The Official Website of Cartoonist M. Rasheed: 2013

Friday, December 27, 2013

What's a "Vanity Project?"

Muhammad Rasheed - I need help on figuring out this 'vanity project' thing.

My first mind said it was just a weaponized word in the guise of an actual standardized industry term, that is used to red flag certain movies that the six studio Hollywood monopoly didn't want to succeed. I thought that because it SEEEEEMED like the term only surfaced against certain black people films in which the six studio Hollywood monopoly justifiably may have felt that if that film were to do well, they may have to give up a piece of their pie through more competition. It's possible that I do hear the term a lot and only notice it when it is directed towards black films that meet that criterion. So I decided to look 'vanity project' up to see if it really was an actual movie critic industry term or whatever, and I discovered what I posted below.

Now I'm leaning heavily towards what my first mind gave me and I'm angry about it.

There's a lot of other movies that follow the UrbanDictionary.com definition, they are all projects by the super-wealthy who have a lot of extra cash on their hands and the money they net is just an investment return payout that they certainly didn't need. Look at the DREAMGIRLS movie. Three super successful studios (Laurence Mark Productions, DreamWorks Pictures, and Paramount Pictures) got the film rights for a Warner Bros. owned script based on an African American story, in which the all black talent were pressured into taking the roles at a fraction of their normal price. Why? Were the three super producers going to give all the proceeds to charity or some other worthy cause? There is no mention of that anywhere, which of course they would've bragged about if they had. No, they just pocketed it. "Do this movie for us for $10. It'll be good for your career," said the billionaires. "Money-schmunny." So they put this movie together 1.) because they could and 2.) to make a huge profit, minus the large actors' fees that everyone else had to deal with because they pressured them with whatever bs spiel they came up with. But no one ever called DREAMGIRLS a vanity project. If it's a "real" term in the way it is used against other films, then this was clearly a vanity project for the three studio heads.

They called Eddie Murphy's Harlem Nights, and Will Smith's After Earth vanity projects. I've been raking my brain for a while as to what that meant. Is it because they put together their own movie that they controlled and starred in? So how come Woody Allen never heard the term leveled at him before, or Clint Eastwood, or even Spike Lee? Despite their successes, those guys didn't think big (like Tyler Perry big) and were never considered a threat to the six studio Hollywood monopoly. But Will Smith's After Earth project was a clear power move, and had to be squashed. Eddie Murphy was at the height of his popularity, and the biggest box office draw, when he decided to sit on the other side of the table. Eddie is a private person, and doesn't telegraph his moves, so that Harlem Nights project represented an unpredictable unknown that they didn't want to take any chances on.

"Vanity Project" is a nonsense term used to red flag a film to have the industry turn on it. Prove me wrong.

*******************

What's a "vanity project?"

DICTIONARY.COM
You are seeing web results for vanity project because there's not a match on Dictionary.com.

________________________________________

URBANDICTIONARY.COM
In home improvement, a project that adds minimal value to the home (and may actually decrease home value) and is undertaken on the whims of the homeowner. Usually done by someone with too much money on their hands. A DIY project, no matter how odd, typically doesn't qualify as a vanity project if they actually work on it themselves.
My rich uncle's latest vanity project was getting the solar panels ripped off his roof and replaced with a replica of Kennedy Space Center for his model rockets.

________________________________________

PROZ.COM - THE TRANSLATION WORKPLACE
*Something to be done out of vanity, to show that they could do it.*

sorein - Here's a possible context: a young man would say about his parents: "I guess I was their vanity project". However, this expression is largely used in other contexts too. It doesn't seem "subtle" enough to be called an idiom. It seems to be just a fancy-talk expression, used mostly by critics. Still what do they imply? I have some vague idea, but I won't reveal it not to mislead you.

Jack Doughty - His parents either had him in the first place, or had him educated in a certain way and/or arranged for him to have a prosperous career, not because they really cared about him but just in order to satisfy their own vanity, to try to justify and display their own (probably unjustified) high opinion of themselves.

See Also:

No Room for You at the Top

The Blatant Sabotage of a Man Trying to Help His People

Friday, September 27, 2013

Awakening The Atrophied Eye: DAY TEN

Okay, I have some good news, and I have some bad news.

