Being Fine Tuned

Being Fine Tuned By The Gods

Janet K Bloom, M.F.A., C.I.T.

Master Of Fine Arts, Certified Eidetic* Imaging Trainer

*Eidetic (eye-deht’-ic) images have been scientifically redefined as

ISMs: IMAGES always involving SOMATIC (BODY) RESPONSES with MEANING.

Dr. Akhter Ahsen, my mentor, founded Image Psychology in the 1950’s on his discovery of how dramatically effective these inner motion pictures are when concentrated in ways that bring out their ability to heal us.

Introduction

“The best place is in the middle,” Dr. Ahsen told me one day, making a statement that has reverberated with deep meaning so many times over the years.

In redefining eidetic images as ISMs: IMAGES always involving SOMATIC (BODY) RESPONSES with MEANING, Ahsen put S, the Somatic response, in the middle. In following Ahsen’s approach to eidetic imaging as Ahsen an imager gradually understands how much this new definition does for us. It puts our body back in the middle of our picture of ourselves in our mind’s eye, where it needs to be, where we need it to be. I called one of my videos about eidetic imaging Letting Our Bodies Speak Our Minds because that is what eidetic imaging allows us to do.

In ordinary consciousness most of us today keep our bodies hidden away in our unconscious, buried alive in shyness, self-consciousness, embarrassment, shame and mortification. Eidetic imaging brings our bodies out of hiding; lets them strut their brilliance in ways that make us wise to ourselves, wise in ways we cannot be wise when we leave our bodies out of our picture.

The two passages from my Transformational Autobiography presented below clearly illustrate how the S in an ISM – an image involving meaningful body responses – works.

Part I shows how the figures of light who are members of my powwow move me, each one fine tuning my attitude by injecting another wisely focused energy into me.

Part II shows how Shiva stepped briskly onto center stage in my mind’s eye as I woke one morning thus profoundly correcting my crushed and cringing attitude in one swift move.

I like to describe eidetic imaging as the language of light in action. As we concentrate on our eidetic images – the inner motion pictures that move us – they reveal the drama of positioning we are always in, showing it in such clear depth that we can gain exact leverage on whatever we need to handle and root out a problem at its source. We find ourselves handling difficult situations more wisely than we thought or felt or dreamt we could.

Part I

Seeing Inner Trampoline and Powwow Work

an eidetic workout

involving Shiva, Ganesh, Daddy, Eagle, Mary

Mommy, The Mahanta, Aphrodite, Jesus & Buddha

As I sit in the kitchen eating babaganoush spread on cucumbers slices as the middle course in my summer ice box breakfast, I relish seeing Shiva standing before me rubbing his palms over each other in a rotary motion. This is a sign of his continuing relish for what we’re getting into, the deep challenge we are finally grasping by the horns. “Yes,” my inner voice says somewhat gravely. I see that Shiva – appearing as a very interesting infusion of one part Shiva, one part Daddy and a little Akhter (Ahsen), all three of them in one – is relishing this moment of getting their hands on finally meeting the challenge of turning my tides for good. “Yes,” my inner voice says in a long slide of satisfaction.

Chronologically the above paragraph would appear after the following inner suspense story, but it feels apt to put it here as preamble to the episode too.

Reversing The Titanic

The Advent Of The Deep Smile

Turning The Sinking Tide,

another inner suspense story,

sequel to The Rooting Feeling

Note: Text in bold describes an eidetic image I am seeing in my mind’s eye and feel playing throughout out my body as I transcribe the dramatic action it is putting me through, both as actor in the image and as the imager who is audience to the image.

Janet to Shiva: Do you feel the sinking?

Shiva: I do.

J: Can we reverse it?

S: We can.

J: Now?

S: Now.

J: Okay. Let’s do it.

