Understanding the

Four Forms of Awareness

By Ethan Indigo Smith

Guest Writer for Wake Up World

You are intuitive. You are capable of metaphysical observation that would make angels jealous. And yet as mortals we are all susceptible to the eternal rule applicable to systems in impermanence; move it or lose it. If you do not practice enhancing your observations but instead focus on limiting them, you limit yourself to the mere tangible.

Metaphysical intuition is very much like chi, metaphysical energy, and is in fact enhanced in the same meditative practices. To initially feel the flow, one must first believe, one must first imagine, and then the chi – the metaphysical intuition – will arise. This runs completely contrary to our post-modern mind state that refuses to believe until being presented with proof, sometimes even after being presented proof.

We are trained to sense only the tangible and physical. We believe we are not trained, we think we are completely developed. But take a step back – there is no limit to our development. If you do not practice developing your chi or your metaphysical intuition, instead concentrating on the tangible routine, you are limiting your comprehension and being. If you’re not training, you’re being trained. Meditation and meditative movements are called practices because one is never finished, for if you are not practicing or training, especially in the extensively meditated post-modern world, you are being steered or trained by others.

Sometimes we catch metaphysical intuition and then convince ourselves that our physical senses revealed the observation, not our metaphysical intuition. This is part of the predominant training of outside influences, that we do not have intuitive insight, that the institutions have the answers and that it’s not in us. We convince ourselves to even stop listening to our own insights because we have been trained that way.

The Balanced Mid-Point

The idea of balance in tai chi and all meditative movements for that matter is best expressed using a dual linear cross reference. Consider one can be tense or limp and that relaxed awareness is balance between the two, the midpoint of a horizontal line. Consider also that one can perform actions out of form or function, optimally expressed in a balanced midpoint between the two points on a vertical line. Relaxed awareness is a requirement and conversely a result of meditation and meditative movement, and can be represented as the point where these two ideas intersect and balance. This point of relaxed awareness is achieved when one properly intersects and balances the linear ideas of tense and limp, form and function. Whenever performing any activity, this state is required for optimal results, be it tai chi or meditation or shedding burdensome training.

“The loose string, which is like a life of indulgence, produces a poor sound when struck. The overly tight string, which is like a life of extreme asceticism, similarly produces a poor sound when struck and is moreover likely to break at any moment. Only the middle string, which is like the middle path, produces a pleasant and harmonious sound when struck.” ~ Story of Buddha

 

Levels of Awareness

Tai chi and meditative movements activate all aspects of awareness, physical awareness and metaphysical awareness. The first level of awareness multiplied through practicing meditative movement is interoception, the understanding of the one’s material self, how you feel and move. The second level of understanding is exteroception, the understanding of the material world outside oneself. Thirdly is proprioception, the understanding of how much strength, speed and from what position one can best manipulate or deal with the material world outside oneself. The fourth aspect of this set of four forms of perception is preprioception, the utilization of intuitive understanding and sensitivity for metaphysical observation.

Tai chi and all meditative movements enhance these four forms of perception, expanding one’s perimeter awareness metaphysically. Interoception, exteroception and proprioception are commonly understood terms, but the fourth part, preprioception, while obvious to meditative movement practitioners is mostly unconsidered. And it’s mostly omitted and unconsidered along with metaphysical intuition, because otherwise institutions could not lie to us. If one practices enhancement of intuition, proprioception, institutions cannot lie.

Language is a map, and omitting words rubs whole regions from the map. Simply understanding the four forms of perception can help enhance metaphysical intuition and make it so one might not be lied to so easily.  Practicing meditation and meditative movement will enhance your perception also, of course.

 

Ethan Indigo Smith was born on a farm in Maine and lived in Manhattan for a number of years before migrating west to Mendocino, California. The events of September 11, 2001 inspired him to write his first book, The Complete Patriot’s Guide to Oligarchical Collectivism. He has since written The Matrix of Four, (Kindle Edition). <http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006R9Z1V6/?_encoding=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;linkCode=ur2&amp;tag=spir02-20>  

 <http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006R9Z1V6>, The Philosophy of the Duality of Polarity on the subject of the development of individual consciousness, before expanding into the fiction realm with the controversial The Terraist Letters , a work that humorously contrasts the very serious issues of global nuclear experimentation promotion and global marijuana prohibition.

Ethan’s latest book The Little Green Book of Revolution (released in May 2013) is based on ideas of peaceful revolution, historical activism and caring for the Earth like Native Americans.