The good news is that I’ve conquered my problem revealed in the Day Nine post. I was distracted by mentally writing these blogs while I was supposed to be meditating, messing up the whole experiment. This blog has been tremendous fun and proved to be a great way for me to stick to this thing, but the fun of journaling the experience was beginning to overwhelm the point of the experiment itself. So I had to pull back from it until I could figure out how to get that part under control. I let it go for a few days, and then started up again to reboot my mental battery. The good news is that the eye trick… quickly glancing down to the left and then promptly focusing back on the fovea spot… works like a charm. I now treat all such stray thoughts and daydreaming as if they are threshold visions, and the trick immediately snaps my concentration to heel. It’s easy as pie. Good news, right?

The bad news is that the eye trick works on the daydreaming distractions every bit as effectively as it works on the threshold visions.

Or potential bad news. In the beginning of this, I only took the pyramid texts’ instruction in their most literal sense when it warned about allowing illusions to distract me from my goal of opening the mystic Third Eye, and it didn’t occur to me that other distractions from even within my own normal, day-to-day thoughts could be considered in this group. Of my nine previous posts journaling my meditation attempts, at LEAST half of them featured me writing the next exciting episode while I was doing it. Have I already pissed off my immortal half and alienated it to the point of refusing to open the Third Eye for me?

I have no idea.

But I know how I can find out. If I manage to get to the event horizon… the pure, inky black stage (as described by Clesson H. Harvey and others) that I will see just before the Wisdom Eye opens… and end up staying right there for the next 50+ years or whatever of meditation sessions, then I will know that I messed this whole thing up royally before I even got started. My bad. But I don’t know at this point if that is the case or not. Perhaps it’ll forgive me as long as I don’t do it again. We’ll see. All I can do is put in the time.

Awakening the Atrophied Eye: Mark of the Striver

Awakening the Atrophied Eye: Third Eye FAQ

Saturday, September 21, 2013

Awakening the Atrophied Eye: DAY NINE

I have a problem.

I noticed it a few posts ago, but it didn’t occur to me that it would be a real problem. Now I can’t deny it, and have to figure out how to get this under control.

I’m writing while I meditate.

Instead of concentrating fully on what I’m supposed to be doing, I’m gathering notes and composing what my next blog is going to say. That’s NOT good. It explains why sometimes cool stuff happens and why sometimes it doesn’t. So it doesn’t matter whether I’m meditating for an hour or not if I’m not really paying attention to what I’m doing. It’s not the power of perception; it’s the power of journaling the experience, really.

I have to figure out how to shut that side of my brain off when I’m meditating. I did it for an hour today, such as it were, but I spent the time plotting out the next blog. When I realized what I was doing… basically sabotaging my project… I still didn’t stop. I was reluctant to let go of the material I had composed at that point and risk forgetting it.

Like I said, not good.

Why wouldn’t my immortal half consider that a form of paying attention to the threshold visions instead of focusing on meeting it? You see what I mean? What’s the difference between mentally writing a blog versus focusing on some illusory phantasms designed to lure me off the path to see if I’m serious or not?

Awakening the Atrophied Eye: Mark of the Striver

Awakening the Atrophied Eye: Third Eye FAQ

Friday, September 20, 2013

Awakening the Atrophied Eye: DAY EIGHT

Correct meditation.

I keep calling it that because the meditation technique I’m using here is very old. Old enough to be the actual source of meditation in the world. At the time that group of five pharaohs initiated the project for permanently recording the ancient data upon those groups of granite stele in Saqqara, the papyri scrolls they were transferring the knowledge from were already ages old... old enough for the papyrus to crumble, and you know how long that stuff holds up. It’s highly probable that the information had already been recopied onto fresher papyri numerous times even at that point. With a greater respect for the data than their forebears, these pharaohs finally had the knowledge writ upon more durable stuff.

