Middle Pillar - highest downwards and lowest upwards
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The following is a quote from Israel Regardie:
Some will note that this exercise corresponds in some ways to the yoga chakra system. There is, assuredly, correspondence. But there are several very important differences and variations. The first, a minor difference, is the number and position of the centers involved. But this does not require discussion. What is fundamental, however, is the entirely different approach. The yoga technique commences its meditations from the lowest chakra and works upwards to the Sahasrara above the head. On the other hand, in the western system, the Middle Pillar starts from the highest and works downwards. In a word, the Western ideal is not to escape from the body but to become involved more and more in life, in order to experience it more adequately, and in order to obtain a mastery over it. The ideal is to bring down godhead so that one's manhood being enriched may thereby be assumed into godhead. Always does this system begin from the real center of working - the higher genius which, by definition, is in contact eternally with whatever infinite deity there may be.
I practice the Middle Pillar in the morning and before I go to bed. I also spend an hour 3 or 4 days a week on a yoga practice. The yoga practice that I found that I like, and have been using for the past couple of years, follows the Eastern model of the 7 chakras and directs energy up the spine to the crown with each inhale and back out to each chakra center successively from lowest to highest on each exhale. So, from Regardies description here, should I really only be doing one or the other, but not both?
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If each practice is safe and complete in itself, in this case I see no problem at all with doing both (separate) practices.
The confusion about the Middle Pillar that gets people most people in trouble is the idea that it is a chakra-based practice. It isn't. It's doing something else. For example, the MP puts no attention at all on the spine, which is the body-centered anchor location of the chakra. It puts attention on selected and related centers at the front of the body instead. This makes it a quite different practice.
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93!
In his books Regardie (that is, the author of this rite) wrote to visualize the spheres and pillar inside the body (at least The Golden Dawn, The Middle Pillar, 12 steps). But the 776 1/2 (actually not only) says that they are half exterior to the body. Which way is correct for beginner?
Thanks in advance!