Videos hosted by Michael Erlewine

Many of you have mentioned that you would like to know how to better experience the visions that happen around eclipse times. There is a technique, but it is difficult to put into words. I will give it a try. You let me know if this makes any sense to you. It involves disappointment.

Disappointment is not something many of us look forward to. Yet it has its place, particularly in spiritual training, and very much so when it comes to eclipses of the Sun and the Moon as they relate to their visions.

These inner eclipse visions are subtle and not easy to grasp. In fact, we can't grasp them at all because there is no point in doing that. In other words, there is no point to grasping at or "trying" to get at the vision of a particular eclipse. None whatsoever. It does not work like that.

Not everything in life has to have a point and drawing conclusions is something we can't do with eclipse visions until long after they are over. Looking for or jumping to conclusions is a bad habit that many of us tend to have, certainly something we avoid when it comes to the conclusion of our life. In other words, there is nothing to conclude about visions while they are still taking place. In fact, it is the opposite. It is best to leave the mind open and just take them in.

As mentioned earlier, the object with visions is not to somehow "get the point" when it comes to experiencing them. Grasping at and trying (making effort) to get the point of a vision is counterproductive to the extreme. Visions are more like the natural process of birth, where we work instead on relaxing, and allow the vision to arise from within us rather than to guess at or try to understand it. What's the hurry? Visions are not materialistic. They have no point in them at all to grasp at. It is just the reverse.

With eclipses, a "vision" will arise as an intensifying experience, one that is more vivid than what went before and what comes after the vision. It is as if a light comes on inside us and etches a view or message in the corners of our mind, but we will have to deeply relax not to confuse it with this grasping and wanting to know what it is about. That only obscures the process. Sometimes it even takes sleep and dreaming time for these holographic-like visions to come into focus. We have to relax to see them. They are there, but often peripherally, like off to the side. If we look right at them, they vanish, but if we relax and allow the mind to rest, they appear and can be seen in their entirety. They give up their essence when we give up our effort to see them.

This is why some of us practice meditation as earnestly as we do, because meditation also requires the mind to stop trying to the get the point, and to instead just relax "as it is" and allow any natural vision to arise effortlessly, and it will. If we are always trying to get at or grasp what this or that eclipse vision is all about, we will get nowhere fast. And this is generally good advice, to not jump at conclusions, but to let them come as they may. Certainly they will come.

Speaking for myself, I need not only these eclipse visions, but also the many smaller mini-visions available to me that life offers to guide me and to help me make decisions. After all, the more vivid times of visions are the road signs that imprint and show me the way, if I will just learn to look. Learning to relax and look is very much worth the effort and practice that meditation requires. At least in my case, the breadcrumb trail from visions serves as a roadmap to where I want to go, not an option, but a necessity.