Three Day Fast.

       

            I stopped eating on Sunday night and didn't start again till this morning, so that's me done another  three day fast. I might have done two before, but I definitely did one. Maybe you always remember the first time! I'm quite pleased to get through the three days because usually when I start fasting I don't make it past breakfast time.

          Any purification seems to affect the meditations very much. I don't know why this is, but fasting definitely counts as some kind of purification and I hoped when I started this fast that it would boost what was happening with the vase breathing, etc., the heat and all that kind of thing. Well, I meditated for the first time after eating about an hour ago, and the after effects of the vase breathing have just went right out of the park. God knows what the hell is going on! I'm nowhere near standing on one leg half way up the Himalayas in my simmit, but I think I might be slowly creeping onto that ball park.

          I was fortunate enough to get a meeting with Lama Rinchen Palmo last Friday. She can't tell me what's going to happen. Everyone, it seems, is different.

          She was most helpful on the visualisations. For some time, I lost confidence in  the deity visualisations because they are almost impossible to do. I'm sure you'd have to be in retreat for some time to get anywhere near that. So the technique seemed to be to have a steady visualisations of the symbols and move the heat up from chakra to chakra, but if you cannot visualise the channels and whatnot, then I don't see how you can systematically move it up.

           But, despite the crap visualisations, I am getting heat. It's more like a full body heat (at least in the upper torso) and is not centred on the navel chakra.

            I respect this juju. I'm sure it could be dangerous. It would be nice if someone could give me a roadmap for this, but since that is not going to happen, I'll just have to soldier on. Be great to give up drinking this year. If I have a drink this weekend, I'll try to give it up on Monday. There's always Mondays. Tell me why I don't like Mondays.