The
Caldron
Ting/The Caldron Changing
to Sui/Following in the Tao.
I Ching |
The Ting is a special kind of bowl. The Chinese used
it to serve honored guests. It has a special place, too, in the I Ching.
After a fashion, you could
say the I
Ching was a cauldron of stewing ideas just waiting for the host to dish out to the
hungry minds that consult it. The host, in
the case of the I Ching, being change itself
dressed in its finery of chance.
This exercise is like that, too. Full of high caloric imagery your
mind can feed on. What's in it? The Thread of Awareness itself. 8 mind levels simmered
into view by Om Mani Padma Hum. Flavored with natural spices. You should be familiar with
the 8 mind level exercise and the Om Mani
Padma Hum exercise before you get into the Caldron.
This exercise seems complicated at first, but it isn't really. Just
remember the 8 mind levels. This is the same thing Chinese Style.
Like any recipe, feel free to adapt the general parts to fit the
scenes available to you. It is best served during early morning exercise, and tastiest of
all in wilderness, near a mountain stream. However. Whatever. Read it over, start simply
with a few tests, let it ripen by itself.
The ingredients.
Wind: The wind
is the flow of energy of the universe, the unformed, life giving elements surging into and
out of your focus. Real wind is a good example.
Wood: The wood is the
elements of Earth. As in a tree or your body. It is the receptive. Your body is the
position of the 100 trillion little beings that dance your form and movement.
Flame: The flame is
spirit, the hot mix of the energy of the universe igniting and rising in the wood. You
have to feel this one. If you are running it's easy cause you get hot.
Metal: The cauldron is metal. This is creativity
(metal isn't natural, you know). Also perserverence, duty, even reverence.
Water: Water is water.
But it has 4 states. These are Chaos, Steam, River, and Ocean. (Skip ice, snow and rain
for this one).
Preparation:
Here's how you prepare the exercise. Remember, this is a variation
of the 8 mind level exercise.
Warm up with Yin/Yang and walking or
jogging in nature. Maybe a few rounds of Om Mani Padma Hum as
appetizers.
Then:
Contact the wind. Feel
the wind flowing all around you and through you, weaving in and out of the threads of your
being. Feel the wind entering you and leaving you with each breath (the Yin and Yang
exercise). Keep this up till you actually become the wind blowing through your focus, the
trees, over the hills or whatever is around you.
Then:
Contact the wood. Now you are the wind contacting the wood. The wind flows through and around the wood.
Integrate the wind and the wood. Become the wood. Now you are the wood feeling the wind
flowing through it. Think of the wood as the elements of the earth, the atoms creating
your running form, the form of the trees. When you truly are the wood feeling the wind
blowing over you feel the wind ignite the wood and together form the flame.
Then:
Contact the flame. The
flame is your spirit, the light by which all creatures perceive one another. The spirit is
the dancing fire of energy formed as the wind integrates with the dancing beings of your
body. You are the wind and the wood united. The flame is their motion and heat. It is your
motion and heat. Integrate the flame and the wood and the wind. Stir these together into
the trees, plants, all living things around you as you run (or walk) until you are the
flame rising up from the wind and the wood.
Then:
The integrated flame and wood and wind forge the metal
cauldron. The cauldron represents creativity, mind making something brand new and
different. Contact the cauldron. It prepares the nourishment of the divine. Integrate the
cauldron, the flame, the wood and the wind. Feel the spirit heating the metal of
creativity. Become the cauldron, become creativity.
Then:
Within the cauldron is water.
Water represents chaos, the unformed material giving rise to all. Contact the water.
Integrate the water, the cauldron, the flame, the wood, and the wind. Feel the metal of
creativity heated by spirit created by the wind burning the wood. Become the water. Become
the water in yourself, in the trees, in the earth, in whatever water is around you. Become
the water of chaos, churning with the heat of spirit and now become aware that you have
come to a new phase, crossed a barrier of metal to leave behind the wind and the wood and
the fire and the metal elements to become an abstraction emerging from chaos.
Then:
The energy of the universe, integrated with the dance of life forms
the fire of spirit and is focused by reverence and love to heat the liquid chaos. This
causes the water to boil, thus creating order out of chaos, forming perfect spheres where
the flames of spirit lick through the metal lens of creativity. Contact
the creativity of order from chaos. Integrate the creativity of order from
chaos with the water, the cauldron, the flame, the wood and the wind. Become the spheres
of life rising up, churning chaos itself.