Grounded

By Dr. Mercola

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/10/19/grounded-documentary.aspx

http://www.mygroundedmovie.com/

The surface of the Earth holds subtle health-boosting energy. All we have to do is touch it and become truly alive. In the documentary film Grounded, you can see this amazing phenomenon transform the life of people who had been struggling with health issues like chronic pain, and one man who had been wheelchair-bound for decades is able to walk again.

Even plants are drastically impacted when they are taken away from the Earth’s natural energy. Yet, the act of grounding, or Earthing, as it’s sometimes called, isn’t really an unusual phenomenon at all. It’s actually a natural act that virtually every living creature does instinctively.

 

Your Body Needs Its Connection to the Earth

In the film, you’ll see an orphaned baby moose that instinctively lies on an Earthing pad to connect him to the Earth while he’s being temporarily housed in a trailer. The moose goes to the pad whether it’s concealed or not.

This simple act, which can also be achieved by walking barefoot on the Earth, transfers free electrons from the Earth’s surface into your body that spread throughout your tissues.

The effect is sufficient to maintain your body at the same negatively charged electrical potential as the Earth. This simple process is called 'grounding,' and its effect is one of the most potent antioxidants we know of. Grounding has been shown to relieve pain, reduce inflammation, improve sleep, enhance well-being and much, much more.

Upon first learning of grounding, most agree that, in theory, it makes sense. But many are still skeptical, and I’m the first to admit that it is hard to believe… that is, until you experience it for yourself.

And the concept of grounding, and its necessity to human (and virtually ever living creature’s) health is not so much of a stretch when you consider that you are already dependent on and intricately intertwined with the Earth.

Every time you take a breath of air or a drink of water, or absorb the ultraviolet light from the sun, you are, in practice, connecting to the Earth and using it for your very survival. Grounding is really one more extension of this; one more way that your body is intelligently designed to co-exist as a part of nature.

 

Rubber and Plastic Shoes Disconnect You from the Earth’s Energy Flow

Chances are it’s been awhile since you’ve experienced the benefits of grounding, as most Americans spend most of their waking hours wearing shoes with rubber or plastic soles. These materials are very effective insulators, which is precisely whey they’re used to insulate electrical wires. Yet, they also effectively disconnect you from the Earth’s natural electron flow.

In the featured video above, Grounded, (in which I actually appear) you’ll see how poking holes in the soles of your shoes and inserting a grounding rod can allow you to stay grounded, as can special grounding shoes that are now available (sporadically).

Leather-soled shoes will also allow you to stay grounded with the Earth. Walking barefoot is one of the easiest and best ways to stay grounded, but you’ll need to do so on the proper surface. Good grounding surfaces include:

• • • Sand (beach)
    • Grass (preferably moist)
    • Bare soil
    • Concrete and brick (as long as it's not painted or sealed)
    • Ceramic tile

The following surfaces will NOT ground you:

• • • Asphalt
    • Wood
    • Rubber and plastic
    • Vinyl
    • Tar or tarmac

In today's world, this is more important than ever, yet fewer people than ever actually connect with the Earth in this way anymore. Free radical stress from exposure to mercury pollution, cigarettes, insecticides, pesticides, trans fats, and radiation, just to name a few, continually deplete your body of electrons.

Simply by getting outside, barefoot, touching the Earth, and allowing the excess charge in your body to discharge into the Earth, you can alleviate some of the stress continually put on your system. For example, walking barefoot can help ameliorate the constant assault of electromagnetic fields and other types of radiation from cell phones, computers and Wi-Fi.

 

Grounding Is an Anti-Inflammatory and Helps Thin Your Blood

One of the primary health benefits of grounding is its antioxidant effect. It helps alleviate inflammation throughout your body. The film shows examples of inflammation, demonstrated via thermography, that is significantly reduced following grounding.

This in itself is groundbreaking, since inflammation is at the root of most diseases, including heart disease. Dr. Stephen Sinatra is a prominent cardiologist featured in Grounded. I also interviewed him this year <http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/08/04/barefoot-grounding-effect.aspx> , and you can watch the interview below. Ten years ago, Dr. Sinatra met Clint Ober, who introduced him to grounding.

You can see Clint Ober demonstrate Earthing here <http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2012/11/04/why-does-walking-barefoot-on-the-earth-make-you-feel-better.aspx> .

