Conscious Exercise and the Transcendental Sun – Epilogue

First edition: 11/74,
©1974 The Dawn Horse Communion.
ISBN: 0-913922-15-3.
LOCCCN: 74-26361.

Second edition: 8/75.
©1975 The Dawn Horse Communion.
LOCCCN: 77-365071.

Conscious Exercise and the Transcendental Sun

The principle of love applied to exercise and the method of common physical action.  A science of whole body wisdom, or true emotion, intended especially for those engaged in religious or spiritual life.  Prepared in collaboration with Da Free John and based on his written and verbal instructions.

Epilogue

The sun, or fascinating light, the visible vibration that can absorb us, is the principal symbol of religion and all the ways of extraordinary knowledge. The sacred practices of prophets, magicians, mystics, yogis, saints, and all ordinary believers are devoted toward knowledge of the Source Light or Creator Vibration via regressive absorption or return through the descended and progressively solid and vibratory hierarchy of manifest light. Even the various modern sciences, which pursue knowledge independent of the transformations of the experimenter and knower, may be said to be enterprises that investigate the mysteries of light, or vibratory effulgence. And, on the basis of all experiments, whether mystical or scientific, men are close to agreement on the universal concept and presumption that all appearances, forms, bodies, beings, thoughts, all events are emissions and transformations of universal and even eternal Vibratory Force or Light.

For this reason, we may say that light, or vibratory brightness, is the most universally venerated object among men. The Light of lights, seen and heard, is the principal idol to which our ways of knowing lead. To be sure, light, even most subtle or ascended, even the highest Light itself, is a great Principle of manifestation and of knowledge, but it is not Truth or very God and Reality.

Light is a great temptation. It is a mystery commonly entertained over against the idea and experience of darkness, or no-Radiance. In earlier times, life in the world was viewed as a great warfare between ascended powers of light and descended powers of darkness. And the theatre of life in the world was to be solved by a great Day, or a great impulse of Awakening, wherein those who had maintained allegiance to the highest Light would be returned, via the way of lights, to the domain of Light, above and beyond this world. And those who had been firmly committed to darkness would be excluded from Light, perhaps forever, in the domains of darkness, even the absolute Darkness below this world.

There is still an ultimate, factual, and temporal correspondence between such ideas and the theatre of universal physics. That correspondence has been all but forgotten in the cult of modern scientism, which excludes pre-scientific presumptions the way early church councils excluded the “heretical” wisdom of the ancient world. That wisdom which flourished in lights for eons remains latent in all men, even if it is now repressed by the dogmas of official experience. And that wisdom is returning now, reawakened through the service of those in whom the benighted popular and official consciousness is only superficial in its blinding effect. Even so, for those who are awakened to the super-physics of all light, Truth, the very Reality, which is salvation or Happiness, is not itself Light or any light in the exclusive sense. Light itself is ultimately resolved in a Principle that includes and is prior to both light and darkness. The Truth of life is not the victory of light over darkness. The Truth of life is not its physics of manifestation, or any kind of experiential destiny. The Truth of life is Unqualified, prior to all distinctions. It is not realized via the way of the knowledge of lights, or in the objective Shine and Sound of ultimate Brightness. It is intuited via the Wound or Mystery of Paradox, the irreducible profundity of absolute Ignorance. One whose enjoyment is Truth is thus free of all complications, even all the changes that appear in the manifesting Light. Such a one is eternally purified by the Realization that, no matter what arises, high or low, bright or dark, he does not know what even a single thing is.

This having been said, it is appropriate to consider what is the proper relationship between the practice of conscious exercise (or even all conscious activity) and the direct or progressive knowledge of the subtle, transcendental Sun or Light. In the older cultures, the visible sun and its light were and are worshipped and concentrated upon for the sake of physical, mental, psychic, and spiritual transformation. As such, the sun is viewed as a kind of icon, a living symbol in the universe for the Divine Sun or Prior Light that is Creative relative to the world. However, such practices, as well as their more esoteric counterparts, which conceive of the Sun within and subtly above for the same purpose, are expressions of a view of the world and of conscious existence in which Light (the Sun itself) is acknowledged as Truth and its emanations (sunlight) exploited as a method or way to Truth.