Then:
The bubbles rise to the surface and the cauldron overflows. The
river of creativity is called The Way. The spherical eggs formed by the
process of elements becoming is its source. It is born from the cauldron as an infant, a
tiny stream flowing down the mountain of becoming, twisting and turning in the course of
existence. Joined by tributaries from all the bright glowing centers of creation it grows
larger and larger until it is a mighty river.
Contact the River
called The Way. Find yourself flowing within it, carried along by the mighty flow. As you
pass through the course of existence the current of the river becomes time. And it seems
you are adrift in the eddies of an endless flow of time. The past recedes along the shore
as you descend the mountain from birth to death and the future rushes towards you. If you
are lucky enough to have a mountain stream or a river to observe look up stream to see the
past, downstream to see the future and feel how different the two views are.
Then:
The River flows into This Magic Sea,
entering the vast ocean of our planet. The past and the future vanish. The mountain is
gone. Become This Magic Sea. Feel it's depth and expanse. Expand within This Magic Sea and
sense the currents, the energy within it. Feel the energy moving within This Magic Sea.
Become aware that the energy comes from the surface where the sun contacts the water. Rise
to the heat of the sun and emerge from This Magic Sea into the Air. Contact the wind. Become the wind.
Then, In your mind:
Integrate the 8 steps of the cycle from the ocean,
the wind, the wood, the flame, the cauldron, the water, the steam, the river. Reveal to
your deeper self the 8 phases as one entity, ever flowing from its creation to its
dispersion in This Magic Sea and back. What seems to you, adrift in experience, as time is
but one mighty river existing all at once from its birth to its ending. For The Way, time
is all one interval of awareness, born in creativity and ending in understanding.
Contact the awareness of The Way.
See yourself at the source, when you were created. See yourself at the moment of
understanding as you enter this Magic Sea of Knowledge. You exist in the river everywhere,
all at once.
Then:
Contact yourself as a youth.
See yourself in the currents of experience as you drift through life as a child. Integrate
your present self with the youth in the river of life. Realize the child formed before you
did, it has existed longer than you have. It gave rise to you. Therefore the child, still
within you, is the eldest and you are the newest, youngest, most resilient and most
powerful you.
Contact the you in the future.
It has not yet come to pass from your viewpoint in time. It will be your child, yet it
will be older than you are now. It will be closer to This Magic Sea and will know The Way.
The you in the future can guide you if you defer to it and show it respect as the elder
child within you defers to you and shows you respect. Integrate the you in the future with
the you in the past and the you in the present.
Through The Way, you can communicate between all of your selves.
Thus The Way becomes self-evident, self-creating, self fulfilling.
Your being flows with the force and there is great success and happiness in all that you
do.
Add some seasoning:
Perceive only the you of the now, running. Alone. Attempt to hold on
to the passing shores of experience and the conditions of life. Focus on your life now.
Hold on to what you are now. Discover you are floating ever backwards, grasping at the
veiled beauty of becoming, holding onto rocks for security against the raging torrents of
time that sweep you onward toward oblivion. No matter how hard you try to grasp the
physical realities of experience, the currents of time weaken your grasp and carry you
away on the rip tide of age.
For desert:
Contact The Way. Integrate The Way and the infinity of selves that
ride the flow of experience. The currents resolve into a transparent, smoothly flowing
light called Joy. Guided by your future selves, followed faithfully by your elder child
within, you are free to fly joyously, as in a wondrous lucid dream, to any destinations
your infinite self can imagine.
When you learn, thus, to soar and fly on the river of life, you will
make a wondrous discovery upon entering, at last, This Magic Sea of Knowledge.
Contact This Magic Sea. Integrate This Magic Sea with the inner you
that knows joy and love and peace and harmony. Feel yourself uplifted and spread out to
become the Wind. Feel the Wind integrate with the wood and ignite to become the spiritual
flame. Feel the wind and wood and flame shape itself with reverence and understanding into
the cauldron. Experience the wind and wood and flame and cauldron heat the water of chaos
and become, once again, the creative, the source, the beginning of The Way to This Magic
Sea. Integrate with all the living beings and all the centers of creation and all the
spiritual flames and all the dance of life and all the flowing unformed energies of life.
Become This Magic Sea of Knowledge.
This is a test:
Can you recognize the 8 mind levels and Om Mani Padma Hum in
this exercise?
Try the vegetarian version.
Try the Zero Calorie version
Check the Caldron out in action
in New
Caledonia
|