S: Okay. He hurtles himself forward in almost three, long, phrase mark shaped languid arcs towards the center of the powwow circle. He stands on or near center brushing his hands off. I felt no difference in my body seeing Shiva arc. But now I feel that the decisive motion of his brushing his hands off is slicing at a slight diagonal down through my sternum area. This gesture cuts the swarm of the sinking tide! “Yes,” my inner voice says appreciatively.

I see Shiva brush his hands off again, just to feel the frisson of the slice through the ooze, the sludge, that has been overwhelming recently, and taking me over like a slow tide, a slow wave, a slow negative wave. I feel a little forwardness gathering momentum in my right hand, rescuing me from the sinking; giving me the opposing sense of direction to go in. I had lost my grip on that. “Yes,” my inner voice says succinctly.

Now, satisfied with that brush off, Shiva finishes it with a final swipe, and languidly does a forward handstand-quasi-cartwheel.

I feel relieved and lay back straight, relaxing, sinking into the strengthening feeling of my rescue. Anyone who has ever rescued himself from an overpowering overwhelming undertow will know the feeling, the ultimate sense of relief that comes with being lifted out of going down a vastly overpowering drain.

The worst of being subject to mood swings is not the swings so much as the suck of total overwhelming despair, the Job feeling I described in the last episode. “Next!” I hear a peremptory voice say, telling me I shouldn’t linger over admiring this moment of taking control.

Shiva wipes his hand of the undertow one more time, just to oblige me. This makes me smile. I feel this smile first in my lower ribs; then in my upper breast; and now dawning in my cheeks and eyes.

I stretch my legs and torso out, and take an expansive breath stretching into the opposite of the sinking feeling body posture, which makes me picture a body in fetal position sinking through a deep down drought of water. “Yes,” this inner voice confirms. That means I don’t have to drag into the interview today looking like Orphan Annie coming in out of the rain. “Yes,” my inner voice says crisply.

I keep relishing seeing Shiva wipe his hands of the undertow by swiftly swirling his palms over each other. This gesture strikes me as tantamount to stopping the eruption of Mt. St. Helen with the flick of a nail that would send a flea flying. “Yes,” my inner voice says, relishing the analogy.

“Next!” I hear in that peremptory tone again.

Shiva rolls into a forward-moving back bend and stands looking back towards the powwow center.

J: Shall I go to Ganesh?

S: Yes.

I look forward to Ganesh’s friendship. I sense his amiably lounging presence in his place at high noon on the powwow circle, before I see him stretched out on his recliner. He is a smiling being. His belly, cheeks, and even his rolly polly arms smile. “Yes,” my inner voice confirms.

I give him a “What’s up?” look. He rolls slowly from leaning a little left to being more on center, and sets himself to deal deliberately with me face to, head on. Here is another strong anti-swirl move. “Yes,” my inner voice says adamantly.

No outsider, however good his or her intentions, could know to give me precisely these anti-undertow and anti-swirling thrusts that I need as desperately as a rocket ship rolling out of control needs the proper emission of steering jets of air. “Yes,” my inner voice confirms.

I feel a firmness and deliberateness setting in to the focus of my upper cheeks and temples and upper lip.

No one could deal with me in the washout mode I was in. Sensing that this is so was deepening my despair. A friend could tell me to be brief and use my images. He could not show me how to take the dragon by the tail, and snout. “Yes,” my inner voice says gratified. I lay back throwing my arms out, and taking a deep breath of expansion, thus incorporating aspects of this renewed healthy attitude towards life

Concentrating on Ganesh lounging, I take deeper and deeper breaths into my lower abdomen in order to help further incorporate this relaxed, amiable, direct way of being. “Thank you,” I say gratefully to Ganesh, and he rolls together into a clap of appreciation for and enjoyment of my thanks. “Yes,” my inner voice says with a sizzle.