And for many centuries, adepts from all over the world traveled to glorious

Egypt

to learn those secrets -- that were available only to the kings, high priests, and other privileged classes -- and took them back to their distant lands where they also carefully guarded them within the walls of secrecy. They would set them at the very top of mountains of long, tedious, and difficult rituals, wrapped within exclusive secret societies with initiation rules so difficult and crazy, that few in their right minds would wish to subject themselves to it. Everyone who brought the knowledge back from Egypt did this. Consequently, not only have few people ever opened their Third Eye over the aeons, but the meditative techniques that are commonly known in the world are but various versions of the secret society techniques at their different stages, as the groups deliberately hid not only the correct way to do the Egyptian technique from the lower ranks, but of course hiding the very purpose of meditation itself, until the hopeful adept reached the top of the rank structure ladder.

So common meditative techniques are not the real thing, despite having some ancillary value such as enabling the focused practitioner to achieve calm, relaxing states of stress release. But without the true point of performing what meditation is actually for, it’s really just busy work.

Very, very few of the followers of second sight throughout history have generously recorded their spiritual experiences for posterity, but even if they did, without a straight forward terminology base to describe the experiences with, the unenlightened hopeful would struggle to puzzle out what those “deep” sounding descriptions were trying to say anyway. In The Short Path, Clesson H. Harvey demonstrated how one who actually had the experience could decipher the descriptions in the old texts and reveal their meaning, while also comparing them to what the pyramid texts describe. He was also able to point out examples in other texts that were written by adept hopefuls who had not opened their Third Eye, but were using source material from the other guys to compose their own indecipherable “deep” works.

According to the pyramid texts, in order to meditate correctly, one must do the following:

Get enough sleep.
Relax in a comfortable place that is quiet and without distraction.
Breathe through your mouth and nose at the same time, slower on the inhale, faster on the exhale so that the noise your escaping breath makes sounds similar to saying the nonsense word “sah.”
Then you focus on an area roughly six inches in front of your brow, where the fovea spot is located... the pinpoint-sized area where the field of vision at the center of each eye crosses into the other. You will recognize it as a faint, glowing dot that gleams like a pale star even in total darkness. The novice may have trouble pinpointing it exactly because of the interference of surrounding visual purple cells and regular eye “tv noise” dots in the way, but simply focus in that general area… grab a small chunk of the cells you find there with your focused vision… and begin just trying to will the cells still with your eyes alone. One of those small white dots will take offense at this rough handling and will skip away. THAT will be the fovea spot. Spend the next hour grabbing it with your eyes and attempting to hold it still, and continue to do that every time it skips away.

And don’t forget to breathe.

To be clear, your eyes are open during the performance of correct meditation, as you’ve no doubt surmised from reading the posts thus far. It’s not a staring, death trance or anything; you are allowed to blink, but your eyes are quite open. It is a very active LOOKING. I used the phrase “Power of Perception” in an earlier post, paraphrased from the old anime Fist of the Northstar, and that’s what it is. It’s not a passive meditation technique at all like the common, lesser ones widely available, and it is very mental. You have to get enough sleep beforehand because it does require concentration. That’s why when I tried to meditate that one time when I was sleepy, my exhausted mind rejected the attempt, and I actually felt the discomfort of eye strain.

So again, to be CLEAR, your eyes are OPEN while performing the correct meditation of the followers of second sight. The truly remarkable fact about all of this is that… finally… the stranglehold that the monopolies and cartels of the ancients, who had long prevented this knowledge from being placed in the hands of the common folk, is now broken. Thanks to the power of the Internet, anyone can have access to this information, and any and everyone can become enlightened if they want to. Despite the trickery of the world’s secret societies, it turns out the technique to have the most remarkable spiritual experience possible is actually extremely simple and easy, and achievable by anyone at all. That is a blessing that should be obvious to everybody. The raw simplicity of it implies that it came from God… possibly part of the revealed scripture given to Adam, the patriarch himself. How awesome would that be? Very!

As a side bar, in that same anime mentioned above, when the character Ryuken said “Perception is the key for unlocking the intangible power of the spirit!” I was totally like WHAAAAAAAAAAAAT?! The writers of this thing found the secret!!!” But then the same character said, “Power without perception is spiritually useless, and therefore of no true value,” giving a different meaning to his usage of “perception” revealing it was just “deep” talk, and not the straight forward language needed to get to the friggin’ point by someone actually in the know.

