Re: The Internet ~ I see your pictures on the wall of this cave... Posted by Narada on July 24, 1998 at 05:27:54:
In Reply to: Re: The Internet ~ I see your pictures on the wall of this cave... posted by Shirley on June 11, 1998 at 13:26:12:
Yes I remember reading John Lilly's "Centre of the Cyclone", and being intrigued for a while by the concept of levels of spiritual-emotional energies. I never did figure out why they were numbered that way though.
As to my own experience with hightened states of conciousness... after many years of exploring and enjoying revelations and extasies invoked with the aid of various power plants and their derivatives, (never in anything like the quantities or intensities that Lilly and other pioneers experimented with), I decided that there were at least 2 good reasons to stop using substances and see what could be learned through other paths and through the awesome experience of being alive itself.
I found that after a few months transition, the "peak experiences" returned on a regular basis, and I treat them as a normal part of the fluctuations of life. There have been months, if not years, where virtually every day was a revelation and expansion of my energy.
I remember Lilly saying that it finally hit him that the exercises that he had been given in order to lift his level of energy, were actually things that come spontaneously as ecstatic expressions of the self when one is in an exalted state. I have found this to be true for me too - and the quickest ways to raise my energy when I want or need to for some reason, is by doing the things that I would do in that hightened state, ie, dance, sing, breathe, visualise colours and geometries, play with the mind, and generally enjoy the manifold possibilities of this stangely indefinable existance.
"What stops us doing this all the time?", is, I believe, a very important question.
What makes us feel good? Why are we still making pictures on the walls of the universe?