Stimuli to Response: Counter Intuitive Intuition

As an addendum to my previous post I would like to explain the relation of stimuli to the response in the ecstatic experience. What arises in the experience is not usually associated to how I elicit it. I have learned what works over the years and often this would seem very specific to me. It is an empirical approach, not a logical one.

For instance, it may arise that I experience an overwhelming feeling of love to and from me of an order which is not usually known or accessible to me. But this is not achieved by honing or trying to augment my sense of love through focus, meditation, chant or prayer on love. I may find this by relaxing my sacrum area, surrendering to the spontaneous movement that arises, and visually focusing on all that is about me. It will arise as if on it's own, not by efforts to form it.

Other stimuli I use seem purely functional and specific to me, such as looking into or poking a stick into a cup or bowl. This can even work when I see someone else poke a stick into a vessel. Fortunately for me these objects and actions have a great amount of metaphorical associative possibilities which I can use thematically, but this isn't why it works. Rather it is because this is the action of me dunking an ink pen into an ink well, which is an action associated with drawing, and some how the focus I put on automatic drawing to elicit a response got transferred to the dunking of the pen, as these actions are always consecutive.

Although some may use the power of a symbol to focus and open an experience on what the symbol represents, this is by no means the sole way, or even a completely efficient way. A focus on a symbol can entice many levels of the psyche; conceptual, sentimental, ego identification, which can distract from an awareness of the ecstatic and expansive. In my experience when a stronger ecstatic response comes it is pretty shattering to my sense of self. That love may be more bewildering than comforting, even disorienting. It is a qualitatively different experience. I do not see the bridge between them.

In this the sense of cause and effect does not hold for me. It is more practice/surrender leading to grace by grace. Joseph Campbell said that some spiritual traditions are there to protect the user from spiritual experiences, and I know how and where in my being some spiritual actions and practices affect me, which I can see are distractions. I do sometimes find stimulating words that I can use to elicit the response, but they have come directly from the ecstatic experience. I have learned them, not devised them. It is a path of intuition, but intuition that has proven itself.