Saturday-Sunday May 27-28, 2023

– First Quarter Moon Phase – step out, take action, breaking away, expression

– Moon in LEO – Void of Course 2:38 AM – 11:05 AM moving to Virgo

– Retrograde Planets – Pluto

– Best Days (from the Farmer’s Almanac) – May 26th – 28th – Mow to Increase Growth, Dig Holes, Wax Floors, Kill Plant Pests, Cut Firewood

– Planting Calendar (from the Farmer’s Almanac) –  May 24th – 28th – A barren period. Favorable for killing plant pests, cultivating, or taking a short vacation.

– Aspect of the Aeon Sophia: (Wisdom): – Chinnamasta – Goddess Who Expands The Mind

– Aspect of the Aeon Thelete: (Will/Desire): Ian – God of the East, God of Wisdom

– Sabian Symbol for the Solar-Lunar Month – New Moon in ARIES SUN/MOON – 30 ARIES: a duck pond and its brood     (EARTH – 30 LIBRA: three mounds of knowledge on a philosopher’s head )

– Sabian Symbol for the Solar-Lunar Year: – “a woman has risen out of the ocean, a seal is embracing her”

– SUN – 

06 GEMINI: workmen drilling for oil
07 GEMINI: an old- fashioned well
08 GEMINI: aroused strikers round a factory

– EARTH – 

06 SAGITTARIUS: a game of cricket
07 SAGITTARIUS: Cupid knocking at the door of a human heart
08 SAGITTARIUS: deep within the depths of the Earth, new elements are being formed

How do You Meditate?

I have a complicated history with meditation. Looking back over time, I can say that I have done it very regularly for about 37 years.

But what does that mean? Did I take meditation lessons? No. Did I read any books on the subject? Not really.

So how did I do it? And how do I define it?

I will take it back to the year I started. It was my first year in college. 1985-1986. My concern was sleeping. I could not sleep when I hard voices and noise. I moved into the dorm, and it was noisy. So I created rules for myself.

1. Go to bed so late that there was no longer noise in the halls
2. Take no 8:00 classes.
3. Wake up and shower by 7:00 anyways so that I could make it to breakfast.
4. Make it up on the weekend
5. Drink black coffee
6. Listen to music
7. Learn to quiet my mind.

All of these rules I came up with in my first year. All of them were the result of trial and error. And some had consequences.

Go to Bed Late: This started due to my roommate, who was proud of three things he brought to school with him: His bong, his fish tank and and his pot plant he names Herb the herb. He and his friends delighted in late night bong hits while they fed goldfish to his huge cichlids. It was a bloodbath. I would stay up and watch Carson and Letterman and any other late night show. There was a group of us that would always stay up til about 3:00.

No 8:00 Classes – I generally wake up early. But to get to school (I lived a mile away and had to walk) took 20 minutes. I liked to wake up by 7:00 – which would give me about 4 hours of sleep. I took a lot of time in the morning between showering, eating, reading the paper. My first semester, I found out I could not function for an 8:00 class. Rule made.

7:00 AM wake up – This was a hard time early as I wanted breakfast and out cafeteria closed at 8:00. In addition to my sleeping routine, I had a goal that I would not be afflicted with the Freshman 15 (AKA Dorm Butt). Eating 3 meals a day and strictly not eating after 8:00 PM helped to make this work.

Make it up on the Weekend – Four hours of sleep a day is not enough. I found that I could manage the deficut during the week by getting better sleep on the weekend – between 8 and 10 hours. It worked.

Drink Black Coffee – I kicked the sugar and milk habit in my coffee in the first month of college. Part was reducing calories. The other part was being man-shamed by some of the other guys. But the caffeine was part of what kept me going. I do not know how profound my addition to caffeine is today. But I do not think I have tried a morning without coffee since college.

Listen to music – This was something I discovered as a way to block out the background noise. voices throw me and keep me awake. But if I have music in the background, I can tune them out. It cannot be just any music. It has to be familiar. (I am listening to Smashing Pumpkins Gish album as I am writing this). Music without singing is easier. But if I know the album, I can selectively tune it out.

Quieting the mind – Of each of the 7 points I made above, this is the one that begins to approach the subject of meditation. And where I want to focus the rest of this discussion.

How to Meditate

For the purpose of this discussion, I am going to describe a couple of the techniques I developed back then that I still use today. I cannot say that it follows any “experts” version of meditation. A guru might read this and say I am a fool or an idiot. These processes helped me to get to sleep. So I use them.

Quieting the mind is an intentional process. You mind works faster than anyone is consciously aware of. When I wanted to get to sleep, I found it next to impossible with random thoughts in my head. The background noise (especially random voices) prevented this. I would hear someone or something and my mind would follow it.

Shut it down – I began intentionally selecting thoughts that came in my head. And each one, I would shut off. It helped to find a focus point. By keeping my mind on the focus point, it became easy to shut down invading thoughts.

Blank Sheet – One of my favorite focus points was to “look” at a black sheet of paper. The sheet of what paper became as close to nothing as I could manage. And it worked.

The Music – I mentioned it above. It was like the black sheet of paper for me. If the music was familiar, I found it easy to tune out everything else. In the beginning, It was The Cure, REM, Echo and the Bunnymen, Love and Rockets, The Church, REM. I often wanted to listen to the radio, but that never worked. The voices of the DJ’s and commercials always spoiled it.

Self Hypnosis – I said above that I did not read any books on the subject of meditation. But I did learn a lot about hypnosis. And the process of putting oneself in a hypnotic trans is much like meditation. We had the chance to see a hypnotist in my first year. He was kitchey and entertaining. When looking for subjects, he did this silly dance to select people he thought he could influence. After choosing, he then proceeded to get them to do all sorts of silly thing. I was not chosen. But I could feel where he was going with it. And it was a lot like what I was already doing to put myself to sleep. So I did go to the library and read more about it. Not that I found out a whole lot. But the process gave me more tools in my tool chest to work with.

The end result of my sleep experiment in my first year of college was that I was able to gain a modicum of control of my mind function. Enough at least to be able to fall asleep. anytime and anywhere of my choosing.

More to Learn . . . Much More

It had not been my desire at the time to become a mentalist. But what I learned started the process. I have learned additional techniques since then. And uncovered a whole field that I will be exploring in the coming pages. Stay tuned if you are interested.