I do not propose that those who do conscious exercise use or seek the symbol of Light in this way. Although the Principle of Light may be senior to the Principle of Life, it is itself secondary to the Principle of the Awareness of both Life and Light. And all three of these Principles, which together form the foundation of every kind of esoteric and extraordinary knowledge, are fundamentals of the World-Process. They are not identical to Truth, or the Real, which has no description and is not an extension of the world, or any convention of knowledge, high or low.

What I am saying, then, is that all experience is conditional, temporary, or dependent on other conditions and Conditions. Therefore, conscious exercise is, like all ordinary experience, to be realized in Truth in the present, rather than exploited as a strategic way of attaining eventual knowledge. Conscious exercise is an ordinary discipline, founded in prior Fullness or Happiness, not an extraordinary strategy, founded in separation and distress. The discipline of conscious exercise may be realized as a direct extension of a Great Process of spiritual participation and realization in Truth. It may then be felt-intuited in terms of the whole affair of Divine Ignorance, Radical Understanding, and the spiritual Conductivity of Radiance, as these have been described in the literature of Vision Mound Ceremony.’¹ But in that case, the process of conscious exercise, along with all the rest of a human life, must have matured in the midst of the radical spiritual practice of the Way of Divine Ignorance.

To take up the process of conscious exercise as an extraordinary esoteric practice from the beginning is to take on the condition of a seeker in dilemma, and to manipulate one’s life by means of an idolater’s idea of Light. Therefore, let the formal practice of exercise always correspond to the general level of technical participation for which you are otherwise and properly responsible as a devotee.

I urge you to begin by doing exercise, even all your activities, as an ordinary functional discipline. The exercises, as they are described in this book, are a simple, natural, and homely practice. You are not instructed to perform the exercises as an esoteric method from the beginning, before your own experience, knowledge, and intuition combine to make you presently or already responsible for “secrets. “² Do the exercises in ordinary ways. When you exercise, concentrate through the whole process of breathing. Feel the breath itself as pervasive energy, a living food. Engage the living breath in a natural process, in which you become filled with life on inhalation and by which you permeate and purify the living world (including your own body, mind, and psyche) on exhalation. This use of the breath in conscious exercise is fundamental, but it is not extraordinarily esoteric. It involves a natural, ordinary kind of observation and responsibility relative to the complex organism or whole body in which we appear. By means of the ordinary and conscious exercise of the body in cooperation with the living breath, or the power of feeling, established by the concentration of the conscious mind, or free attention, on the whole process, the whole game of functional activity is presently and naturally aligned or harmonized with its laws and sources.

Body, the feeling breath, and mind are each and all identical to (not other than) energy or life-force. Through conscious exercise, or conscious activity in general, we affirm the lawful and functional relationship between body, feeling, breath, mind, and life-force. In the random and conventional activities of men, these agencies or dimensions of human life tend to be abused, divided, and depressed, each exploited separately, as if they were each a something apart from the others. In conscious exercise, and conscious life in general, they are enacted as a single process of mutually dependent functions. As such, they do not point to themselves or lead to meditation on their own content, but point toward their implied Law and creative Source. The Law of life is sacrifice, or unqualified relationship, and the instrumental Source of life is the Transcendental Sun or Light, the Vibratory Radiance or Current felt to permeate body, mind, and world with its all-pervading Presence, Spirit, or Breath. The Truth or Condition of life is prior to all experiential realizations of the Law and the Light. Therefore, those who would live or “exercise” consciously must also become devotees in Truth, or else their own experience will bind them.

