Navigation

This describes a navigation system to help the awareness move through reality. As implied by the word “system”, this is not the only way one can go about doing this. I put this together to be able to communicate how to get to some of the places in non-ordinary reality.. Work with this system can also exercise the ability to orient and navigate in these subtle spaces.

The Three Axes and Six Directions

When we move our human body around in physical spae, we navigate along six directions:

1. Forward
2. Backward
3. Left
4. Right
5. Up
6. Down

Mathematically speaking, these are movements along three axes. We can label these as (x,y,z), for the x-axis, y-axis, and z-axis. The point is that forwards-backwards is one axis, left-right is another axis, and up-and-down is another axis.

This forms a 3-dimensional space, or Cartesian space.

It is not just our bodies that can move in this way. Our awareness can do this as well. In some systems of mental exercises, there is an exercise called a body scan. This is where you scan – slowly move your attention – throughout your body, allowing whatever content to arise and pass. In order to do this, we are navigating the 3d space of the body with your awareness, from head to toes, to the fingers and toes the skin and hair, the internal organs.

We can also navigate our awareness beyond the body. Our sight, hearing, and smell links us to objects beyond our physical reach, even though there are no nerve endings connecting to that object.

Beyond that though, is the ability for awareness to touch things from afar. Sight, hearing, and smell become the “psychic key” to link to something that is beyond reach. What gets interesting is developing this to things to your side, on the peripheral vision … and then behind you, where you can’t see.

This has applications in martial arts when it comes to distance and measure, or with a ranged discipline such as archery. That will be explord in other posts.

Time Axis - Past, Future, and Present

In this day and age, the 4th dimension is understood as the time axis, typically designated as the t-axis.

This t-axis is not the x, y, or z axis. In other words, regardless of whether you are moving forwards-backwards, left-right, up-down, none of those have to do with traversing into the future or past. In mathematical terms, the t-axis is orthogonal to the x,y,z axis (if we are relating time to another spatial dimension),

In our day-to-day human existance, time moves inexorably forward. Albert Einstein talks about time as a 4th spatial dimension. His contemporary, the philsopher Jorge Luis Borges talks about time as a complex experience, sometimes moving fast, sometimes moving slow.

The I-Ching (易經) can be understood as pattern of changes in the subtle energy of time.

While our human bodies have limited influence on moving through time, our awareness is quite capable of traversing across time.

The most common way humans move through time is in the uncontrolled, often unmindful process of attachment to moments as humans experience life. Some life experiences are painful. When they are truamatic, a “piece” of our awareness becomes stuck in the moment of the truama, and one is no longer fully present to the Now.

Sometimes humans get attached to some future outcome. Their awareness has traversed into a possible future, and attached itself to that moment. One is no longer fully present to the Now.

This can span multiple incarnations as humans. Regrets and longings that could not be released during the dissolution process (death) comes with the subtle energy body we call a soul, and drives the selection of future incarnations.

Whether it is in a present lifetime or in a previous lifetime, there is an energetic link traversing across time into that truamatic moment. Energy healing methods for releasing this involves the healer to traverse time (along the t-axis) and work with the energy at that moment.

When people try to use various methods to release the past, it doesn’t always work because they are not traversing along the t-axis to the moment. And why would they? The truama of the moment is so painful that there is a natural aversion for the human to go there. It is much easier to cope, and put a barrier between that moment and the present moment. However, coping does not change that link to that past moment, and that truama connects across time to influence and inflect the human experience in the present moment.

Good times can also attach people to a moment. All things come and go, but sometimes we want to cling to those good moments, stealing away awareness of the present.

Working with past and future incarnations, and healing methods for past and future life truamas will be explored in other posts.

Moments we experience as humans are more accessible. We are not just traversing across the t-axis, but also along the incarnational journey. But time isn’t necessarily linear, nor uniform (whether we are talking about Einstein’s or Borge’s ideas). These will also be explored in other posts.

The Subtle Axis (S-Axis)

There is yet another axis that one can traverse, making this the 5th axis discussed in this post. However, in the New Age community, when we talk about the “5th dimension” or “5d”, it is often spoken of as a kind of space rather than a direction of navigation, a place where great beings operate. THen others talk about higher dimensions.

In this system of navigation, there is a fifth axis. This is not x, y, z, or t axis. That is, it is not moving forwards-backwards, left-right, up-down, past-present, and is orthogonal to all four of those axes.

We typically think of our human experience navigating in 3d space with our body as the “origin”. That is why we can talk about moving forwards-backwards, left-right, up-down.

Likewise, with time, our human origin from which we orient is the present moment, and traversing to the past or future.

In this direction of travel, our origin point as a human is physicality. This is our body, and the things we can touch, taste, smell, hear and see.

The further we got along this direction of travel with our awareness, we move towards spaces where dualities becomes less distinct, until we reach the true origin.[1]

For lack of a better term, I call this the subtle dimension, or the S-axis. This is probably not a comprehensive understanding of navigation, but understanding this can help with practices.

For example, traversing just a little bit from physicality along the S-dimension is what some will call the etheric. When we look at diagrams for the the Twelve Ordinary Meridians, they don’t really correspond with anything physical. [2] It becomes hard to access the ordinary meridians because if we only locate them in 3d space on our body, we would still not be able to access it. Each meridian point that can be accessed by acupressure or through acupuncture as a 3d coordinate on the body, often shallow in depth (just below the skin), and a little bit down the S-axis away from human physicality.[3]

In another example, we we start working on the lower dantian to coalesce an energy structure, we’re looking for the nub of energy. The typical direction is to traverse in 3d space from the perineum up to the crown of the head, about where it is level near the navel. But if you only look for it in physicality, you will never find it. Implicit in that direction is that you’re traversing along the central channel, which requires starting at the 3d location of the perineum, and then traversing along the S-axis (further than etheric) to find the central channel. And then you traverse up the central channel to around the navel.

This is also the method of navigation to finding one’s personal Domain, an area I have found to be neglected in modern practice. This will be explored in other posts, along with a map and how to navigate to interesting or useful spaces.

See Also

• Navigation Siddhi Home

Footnotes

1. However, how does this square with the idea of the Two Veils? A single dimension moving from the fully manifest to Source works well with a single Veil. But two?

2. The modernized and standardized “Traditional” Chinese Medicine (TCM) does not have this concept. While not formalized, this is closer to some of the schools of Classical Chinese Medicine (CCM)

3. Does that mean there is a way to traverse the other way, “more physical” than physical?