The Collected State |
| ÎThe Collected StateÌ will greatly enhance the effect of the dance.
The Collected State, a term used frequently by Yakzan, is very simply attained
to by cultivating the capacity to use the breath as a sensory organ to
witness the body...the tightness, the looseness, becoming aware of the
areas that are felt as well as the areas that are not felt.
This capacity is innate and natural. It is often awakened within a person upon the first attempt, but certainly in almost all within a month of practice. Once this capacity is comfotrtably attained, we then turn our ability to use the breath as a sensory organ to witness conditions towards our emotional center (this may be easily felt in a tactile manner as the area in the belly where the butterflies sometimes occur or as the area which tightens when a person yells suddenly at you or thrusts a fist towards your body). Once we are feeling this area with the breath, we then turn our capacity of witnessing in this manner towards the mass of protoplasm and blood within the skull. I do not use the words ÎbrainÌ or ÎmindÌ here, because these words enkindle in most abstract ideas of what seems to be within the skull. At this time we use our breath, now accustomed to being a sensory organ, to feel the ÎenergyÌ of the protoplasmic mass within the skull. Is the energy there foggy? Or is it sharp, perhaps in the temples? Or perhaps it feels like a weight, a brick, perhaps in the forehead? Often we can feel the gush of flowings as our thoughts come and pass in rising and falling rhythms. But what we are doing here is feeling not the thoughts but rather the substance from which the thoughts arise. Again, this is a tacile experience, not a mental excersize. Once we have developed the capacity to witness with the breath as a sensory organ the brain, we then ride within the breath and use it to witness all three areas of our being at the same time. We witness the body, the belly (the seat of the basic emotional body) and the energy within the head (the seat of the basic mental body) simultaneously. Once one is comfortable with this capacity (which very often is right away, but may take as much as a week), one then asks the question...ÓWho is this who is watching my mind, my emotions and my body? Who is this who watches my mindÓ And go in. Go in to the One Who Is Witnessing. Feel this Child. Here, seated in this Witness, then, is the beginning of what Yakzan reffered to as ÎThe Collected StateÌ. |