Please help me with NEW

[MatthewWright]

I have recently purchased Astral Dynamics, and have started reading the NEW Energy Ways section, and need help. I can't seem to get it to work. "Feel your left knee. Become aware of it." I don't know what it is I'm supposed to be doing. Concentrating on it? I can 'feel' my left knee right now. If something touches my left knee, I can feel it. I'm aware of my left knee now. What does he want exactly? It seems that Robert's teaching requires some level of "just getting it" from the student, that I don't know if I have. For example, the exercise where you draw a circle around your thumb joint over and over, until you can feel that without actually drawing the circle. I can't feel it. I need to draw it. I can't feel any circle being drawn there unless I'm physically doing it with my finger.

Please, help. This is getting frustrating. I keep scratching my lef tknee and sitting there trying to "feel" it and become completely "aware" of my left knee, but it seems almost pointless, because I don't think that whatever he wants to happen is happening.

[MatthewWright]

Also, another problem occurs when trying to do the exercise where you run your figner from the base of your left thumb to your shoulder, or doing the exercise where you run your fignertips along the back of your hand on the beginners page of this site. I cannot get myself to recall the moving feeling of the fignertips. I can recall the overall feeling of touch on my left hand, but not the feeling going from the wrist up. It's like I can feel the whole length I ran my fignertips along all at once, but cannot get myself to recreate the feeling of touch moving from my wrist up.

[Planet_Jeroen]

Please, help. This is getting frustrating. I keep scratching my lef tknee and sitting there trying to "feel" it and become completely "aware" of my left knee, but it seems almost pointless, because I don't think that whatever he wants to happen is happening.

It's a strange concept to start out with, since it involves you accepting that there's more then meets the eye.

A helpfull hint is given by Brian, where he suggests the following:

If yo have trouble with the stirring or brushing actions after several minutes, try this: Open your eyes and point your left index finger to your right thumb joint. Your index finger should be about an inch or so above but not touching your thumb joint. Use your index finger to stir or brush the area above the joint.

Try that for the other areas you mention as well... do it slowly, and it might also be helpfull to imagine energy emitting from your index finger to the place you try to work on. If you want to get a refference feeling, rub your hands together for a while with the palms and then slowly bring them together, without touching. It should feel as if there is something soft between them, or as if you try to push to magnets together with identical poles.

Other then that, replace 'feel' and 'become aware' with 'how does it feel' and go from there. Try to answer that question as specific as possible for yourself, while you hold the brushing concept in your mind as well.

Hope you can work with these suggestions.

Regards,

Jeroen

[MatthewWright]

I don't know if there is much there to work with, but I'll try, thanks.

I guess I'll just have to keep trying until something happens.

That seems to be the main problem, I'm waiting for anything to happen. I don't know exactly what I'm shooting for, so I can't try it directly. Be aware of your knee. What does that mean? I'm always aware of my knee, it's a part of me. I don't know how he means me to be more aware than I am now. I can concentrate on it, I suppose and think about it, but I don't know how to "feel" my knee and to "highlight it with my awareness".

That's why I'm not sure if I can go anywhere with seeing how it feels, and go from there. It doesn't really feel anything at all after I stop scratching or drawing the circle.

Maybe I'll just have to keep trying it, but think differently each time. Re-think the way I'm thinking, until I finally realize what he means to happen.

Is there any certain end result I should be waiting for to know that I've done it successfully? What happens if I think that I have become more aware of my knee, but I really havn't. I'm just fooling myself. I'd end up continuing on from there without knowing I havn't even gotten the first steps right and it would all be a waste.

I have done the palm thing before. Long ago. I'd hold them about an inch or two apart, and then bring them out to about a foot apart and then back and forth, and eventually I could feel something between them. As if the air had thickened between them. Quite a cool feeling. How does this apply to the energy work though?

Thanks a lot for your help, I really appreciate it.

[Tom]

The reason why tactile imaging is easier than techniques based on visualization is that for most people it is easier to remember and recreate what a touch sensation felt like than it is to recreate a picture of some sort. What you are trying to do is to remember what something felt like and pretend you are feeling it exactly the same way at first. Then you go on to make up new sensations. It is like when you are reading that example of tasting a lemon. You are guided to feel the weight of the lemon in your hand and to smell it and to see the pores in the peel. You are guided to imagine cutting into the lemon, seeing the juice spray and drip from where you cut it. The smell grows stronger and sharper. You then imagine putting some of the lemon in your mouth and biting into it. As long as you keep everything vivid and involve several of your senses, your mouth will react as if you were really eating a lemon. It is like that with tactile imagery. Working with ideas like brushes and sponges and rubbing them on parts of your body is just the beginning. It is easier than trying to start from the beginning with "become aware of your energy", but it happens that you will start to find things going on fairly quickly that you did not make happen deliberately. You might also find that sensations continue in the area where you were practicing after you stop and move on to something else. What happens is that you become familiar with the sensations of energy moving through you and then you can switch to using tactile imagery to bring those back. The process continues to get faster, easier, and more direct. Other people will just just directly to telling you to imagine the energy moving into you and through you by visualizing it as light. This approach works also, but it requires a far bigger initial leap on the part of people trying to learn on their own from a book or a web site.