Anyway, Day Eight’s session was successful in the sense that I meditated a full, true hour interrupted only by my cell phone alarm. “You can go now, Ed Harley. Now it begins,” to quote Haggis from the movie Pumpkinhead. lol Now I can start making REAL progress. It’s ON. I’ve reached my biggest short-term objective. Now the only objective left… other than consistently doing this until The Night of Power next year… is to reach the event horizon of the stage just prior to the Third Eye opening or when/if it actually opens for me. But the blue swirly-do didn’t appear for some reason. I have no idea what that means. I’m not sweating it though.

Maybe it'll appear on Day Nine.

See Also:

Awakening the Atrophied Eye: A Personal Quest to Find the Followers of Second Sight

Awakening the Atrophied Eye: DAY ONE

Awakening the Atrophied Eye: DAY TWO

Awakening the Atrophied Eye: DAY THREE

Awakening the Atrophied Eye: DAY FOUR

Awakening the Atrophied Eye: DAY FIVE

Awakening the Atrophied Eye: DAY SIX

Awakening the Atrophied Eye: DAY SEVEN

Awakening the Atrophied Eye: DAY EIGHT

Awakening the Atrophied Eye: DAY NINE

Awakening The Atrophied Eye: DAY TEN

Awakening the Atrophied Eye: INITIATION

Awakening the Atrophied Eye: The Wisdom Eye Returns

Awakening the Atrophied Eye: The Night of Power

Awakening the Atrophied Eye: Mark of the Striver

Awakening the Atrophied Eye: Third Eye FAQ

Thursday, September 19, 2013

Awakening the Atrophied Eye: DAY SEVEN

A friend did some digging and discovered that Clesson H. Harvey passed away last year in October. Even though I knew he was elderly, it still shocked me. I decided not to be sad about it though, because he obviously had a really good life. I’m honored that he was able to touch me through his work. He traveled all over the world, and experienced all kinds of amazing things. He even had that rare spiritual experience that is now the focus of my blog.

He published his latest book, Opening the Door to Immortality, in June of last year which, judging from the description on his website, was clearly his life’s work. Four months later and he was dead. “Must… *GASP!* …publish… book…!” *plop* That’s deep. He’s been working on translating the pyramid texts of Saqqara, from his more qualified perspective as an expert on meditation techniques and a follower of second sight, for quite a while now. Then when he finally finished it, it was ALL over.

Something like that makes me blessed that I’ve found my calling as a cartoonist early in life, and that I’ve found the thread of the tales that I wanted to create pretty early as well. I’m glad I finished Monsters 101 at 42 years of age as opposed to 82 or 92. I’ll be starting Wild Hunt: The Aspects of Death, the second part of my greater masterwork saga, at around this time next year, God willing. I think something like this will help me get off my butt and make sure I complete it in a timely fashion. I like striking items off of my to-do list anyway.

One day, back in 2005, I decided to reach out to Harvey. I wanted to probe to see what his opinion was of other spiritual interests of mine, and perhaps draw him into a long-term discussion, and possibly even a friendship. Maybe I was also looking for a “guide” too since I had been too chicken shit or whatever to just sit and follow through on the correct meditation technique he uncovered.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Muhammad Rasheed"
To: udjateye@earthlink.net
Sent: Tuesday, October 25, 2005 7:51 AM
Subject: [Norton AntiSpam] The Scroll of Toth

Mr. Harvey (or is it "Dr.?") [Just Mr.],

Thank you very much for sharing your research in how to attain Enlightenment by applying the techniques for opening the Third Eye. Your dedication and research are impressive and your findings are AMAZING. I do have a question, if you please.

I am somewhat disturbed by the fact that those who developed these techniques are gone "without a trace." In the Holy Scriptures God makes it clear that He wiped out whole nations routinely when they indulged in paganism and the subscribing of partners to him. I recognize the "science" within the udjat meditative techniques, but how can we be sure we are not crossing a line that will displease the Creator? What are the parts that show you "science" and the parts that reveal "blasphemy?"

I will appreciate the sharing of your opinion on this matter. Thank you for your time.

Your friend,

M. Rasheed
www.mrasheed.com

See where in the response he inserted “Just Mr.?” That’s actually my first time noticing that. lol Not really surprising since his response in the body kind of shook me a bit.