I feel a strong pull of light going through my left temple, and eye and the left side of my nose. It tells me Daddy is twinkling and smiling and ready to clap one of his resonant claps to join in this parade of encouragement, this reviewing stand of supporters. “Yes,” my inner voice says pleased. Seeing Daddy’s smiling being sends a rippling wash of light down the front of my being, touching me from my forehead to my abdomen, a rippling that feels like a big smile.

I feel a throb in under my sternum as I see Daddy languidly open his arms to take me into a long, warm, repeatedly pressing, fond hug. “Yes,” my inner voice says appreciatively. I could have a husband and not have such a warm hug handy!

Could I possibly see, grasp, and never forget the great advantage imaging gives me?! Being able to find needed hugs somewhat on demand, as needed. If I have this ability, then what have I got to be Orphan Annie about?!!! “Yes.” Just some outworn habit of abandonment that won’t bug off. “Yes,” my inner voice says with deep appreciation.

If I really get this, this could really turn my tide! “Yes,” my inner voice confirms. See Daddy to get a hug as needed!

Smiling, Daddy raises his arm to put it around my shoulders, and starts leading me on under his fond, protective and comradely leadership. See. I have this protection. My problem is I don’t let myself feel it. It got scared so deep down into me. But most people don’t even have any idea we all have this fond father protection in us and can find it somehow, somewhere! “Yes,” an inner voice says. If neither of our parents had even a streak of it some wild power animal or other divine being will show up to show us what protection (root meaning: for + building) feels like.

Eagle is clapping the tips of his long outspread wings together with a light grace, and an arch smile deep in his eyes and brow.

Mommy is hooting a Hallelujah Hello in Eagle’s direction. She is overjoyed. This is a little astonishing for me to see. But I see it is the actress in her greatly appreciating that I might grasp this acting versatility in me at long last, instead of keeping on going down drains. “Yes,” my inner voice says gravely.

I am feeling more and more relieved, as if a layer of buoyancy is settling over my brows and arms and ribs like a foam that is lightening me up! “Yes,” my inner voice says with satisfaction. I was going down very heavily, like a stone.

My inner trampoline is becoming my inner air pump. “Yes,” my inner voice says appreciatively.

Now Mommy turns and looks steeply down at The Mahanta.

I wonder about Mary. I haven’t seen her in a long time. She used to appear affrightedly behind Mommy. But there’s no trace of her now.

The Mahanta’s weighty hands slide down in front of his face and chest into a deeper resonant fleshy clap in front of his ribs. He is clearly deeply gratified with what is taking place. Viewing The Mahanta, I feel a throbbing in my right breast; and a sheath of my needed determination forming in my forehead! The undertow had drawn that out of me. “Yes,” my inner voice says gravely.

I look to Aphrodite. I feel how buoyant with being zoftig she is, like a pure Elizabeth Taylor. She’s the female counterpart of a friend, beaming a soft pleasantness that shows how deeply she’s enjoying herself. No, how deeply she enjoys life.

It took about two hours but I feel I am out of the soup

Looking at Aphrodite, I feel pleasantness slowly, expansively seep over my face just under my skin!

I feel a smile of being pleased with myself spreading, especially in my outer cheeks and onto my ears. Amazingly it feels as if the muscles that have been caught up in miming all my Mother’s ugly, angry, furious, terrifying grimaces all my life are smoothing out!

This feels like the most amazing release that has yet taken place in all my years of inner work with eidetic imaging!

I could not be a winner, a public relations success, with my Mother’s ferocious, severe, judgmental, cutting, glaring, demoralizing faces, mugs parading across my face. “Right,” my inner voice says. This is pulling the hair shirt out complete. “Yes,” my inner voice says with a clear finality. Deep deep deepest sigh into my lower belly.

Purification to the hilt.

The smile of Aphrodite without the jabs and fury threading through it. Wow. Wow. Wow. Having experienced this smile now for a minute or two, I wonder how long can I hold it? From here to eternity? My friend does not appear to lose his.

