3rd Gear: The Deadman Switch
- kennethfolk
- Topic Author
15 years 3 months ago #69120
by kennethfolk
3rd Gear: The Deadman Switch was created by kennethfolk
Another way to access the direct mode of perception:
The Deadman Switch
A deadman switch is a safety feature found on machinery. In order for the machine to continue to run, you must keep your hand on the switch. If you take your hand off, the machine stops. You can find these devices on trains; they are intended to prevent train wrecks in case of the untimely death of the engineer. You will also find a deadman switch on a self-propelled lawn mower. If you stumble and fall, letting go of the switch, the lawn mower will stop moving forward, preventing it from running over your hedge or your neighbor.
In order to maintain yourself in the direct mode of perception, you must keep your hand on the switch. If you take it off, you will drift back into your customary state of fragmentation. Place you attention in your body and leave it there. Feel your body as a whole, alert to subtle energy disruptions, hard spots, or tension. Don't try to fix anything! Leave it alone. Just gently rest your attention on/in the body as you would rest your hand on the shoulder of a loved one by way of reassurance; you don't have to do anything. The very fact that the hand is there IS the reassurance.
Your attention is the lightning rod, effortlessly grounding the free-floating emotional charge in the body. You must make the connection and all you have to do to make the connection is to feel the anxiety, anger, resentment, fear, or manic pleasure wherever it manifests in the body. As long as you are feeling the emotions as body sensations, you are safe and whole. Just remember to keep your hand on the switch. It is a deadman switch, just like on a train.
I think of the Cat Stevens song, "Peace Train." As long as your hand is on the switch, the Peace Train is runnin'; when your hand slips off the switch, the Anxiety Train starts up.
Feel the emotions in the body. Keep your hand on the switch.
The Deadman Switch
A deadman switch is a safety feature found on machinery. In order for the machine to continue to run, you must keep your hand on the switch. If you take your hand off, the machine stops. You can find these devices on trains; they are intended to prevent train wrecks in case of the untimely death of the engineer. You will also find a deadman switch on a self-propelled lawn mower. If you stumble and fall, letting go of the switch, the lawn mower will stop moving forward, preventing it from running over your hedge or your neighbor.
In order to maintain yourself in the direct mode of perception, you must keep your hand on the switch. If you take it off, you will drift back into your customary state of fragmentation. Place you attention in your body and leave it there. Feel your body as a whole, alert to subtle energy disruptions, hard spots, or tension. Don't try to fix anything! Leave it alone. Just gently rest your attention on/in the body as you would rest your hand on the shoulder of a loved one by way of reassurance; you don't have to do anything. The very fact that the hand is there IS the reassurance.
Your attention is the lightning rod, effortlessly grounding the free-floating emotional charge in the body. You must make the connection and all you have to do to make the connection is to feel the anxiety, anger, resentment, fear, or manic pleasure wherever it manifests in the body. As long as you are feeling the emotions as body sensations, you are safe and whole. Just remember to keep your hand on the switch. It is a deadman switch, just like on a train.
I think of the Cat Stevens song, "Peace Train." As long as your hand is on the switch, the Peace Train is runnin'; when your hand slips off the switch, the Anxiety Train starts up.
Feel the emotions in the body. Keep your hand on the switch.
- mumuwu
- Topic Author
- Mark_VanWhy
- Topic Author
15 years 3 months ago #69122
by Mark_VanWhy
Replied by Mark_VanWhy on topic RE: 3rd Gear: The Deadman Switch
"You must make the connection and all you have to do to make the connection is to feel the anxiety, anger, resentment, fear, or manic pleasure wherever it manifests in the body. As long as you are feeling the emotions as body sensations, you are safe and whole. "
LOL, I'm gonna write my own song called "Runaway Peace Train..." Yeah though, what you are saying is the case for me also and it's great that you are bringing all this up these days. A great contribution to this KFDh community which you always help to balance and to keep from becoming lopsided.
I feel this directness you speak of as everything occuring in the body (just as you said) and interestingly for me there is no depth perception in it whatsoever. It's very hard to explain, but for me directly seeing a closely held thought or directly seeing a quasar on the other side of the universe would appear to the body as being the same distance away somehow. It's very hard to fathom, because obviously I can function and orient myself in time and space, but somehow there is no far or near to it. In the body all the senses seem to occur at the same distance, which is in fact no distance at all.
Another thing that I always notice in the direct perception is that people comment that there are three components to the breath: in breath, out breath and the gap between the two. For me, in directness, there is no gap component to the breath at all. I can see with perfect clarity that the gap is there only as a background in which the in-breath and out-breath both arise. Although I can see this directly and with what seems to be impossible clearly, I understand that when I finally get 1st gear attainment it may unmask that sense completely; because by all accounts what I am saying is not possible in a 1st gear framework.
LOL, I'm gonna write my own song called "Runaway Peace Train..." Yeah though, what you are saying is the case for me also and it's great that you are bringing all this up these days. A great contribution to this KFDh community which you always help to balance and to keep from becoming lopsided.
I feel this directness you speak of as everything occuring in the body (just as you said) and interestingly for me there is no depth perception in it whatsoever. It's very hard to explain, but for me directly seeing a closely held thought or directly seeing a quasar on the other side of the universe would appear to the body as being the same distance away somehow. It's very hard to fathom, because obviously I can function and orient myself in time and space, but somehow there is no far or near to it. In the body all the senses seem to occur at the same distance, which is in fact no distance at all.
Another thing that I always notice in the direct perception is that people comment that there are three components to the breath: in breath, out breath and the gap between the two. For me, in directness, there is no gap component to the breath at all. I can see with perfect clarity that the gap is there only as a background in which the in-breath and out-breath both arise. Although I can see this directly and with what seems to be impossible clearly, I understand that when I finally get 1st gear attainment it may unmask that sense completely; because by all accounts what I am saying is not possible in a 1st gear framework.