Pathway of the Thogal Postures

Thogal posture of the Elephant

The Visions of Thogal have always been. They are primordial; they are the first and most radiant aspect of manifestation closest to the essence. They are not random. They arise in the same way and in the same progression for everyone. The complete path of return is organic and natural. The ancient ones followed the signs and cycles of Earth, water, and sky, moon and sun and seed. They found the luminous seed in their hearts through the vision that is this life and rays of the sun, through the water of their eyes and the light of their hearts. They watched, they waited, they allowed, they followed their hearts without hurrying—allowing the visions of inner radiance. They sat upon the Sacred Mother and gazed upon truth resonant in their hearts and the Heart of All. Their posture was straight, aware, and capable of long periods of gazing upon the reflection of the Sun. And having lived with the Earth they would be intimately aware of the sacred quality of visions arising within and without.

There are three traditional postures specific to the practice in use today. Each posture has a quality that supports your practice in a different way, and the postures have traditional names that evoke the ways they align your body to the practice.

In the Posture of the Lion, you sit with the alert regal bearing of a seated lion, upright with the soles of your feet together close in front of you and your knees out to the sides. Your back is straight, you gaze with your head slightly tilted upward looking just above the horizon. Your arms are straight, and your hands are placed in front of you, either beside or in front of your feet, or behind your feet depending on how close you can bring your feet to your body. Your fingers wrap around your thumbs making fists like lion paws. The lion posture raises energy up through your body and has a transcendent quality.

In the Posture of the Mountain Yogi, you sit on the Earth in openness, unencumbered, stable, and balanced, with your feet flat on the ground, your back straight, and your knees drawn up to your chest. Your abdomen is held in slightly toward your spine, and you pull up slightly on the perineum, the lower door. Your arms are folded with your left elbow on your left knee and your left hand on your right knee. Your right arm is on top, with the right elbow on top of the left hand, and the right hand on top of the left elbow. This cools heat in the body. There are alternative hand and arm

positions. Resting your elbows on your knees with hands supporting your chin balances heat and cold. Crossing your arms with your hands in the opposite arm pits raises heat if you are cold. You gaze looking downward within a sense of balance and stability that supports openness.

For any of the Mountain yogi postures, you need to support your back with a meditation belt, a strong soft band four to eight inches wide that encircles your body just below your knees, supports your back. This will hold your knees comfortably close to your chest. You might also find it helpful to sit on a thick firm cushion with your feet a little lower flat on the ground. The mountain yogi posture evens your energy and supports resting in Original Heart (Rigpa).

In the Posture of a Sleeping Elephant, you kneel with your body curled up like the huge bulk of an elephant resting completely at ease on a vast shore of an inner sea. You crouch on your knees, elbows touching the ground, hands supporting your chin, with your feet together with toes pointing back. Your abdomen presses on your upper thighs. You gaze slightly to the side, either right or left, like an archer sighting down an arrow. The Elephant Posture brings a quality of

inner heat, mellowing, soothing your energy.

Rachel used the Lion Posture exclusively while I used the Mountain Yogi Posture exclusively. We both avoided using the Elephant Posture for we both found it uncomfortable.

The most important aspect of the postures is for you have to able to be motionless and basically comfortable for long periods of time. The postures allow you to remain motionless for hours and align your body and subtle energies in a way that supports the unfolding of the Thogal Visions, which is crucial for the practice. But some people may find sitting on the floor or in a chair the only comfortable way to practice for long periods of time. And with all the postures, your back straight with your gaze either just above the horizon as with the Lion Posture or looking downward at the light source as in the Mountain Yogi Posture.

And whichever posture you use at any given time depends on your physical body and your subtle energy. Practice in each of these postures so that you become comfortable in them and can stay in one of them for a long time without moving. The qualities of transcendence, bliss, stability, and so forth attributed to the postures are not so defined in practice. You can touch all of these qualities within any posture but each posture does have specific effects on your personal energies, enlivening, soothing, or balancing, and you may find that you have an affinity for one of them and will want to spend most of your time in that posture.

If you want to see the detailed pictures of the Thogal postures, you can check on my book Primordial Grace.

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Eyes of the Heart in the practice of Thogal

Thogal Vision

Thogal is profoundly visual, and the visions unfold in a way that is fluid, organic, and very beautiful. To be truly open to the intent of the essence embodied in this fluidity and beauty, you must be able to clearly see the light in your heart with the eyes of the heart. Most people have allowed their minds to be dominant and use their eyes in a channeled, tunnel vision way, grabbing blindly out of the negative emotions and limitations of separate identity upheld by the mind. The channel of light that connects the eyes directly to the heart in the practice of Thogal bypasses the brain and the hold it has over what we see, but if you do not break from the mind’s narrow, uncontrolled grabbing action through opening your heart, the Thogal visions will still be routed through the mind and will not unfold in an authentic way.

There is a natural fluid power to the eyes that reaches out and connects with what it sees. It can meet, hold, push, or pull at need. If this power is guided by the mind, it grabs and pulls back into itself and interprets in ways that reinforce perceptions upholding separate identity. The eyes can also be used more purely, from the heart, to connect with and relate, and with this more open use of the eyes the visions arise and you bond with them. No longer grabbing with your eyes, seeing becomes a mutual embrace as you embrace the visions and are embraced by them.

The fluid receptive nature of the eyes and their ability to perceive light is called the Heart Lamp of the Eyes. The eye has a natural fluid power that reaches out and connects with what it sees, and has sometimes been called a Water Lasso for that reason and with this more open use of the eyes, you

bond and blend with the visions as they arise. Then the lasso quality becomes a mutual embrace, as you embrace the visions and are embraced by them.

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Primordial Joy - The path of Thogal

Thogal visions

After following a path of letting go, learning the way of an open heart and an allowing mind, and acknowledging original heart, you come to a beginning, a threshold. The seed in your heart initiates

the ripening of your path through the visionary practice of radiance. It is as if you become a sphere

riding upon the essence, becoming less and less held by time, space, shape, and distance, more and more a unity beyond separation, a unity of all experience, all phenomena, that resolves in an instant, essence, essence, essence.

The visionary path of radiance is a path of return from the point of origin, just as a circle is drawn. In the movement of a line sweeping around and curving back to merge seamlessly with itself, completion is inherent in the path from the beginning. The whole process of reunion with origin is all around us reflected in the natural world, infinitely patiently teaching us to acknowledge our place within its embrace. Circles and the movement of return to origin are expressions of the cyclical nature of the radiance of the essence that weaves the entire world experience we find ourselves within. They are the basis for the path of radiance, and they shape all manifestation, from atoms and molecules and the orbits of subatomic particles, to planets and stars and the dance of their movements within the larger movements of the universe itself.

On this primordial path, you rest in original heart, settle your body and eyes in specific postures and

gazes and breathe in a specific way, to open a very subtle channel that leads from your heart to your eyes. Nourished by the soil of your heart that you have prepared through all the previous practices, the luminous seed in your heart opens and begins to grow upward toward your eyes, giving rise to the fluid ongoing experience called the four visions. The visions of radiance lead you to oneness through the guiding field of spontaneous presence, an actual relationship with the radiance of the essence. It is an experience of total joy. Settled in original heart, perceiving the seed of light and knowing in your heart that you are immersed in the direct perception of the holy ones, you enter the final path, a path of living light at the very edge of the essence, the point of origin, a sacred, joyous knowing.

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