He said last night some one told him when he was quite young that if he saw something he admired in someone else he should let it become a part of him. That said a lot to me about him. He swallowed that advice whole. It has been hard for me to imagine how anyone could be so consistently pleasant.

I can see today’s Aphrodite smile as an infusion of this man’s. This gives me a belly chuckle and cheeky smile.

Someone is hovering high inside of four o’clock. Is it Jesus? “Yes.” Long, tall, lanky, and drapey, hovering there, smiling down on us. I sense I am being held invisibly in Aphrodite’s arms, and Jesus is our friendly fond father watching over us with such deep love. I feel a deep smile crawl across my face, and some movement in the cockles of my stomach.

I smile and lie back enjoying serenity crossing my face; inhaling it. “Yes,” my inner voice says gratified. I feel a sense of being pleased with myself wafting up like a mist over my cheeks, eyes and temples. It is this being pleased with myself that will win the day, without which I have no case. “Yes” my inner voice says gravely

As I wonder if Buddha is around, his great stone smiling face appears in the lower left quadrant of our sacred ground. He is smiling up, thus smiling over all the presences in the whole powwow circle. I inhale his smile. It slips deeply into my belly.

Who wouldn’t want to learn how to inhale Buddha’s smile?

And Jesus’s. And Aphrodite’s. And Daddy’s. And Ganesh’s.

This is the story of the advent of the return of Janet’s deep smile.

This smile is the yoni to the lingam feeling!

Before doing the lingam and yoni imaging work recently I could not direct help well because of always being hit by so many swirls from so many directions. Now I can have and give a clear sense of direction. No wonder I realized that the executive ability arises once the lingam feeling is erected. “Yes,” my inner voice says with deep satisfaction.

During breakfast:

As I sit in the kitchen, eating babaganoush spread on cucumbers slices as the middle course in my summer ice box breakfast, I relish seeing Shiva standing before me rubbing his palms over each other in a rotary motion. This is a sign of his continuing relish for what we’re getting into, the deep challenge we are finally grasping by the horns. “Yes,” my inner voice says somewhat gravely. I see that Shiva, appearing as a very interesting infusion of 1 part Shiva, 1 part Daddy and a little Akhter, my mentor, all three of them in one – is relishing this moment of getting their hands on finally meeting the challenge of turning my tides for good. “Yes,” my inner voice says in a long slide of satisfaction.

Part II

Shiva’s Brisk Step

As I woke I looked to Shiva for help. He instantly stepped out and arrived briskly at center and took a commanding bow. I gradually sensed the profound meaning of this move.

Yesterday I found out that I have been pushed to minus stage one in my proceedings with the paralyzed management of my condo regarding the mold in the basement. Shiva’s brisk step to center centered me, bringing up a sense of strength right down my center, a sense of having what we call a stout heart, a sense of taking center stage and commanding attention. Shiva’s brisk step brought me out of the crushed and cringing self-image that had slipped in on me. I was viewing my current situation from a viewpoint akin to my view as a child driven to my knees under the kitchen table at the finger point of mother’s glaring and gnashing fury. Now I have standing and even a pleasant enough smile on my face. Last night I was swamped with downer.

This may be the most profound instance I’ve ever experienced of the perfectly clear, dramatic wisdom in our bodies that eidetic imaging brings out and gives us a handle on.

As soon as I began waking, and sought Shiva’s help, he was instantly there for me, correcting my attitude, giving me a chance to win because of having a winning attitude in the perpetual drama of positioning, instead of dragging the downer in me into this already nearly impossible situation. Who can help you if you’ve lost your buoyancy? No one. Not a soul.

Shiva’s step gave me back my buoyancy, my standing, my stout hearted focus. He reminded me of that which is upstanding within me. I kept thinking I should move on and look to Ganesh. But I didn’t want to until I had fully absorbed and documented this beautiful moment of how swiftly eidetic imaging works for an imager who has learned the ropes.

