Previously Raymond Pattison wrote about his ten years as a monk in India. Then about spiritual matters with foundation spiritual philosophy derived from ancient Indian writings. After leaving India in 1976 Raymond became a mental health professional, qualifying in 1980.

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In the previous book Therapeutic Journey to Self-Realisation there was a focus on traditional Spirituality connected with some mental health perspectives. Some writing was about therapy involving depression, anxiety and addiction, etc., using the labels of mental health disorders. The preferred view was that mental health is inclusive in our Journey as a Waymarker on ourroute.It doesn’t define us, only advises where we are. (Mental health in its entirety is inseparable from life in its entirety).

Now only realisation and enlightenment are sought as this new books outcome. If we have a higher state of being both spiritual and live in the world, as both human and transcendental, then we are:

Practically Enlightened or Realistically Realised

For this book we meet Alex who contacted me via my website, to better follow his spiritual path with some advice about practices, Alex also was dealing with some long standing issues – especially severe anxiety. However we quickly established a weekly “session” where we placed mental health into the context of the wider picture of real spiritual practice which transcends all of Life and the Universe.

Here (in following blogs), are partial transcripts of what we said followed by some summaries.

The transcripts may have a note on who is the speaker.

(The summaries are AI generated)

N.B. Summaries relate to the complete conversation

Alex

The idea is to relax first, get a relaxed state, and drop into the body. Bring stressful or painful memories into the body visualizing them inside a globe of light to carry them consciously.

Focus on the body where there’s a pain. If there’s no pain, focus on the body energy. Feel the body. Feel the body within or without or outside. Also bring the most recent stressful or painful memories up. And then watch the body reaction & feel where the tension is coming from.

Relax into the tension. That’s all. Okay. The idea is really, really simple. Generate the situation, be in a relaxed state and bring it up consciously. Attention to the pain and rest in it. Yeah.

Witness it without reaction to allow it to transform. So, we’re not trying to transform it. We’re witnessing it because it will transform itself.

It’s a form itself. As soon as you put attention to the pain, the tension, it will transform itself or stay. It does always. We’re discussing the role of the body in spirituality, and the body could be described as smarter than the mind, and is essential in the process of transcendence. From all the books I’ve read about spirituality, nobody seems to go there. And there is a reason for it.

Technically speaking, the body has more neurons than the mind. Meaning that people are thinking with the body, technically speaking.

So, the point is to focus on the body because body is not really creating this illusion. So, when the mind is saying one thing, the mind is saying another. The body is technically saying the truth. How? Because it’s there in terms of the tension or discomfort.

It’s within. Okay. And feeling the body within, it’s just by pointing the direction down to the body and see if there is a tension or discomfort or anything. Usually, usually people are not really aware of the body when that happens. The mind starts ruminating. The trick is to not train the mind, but train the attention to keep on the body always.

Another way of doing it is to pay attention to the body’s outer sensation. And imagine where the tension is. Imagine the size of it, the exact shape. There are two ways to do it.

In the different sources there are two different ways to address that. Both of those ways can work. Some people might prefer feeling the body outside – I mean the skin. How the body touches the skin. Where the body touches the ground or chair or wherever they locate it.

Some books, say that leaving the body is not a good idea. I

Raymond

I wasn’t saying leaving the body. I was saying have energy out “there”. I did my meditation last night, going into the cosmos and free floating. Then I came back in my body, I said okay the cosmos is out there and I am here also. All is relative to what we’re doing here

So now I will sit in my body on the edge of the cosmos and see if I fall, if the edge disappears. And that’s what happens. Then I went into a dream and woke up back in the body. So, there’s two parts. We don’t necessarily drift off into the cosmos unless we’re doing that as some sort of exercise. But generally, we tend to stay in the body and work within the body, even if we’re trying to do our spiritual practice.

I don’t think we have to be doing anything, because it’s not about doing. It’s about become a witness. Being the witness in the middle of the wheel of change, or the wheel of no change in this case. We just stay where we are. Rather than going round from action to reaction to addiction, to recovery. This recovery model can be seen in in terms of being enmeshed in the world, and recovering from that by becoming the witness focus in the centre. We visualize that I am in the centre of all of these things happening. Visualise the body merging with the universal energy.

Now that’s what I do with the chakras because energy, in my words, is Shakti. And the Shakti is here, in the different chakras, the different energy centres. And then I use a mantra to focus on the energy per centre of the body according to how I am residing at any particular moment, or what I’m focused on.

