Meditation of Farseeing

Merry looked out in wonder upon this strange country, of which he had heard many tales upon their long road. It was a skyless world, in which his eye, through dim gulfs of shadowy air, saw only ever-mounting slopes, great walls of stone behind great walls, and frowning precipices wreathed with mist. He sat for a moment half dreaming, listening to the noise of water, the whisper of dark trees, the crack of stone, and the vast waiting silence that brooded behind all sound. He loved mountains, or he had loved the thought of them marching on the edge of stories brought from far away; but now he was borne down by the insupportable weight of Middle-earth. He longed to shut out the immensity in a quiet room by the fire.
J.R.R. Tolkien
Background | Dyal Thak, Kin Coedel

A method

Through this working, you will experience and know the rightness of the Map of all things. It is easiest done at the top of a hill, but become familiar with doing it everywhere and everywhere.

Begin, if you like, by dancing - stretching - moving your body - or with a hike up a hill - to get out of your head and into your skin. Or simple rituals actions to make this time and place a little special. Or simply bringing your attention to the breath and slowing it down until you are readied

Breathing and positioned as you wish.

Bring your awareness to the body. Move it outwards on the horizontal plane. Contemplate the body, and then when you are ready, contemplate your immediate surroundings. Continue moving your awareness outwards as far as you can see, in all directions. It can help to place your eyeline directly on the horizon itself. When you can see no further, use your imagination to recall what you know to be beyond the horizon. When you can remember no further, use imagination alone, until it feels like your mind is aglow with pathways all over the land, all around and you at the center - as far as the sea, and then beyond.

(As you do this, you are not like a bird travelling from where you begun to somewhere new: you are at the center and the edges and all places inbetween at once - do not replace one image with the next, but attempt to hold them both together: what you can see sitting and what you can see fardistant. And try to see it in your body if you can - not just imagining pictures, but imagining sensations and sound also.)

Hold as long as you can this hugeness-of-the-world. It is usual to feel a little panicky, and this is good, for this meditation is on the immensity of things. When you can endure no longer, let the feeling collapse back into yourself, and you are your self again sitting in your room or on the hill, seeing only that which can be seen with your own eyes.

Now we will contemplate upwards

Bring your awareness to the body. Move it upwards on the vertical plane. Contemplate the body, and then when you are ready, contemplate your immediate surroundings. Experience the weather and feel your way upwards. Continue moving your awareness outwards as far as you can see. When you can see no further, use your imagination to see what you know to be above the clouds, upwards all the way through the skies into out into the endless stars and beyond. As before, you are not like a balloon that was once on the earth and is now in the sky - you are both at once - holding what you can see of the sky and what you know of the infinite and all the rushing in-between to be the same, and within you.

Hold as long as you can this hugeness-of-the-sky. When you can endure no longer, let the feeling collapse back into yourself, and you are your self again sitting in your room or on the hill, seeing only that which can be seen with your own eyes.

Now we will do this once more, into the deeprumbling earth. Down through the strangenesses of soils, down through tangling roots, strength of stone and its great age and the processes of its making and beyond into the hiddenplaces deep beneath the land

Know where you are (in this particular square of earth, in this time and in this place).

Know where you are (on the edge of a great precipice touching all things).

Know where you are (the smallness of human, the immensity of stars).

Some Notes

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Many occult traditions have 'start-you-off-by-stretching' practices. Of which kind is this?

  • Is it like the QC, which asserts where you are in cosmic space, with yourself in the center?
  • Is it like grounding and centering, raising and connecting to energies while sloughing off the everyday?
  • Is it more like circle-making, the creation of sacred space as a microcosm of the energetic world?

To my mind, a little of all three - it could be turned to any of these purposes. It should evoke a mix of competence and fear - a readiness to go forth in wonder and not-knowing. The QC (a Sol-Lun-Light working) fills you with a holy sureness that you are master of all things - which can be useful at times, but we recognise the Stellar lurking underneath, those things beyond control. Therefore this ritual expresses the brilliance of courage.

I don't know where, if anywhere, is the 'center' of the body - it may be centered on the heart, the solar plexus, the mind, the skin - so use whatever seems right to you, or nothing at all.

You are in this meditation, of course, moving from the Solar - the safe-and-known of the physical and everyday - through the Lunar of motion, farseeing, farflying, imagining, journeying and distance, towards the Stellar of immensity and awe.

Consider: Symbol | The Wanderer at the Center of the Cosmos for an image of what you are doing, and Symbol | the Circle in the Triangle for the energies you are handling - the lower third of the circle that is the sky that is up, the leftmost third of the circle which is the physicality of the land that is down, and the rightmost third which is the touchingplaces of horizon that is outwards.

Once familiar with the meditation, you may find adding gestures or breathing patterns enhances the work.

You may have different experiences, but my own is to feel panicky and overly-alive and filled with the sight of the otherworlds. This seems to be more suited to the start of a rite or observance than, say, an exercise you repeat every day.

One thing I have discovered about trance is that you can produce bodyweird by attempting to experience two contrary sensations in your body at once. The spiritual equivalent of rubbing your tummy while patting your head. Some examples of this:

  • First, experience the weight of your body pushing down on the earth where it touches. Then, tell yourself that these sensations are in fact the earth pushing up on you
  • Seated, balacing on the tailbone, very gently feeling yourself move backwards (ever so slightly!) while moving your perception forwards and also feeling yourself move forwards (or vice versa, or both at once)

You may find body-motions of this kind enhances the here-and-not-here visualisations of the meditation.