Death and Rebirth
The Shamanic journey is a journey of ego death and rebirth - at least, that's the best word for what I experienced. As I shifted into trance, there was a strong sense of unease and anxiety which manifested as nausea. Some deep-rooted instinct took over and my breathing automatically took on a chaotic rhythm to work through the nausea. (Later on, Eduardo would conjecture that this chaotic breathing was a response to deep rooted emotions surfacing in the trance, see this reference on nihdotgov) I felt myself "squeezed until all that was left was the very essence of existence", and I imagine the closest comparable sensation would be that of being born (!!!) While the experience was very, very visceral, intense and just a little scary, it also felt completely natural and familiar at another level. As the nausea wore off, the trance deepened and this where I had the sense of reliving many, many lives before emerging on the other side, reborn.
No one teaches us to breathe. The compression of the fetal chest in the birth canal may cause the urge the breath. We are compressed, we are trapped, we need space—so our innate instinct is to breathe.
We need the space—the expansion—that breathing creates.
Breath: The Umbilical Cord
The trance state is a state of expanded consciousness. While the finite, limited sense of everyday self almost completely dissolves into infinity, a shred of individuality remains. As I lay awash in bliss, the question arose as to what the relationship is between Unitary Awareness and the limited self and physical body of my everyday experience. The answer that came was that breath is the umbilical cord that connects the finite body and mind to the infinite - stop breathing, and you merge into the infinite.
Gender and Identity
Once I was established in trance, all gender identification seemed meaningless and inconsequential. Pure awareness or consciousness transcends such limited concepts. I've already touched upon this in my previous post, but my sense of separate identity vanished. In turn, I transformed into my wife, children, parents, uncles and aunts - in the sense of completely forgetting I was myself and becoming them. I experienced what it was like to be each of them, sharing their emotions, hopes and fears - in other words, empathy to the point of complete identification with the other person. This line from the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali describing the steps to the experience of Samyama or oneness with an object of meditation, best captures the experience:
तद् एवार्थमात्रनिर्भासं स्वरूपशून्यम् इव समाधिः ॥ ३॥
tad evārthamātranirbhāsaṃ svarūpaśūnyam iva samādhiḥ .. 3..
When the object of meditation engulfs the meditator, appearing as the subject, self-awareness is lost. This is samādhi.
Salvation and the Time before Death
Expanded consciousness exists all around us at this very moment. The effort is in staying in that expanded state instead of contracting into the day to day experience of limited self. Quoting from The Time before Death by the 15th century mystic and poet Kabir.
What you call "salvation" belongs to the time
before death.
.....
What is found now is found then.
If you find nothing now,
you will simply end up with an apartment in the
City of Death.
If you make love with the divine now, in the next
life you will have the face of satisfied desire.
The Shamanic journey is a journey of ego death and rebirth - at least, that's the best word for what I experienced. As I shifted into trance, there was a strong sense of unease and anxiety which manifested as nausea. Some deep-rooted instinct took over and my breathing automatically took on a chaotic rhythm to work through the nausea. (Later on, Eduardo would conjecture that this chaotic breathing was a response to deep rooted emotions surfacing in the trance, see this reference on nihdotgov) I felt myself "squeezed until all that was left was the very essence of existence", and I imagine the closest comparable sensation would be that of being born (!!!) While the experience was very, very visceral, intense and just a little scary, it also felt completely natural and familiar at another level. As the nausea wore off, the trance deepened and this where I had the sense of reliving many, many lives before emerging on the other side, reborn.
This article Breathe Like a Baby: The Miracle of Pranayama that I found as I write this post expresses it well:
We need the space—the expansion—that breathing creates.
It helps us to continue creating space, to become devoid of conditioning to continue unlearning the fear, anxiety, and stress that we have learned, the stories that we’ve held on to for dear life, even though they were no longer serving us
Breath: The Umbilical Cord
The trance state is a state of expanded consciousness. While the finite, limited sense of everyday self almost completely dissolves into infinity, a shred of individuality remains. As I lay awash in bliss, the question arose as to what the relationship is between Unitary Awareness and the limited self and physical body of my everyday experience. The answer that came was that breath is the umbilical cord that connects the finite body and mind to the infinite - stop breathing, and you merge into the infinite.
Gender and Identity
Once I was established in trance, all gender identification seemed meaningless and inconsequential. Pure awareness or consciousness transcends such limited concepts. I've already touched upon this in my previous post, but my sense of separate identity vanished. In turn, I transformed into my wife, children, parents, uncles and aunts - in the sense of completely forgetting I was myself and becoming them. I experienced what it was like to be each of them, sharing their emotions, hopes and fears - in other words, empathy to the point of complete identification with the other person. This line from the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali describing the steps to the experience of Samyama or oneness with an object of meditation, best captures the experience:
तद् एवार्थमात्रनिर्भासं स्वरूपशून्यम् इव समाधिः ॥ ३॥
tad evārthamātranirbhāsaṃ svarūpaśūnyam iva samādhiḥ .. 3..
When the object of meditation engulfs the meditator, appearing as the subject, self-awareness is lost. This is samādhi.
Salvation and the Time before Death
Expanded consciousness exists all around us at this very moment. The effort is in staying in that expanded state instead of contracting into the day to day experience of limited self. Quoting from The Time before Death by the 15th century mystic and poet Kabir.
What you call "salvation" belongs to the time
before death.
.....
What is found now is found then.
If you find nothing now,
you will simply end up with an apartment in the
City of Death.
If you make love with the divine now, in the next
life you will have the face of satisfied desire.
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