A Golden Opportunity To Learn With The Master

This application for the 2017 Parallel Perception Scholarship was submitted by Nadeem.  If you would like to offer your support for Nadeem please leave a comment at the end of this blog post.

I was gifted The Art of Stalking Parallel Perception and Whisperings of the Dragon by my sister in UK. Seeing, that it was about shamanism I started devouring it the same night. I started with The Art of Stalking Parallel Perception book. I was familiar with Carlos Castaneda’s work but most of the contents of this book just went above my head. I left it half way. This was way back in 2015 when I went for my first Vipassana retreat.

I took the book along with me to read in the airport waiting lounge. I practiced shutting down my internal dialogue there and then. Everything went silent. This silence was pregnant with a lot of activities. I was part of the hustle bustle sound of the airport and my internals were beaming with intense sensations. It was a sense of being alive enveloped in a deep contagious silence.

I experienced deep sadness after about five minutes of this practice. This nauseous sadness continued until I reached the retreat center. My next short experience of the practice came on the sixth day of the retreat. By then, we were practicing eleven hours of sitting meditation daily.

On that particular afternoon I was so overwhelmed with mixed emotions and the tally those fiery sensations were having on my body. I quietly exited from the hall and relaxed outside. I sat there watching my mind swirling in chaos of thoughts. For a few minutes I got identified with it and went along with it. Then out of the blue I went to an internal dialogue shut off practice mode.

Thoughts silenced but my being was dancing with hot sensations within. I kept watching them until they flowed out from my body. An ancient memory arose from my past. It registered momentarily in my mind and everything went silent. I enjoyed bathing in my silence for a couple of minutes then went inside the hall.

I completed Whisperings of the Dragon after the retreat at home. I immediately started practicing the teachings. I cleared lots of back log of issues. I started reading The Art of Stalking Parallel Perception and this time I understood everything inside. I always read Whisperings of the Dragon once in a month to freshen up my understanding.

It’s a very challenging to apply Lujan’s teaching in a social setting. Sometimes I just get lost in the dream of thoughts and feelings. I feel the chapter of Being, Knowing and Doing was written especially for me. My dot gazing exercise has improved immensely too by applying the 98 percent inside and 2 percent outside rule.

The sensitivity I used to dread has become my greatest ally in my moment to moment existence. Lujan’s book The Art of Stalking Parallel Perception contains many books within it. I understand so many things from following simple lines from the book. The Art of Stalking Parallel Perception deepened the knowledge from Whisperings of the Dragon.

It has been one and a half years now since I came across Lujan’s teaching. I have processed a lot of my back logs of issues. A new vista of understanding has opened up for me, a way of being which was not in the vicinity of my imagination. I no longer take things at face value. I am alertly engaging with what is being presented to me, moment by moment. My complaining and blaming streaks have been annulled greatly by the practice. I am not yet there yet but life certainly has got a meaning now.

When I saw the article on Three Treasures Scholarship I instantly saw an opportunity to meet and learn from the master himself. Feelings of gloom and doom caught me as I was typing this short piece. I just welcomed these guests, watching them dance inside my abdomen. I didn’t catch their train and they left after my acknowledgement.

May the most eligible of us get this golden opportunity to learn with the Master.

Nadeem
Kenya