According to Dr. Sinatra, inflammation thrives when your blood is thick and you have a lot of free radical stress, and a lot of positive charges in your body. Grounding effectively alleviates inflammation because it thins your blood and infuses you with negatively charged ions through the soles of your feet.

Grounding helps thin your blood by improving its zeta potential, which means it improves the energy between your red blood cells. Research has demonstrated it takes about 80 minutes for the free electrons from the earth to reach your bloodstream and transform your blood.

Hypercoagulable (thick, slow-moving) blood contributes to chronic inflammation, because when your blood does not flow well, oxygen can't get to your tissues. Grounding's effect on blood thinning is so profound that if you are taking blood thinners you must work with your health care provider to lower your dose otherwise you may overdose on the medication. You can see an example of grounding’s effect on blood cells in Grounded, as well.

Download Video Transcript

<http://mercola.fileburst.com/PDF/ExpertInterviewTranscripts/DrStephenSinatraOneonOneInterview.pdf>  

However a newer theory is that grounding may actually facilitate the formation of structured water in your body. I previously interviewed Dr. Gerald Pollock <http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/01/29/dr-pollack-on-structured-water.aspx>  on this topic, and afterwards introduced him to Dr. Sinatra. We were all on a conference call and Dr. Sinatra agreed that it made sense and was going to revise his theory on how grounding actually works.

 

This Isn’t Just ‘New-Age Nonsense’

For over 5 years, I have personally prioritized grounding myself as much as possible. It's a simple concept—to some it may appear too simple. Yet, as you can see in the film this isn’t something to brush off as ‘new-age nonsense.’ It’s supported and backed by prominent medical doctors, scientists including Dr. David Suzuki <http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/04/27/ge-trees.aspx> , NASA astronauts, and, of course, it was used by ancient civilizations who placed strong value on their relationship to the Earth.

One little trick that I have been using for a few years after a tip from Dr. Sinatra is to remove one of my shoes when flying and put my foot on the metal support frame on the seat in front of me. Doing this will ground you to the airplane frame and help mitigate damage from radiation at 35,000 feet. In fact, as I write this I am at 35,000 feet with my foot on the airplane frame. Simple and doesn’t cost anything and if it doesn’t work (which I doubt) there is no harm done. So it passes my criteria of inexpensive non-harmful tips that you can use to take control of your health.

The Tarahumara people of northwestern Mexico are one of the few modern-day cultures that still embrace barefoot living and, famously, barefoot running. The tribes are among the most skilled runners in the world, running up to 200 miles over a two-day period. Notably, they run barefoot and this has been suggested as the reason for their remarkable athletic prowess.

But even if that doesn’t impress you, the anecdotal accounts of residents of Haines, Alaska featured in the film are hard to ignore. These are people like you and me, who took a leap of faith and tried grounding – after all, why wouldn’t you? Doing so is free and you have nothing to lose.

The beneficial impacts on their pain levels, sleep, stress and more were near miraculous. One woman even gave her grounding kit back because she didn’t want to get too well and then lose her disability benefits! And at one of the town’s motels – the first in the US to offer a grounded room to guests – travelers keep coming back because their pain significantly improved after spending just one night in the grounded room.

 

Grounding Calms Your Nervous System

Grounding also calms your sympathetic nervous system, which supports your heart rate variability. And, when you support heart rate variability, this promotes homeostasis, or balance, in your autonomic nervous system. This is important because anytime you improve your heart rate variability, you're improving your entire body and all its functions.

"In other words, we're there -- we're in a health mode, as opposed to disease mode. Grounding does that," Dr. Sinatra explains.

Did ancient cultures know something about this that we don’t? It appears so, as many Gothic cathedrals are built on energy hotspots on the Earth, and are actually designed to channel Earth’s energy to flow strategically through them.

 

Tips for Staying Grounded Outside or Inside

Grounding is not a "treatment" or a "cure" for any disease or disorder. Instead, it can be said without any equivocation that the human body evolved in contact with the Earth and needs to maintain this natural contact in order to function properly. Like eating right, exercising and sleeping, grounding can be described as yet anotherr lifestyle habit that supports optimal health.

Exercising barefoot outdoors is one of the most wonderful, inexpensive and powerful ways of incorporating grounding into your daily life. You can also simply take off your shoes as much as you can when you’re outdoors to take advantage of these natural grounding opportunities.