If an individual does conscious exercise as part of a total life of spiritual practice, under the appropriate conditions communicated in the Teaching and in the Company of the Spiritual Master, he or she will, in time, simply begin to observe that the life-force, the mind, attention, the breath, all feeling, and the body at present exist as conditions of that Light which is also expressed and intuited as an all-pervading Presence. For such a one, conscious life, including conscious exercise, becomes a process of participation in the prior Condition of that Light, through conscious breathing of the Force of the Presence, and conversion or sacrifice of psycho-physical (mind-body) conditions in a cycle of reception and release. Such a one naturally and spontaneously begins to live as sacrifice, a process of transformation of life-conditions in which simple process of conscious life. One who does conscious exercise is actively concentrated upon that process itself in each moment of exercise. He does not concentrate on some problem, such as overweight, disease, or the need for objective God Realization or mystical experience. Nor does he concentrate upon specific, isolated, and technical versions of his possible psycho-physiology. He concentrates upon the present and total activity that is the human life-process within the Paradox or Mystery of the infinite theatre of Existence. Thus, he does not, in principle, exercise in order to solve any problem. He simply lives his own process of life consciously. He may notice that apparent benefits arise secondary to this way of exercise, but the conscious element of his exercise is always one in which he turns from every problematic conception and motivation to simple attention in the natural event of his own activity.

This natural and intelligent attention of the being, from its center, the heart, the psychic or feeling root, involves conscious turning of the body, the breath, and the mind into coincidence with the cyclic reception-release process of life-energy. Body, breath, and mind are a single, mutual, cooperative process, each part of which must consciously be realized to depend on (and, ultimately, to be not other than) life-energy, or manifest light. Therefore, in the action of exercise, body, mind, and breath are functionally and always feelingly associated with the pervading energy in the form of life-force. This is done by consciously moving or posing the body, consciously concentrating the mind as free attention, and consciously breathing the breath as pervasive feeling, or non-personal life-force. Thus, body, mind, and breath are consciously concentrated on the life principle, or energy, and the process of conscious exercise becomes exercise of the life-principle itself in a deeply felt cycle of inbreath-outbreath, reception release, attention and movement. This is simply practice of the prior, harmonious condition of life as it is. Nothing is sought or directly gained in this process itself. But those who exercise and live thus may always be intuitively available to the communicated Grace of the Divine, which is the Spiritual Master and Condition of all.

What we identify as disease is, in general, a condition of combined toxemia, enervation, and mechanical disability, which the manifest result of not living (exercising life) consciously, with full feeling, as an harmonious event of universal energy. No “cure,” or solution to specifically conceived _problem or disease, is of ultimate significance What must occur in every man or woman is a re-orientation to the principles, laws, real processes, and sources of his or her functional life. Each individual must be consciously turned away from the principle and process of disease, the problem, the dilemma, the motivation toward solutions, into the Principle and Process of his actual and prior Condition. This deeply felt and conscious turning is a matter of intuitive response to the Teaching of the Way of Divine Ignorance, and practical implementation of that response in the form of a whole life of conscious and appropriate practice in the Company of the Spiritual Master. All of the ordinary practices and disciplines communicated by Bubba Free John through the literature and services of Vision Mound Ceremony serve this present turning or re-orientation to the appropriate conditions and ultimate Condition of the human life process. Thus, there is conscious application to diet, work, sexuality, celebration, study, service, and the like, as well as exercise. An apparent byproduct of all this may be improved general health, gradual and even spontaneous healing, elimination of toxicity, intensification and increase of available life-force, increase in mechanical and mental ability, and so forth, but none of that is fundamental, or a specific goal of the practice. At best, if such changes appear, they are testimony to the essential correctness and lawful significance of the affair of conscious practice itself. It is in this spirit that the apparent benefits of conscious exercise should be viewed, and one who does the practice should always be mindful of his tendency to devote his total life in practice to remedial goals.