From: udjateye@earthlink.net

To: muhrasheed@hotmail.com
Date: Sun, 30 Oct 2005 01:08:25 -0700
Subject: Re: The Scroll of Toth

CHOOSING ANYTHING FROM THIS ILLUSORY WORLD OF WAKING/DREAM, INSTEAD OF FINDING AND PREFERRING THE IMMORTAL STAR (6 INCHES BEFORE THE BROW) IS IN FACT THE ULTIMATE ACT OF BLASPHEMY!!!

YOUR FRIEND,

C. H. HARVEY.

Unfortunately my Sent box stops in 2006 and I no longer remember what I said in response. I remember attempting to draw him into a deeper discussion about it, but he didn’t respond back that time. Maybe my first post offended him or something.

lol He was clearly yelling at me. This was a week or two before I started hanging out on message boards and stuff, but even then I knew what all caps meant. God isn’t part of the illusory world, Mr. Harvey.

I took the hint and left him alone. But I’ve been thinking about his response over the years, comparing it with the message of scripture. “The men on the heights.” It is unclear whether the men on the heights will be Judged. Why aren’t they in one or the other groups? Perhaps they will be Judged first? Perhaps they were Judged during the process of the Third Eye scrutiny?

Here’s the thing: When the Eye opens, it will show you stuff. Stuff you will need… that your immortal half feels you need… in order to make your journey better in some way. That’s the reality of it. In my comic book world, of course, I have all kinds of other stuff happen, too, but that’s just what I need for my action/adventure/fantasy narrative to be more exciting for the genre base. If you decide not to heed what your immortal half shows you, and reject the message of God and sow mischief in the earth, then things will not go well for you on the Last Day, whether you open the Third Eye or not. I wonder if the men on the heights represent the righteous believers of God who ALSO happened to be followers of second sight.

I only meditated for about thirty minutes today… I don’t know why I stopped… and this time the blue, glowy thingy stayed behind that grayish veil again, but I could still see it. I wonder what the veil means/represents? Are there different layers of fabric I must penetrate in order to finally see? “Freedom is seeing,” as my mom used to say. "Seeing things as they really are."

Awakening the Atrophied Eye: Mark of the Striver

Awakening the Atrophied Eye: Third Eye FAQ

Wednesday, September 18, 2013

Awakening the Atrophied Eye: DAY SIX

Sorry, I spent most of the day rescuing the broken links for my Monsters 101 reviews. I have no idea how long they were like that. Sucky. Gotta catch you up on what you’ve missed in the last couple of sessions.

First of all, I almost meditated a full hour on the Day Six one. That’s pretty cool. I was NOT expecting to get anywhere close to that this early. Fun! Started at 5:12am and stopped at 6am when my get-up-for-work alarm went off.

Second, I reached that Stage One finally, just like before back in 2002. It was that full, swirling blue phenomenon, looking like a cosmic star nebula moving in real time. It’s really pretty and majestic looking. And it stays, it lingers. When I wrap up the session and get up it’s still floating there in my face! No matter where I look, and even when I close my eyes. I noticed it doesn’t interfere with the fovea spot at all. The fovea spot sits on top of it like a Photoshop layer. I didn’t think to notice if I could still see that faint corona around the fovea spot area though. This was a really successful session.

There are these verses in the Qur’an that have been on my mind since I first discovered this stuff. It’s God describing a scene in the future that takes place during the Day of Judgment. The judgment itself hasn’t taken place yet, but the two groups… the unrepentant hellbound and the righteous believers… will be separated in two camps:

The Holy Qur’an – Surah 7:46-48

46 Between them shall be a veil, and on the heights will be men who would know everyone by their marks. They will call out to the Companions of the Garden, "Peace on you." They will not have entered, but they will have an assurance thereof.

47 When their eyes shall be turned towards the Companions of the Fire,
they will say: "Our Lord! Send us not to the company of the wrong-doers."

48 The men on the heights will call to certain men whom they will know from their marks, saying: "Of what profit to you were your hoards and your arrogant ways?"