[MatthewWright]

Tom:

I know. I can't do it. I can't get myself to recall the feeling. That's the problem. I scratch my left knee. I stop scratching and tyr to recall the feeling. I can recall doing the scratching, but not the feeling of scratching or being scratched, let alone bring other sensations into the picture.

See, for me, I can easily recreate pictures of things. Just going to answer this, in my mind I can see your little avatar picture in my mind, as I think about replying to you. As I try and concentrate on recalling the feeling of my knee being scratched, I can see my knee in my mind. I don't even look at my knee while I scratch it, I keep my eyes closed, but I can still see my knee when I try to recall the scratching feeling. And it's not a choice, either. Whether I want to see it or not, I do. It isn't even possible to get rid of the image, because to do that I have to think: Ok get rid of that picture of my knee! But that right there just reminds me of it and brings the image right back up.

Picturing things isn't a problem. It's recalling the feelings and imagining feelings that I can't seem to be able to do. When i try to recall the feeling of my knee being scratched, I just get a picture of my knee and usually my figner scratching it. Sometimes there is some kind of mark or streak where I'd been scratched. Maybe the scratched spot is coloured differently. But that's it. No feelings come back to me.

For me, to have the feeling of being scratched, I seem to have to be physically scratched, and because of that I can't even begin any energy work. That's where I need some kind of help.

Thank you, though, now I have a better idea of what he means being aware of my knee. I think...

[Tom]

Given how good your ability to work with pictures is, it sounds like you should go that route. You can apply pictures to everything you would do with tactile imagery. There have been other people with the same circumstances. Actually, for me I have to have sound effects for my primary imagery rather than tactile or visual. A couple of people needed to adapt tactile imagery for use with smells. The more senses you can work into your practice, the better. It is just that for most people, it is challenging enough just to get one sense working this way and the easiest is usually touch. For you to force yourself to do things that way would be like making a marathon runner walk with crutches and braces.

[MatthewWright]

Thanks, I'll keep that in mind.

I'd rather learn it the way descirbed though, as Robert actually goes out of his way to explain that it works better than vizualizing things. For example, you can't use ROPE with just pictures.

Not to mention that now that the challenge has been set in front of me, I have to take it head on. I'd rather not find a way around it.

I just need to find someone to tell me what he means by "become aware of it your knee." People have given me some great tips and ideas regarding the work, but nobody seems to be able to directly answered the question. I'm not complaining or blaming anyone, I'm just saying.

Is there any way I can contact Robert directly?

(P.S. - If I seem like I'm being difficult or anything, please take note that that is not at ALL my intention. I just want to learn this thing properly, and to do that, I have to understand it. Don't think I don't appreciate your help, Tom, it's excellent to have someone willing to try and help me, and I'm grateful.)

[gorillabait]

I think that the phrase "becoming aware of your knee" sounds more complicated than it really is. If you touch a part of your body, you feel it. You feel that touch. When you take your finger away, you still feel a remenant of it. That feeling is all that they mean, really. The more you try concentrating on feeling a part of your body, the more you can feel it without needing to touch it. Right now I can feel almost any point of my body, and there are many places which feel tight or otherwise uncomfortable; these are problem areas in my mind.

Becoming aware of your knee means being able to feel it really. If you touch your knee, that feeling of touch is all Robert means. Eventually you'll even have the sensation of being able to feel the inside of it, bones and all.

If this doesn't help please let us know. I'd love to try and clarify further.

-Mike

[MatthewWright]

I MAY have gotten somewhere:

In between posts I've been doing the exercise where you stroke your hand and tyr to recreate the feeling. I was hoping maybe I'd be able to get it to work, but it was to no success until a few minutes ago.

I tried it again, slowly stroking the back of my hand. I made sure I could feel it clearly and did it oooover and oooover. I then stopped, shut my eyes, and tried to recreate the feeling. Unforutnately, once again, I could recall the overall feeling, as in, could feel the general path of the strokes and even sort of feel where I would begin each stroke a little stronger, as if my fingertips were still there, ready to go to work. Unfortunately, they seemed to just sit there.

I kept concentrating and trying. No stroking feeling. No sensations. Not at first at least.

After a couple minutes of holding out my hand and just simply focusing on the feeling, it was as if I could feel it more clearly. Still no stroking, but at least a "stroked" feeling. I could sooort of feel something between a tingling and a pressure in my hand. I may have a better idea of what he means by "being aware of your hand" now, but I'm not all the way there. At least it's a start.

Thanks Tom, you've helped.

EDIT AFTERWARD: Gorilla, I didn't thank Tom and not you on purpose, by the time you posted, apparently I was already in the middle of typing this up. Thank yuo for your post. THe thing is I DON"T have a remnant of touching my knee. I have it for maybe half a second, just like if you touch anywhere. But I can't hold on, I can't keep the feeling, and cannot recreate it. Even in the above post, I couldn't feel the stroking, I couldn't recreate that. All I could do was hold on a little longer to the afterward feeling of being stroked. It was the same when I did the exercise from the book. The one where you go back and forth with your figner from the base of your thumb to your shoulder and then try and do it without touching. I can hold onto the feeling of the path my figner traced overall, but I can't make any kind "moving up and down" feeling. I can recall where I traced, but no type of movement. No type of shifting the awareness along the path.