The Places Inside Us

[VacuumFlux]

Reading through another thread on here (starting about here) got me thinking about this topic again. I'm not sure what the right word is for it, and there are probably several, but I'm talking about the safe or necessary places you go to inside your own head. I've got several. Most of them are places I get to while meditating.

 

The void. The void isn't empty, it is so very alive. I see myself as a humanoid shape, defined by a bluish outline. But I am not a solid object, and the breezes that I feel blow right through me and are not stopped by any sort of skin. The background color of this space is black, but not black as in nothingness. It is black in the sense of there not being any objects in my way of seeing all the way to infinity. (I also have glowing white room I can go to, but is it a place I either feel trapped in or go to block out everything. Colors come from objects and describe boundaries.) I am stationary but there is no floor. All through this space, that goes on forever, are tiny flashes of light, of all sorts of colors. This is what I mean by the void being alive. It is a place of freedom, a place to go and simply enjoy the experience of me being alive.

 

One other place, that I haven't seen in a while, represents the more logical, structured side of me. It is also located is a black expanse, but the experience of this place is more localized. Here, I again see my edges as defined by a blue glow. But I am a crystaline structure, make of of bars and angles. I am under construction, becoming more are more organized and symmetric. I think this is a place, a conception of myself, that I used to go to for comfort when life felt overwhelming and out of control. It sorta has a sci-fy feel of a space dock where a ship is being built. Or maybe not so much a ship but a space station, because it's not planning on going anywhere.

 

There used to be a similar localized place in the blackness that just had a cocoon, but that part of me has finally woken up. I'm still working on integrating it, though. I'd go visit it when I knew there was a part of me missing, but I'd usually end up telling myself it wasn't time yet. What happens now, when I'm trying to integrate that part, I am aware of my body and feel this other part as a dark and powerful blob that I will into a humanoid shape and make it line up with my body and all my body's movements. This goes along with a process of thinking of myself in the plural and, once everything is lined up, my personal pronouns abruptly become singular. I start out feeling a little off and lost, gather the committee members, and they all start chanting "we are one" until they truly are, and then the "we" sounds silly and I just think in terms of "I".

 

This next one isn't a place, exactly, but a representation of me. It's a white glowing humanoid shape. It's... comforting and maternal. Once when I was really stressed out and hiding from myself, it was carrying around a passed out darker version of me. I asked it, since it seemed so much more capable and sure of itself, to take over and run my life. It said that wasn't it's place, and was there to help me heal inside so I could go back out and take care of myself again. It assured me that I was capable of doing so.

 

As for more full-colored physical type places, most of those are one-off locations. I see them a lot in guided meditations. I like trees, forests, wind, and the ocean's beach. Sometimes the desert is nice too. One I found a "library" with a bunch of doorway-sized pages arranged in a circle (think rolodex). I tried to go to the center but it was blanked out and, like the cocoon, something told me I wasn't ready to see it yet. I found a page, a floating page that contained some bad memories, and the more I looked the more the pictures became alive and tried to suck me back into the negative emotions I'd felt when it happened. I had to back out and calm down before I could look at other things.

 

One of the few recurring locations is floating in the ocean. If I'm laying on my back, I close my eyes and enjoy the comforting feel of the sun while still being aware of the dark expanse below me. If I'm upset about things and unable to calmly enjoy the sunlight, or afraid of the sunlight, I go diving. Sometimes there are things hiding in the water that I need to find. But no matter how far I go, the ocean is still more vast than I can ever experience. There is a sort of comfort to that, to there being something bigger than "me" (my limited conscious mind?), even though the ocean is a representation of my own subconscious.

[Noggy]

Hey! I'm the one that said the Void

 

YAY ME!

 

But srs, I just imagine a flame in a sea of blackness (void), and I throw all of my cares, and emotions, and thoughts into the all consuming flame. Sometimes the flame stays there, but when I am really successful I can then snuff out the flame.

[VacuumFlux]

Hey! I'm the one that said the Void

 

YAY ME!

 

Hehe. Part of what I'm curious about is how many people use the void vs using more realistic/concrete locations. I wonder what it is about the void that makes it so common? Most other abstract visualizations I get seem unique to me and not-useful for communicating with other people.

 

But srs, I just imagine a flame in a sea of blackness (void), and I throw all of my cares, and emotions, and thoughts into the all consuming flame. Sometimes the flame stays there, but when I am really successful I can then snuff out the flame.

 

Huh, I just realized that despite my love of real fire, I can't recall ever making one inside my head.

[Noggy]

Imagining myself in places is too hectic for me. I have pretty severe ADHD (lol i know), and anything that stimulates my mind at all is not useful for meditation. I have to either concentrate on my breathing or consciously let go of all of my thoughts, hence the flame. I definitely stole the idea from a book, though.

