My Library

no matter what. The most important thing is to aim right for the phase. Understanding a logical fact dramatically increases the effectiveness of indirect techniques: practically every time a practitioner is waking up, he is already in the phase, be it a deep or shallow form of it. Physiologically speaking, a person who has just woken up is in the phase by definition. Once a practitioner understands this, he will act in a much more selfassured and focused manner during attempts, and results will follow. It's no secret that a substantial portion of unsuccessful attempts - if not 90% of them - are unsuccessful due not to any action, but because lack of confidence finds expression in the results. This is due to the phase's tendency to model expectations. You expect nothing to happen, and so even if you are in the phase - nothing will happen. Believe that you will do it right here and now because you are already in the phase - and enjoy the result! We are actually already in the phase upon every awakening. One can even take the following approach to this understanding: when waking up, our task is not to enter the phase, but to deepen it. This is easily observed with the technique of sensory-motor visualization, which essentially consists in performing deepening without any separation or prior employment of techniques. There's a reason why this technique works well for experienced practitioners, and novices have a hard time getting it. DIRECT TECHNIQUES The main conclusion that an experienced practitioner will come to is that direct techniques are actually easy, and not much more difficult than any other ones. The problems only lies in understanding certain subtleties. As soon as they become clear, results are easy to obtain. Despite it being constantly emphasized that the freefloating state of mind is of decisive importance, nearly all novices stubbornly look through all the various techniques in search of a silver bullet. However, an advanced practitioner will hardly ever use techniques. He will immediately go for the