When indoors, using a grounding pad or sheet is an excellent way to stay grounded while you’re working or sleeping. I typically bring a grounding pad with me when I fly, too, thougah as mentioned Dr. Sinatra believes that simply taking your shoes off and putting your feet (bare or with socks) on the steel struts will do the trick as well.

 

The Mirror Lies:

Beyond a World

Obsessed

With Appearances

by Jordan Bates

refinethemind.com

A friend of mine — let’s call him Huck — was walking to a tattoo parlor recently with the intention of getting some new ink, or as he might prefer to think of it, inscribing a new linguistic artifact upon the canvas of his skin.

Huck had almost arrived at the tattoo shop when, in an uncharacteristically self-conscious act, he glanced to his side and stared at his reflection in a storefront window.

In that moment, he felt a bit of confusion as to why he’d looked at his reflection. It seemed to him insensible to be concerned with one’s appearance. Suddenly, he was struck by a thought:

the mirror lies.

 <http://www.refinethemind.com/the-mirror-lies-beyond-world-of-appearances/crackedmirror/>

This sudden moment of clarity resonated deeply with Huck, and he then decided to spontaneously tattoo “the mirror lies.“ upon his back instead of the tattoo he’d previously had in mind.

Appearances ≠ Reality

Huck explained to me that for him, “the mirror lies.” represents the fact that what we see when we view ourselves will never coincide with the way we are viewed by other people.

We may see superman, while someone else sees a slime ball. Conversely, people with eating disorders see themselves as overweight when it’s clear to everyone else that they’re frighteningly skinny.

These are just a couple examples of a mega-important principle that we, as humans, must understand in order to find more satisfaction in our daily lives and to progress as a species. The principle I’m referring to is this: How things appear to be is not how things are. 

What I look like is not what I am. I look like a goofy college grad, but I assure you I’m also a particulate collection of trillions upon trillions of atoms, not to mention a rather messy bundle of experiences, ideas, feelings, insights, and sensations. What a dollar bill looks like is hardly what it is. We may see a rectangular piece of something green and flimsy, but it is also a small shred of dead organic matter and an agreed-upon symbolic representation of a certain fiscal value promised to be repaid by the government.

Certainly, this very phenomenon was what once prompted Martin Luther King, Jr. to observe that “Everything that we see is a shadow cast by that which we do not see.”

But Our Culture is Based on Appearance

Despite this fairly easy-to-understand premise of the illusion of correlation between appearance and truth, our culture is based upon encouraging people to care deeply about appearances.

When people care about appearances, they buy things to make them appear more beautiful, wealthy, noble, educated, etc. When people buy things, the economy does well and rich people get richer. When people buy things, businesses succeed.

So many, many business people out there invest massive amounts of money into keeping people obsessed with what they look like. We’re subconsciously coerced into falsely idolizing “the beautiful people”, and then told that we can be like them if we spend X amount of money.

The wealth displayed by other people also becomes a coercive force. We see people’s fancy homes and luxurious cars and envy them. We want what they have, so we chase appearances.

These are merely two examples, but this paradigm of placing appearances upon a pedestal has so fully permeated (woah, hello unintentional alliteration) our society that it can be seen wherever you look, if you know what you’re looking for.

Problematic Consequences

Just as a mirror shows us the most surface-level aspects of ourselves, our regular perceptions tend toward basic, automatic judgments that represent a small sliver of what’s actually going on. Just as Huck observed that “the mirror lies”, so too do our surface-level perceptions.

And when we become overly entrenched in a culture that drastically over-values appearances, our everyday judgments tend to be very presumptuous. We think appearances are revealing some objective measurement of who we are or who they are or what we’re seeing, but this couldn’t be farther from the truth. Let’s go into a bit more detail to consider the nasty implications of this occurrence in our modern “civilizations”. 

In extreme cases, like the eating disorder example mentioned earlier, the mind is capable of complete distortions of physical evidence. This is scary stuff, but perhaps even scarier are the much more subtle and common ways in which the mind miscalculates based on appearance.

Consider that the way we perceive ourselves in a mirror and the way we perceive other people result from the same process – a process of projection.

This means that when we view a person, we view them in light of many preconceived ideas and feelings that we project onto their appearance. When viewing ourselves, we might see a reflection of our current mood, our latest insecurities, the attributes we’ve assigned to ourselves, the roles we believe we play, how the current events in our lives fit into our overarching narrative of selfhood, things people have told us that we are, and/or many other items.

