(The Sorcerers’ Crossing by Taisha Abelar)
“Lie down and close your eyes, but don’t fall asleep,” he ordered. Embarrassed, I did as he asked, feeling strangely vulnerable lying down in front of them. He knelt down beside me and spoke in a soft voice. “Imagine lines extending out from the sides of your body, beginning at your feet,” he said.
“What if I can’t imagine them?”
“If you want to, you certainly can,” he said. “Use all your strength to intend the lines into existence.”
He elaborated that it was not really imagining those lines that was involved, but rather a mysterious act of pulling them out from the side of the body, beginning at the toes and continuing all the way up to the top of the head. He said that I should also feel lines emanating from the soles of my feet going downward and wrapping around the length of my body to the back of my head; and also other lines that radiated from my forehead upward and downward, along the front of my body to my feet, thus forming a net or a cocoon of luminous energy.
“Practice this until you can let go of your physical body and can place your attention at will on your luminous net,” he said. “Eventually, you’ll be able to cast and sustain that net with a single thought.”
I tried to relax. I found his voice soothing. It had a mesmerizing quality; at times it seemed to come from very close, and at other times from far away. He cautioned me that if there was a place in my body where the net felt tight or where it was difficult to stretch the lines out or where the lines recoiled, that was the place where my body was weak or injured.
“You can heal those parts by allowing the double to spread out the ethereal net,” he said.
“How do I do that?”
“By intending it, but not with your thoughts,” he said. “Intend it with your intent, which is the layer beneath your thoughts. Listen carefully, look for it beneath the thoughts, away from them. Intent is so far away from thoughts that we can’t talk about it; we can’t even feel it. But we can certainly use it.”
I couldn’t even conceive how to intend with my intent. Mr. Abelar said that I shouldn’t have too much difficulty casting my net, because for the past few months, unknowingly, I had been projecting such ethereal lines during my recapitulation. He suggested that I begin by concentrating on my breathing. After what seemed to be hours, during which time I must have dozed off once or twice, I could eventually feel an intense tingling heat in my feet and head. The heat expanded to form a ring encircling my body lengthwise.
In a soft voice, Mr. Abelar reminded me that I should focus my attention on the heat outside my body and try to stretch it out, pushing it out from within and allowing it to expand.
I focused on my breathing until all the tension in me vanished. As I relaxed even more, I let the tingling heat find its own course; it didn’t move outward, or expand; it contracted instead, until I felt I was lying on a gigantic balloon, floating in space. I experienced a moment of panic; my breathing stopped and for an instant I was suffocating. Then something outside of myself took over and began to breathe for me. Waves of lulling energy surrounded me, expanding and contracting until everything went black and I could no longer focus my awareness on anything.
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