Who are these “men on the heights?” No one knows. There’s a ton of speculation of course, but it’s one of the secrets of the unseen; no one will know for sure until the event itself takes place. I like to think they are the people who’ve learned to open their Third Eye, with the “knowing them by their marks” representing wisdom and some enhanced powers of insight in some way. And what are these “heights?” It’s fascinating and really cool to think about it, but there are no answers here. But I hope they are the followers of second sight, enlightened by their glimpses behind the fabric of the terrestrial realm, causing them to ascend from mere belief into the Know. Wouldn’t that imply they’ve overcome the judgment state? Maybe. Only if they made sure to do what they were supposed to when they weren’t delighting in entering and acting within the UDJAT Wisdom Eye.

Awakening the Atrophied Eye: Mark of the Striver

Awakening the Atrophied Eye: Third Eye FAQ

Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Awakening the Atrophied Eye: DAY FIVE

It has been awhile since I’ve been on Clesson H. Harvey’s pyramidtexts.com website. Mostly because I had already taken extensive notes from his essay and FAQ, and I own his book The Short Path. Plus I noticed that he had long ago stopped updating it. I knew he was really old, and I was afraid he couldn’t update it anymore because he, you know, forgot that he had it or whatever.

But now I see that he’s published a new book! Opening the Door to Immortality seems like a great read, and from the description it looks like this is the one. Apparently he stopped updating the Utterance translations on his site because he decided to put the rest of that content into this, the comprehensive explanation of all his research. Sweet! I ordered it. Can’t wait to read it.

Alright, I’m back. I got me enough sleep. I didn’t bother to set my alarm as usual because I got up at 5:28am and my old USA cell alarm is already set to get me up at 6:00am to get ready for work. So this was my first session where I didn’t stop meditating prematurely before the alarm went off.

The morning prayer is at 4:12am right now, and when I lied down I didn’t fall back to sleep, so I was still in my purity state.

Pillow. Closet. Sit. Close door partially. Recite ‘sah.’ Focus on fovea spot.

Light was coming through the opening in the closet door, but from the angle of that window, there was shadow right in front of me which kept me from seeing any detail in the wall. As long as I focused on the fovea nothing from my peripheral distracted me so it was all good.

I guess the novelty of the whole experiment has worn off, because it didn’t take long at all to find that state of super peace. I coasted there the whole time. VERY pleasant. Very few of the threshold visions made their appearance, and all in the very beginning. I noticed those swirly-dos moving around at some point, but they stayed very faint and in the background… like they were behind a veil of some kind that caused them to be very faint and grayish instead of that glowing blue color. They never got stronger than that and faded away after a bit. I enjoyed the serenity feeling of the whole session though…

Awakening the Atrophied Eye: Mark of the Striver

Awakening the Atrophied Eye: Third Eye FAQ

Sunday, September 15, 2013

Awakening the Atrophied Eye: DAY FOUR

One of my sisters expressed that reading these blog entries was frightening her. “What do you mean? What’s scary about sitting in the dark thousands of miles away from my loved ones, taunting mysterious entities hell-bent on sabotaging my very soul, just on the other side of a doorway into Beyond?”

Chicks. smh.

But maybe she has a point. I suppose it’s possible that I could accidentally let something in. My bed is only a few steps away from that closet after all. While I’m lying in bed, in that vulnerable half-alert state in between wakefulness and sleep, I could feel the weight of some presence pull itself up on my bed. Or open the closet and find that feral little boy from the remake of the Wolfman crouched in there snarling…

It can happen, I guess.*

But no new Great Frontiers were ever discovered by the craven gutless! Only the brave… those valiant and daring heroes leading the way into Glory… have the gumption and wherewithal to pull the species kicking and screaming into a magnificent new age in which unicorns float above fresh green grass, etc. You know what I’m saying. Sure it’s scary. But bravery is doing stuff despite the fear.

That’s not the stuff I’m scared of anyway. That’s not the stuff that has always made me hesitate on following through with this experiment into spiritual science before. What scares me is the unknown. What if I DO open my Third Eye? What will it show me? What lessons will I be confronted with? Or worse.

What if my immortal half doesn’t want to meet me at all and is genuinely disgusted with all it has witnessed thus far?

It can happen, I guess. **

Sometimes the truth about yourself can be far scarier than any Stan Winston FX creation, and at almost 43 years old, I figure I’m about ready for some [more] truth. And who’s more qualified to reveal the truth about me than myself… the part of me that has personal memories of the paradise described in sacred scripture that it desperately wants to get back to? My immortal half will not coddle me, or tip toe, or walk on eggshells, or be afraid to damage our relationship by being over-the-top blunt. The mystic Third Eye will be a mirror. That’s pretty scary, especially for folk like myself who have a unicorns-floating-over-flowery-lush-green-grass mindset.