When observing someone else, we may see them in light of stereotypes we’ve internalized, insecurities we’ve developed, ideas we have about how a person should be, what we think we know about the person, roles we see ourselves playing in relation to that person, and/or a host of other factors.

The mind does this automatically, especially when it’s been conditioned to make appearance-based judgments, and unless you become much more aware of this process and consciously work to counteract its effects, it happens all the time, unchecked. The result is that we’re constantly making shallow judgments — about ourselves and other people — based on our own inner narratives and prejudices.

So the homeless man on the street automatically becomes a lazy bum, drug addict, and leech on society. The kids in the tye-dye t-shirts are automatically some hippie-dippie socialist fruitcakes. The attractive waitress at the bar is automatically just another sexy arrangement of molecules who should want to get it on with you. The Trayvon Martins <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Trayvon_Martin>  of the world are automatically shady, dangerous threats to be eliminated. The graceful leopard or playful dolphin is automatically a dumb and worthless animal to murder for sport or profit.

Do you see? These types of immediate judgments are insidious and occur constantly all around us. And these are merely a few examples that I felt highlighted the problem nicely.

Think of it this way: the “mirror” that lies to us is not limited to rectangular panes of reflective glass. The mirror is everywhere. All we ever see is a reflection — or more accurately, a projection — of our own worldview, presuppositions, anxieties, and neuroses. Everywhere, all the time.

And maybe this wouldn’t be such a glaring problem if we all had open-minded and understanding points of view, but the truth of the matter is that we don’t. Unless we humans make a conscientious effort to broaden our perspective by doing things like reading , creating, seeking education, traveling, and meeting all types of people, our ability to overcome our surface-level assumptions is pathetically limited.

We need to recognize that each of us is one member of a global family of human beings, or better yet, sentient beings, and that not one of us is inherently better than another. We are not separate from one another or the planet. Try to imagine existing without everything else — you can’t. Thich Nhat Hanh illustrates this beautifully in his book, Being Peace <http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/188837540X/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=188837540X&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=collpart-20> , in this passage:

“If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. Without a cloud there will be no water; without water, the trees cannot grow; and without trees, you cannot make paper. So the cloud is in here. The existence of this page is dependent on the existence of a cloud. Paper and cloud are so close. Let us think of other things, like sunshine. Sunshine is very important because the forest cannot grow without sunshine, and we humans cannot grow without sunshine. So the logger needs sunshine in order to cut the tree, and the tree needs sunshine in order to be a tree. Therefore you can see sunshine in this sheet of paper. And if you look more deeply, with the eyes of a bodhisattva, with the eyes of those who are awake, you see not only the cloud and the sunshine in it, but that everything is here: the wheat that became the bread for the logger to eat, the logger’s father- everything is in this sheet of paper.”

Everything is interconnected and each thing is only able to live because of its intimate relationship with all other things.

This is a scientific fact. Thus, we should embrace compassion, not judgment. Openness, not intolerance. Activism, not apathy. Environmental consciousness, not blind consumerism.

If we can become highly aware of the laughable insufficiency of appearance-based perceptions, we can begin to rid ourselves of jealousy, greed, anger, and hatred. Shallow lives drive us to these states of mind, and we can hardly imagine how they deform, burn, and cripple us until we’re able to reach a deeper place of understanding.

What to Do

If we choose to sit idly by, to ignore essays such as this one, to continue living in the land of appearances, we may be able to convince ourselves that we’ve found some semblance of happiness, but this will not be so.

Happiness can never be attached to any ideal of an externally beautiful life or the forms of our material lives. All that is shiny will one day rust, and all that is beautiful will one day be dust.

Appearances divide us and push us against one another. The way for us to create better lives for ourselves and a promising future for our species on this planet is to gradually distance ourselves from a life based upon appearances. A few ideas for how to do that:

1. Do things that provide no reward apart from intrinsic joy.

2. Become aware of your shallow judgments and actively check yourself.

3. Stop living for material rewards and start living for what excites you.

4. Go out of your way to meet a wide array of different people.

5. Do not assume you know anything and ask questions instead.

Above all, realize, as Huck did, that the mirror lies. As J.R.R. Tolkien once wrote, “All that is gold does not glitter.” What you see and what is are two entirely different things. Dig deeper. Ask questions. Keep seeking. The answers are out there, and a better life is waiting for all of us. It’s high time that we claimed it.