Part III

The Drama Of Positioning Becomes Perfectly Clear

I am staying with a couple for an extended period of time during which we expect them to help me in one way and me to help them in another. During the first few days I sense the husband has volunteered the wife to do something with me that she could readily do for him, or under his supervision, but feels she cannot do with me or for me. At the same time, she makes it amply clear that she is a woman of extraordinarily good will, and really wants to help me, but feels strongly that she does not know how.

The longer I’m there the better I can see how to help her as various situations arise allowing me to see what she’s going through. One day she tosses off the comment that her brother always won swimming. The tone in which she says this indicates to me that this situation is still weighing heavily on her mind, and she needs to clear it out of her way. I think of two images for her to do to start this process.

One afternoon a time opens up in which I can give these image instructions to her. First I want to explore her relationship with aim, because I sense she is often hampered by meandering in her approach to things, and thus unable, in some areas, to do what she wants because she is not practiced in following her intentions to their conclusion.

So I ask her to see herself shooting an arrow. As she sees that, she finds that she misses the target, and even overshoots the box the target is on, and feels pain in both hands, reminding me of how painful archery was to me. Hoping to continue my mission in a way that may take the pain out of her hands, I then ask her to see Shiva shooting an arrow. He hits the outside rim of the target.

As I wake thinking about this the following morning, I want to ask her to see the difference in her body response as she sees herself missing the target and sees Shiva on target. Then I want her to ask Shiva to keep shooting, and see if he feels he can hit the center of the target. If so, I want her to continue practiciing seeing Shiva shooting an arrow. But I would do this only after seeing if we could get the image going without it bringing pain to her hands.

Following the archery, I asked her to see herself swimming with her brother. They are enjoying it, she says. You told me he always won, I say. That was racing, she says. see that you are racing, I say. It is neck and neck, but then I see his hand touch the rim, she says. Her body response to his hand touching the rim ahead of her involves a whole series of pains in her head and jaw and around her eye, which subsequently appear to be connected with determination.

As she progresses the image – by concentrating on and thus intensifying the negative self-image before seeing another self-image jump out of the negative self-image and facing the situation another way entirely – she sees herself throwing her arms around her brother and saying how proud she is that he won. When I ask what his response is, she says he is smiling happily now, but before his smile was mean. Then she realizes that it was not him that was mean. It was her thinking he was mean.

As I continue to engage her in doing emanation on seeing her brother winning, she says, at one point, I don’t know what to do when I’m not entertaining him. I tell her I sensed that, and I’m very glad you see that; but continue the task of emanation before I explain why.

Again I ask her to see your brother winning, intensify the negative, and see another you jumping out of that you and facing this situation another way entirely, and she says to him, “I’ll race you to the other end of the pool,” and shoots off. Seeing herself taking the initiative in this way is just what she needs to see in order to recognize the impetus within her that can get her out of quandaries readily.

Her offhand comment that she didn’t know what to do when she wasn’t entertaining her brother illuminated so much of what had been happening while we were together. In attempting to give her husband some picture of why our work was not going as he expected it to, I had said, “She’s social. She doesn’t jump to the way you and I do. She could do it for you, but not for me.” Why? Since seeing her swimming with her brother image I see that she operates with her husband, and very likely with many others, on the same trajectory she’s on when she knows what to do to entertain her brother, and feels she doesn’t know what to do otherwise.

As far as I know, only eidetic imaging can make these little dramas of positioning we’re going through all the time so clear. I knew I was up against some dramatic pattern or other in dealing with them. Fortunately, however dimly, I had sensed the good willed nature of the situation correctly, so I wasn’t blaming or judging them while trying to see what was going on. Instead, she and I became deeply engaged in a fascinating effort aimed at seeing her way clear around what at first appeared to be an amorphous longstanding disability but increasingly became clear as day.