A

But to bring that to a lay person’s attention to use that is a little bit difficult. No, you can’t really do that. Even the word chakras will put people off. So, what do you think of the way I interpret it? Like, say, once you are comfortable with the body, that’s a grounding process. You feel like the body touches all and then you feel where the tension is. Rather than turning away we’re turning towards it yeah we do that and I do that with my mantra. I’m doing my mantra here in the chest. I’m doing it in the abdomen.  I’m doing it lower down.

Just putting attention – that’s all it is.

Give the energy, give the love, and give the attention. Full attention means transmuting it, transcending it. So it might be useful to identify the energy centres without calling them chakras, without saying this is your energy of your heart, your abdomen, your third eye or whatever, and give them alternative words, alternative meanings, not Sanskrit, not Hindu, not Buddhist.

How about this? Make it even simpler. Like I stated earlier, what works for me is when I put attention to the energy of the spine, the spine loses the shape. It doesn’t have shape. It just dilutes in the energy of the body. Maybe we could say the body energy is a purple colour and the energy of the pine is grey or make your own colours, whatever you see them as. Yeah, make it a grey colour, and then watch the process of merging or diluting the grey into another colour.

R

The Chakras have colours. I paint them and they all have their own colours. And they’re often a major colour with a variety of petals around the edges. They’ve been processed like this for tens of thousands of years.

They’re in temples and they’re in old books that are thousands and thousands of years old. And people have said, well, this is the colour of that chakra. The energy centre has got this colour, it’s got this sound, and it’s got these properties.

You do the mantra and then it fades because it disappears and then you know that that energy has gone into the aura or the cosmic consciousness.

That’s your nature. Divine being in a divine world. What we’re seeing is just fluctuations in the energy field, which means that sometimes we can’t get attention onto a specific topic. I can’t always go into my meditation and focus on somebody, somewhere, something. It doesn’t always work that way.

All I can do sometimes is be aware of my oneness with the cosmic energy, which is the ultimate. So to be able to focus on something, something is an illusory Maya – a human product. It’s not a real thing.

It’s a bit like a dream, but it’s better than a dream because we’re a bit more in charge. But it’s still something we’re doing as human beings, not as necessarily as spiritual beings. So if you think you can’t pay attention or focus, it’s irrelevant. It doesn’t matter. It’s nothing to do with spiritual practice.

A

Nothing. Well, what matters is it’s still nothing to do with spiritual practice. It’s to do with your perception, mind, energy, connections with the body, mind. It’s all normal human stuff. I mean, you’re doing better. Most human beings are like that 24 hours a day, seven days a week. They don’t have that ability to focus on what they want to or not focus on anything.

R

Ultimately, at the end of the day, when you die, none of this will happen. You’ll be just given a message – time up, focus now, forget anything. That’s it. And you won’t be able to focus on anything because you’re going to be taken away somewhere. And that’s the end of that. So this whole thing, your experiences is still an illusory dreamlike dream.

Go into your coffin. This is my spiritual coffin, cocoon. Lie there, relax, and float into the cosmos. And I think, no, I want to go and talk to people and have ideas and watch what’s on the news and have something going on. And yeah, that’s the human brain ego stuff. This is the big question. This is why it’s so scary for everyone.

You know, I get to walk out the door metaphorically – to leave behind the mind body and face the unknown. We seem to be bogged down in dealing with what we think should be happening and not totally surrendering to the universe because it’s the unknown. And then you’re dead. We’re not dead. The ego is dead.

I did this whole exercise and several more in my previous books about finding the door in the wall of the mountain, and finding the guide. And you have to sit back and wait and surrender. Maybe you wait days there and then suddenly the door opens for you and then you go through. But people don’t want to go through. That’s the problem. Who wants to go through to the unknown, float off into nowhere?

Doesn’t sound very nice to me. I mean, I do it lot. I’m used to it. But average person will be like, oh, this is terrible. This is a nightmare. This is a nightmare. Well, what happens to me was I find the seat of consciousness. That’s how it is. You don’t lose your seat of consciousness. That’s where the mantra comes in, because when you do the mantra you stop and allow the mantra sound to come centre point and gradually as you keep doing that you’ll see – oh wait a minute there’s a cosmic sound here. Oh it’s huge – it’s nothing to do with me.

Everyone wants something to do with something. They don’t want something to do with nothing – it’s too vague, boring, and scary.

