« My body got heavy all of a sudden. As I focused on the Caretaker face, I saw only a whitish haze, like fog in the twilight.
I heard him tell me to lie down and cast out my ethereal net by gradually relaxing my muscles.
I knew what he wanted me to do and automatically followed his instructions. I lay down and began moving my awareness from my feet upward to my ankles, calves, knees, thighs, abdomen and back.
Then I relaxed my arms, shoulders, neck and head. As I moved my awareness to the various parts of my body, I felt myself become more and more drowsy and heavy.
Then the caretaker ordered me to make small counterclockwise circles with my eyes allowing them to roll back and up into my head.
I continued relaxing until my breathing became slow and rhythmic, expanding and contracting by itself. I was concentrating on the lulling waves of my breathing, when he whispered that I should move my awareness out of my forehead to a place as far above me as I could, and there make a small opening.
“What kind of opening?” I muttered.
“Just an opening. A hole.”
“A hole into what?”
“A hole into the nothingness your net is suspended on,” he replied.
“If you can move your awareness outside your body, you’ll realize that there is blackness all around you. Try to pierce that blackness; make a hole in it.”
“I don’t think I can,” I said, tensing up.
“Of course you can,” he assured me. “Remember, sorcerers are never defeated, they can only succeed.”
He leaned toward me and in a whisper said that after I had made the opening, I should roll my body up like a scroll and allow myself to be catapulted along a line extending from the crown of my head into the blackness.
“But I’m lying down,” I protested feebly. “The crown of my head is nearly against the ground. Shouldn’t I be standing up?”
“The blackness is all around us,” he said. “Even if we are standing on our heads, it is still there.”
He changed his tone to a hard command and ordered me to place my concentration on the hole I had just made and to let my thoughts and feelings flow through that opening. Again my muscles tightened because I hadn’t made any hole. The caretaker urged me to relax, to let go and act and feel as if I had made that hole.
“Throw out everything that’s inside you,” he said. “Allow your thoughts, feelings and memories to flow out.”
As I relaxed and released the tension from my body, I felt a surge of energy push through me. I was being turned inside out; everything was being pulled out from the top of my head, rushing along a line like an inverted cascading waterfall. At the end of that line, I sensed an opening.
“Let yourself go even deeper,” he whispered in my ear. “Offer your whole being to nothingness.”
I did my best to follow his suggestions. Whatever thoughts arose in my mind instantly joined the cascade at the top of my head. I vaguely heard the caretaker say that if I wanted to move, I only needed to give myself the directive and the line would pull me wherever I wanted to go. Before I could give myself the command, I felt a gentle but persistent tugging on my left side. I relaxed and allowed this sensation to continue. At first, only my head seemed to be pulled to the left, then the rest of my body slowly rolled to the left. I felt as if I were falling sideways, yet I sensed that my body had not moved at all. I heard a dull sound behind my neck, and saw the opening grow larger. I wanted to crawl inside, to squeeze through it and disappear. I experienced a deep stirring inside me; my awareness began moving along the line at the crown of my head and slipped through the opening.
I felt as if I were inside a gigantic cavern. Its velvety walls enveloped me; it was dark. My attention was caught by a luminescent dot. It flickered on and off like a beacon, appearing and disappearing whenever I focused on it. Then the area in front of me became illuminated by an intense light. Then gradually everything became dark again. My breathing seemed to cease altogether and no thoughts or images disturbed the blackness. I no longer felt my body. My last thought was that I had dissolved.
I felt a hollow popping sound. My thoughts returned to me all at once, tumbling down on me like a mountain of debris, and with them came the awareness of the hardness of the ground, the stiffness of my body, and some insect biting my ankle. I opened my eyes and looked around; the caretaker had taken my shoes and socks off and was poking the soles of my feet with a stick to revive me. I wanted to tell him what had happened, but he shook his head.
“Don’t talk or move until you’re solid again,” he warned. He told me to close my eyes and breathe with my abdomen.
I lay on the ground until I felt I had regained my strength, then I sat up and leaned my back against a tree trunk.
“You opened a crack in the blackness and your double slid to the left and then went through it,” the caretaker said, before I had asked him anything.
“I definitely felt a force pulling me,” I admitted. “And I saw an intense light.”
“That force was your double coming out,” he said, as if he knew exactly what I was referring to. “And the light was the eye of the double. Since you’ve been recapitulating for over a year, you’ve also been, at the same time, casting your energy lines and now they’re beginning to move by themselves. But because you’re still involved in talking and thinking, those energy lines don’t move as easily and completely as they are going to someday.”
I had no idea what he meant when he said that I had been casting my energy lines as I recapitulated. I asked him to explain.
“What’s there to explain?” he said. “It’s a matter of energy; the more of it you call back through recapitulating, the easier it is for that recovered energy to nourish your double. To send energy to the double is what we call casting your energy lines. Someone who sees energy will see it as lines coming out of the physical body.”
“But what does that mean to someone like me who doesn’t see?”
“The greater your energy,” he explained, “the greater your capacity to perceive extraordinary things.”
“I think what has happened to me is that the greater my energy becomes, the crazier I get,” I said, without trying to be facetious.
“Don’t run yourself down in such a casual manner,” he remarked.
“Perception is the ultimate mystery because it’s totally unexplainable. Sorcerers as human beings are perceiving creatures, but what they perceive is neither good nor evil; everything is just perception.
If human beings, through discipline, can perceive more than is normally permitted, more power to them. Do you see what I mean?”
(Taisha Abelar, The Sorcerer’s Crossing)