So here I am on Day Four of my attempt to awaken my atrophied Wisdom Eye. My short term goal is to achieve that [“SERENITY NOW!!”] serene state of super-peace I found the other day. It felt like I could float there forever. How kickass would it be to be able to meditate regularly for exactly an hour at this early date? Very! I certainly didn’t expect to do it as long as I did during Day Three. Near the end of the month of Ramadan, on the Islamic lunar calendar, is an event known as The Night of Power. Ramadan is the month that the first verses of the Qur’an were revealed to the prophet Muhammad (May the peace & blessings of God be upon him), and The Night of Power was the very night those first verses were delivered, on the 27^th day. Traditionally the faithful gather in the masjid (mosque) on that night to celebrate it with extra long prayers and lesser meditation techniques and such. How awesome would it be to be able to do an hour-long session of correct meditation on The Night of Power? Very! If anything exciting was going to happen, SURELY it would be during THAT event. So being able to gain the ability to comfortably meditate for an hour with no sweat this early, means it will be a piece of cake by the time Ramadan rolls back around next summer.

Unfortunately I didn’t really pull that off for Day Four’s session.

It was one of my longest times though. Set my alarm at 1:29am, called it a day at 1:52am. The problem was, remember that day when I said the conditions for being able to meditate correctly involved getting enough sleep beforehand? Well, yeah. I did kind of the opposite of that. The previous night I was up pretty late and I could feel how sleepy I was when I sat on my closet pillow. I experienced a painful but mild eye strain sensation when I began trying to hold the fovea spot in place, but I tried to power through it, thinking that if only I could reach that state of super peace everything would be fine. And then I started yawning every freakin’ four seconds, and my eyes started tearing up. I didn’t experience that breathless hyperventilating sensation (no shit; I was sleepy), but again I thought if I could just power through to the super peace state everything would be fine.

But the yawning wouldn’t stop. It was genuinely annoying. And just before I decided to call it a night, I saw something. Something like a faint comet of blue light trailing a Tron energy line behind it. Instinctively I glanced down and to the left, but it stayed put. According to the pyramid texts “there’s a fine line between enlightenment and illusion” and you can differentiate between the two by which disappears and which doesn’t when you perform that trick. This comet thingy stayed, and in fact other glowing lines started swirling around that, representing the start of Stage One. Fascinated I kept meditating, and the yawns stopped, presumably because my change in attitude made me more alert. But it didn’t last, and I started yawning a lot all over again and the phenomenon abandoned me. I kept it up a bit longer hoping it would come back, but it didn’t. I then got up and went on to bed.

I promise I’ll get some sleep before Day Five.

*No. No, it can’t.

Awakening the Atrophied Eye: Mark of the Striver

Awakening the Atrophied Eye: Third Eye FAQ

Saturday, September 14, 2013

Awakening the Atrophied Eye: DAY THREE

Set my alarm at 8:25pm. Called it a day at 8:54pm.

That’s a lot. For me. I’m kind of impressed by it. lol

I was a little upset when I started. I thought that I should meditate to calm me down, and then it occurred to me, “Why not?” So I got up and put the pillow on my closet floor, set my alarm, turned out the lights, shut the door (left it open a bit to keep fresh air coming in there so I don’t end up on the news), and started “reciting the great word ‘sah’” as the pyramid texts so eloquently put it. I entertained an amused thought at how older, more famous translators of the Egyptian hieroglyphs had no idea what those Utterances were talking about. Clesson H. Harvey’s knowledge of meditation techniques gave him a serious leg up, though one probably wouldn’t see how the two interests would correlate normally. Would you? That’s evidence right there that there should be more cross domain training throughout the different fields of knowledge in our society. How much further advanced would we be if the different specialists were more aware of what their counterparts in other fields were working on? I’ll bet it would be CRAZY far.

The threshold visions were waiting for me again. Kinda creepy. What does that mean? Whatever. They are no match for the Powers of Perception at my command. *glance down to the left and back* Take that! What?! You like it, huh? Well, take THIS! And THAT!