You’re having dreams and you’re in some sort of visualization of memories of people and places and interactions. And that’s fine. That’s the energy you’re talking about. When you bring it into the body, which we should be doing, and then you believe you’re stuck there. Ah, that’s where the mantra comes in because you’ve get it all together. But now you’re not stuck there and now you

And that’s enlightenment, true enlightenment. You’re aware. You’re aware of your own enlightened being, how it will be after you physically die and the brain dies.

For most people, that’s not the case because they will come back again and again and again to a human life time after time after time.

It’s irrelevant because life will go on for you and me, whether we like it or not. Your body will digest food. The sun will come up. You will go and do things and things will happen. And you think you’re doing it, but you’re not the doer. You’re nothing to do with anything. It just happens. It’s just your Kkarma. It’s just the way it’s been.

You’ve ended up somewhere as I have and things seem like sitting in concrete. They’re not they’re just flowing and they will continue to flow until all those energies are exhausted, and then you’ll go on to another dimension completely differen,t or come back to another life. Yyou might come back to live in America next time instead of Siberia. I don’t know what you want to do. What are your desires? Yeah, I’ve got the idea. If it comes, it comes. I’ll keep watching it. Keep watching it and keep practicing. It’s not bad. It’s not that something’s wrong. There’s nothing wrong. There’s nothing wrong with you. There’s nothing you actually need to do.

Because you already told me about it. You’re already aware of it. Yeah. And you’re witnessing is all you can do. You can’t do any more. You know, sometimes, you know, you’re stuck in an airport for 12 hours sitting on a chair. Can’t do anything. You’re just witnessing it. Oh, not very nice not very nice.

Summary

The text discusses practical spiritual exercises centered on body awareness and attention training to manage stress and painful memories. It advocates relaxing into the body, visualizing memories within a globe of light, and witnessing bodily tension…

Key Points

What is the initial step recommended before bringing stressful or painful memories into the body during the exercise?

The initial step is to relax first and get into a relaxed state, then drop into the body by focusing on bodily sensations or pain.

How should one visualize stressful or painful memories according to the exercise?

One should visualize the stressful or painful memories inside a globe of light to carry them consciously into the heart.

What is the purpose of putting attention on bodily pain or tension during the exercise?

The purpose is to rest the attention on the pain or tension without reaction, allowing it to transform itself naturally.

How does the text describe the relationship between the body and mind in terms of processing stress or pain?

The body is described as having more neurons than the mind and is considered to be ‘smarter’ in terms of truthfully reflecting tension or discomfort, whereas the mind can be misleading.

What are two suggested ways to pay attention to body energy and tension?

One way is to focus on the body’s internal energy and tension; another is to pay attention to the body’s outer sensations, such as where the body touches the ground or chair, and imagine the size and shape of the tension.

What is the recommended approach to witnessing bodily sensations and energy?

The recommended approach is to witness the sensations and energy without reaction or trying to transform them, simply allowing them to transform by themselves through full attention.

Why is attention training emphasized in the exercises?

Because many people are not aware of their body and tend to be caught up in the mind; training attention to stay on the body helps maintain body awareness and supports spiritual practice.

What simple objects of attention are suggested for beginners to practice witnessing?

Beginners are encouraged to start by witnessing their breath, feet, or hands, or the sensation of the body touching a surface, as these are easier to focus on.

What visualization is suggested to help with witnessing stressful situations?

Visualizing oneself in a comfortable glass or gilded cage where stressful events happen outside but cannot harm you, allowing you to witness without reaction.

What is the role of mantra in these exercises?

Mantra serves as an object of awareness to help center attention, stop mental chatter, and facilitate the transformation or transmutation of bodily tension and energy into spiritual energy.

How should one deal with difficulties in maintaining attention during meditation?

Understand that fluctuations in attention are normal and illusory; one is already attention itself. Use mantra or simple objects of focus to gently bring attention back without judgment.

What is the suggested attitude towards thoughts during meditation or attention training?

One should drop attention into thinking without being critical or judgmental, simply observing thoughts as if watching a movie.

What is the metaphor used for surrendering the ego and entering a state of spiritual awareness?

Creating a cocoon or coffin at the edge of the universe where the ego ‘dies’ and one floats into cosmic consciousness, symbolizing surrender to the unknown.

What is the ultimate message about control and spiritual practice conveyed in the text?

That we are not in control of life events; spiritual practice is about witnessing and accepting what happens without trying to control or change it.

How can visualization of energy centres be simplified for laypersons?

By avoiding technical terms like chakras and instead focusing on colours or sensations in body areas, using personal or simple imagery to represent energy.