Quite consistently over the past few weeks I've been waking up in the middle of the night, rolling over and gazing at the LED light of my monitor. More often than not, there is an extra light that shouldn't be there:
Original light (I have astigmatism)
Extra light!
The additional light is different. It vibrates, flashes and moves. I have seen it a few times during my darkroom gazing, but it's almost only in the middle of the night.
If I don't see the extra light I just pee and go back to bed because I know I won't see anything quickly. But when it's there I only have to squint, cross my eyes slightly and gaze for a few seconds and boom the light is morphing into something. Usually it's a person doing something. Earlier this week it was a Terraria video game player, my latest obsession. I could see the player mining blocks and even the mouse moving.
A few nights ago it was another person or character doing something and I don't remember the specifics, but what I do remember was I saw the text: "TEFL VES" form beneath the monitor. For context, I've been worrying for a few weeks about whether I should get a TEFL certification and teach English in Asia.
When I saw it I intuitively knew it was supposed to be a Yes. I don't know why it was a V instead of a Y. I also don't know if it was me or an ally or something else, but I am interpreting it as go and get the certification 😉.
The weird thing is that none of it was exciting to me at the time. Although you would think it was, it was more of a "ok neat" kind of vibe
14 Comments
Interesting….some ppl force silence immediately upon waking up as part of their practice. There’s posts about. It’s prob a good time to learn/practice.
Sometimes when I wake up I feel like my internal dialogue was this continuous stream of thoughts flowing from dreaming to being awake without stopping. So I recently started trying to force silence immediately after waking up. It's significantly easier at 9am than when you're groggy at 3am.
Appreciate the tip, I'll have to check it out. Tbh I should reread the books sometime
Are you doing Tensegrity? I find huge benefits from Darkroom Tensegrity. Even the times when my control over internal dialogue is sketchy and minimal. You’ll find that you learn control over the chatter with every session. It’ll help with your other practices. That’s what I’ve experienced.
Rereading the books is good - youll find stuff you missed and that your understanding has evolved.
Yes I do tensegrity almost every single night, I do the recapitulation series and most of the heat series
Awesome! 👏🏼
Seems to me there’s more reply guys here, than practitioners. It’s awesome that you’re doing recap and tensegrity.
I’m behind in my Recap. I don’t do it enough, but I do Darkroom Tensegrity 2x a day. I also gaze at some ancestor trees I found, a few times a week.
Yeah there's definitely more reply guys here than practitioners, and some comments I think are AI lol. Tensegrity 2x a day is solid, how long do you do it for?
I'm also behind in recap, it seems common here. Though today I did 20 minutes and saw some puffs which is nice but not enough.
I liked going to nice parks and gazing at the spaces between the branches of trees while trying to force silence. Although lately I've been trying to force silence while walking
I do, 30-60min each session. I cut down on gazing after tensegrity, so I’m more focused on forcing silence while doing the passes. It’s definitely helped. I also mix it up a bit, I use a sleep mask or my large walk in closet. Depends on what passes or series I’m doing. I’ve also been practicing in low light.
I think (for me anyways) Darkroom Tensegrity produces results faster than recap, and my memory sucks. Even for ppl who can’t turn off their internal dialogues the physical effects from tensegrity are noticeably beneficial.
Have you noticed the holes in your daily awareness yet?
I always plan to do more, but I end up doing closer to 20 minutes of actual tensegrity and then a short recapitulation of my day followed by gazing. I need to learn some more passes and level up my game.
Holes in my daily awareness? Is that, for example, when trying to force silence while walking you realize you forgot to force silence and walked 10 yards while the internal dialogue took over? And you don't know when the switch happened?
If it's not that, then I don't think I've noticed. What are they?
That’s good! I gotta start recapping my day. It’s a good way to learn the technique and build the muscle memory up.
I know few passes and series now. I try to learn a new one every month.
Usually, before i start my practice I figure out what I’m going to use. I’ll take breaks in between and gaze while forcing silence. Today I started with opening oneself to intent, a structure made out of energy, and I put seers window in it, gazed for 10-15minutes at the seers window. Then I did series for inner silence and gazed till my alarm went off. I don’t always gaze at the end of every Darkroom session cause I’m lazy and I won’t force silence as hard as I should while doing passes.
The holes on the tonal/daily awareness, look to me like black or coloured 2D balls/dots in my vision. So far, I seem to see them when moving from one motion to the next when my mind is relaxed and unfocused.
Many psychics, witches, and warlocks start by looking at a candle and then start to see things. Perhaps there is something to it.
It can be a slight blinding effect that helps you switch from your normal vision to another. When I do gazing during sunny day, I experience a similar effect.
Zuleica did say, that for a beginner unmitigated darkness wasn't useful.
Of course, that was Carlos quoting her based on his understanding at the time.
I've been doing this 6+ years, and highly recommend taping over leds or making a little block with fake fur cloth taped on it, to push in front of the LEDs. Get rid of EVERY bit of light.
But I tend to be obsessive with things.
And Zuleica's statement does verify that you can have little bits of light here and there and it's not a problem. In fact, it goes further and implies those are actually useful.
How that might be is a bit obvious. If your tonal can't figure out what something is, it calls on the second attention to see if that can explain.
It's the first principle of darkroom practice!
Thus Zuleica's advice is based on using that same principle we use. That if the first attention can't perceive something in a "real" way, meaning that if it can't make sense of something, the second attention will show up to provide a largely phantom version of it which looks more "real".
Even a half dark room works. I practice that way at work in the warehouse.
Carlos emphasized looking for text, and lately we seem to have 5 or more people who occasionally see text.
I don't suppose they had "TEFL certification " back when I was considering traveling to Japan to teach english.
Sounds like a tiny bit of a scam for whoever came up with that idea of charging money to certify people to teach english. But also since it really does let you travel nearly for free all over the world and earn a meager living, that's pretty cool!
In the 70s, I'm not sure how you got the gigs.
Being obsessive is fine! When there's no standards in a group then it degrades to the lowest common denominator. I've seen it happen, it's not pretty.
In general I stick to the recommended setup by using a blackout mask when I do tensegrity and recapitulation. I've noticed it's much easier to see puffs in complete darkness.
Although, the other day after doing tensegrity and recapitulating my day I was gazing in my semi dark room without my mask and for a split second I saw a basketball with signatures all over it. Which is weird as I don't watch or play basketball.
So it's good to hear that an almost dark room is ok and has a reference point from Zuleica.
I definitely have not tried eating a roast beef sandwich during darkroom gazing, but I could get behind a high quality roast beef sandwich. No Arby's though, they've gone down the drain
I was wondering about LED gazing yesterday!
You said in another post you slightly cross your eyes. Does that mean the led light needs to be perfectly centered between your eyes?
How far are the LED lights from your eyes for LED gazing? Would holding a LED light directly close to my face, to the point only one eyes is “active” in gazing be ineffective? Will too far be too faint to use the second attention?
The way I've been doing it is with the light on the other side of the room. It's not perfectly centered between my eyes or anything.
As far as your other questions: I have no idea, I haven't tried. My practices mostly consist of tensegrity in darkroom, forcing silence during the day and not doing enough recapitulation. Something compels me to do this too so I like to write about it