We tend to believe that action depletes energy and separates us from energy itself. Thus, we consider the relaxation of activity to be the obvious method for restoring or increasing available life-force. Carried to its extreme, this view results in “chronic relaxation,” better known as laziness. In fact, enervation, or the chronic absence of energy, is not caused specifically and necessarily by activity. Enervation is served just as well by inactivity. Rather, enervation and every kind of inharmonious and low level of life-energy are caused by the failure to participate consciously and moment to moment, from the heart, in the cooperative process of body, breath, mind, and universal life-force in the all-pervading Divine Presence or Radiance. Thus, enervation is established more and more in one who is addicted to conventional and exclusive exploitation of the possibilities of either action or inaction. Enervation is the result of the failure to presume or be certain of all-pervading life. One who is addicted to action (the “rajasic” personality) does in fact always meditate on the idea that he is using up his life. And one who is addicted to inaction (the “tamasic” personality) does in fact always meditate on the idea that he is waiting for life and must not act. But one who knows his entire life is a constant process of changes that never end, and which is itself perfect intensity, even Unqualified Life, Light, Consciousness, and Reality, is always engaged in the harmonious event of conscious existence. Such is the true “sattwic” personality, who, whether relatively active or relatively inactive, is always consciously engaged in the same cooperative exercise of all his functions.

Where there is either chronic activity or chronic inactivity, there is the constant degenerative tendency toward enervation, toxemia, unconsciousness, weakness of body, mind, and psyche, and debilitation of all the subtle and gross forms of life. But where such chronic tendencies are not lived, their chronic destinies also start to become obsolete. Even so, one who takes on his life as conscious spiritual practice in response to the Teaching of the Spiritual Master never in fact realizes his life as true practice as long as he, in principle, practices in order to solve the problematic conditions of his life or life itself. But when he simply realizes the conscious and cooperative process of personal and relational life, and when he enjoys direct intuitive Communion with the Condition of all life, he also begins to observe positive transformations of his apparent conditions of existence. (And he continually sacrifices such transformations, be they healings, pleasures, or mystical experiences, into the Great Process and Condition, which is senior to them, and which is the very Reality or Truth, priorly and eternally free of all conditions.)

Therefore, exercise must be done, from the beginning and always, as a conscious, simple, ordinary, and functional discipline, apart from the whole affair of problems, methods, and goals. One who exercises and lives in this way may observe that the plan of exercises described in this book involves rhythms of relative activity and inactivity. But both phases are equally forms of activity, or the motion that is life. The more apparently active moments of exercise are analogous to exhalation in the breath cycle. They represent not the moment of the loss of energy, but the universal communication or release and permeation of energy, whereby the one who exercises is also and totally included. Just so, the more apparently relaxed or inactive moments of exercise are analogous to inhalation in the breath cycle. They represent not inaction or the prevention of action, but the profound action of opening, drawing upon, and receiving the all-pervasive energy or universal light. Therefore, in fact, every moment of conscious exercise is action, the motion of feeling. All such action involves the intensifying and transforming play of life-force. Energy is thus always being “restored,” and body states, feeling states, breath characteristics, and conditions of thought and attention are always being transformed in every moment of conscious exercise and conscious life, independent of any problem oriented strategy to do such things.

In the actual or formal practice of conscious exercise, there should be no daydreaming, but constant feeling-attention to coordination of body and breath in the play of life-force. There should be no laziness, but devotion or complete, deeply felt adaptation of the body to the deliberate and full display of chosen movements and poses. And there should be no dead breath, no small chemistry, but intentional and full use of breath as a feeling instrument for actual and present ingestion, translation, and transfer of felt life-energy. As such, conscious exercise becomes a paradigm for the conscious realization of the whole of life. The formal practice of conscious exercise is merely a concentrated occasion or “lesson,” whereby we are instructed in the realization of every ordinary action as a conscious but non-formal exercise in the same sense. A life realized and expressed by such a discipline is always already movement in sunlight, with eyes fixed firmly on the Sun. And the devotee of Truth is not only so realized in fact, but also eternally and immeasurably free, both Night and Day.

Also see from Conscious Exercise and the Transcendental Sun –

The Internal “Locks” of the Whole Body – by Bubba Free John

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