Her casual comment that her brother always won shed light on a series of experiences we had been in together. I could see they were all stemming from the same situation in her mind that prompts her to act in accordance with the drama of positioning she has lived through for so long in relation to her brother, and often replayed with others.

Her emanation images – in which she sees herself jumping out of a painful reaction and seeing herself face the situation another way entirely – broke her out of that rut, so she is now open to more versatile reactions. These include starting a new race! And carrying on in that spirit, with a new attitude of trying again, instead of operating under the clouded and discouraging expectation that “He always wins.” I had had a sense that she felt she couldn’t win with me, at least in the realm of the work her husband envisioned us doing together.

Deep patterns of behavior like this are hard to get a hold of, or work your way out of, when you think of them generally, distantly, and in the abstract. Seen dramatically, and intimately, however, gives you the right angle on and the right touch for busting out of them for good, as she did, by starting another race and taking off first.

It is helpful to think of patterns like this as establishing currents in the waters of consciousness, currents that drag you back, or push and pull and toss you around, just as currents do when you are swimming or entering the sea. Anyone working with someone caught up in a current has to navigate that current with them, engaging in a process of mutual fascination with getting out of this conundrum alive.

Attempting to slice through such currents with reasoning or powers of persuasion, or shaming or blaming, will get nowhere every time. As far as I know, people continue to swim with whatever currents they’re used to, until they do the eidetic imaging that clearly releases the new self-images that have exactly the right power to free them of their old habits.

Currents like this form many of the walls we run into, and bang our heads against, in dealing with ourselves and each other. Now, instead of succumbing to the sense of impossibility they place before us, we can train ourselves to see how they all of a sudden drop down and come into play in our way. An old image of mine comes to mind; the one that alerted me to this metaphorical understanding of how we get caught up in the tides that certain images bring up in us.

I can still see this image of roiling, dirty looking water that has an odd straight line in it. When it first showed up, I wrote it up in my journal under the title “Knife In The Water.” Upon closer inspection, that line turned out to be a place in the water that is like the edge of a little dam where the water suddenly rolls into a declivity along a straight line. I still feel this image gives me a good picture of what used to be a large part of my inner landscape, what with that water roiling all over the place, except for that knife in the water, the sign, coming in out of nowhere, of a totally unexpected, unforeseen change of direction planted right in the middle of things.

This year I’ve come to see such unexpected movements of consciousness suddenly coming out in our lives as the chief cause of most heartbreak. Things hit us that we could not see happening. Such things appear so violently and fleetingly that we barely see them as they do happen, or deny that they ever happened. And yet they keep stabbing us, until we encounter and transform the images that are the source of them, images that lard our consciousness with mean streaks that keep repeating on us, striking so unexpectedly, until we put them behind us.

When this image first appeared, its roiling waters reminded me of Spuyten Duyvil (which means spitting devil in Dutch), a patch of rough water between Manhattan and Riverdale that I see riding by it on the train. Now I see that the knife in the water in that image was forelighting work that came to me later, not only revealing my mother’s mean streak more directly, but showing how it came out in me, and how I overcame it dramatically.

Eidetic imaging is so accurate in revealing anything we need to know in order to clear up the dramas of positioning we’re caught up in that it will show someone even the flash of a mean thought that has thrown them off, presenting it to them up front in order to get it clearly out of their way. Such a helpful flash freed the woman from continuing to go around with a mistaken impression of her brother that kept overshadowing him and their relationship in her mind’s eye. By seeing herself throwing her arms around him proudly, and seeing him responding happily, the true feeling between them has a fresh stage upon which it can come clean in her mind, a stage where the idea that he had a mean smile is no longer in the way.

As to the knife which showed up in my waters I can only say, in conclusion here, that it points up a declivity any of us is likely to swim into in roiling waters, unable to see it ahead of time, when our minds are trained to gloss over particulars, and not practiced in keeping an eye out for or standing up to the contraries that are bound to crop up in our experience.

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