Steve's Columns

After much thought, I suppose it's time for me to put down my specific thoughts on the form of personal growth called HEART BEAT MEDITATION.
Please let me make it clear: this is a very serious, very powerful form of change work, not to be taken lightly. Having said that, however, I can add that it is the safest of the powerful meditation systems.
Simply put, meditation is the science of learning to place yourself in a particular mental state, and holding yourself there until a desired result is achieved. Sometimes the intent is personal growth, or healing, or centering, or concentration, or non-attachment. There are many others, but the esoteric aspects are beyond the scope of this article. This is DEFINITELY a major piece of the technology I call "Firedance", which, as I have said, is still in its development.
All right: here's the technique: sit quietly for at least twenty minutes, and listen to your heartbeat.
That's all there is to it, in its basic form. You may need to take your pulse at wrist or throat at first, but if you can quiet yourself enough, slow your breathing, and relax, you should be able to find your heartbeat - and perhaps even find it in multiple areas of your body, moving your concentration or attention from place to place in rotation.
This is the first step. Here are some additional exercises that you can try, if this gets too easy for you:

1. Shift attention through the different chakras (energy centers), or at least the three main ones at heart, head, and navel. Find the pulse in each.
   
2. Find the pulse in your head. Visualize a ball of light, floating just behind your forehead, and see how bright and clear you can make it.
   
3. Slow your breathing, and time your inhalations and exhalations to the pulses. For example: Six beats inhale, six beats exhale.
   

COMPLEX EQUIVALENTS

As you meditate, using whatever system, you will notice certain repetitive phenomena: sounds, sensations of heat or pressure, colors, lights, etc. If you are concentrating on your own body, perhaps projecting a glass vessel in the shape of your meditating self, you can try to fill it with light, or perhaps see colored lights at the different "Chakras", or energy centers. If you take this approach, you may find that when you are tired, emotionally upset, or confused, the light seems more clouded or less intense. In fact, I believe that this is a form of communication between conscious and unconscious, or right and left hemispheres of the brain. Instead of giving you a literal list of the things which you need to work on, your deep self will give you a "Complex Equivilent", and just show smoke filling the space where you are trying to create light. Don't worry - this is a good thing. The conscious mind can only handle about seven (plus or minus two) bits of information at a time. Meditation should be a time of simplification. So the deep self gives you a CE so that you can remain in a simple, visual or kinesthetic mode, and still work on whatever is draining or deviling you.
For instance. Let's say you are sitting in lotus position, eyes closed, listening to your heartbeat. You visualize a mirror in front of you, with the seven "chakra" energy centers lit along the path of your spine. One at a time, you move from center to center - base to top, let's say. As you move from one to the other, you imagine each filled with light and clear liquid. Imagine your heartbeat pulsing within. With each pulse, try to make the liquid clearer and brighter. If you seem to be getting darkness, or stirring up sedimentation or muddy muck, this could be your subconscious trying to tell you that you have work to do on this level. Meditating is like running the filter pump in the aquarium of your soul. It stirs up the muck, but run regularly, it will also clean it out.