Hmph. That’s what I thought.

But what’s this? That funky breathless/hyperventilating again. But I’ve barely started! The door IS open about four-five inches. I can feel the air on my neck. What IS this? I don’t know. Perhaps it’s the secret weapon of the threshold visions in their lame ass attempts to thwart my goal of meeting my immortal self. Well, it’s not going to work on me. I’m going to power through this.

It WAS disturbing though.

For a while it seemed like it was getting worse. But I kept my focus on the fovea spot, didn’t let it get away from me. And then my eyelids started involuntarily fluttering really fast. And then my eyes started watering a bit. And then the threshold visions started up again. I performed the old trick a couple of times and they stopped. The fovea spot then seemed uncharacteristically calm… moving around a bit, but not as frantic as usual. And then I noticed that my breathing was normal. More than normal, kind of serene. I felt VERY peaceful. I kept on meditating in that new state for a bit and it was quite pleasant. I would’ve kept going, but I had to get back and monitor something going on in the real world.

I stopped, saw the cell phone alarm and felt myself grin. I may not have got to Stage One again like I really expected to when I started this, but I’m definitely making some kind of progress.

Awakening the Atrophied Eye: Mark of the Striver

Awakening the Atrophied Eye: Third Eye FAQ

Friday, September 13, 2013

Awakening the Atrophied Eye: DAY TWO

I mentioned the other day about the fovea spot being identified with the pole star by the ancient Egyptians. At the time they wrote the pyramid texts (or when they were chiseled into the stele anyway) it was Sirius that was in that role, and they took it pretty seriously. I wonder if any of them would sit in such a position as to line up their individual fovea spot to the actual star and meditate that way? Or for the pharaoh and the high priests meditating in the King’s Chamber within the Great Pyramid, I wonder if those mysterious ‘star shafts’ had anything to with that as well?

It’s a curious but idle thought. I have no interest in incorporating that kind of literal star symbology into my own meditation practices. There’s a reason why that great civilization is no longer among us. You know what I’m talking about… I’m Muslim. In my studies I’m very carefully trying to separate the chaff from the wheat, so to speak. I’m not interested in the pagan b.s. aspect of the stuff the ancients did; I just want the advanced spiritual sciences part they developed over those tens of millennia. I’m wary of inadvertently incorporating some pagan foolishness into my system just because it sounds cool and ending up drawing down the wrath of you-know-Who. So in that regard it’s best to keep it simple and as barebones as possible to be safe.

Anyway, after talking with my family on a video call at around midnight I started getting ready to bed down when I decided to meditate. I had napped earlier, so I wasn’t particularly sleepy. The idea of it got my adrenaline pumping so I was like, “Let’s do it!” So I set my pillow in the bottom of the closet, set my alarm for 1:04am, turned out the lights, sat in the closet and closed the door.

Boy was it dark!

It’s funny that when I started the ‘sah’ breathing and searched for the fovea spot, the threshold visions had already began. And about a minute into it, after properly getting rid of those friggin’ threshold visions by quickly glancing down to the left and back again, I noticed that most of the “tv noise” of visual purple cells vanished from my field of vision. It wasn’t the pure, high-definition blackness of the event horizon stage that Clesson H. Harvey described as being the final stage before the Third Eye opens, but it was a VERY smooth black… blacker than anything in my experience and it was kind of alarming. For a minute I thought something dramatic was about to happen. Actually I’m still not sure if it wasn’t THE pure black he was talking about… maybe it was! Well, I lost the rhythm of my breathing and had to concentrate on calming the hell down. I refocused on my fovea spot and got my breathing rhythm back. It didn’t take long. Holding onto the fovea spot calms you down naturally.

I was sitting on my butt this time, my legs in front of me with the knees bent, and my feet against the wall, heels on the floor, toes bent up. It was a comfortable position and I didn’t shift around at all. I should be able to maintain that for the entire life of my meditation adventure. So I continued the session until I started feeling a kind of breathless, hyperventilation sensation (maybe I should crack that closet door?) and decided that was long enough. Checked the cell phone clock:

12:18am.

Awakening the Atrophied Eye: Mark of the Striver

Awakening the Atrophied Eye: Third Eye FAQ