3rd Gear: The lava lamp

Here's another way to access and understand the direct mode of perception:

The Lava Lamp

You are the wax at the bottom of the lamp. As the lamp heats up, the wax starts to distort; it forms a bump that gets bigger as the lamp continues to heat up. Let's call the bump a proto-blob. We know that if the wax gets hot enough, the distortion in the wax will grow, it will become a fully formed blob and it will break off from the main body of the wax, taking on a life of its own and wreaking all kinds of havoc. You don't want that to happen. You would like to remain whole. If you can detect the distortion of the energy while it is still a proto-blob, you can remove the heat from the wax and let it cool, which will allow the main body of the wax (your physio-energetic body) to come back to rest and regain its natural form. It will be at peace.

As soon as you feel the proto-blob forming, gently rest your attention on it. The proto-blob, you understand, corresponds to proto-anxiety, proto-fear, or proto-manic joy, or proto-desire for gross sensual pleasure. You can feel it because it hurts; it is experienced as a physical sensation in the body. Whenever you have an emotional charge, you can feel it as a discomfort in the body. This is useful to you because it is part of the feedback loop that allows you to do something about it and to know when you are doing it right. Each time an emotional charge arises, feel it as a sensation in the body and gently ground it to the body just by resting your attention on it. When proto-anxiety (or any proto-emotion) is felt in the body, it is not a problem. The wax in your lava lamp can cool and you can regain your natural form, returning to rest. When you are at rest, you will feel peaceful and whole. Look around: visuals are simple, clear, and compelling. Listen: sounds are crisp and seem to exist within a greater silence. Feel your body. Ground the emotions in the body.

Look out for the blob!

It'll do anything to survive LOL!

www.horrorstew.com/images/TheBlobRemakeBox.jpg

Mu, you and I just talked about this, but no one else has the context for the desire of the lava lamp blob to survive. Can you explain?

Once the lava in the lamp heats up to the point where one of the blobs pinches off and becomes a separate blob, the game is over (for the time being). The blob is a separate entity at that point and it will try it's hardest to stay that way. Time to disembed (1st gear)

This is the pain body that Eckhart Tolle speaks of when he says the following:

"This accumulated pain is a negative energy field that occupies your body and mind. If you look on it as an invisible entity in its own right, you are getting qute close to the truth. It's the emotional pain body. It has two modes of being: dormant and active....

....The pain body wants to survive, just like every other entity in existance, and it can only survive if it gets you to unconsciously identify with it. It can then rise up, take you over, "become you," and live through you. It needs to get its "food" through you. It will feed on any experience that resonates with its own kind of energy, anything that creates further pain in whatever form: anger, destructiveness, hatred, grief, emotional drama, violence, and even illness.

So the pain body, when it has taken you over, will create a situation in your life that refects back its own energy frequency for it to feed on. Pain can only feed on pain. Pain cannot feed on joy. It finds it quite indigestible.

Once the pain body has taken you over, you want more pain. You become a victim or a perpetrator. You want to inflict pain, or you want to suffer pain, or both. There isen't really much difference between the two. You are not conscious of this, of course, and will vehemently claim that you do not want pain. But look closely and you will that your thinking and behavior are designed to keep the pain going, for yourself and others.

If you were truly conscious of it, the pattern would disolve, for to want more pain os insanity, and nobody is conscioulsy insane."

Thanks, Mu! You've got it. Once the blob of wax separates from the main body of wax, it takes on a life of its own and will do whatever it can to survive. Perversely, the survival of the blob depends on maintaining the anxiety and agitation; the blob is not other than anxiety and agitation and it fears its own death. Since you are likely to identify with this out-of-control pseudo-entity (which is, in reality, just a thought plus a body sensation), you will justify your own suffering and perpetuate the life of the blob.

As Mu points out, it's time to downshift to 1st Gear and note your behind off! In this way, you can disembed from the blob, regain your composure, realize that the blob is not you, and allow the lamp to cool. In time, the blob "dies," returning to merge with the main body of wax in the lamp and you are whole again and at peace. At this point, you can return to your 3rd Gear practice of gently grounding the emotional charge in the body, remaining undivided, and setting an example of peacefulness for those around you. When the people around you don't have to breathe the second-hand smoke of your anxiety, you are doing them a tremendous favor without even trying!

Bump - for those getting into Direct Mode (shooting for Kenneth's 6th stage).

Thanks Mumuwu (and Kenneth)! Though my partner and I read this some time ago, it was a very helpful reminder today in a context where stressful news had been received -- a rich field for the pain body to spring up.

It is notable that the lava lamp metaphor is also characterised by fluidity and cyclicism, which also have their own calming implications and help remind one of the underlying unity. The literal and color warmth of lava lamps is also a nice reminder for grounding feelings.