[ScifiChick]

I first read about the flame and the void in Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series. Hasn't ever really worked for me. I always used to suck at meditating, but recently, I started using a rainbow exercise that I'm finding great success with.

[DesertBob]

I'm not sure what the right word is for it, and there are probably several, but I'm talking about the safe or necessary places you go to inside your own head.

Never got much mileage out of this. Perhaps it's a lack of imagination on my part, but I never, ever have such detailed, rich experiences between my ears. If I have a place of "escape" it's imagined role playing in a fictional fantasy of someone else's invention, perhaps a movie I've seen recently or something, but in recent years I don't seem able to really get into those nearly to the extent that I used to. To a lesser extent I imagine orderly, comprehensible worlds unlike the insane nutjob universe we find ourselves in, and what it would be like to live in such a world. But I don't find such reveries particularly helpful; after all, I have to cope with and navigate the world I actually am obliged to inhabit.

 

If fascinates me that other people have such rich inner lives and find them so helpful. It's just outside my experience.

 

--Bob

[hereticzero]

I was able to meditate a lot better before I got married and had kids. I like being able to shut out noise and it's hard to do with other people around. I generally wait to meditate after the house settles down for the night. I like to sit outside too in the shade or on the porch and pretend I am one of the birds in the trees out front and try to visualize what they are seeing through their eyes. I have a kinship for wrens. When I want total meditation without concentrating, or straining for peace, I imagine I am in a meadow with wrens. It is snowing with a breeze and I am in a kilt. I think it has to do with my Celtic heritage. There are cherry tree blossoms on trees. My beard is braided and my hair. I spent years creating this place. When I lived in horrible poverty and no television, no phone, nothing in the one-room apartment but one window on the 5th floor and I built this place in my mind for someplace to go to other than the shit-hole I had to live in.

[ilovemybrain]

I have a deep inner life but I don't picture voids and flames and such...Those of you who live "inwardly" might enjoy the book "The Elegance of the Hedgehog" about a couple of very intelligent people who live incognito, with outwardly average lives.

[Antlerman]

When I speak of the Void it is that place of formlessness, Emptiness. It is the absolute absence of thoughts and feelings. It is the place of pure awareness, present Spirit, Being itself from which all arises. It is the Abyss. It is not a state of mind, but Mind itself.

 

It is terror to face it as it is nothingness. It is the end of "you". It is the end of all things. It is Ocean, out of which all forms arise. It is "God beyond God" or Godhead.

[asanerman]

Castaneda's Yaqui shaman, Don Juan, teaches, we must "stop the world" in its routine spinning if we are to truly "See."

 

By quieting my mind, reason and imagination, all mental chatter dies down. Past and future drop away. If I'm lucky or fortunate it's not a doing but an "undoing," a giving up, an abandonment of the belief that there's Anyone here to abandon.

 

My inner place is "seeing" what is already Obvious, that "I am" Nothing and Everything and at the deepest level I already will Nothing and Everything.

 

My inner place is the "breakthrough to the already," reverence for "What's So--for The Plainly Given, The Blatantly Obvious." A place where my "intention" does not play havoc with my "attention." A place of rediscovering the Obvious in the un-Obvious

 

When I "stop the world" by quieting my mind, sometimes, if I'm lucky or just fortunate, I find my inner Nothingness and Everything-ness. I find the Obvious and I have no complaints!

[Antlerman]

Castaneda's Yaqui shaman, Don Juan, teaches, we must "stop" the world" in its routine spinning if we are to truly "See."

 

By quieting my mind, reason and imagination, all mental chatter dies down. Past and future drop away. If I'm lucky or fortunate it's not a doing but an "undoing," a giving up, an abandonment of the belief that there's Anyone here to abandon.

 

My inner place is "seeing" what is already Obvious, that "I am" Nothing and Everything and at the deepest level I already will Nothing and Everything.

 

My inner place is the "breakthrough to the already," reverence for "What's So--for The Plainly Given, The Blatantly Obvious." A place where my "intention" does not play havoc with my "attention." A place of rediscovering the Obvious in the un-Obvious

 

When I "stop the world" by quieting my mind, sometimes, if I lucky or just fortunate, I find my inner Nothingness and Everything-ness. I find the Obvious and I have no complaints!

That was beautiful. This in particular resounds, "Breakthrough to the already". My inner self is my, our, all things Prior Nature. It is breaking through the clutter to Reality. Before and Beyond. That and nothing else is Truth. All else are forms of It, faces It wears, as are the ones we wear. We are Spirit enfolding and unfolding.