It's been a couple weeks since I started daily meditation with the master symbol. I won't give you a blow-by-blow, since experiences will be different for everyone, but I can certainly recommend this practice for you to try.
It has had these effects so far:
- accelerating and clarifying the healing process
- bringing more balance
- on occasion, unbalancing me as I adjust to new awareness (ego rebels, overindulges and the body suffers a little)
- clarifying my healing work and deepening others' trust in what I do
- increasing my ease at softly speaking truth
- enhancing awareness and empowerment within dreams (the first night's work was most impressive)
- with all the above, giving me a deeper understanding of the symbol itself (hint: you don't understand it, you become it)
As far as the practice goes, it's very challenging. As Buddh01 said, you might want to visualize the symbol a bit at a time, to build the whole picture. I found the breath key to holding the symbol in mind -- breathe in, see the symbol form, up from my belly; breathe out, see the symbol flow out to the world, returning to my belly in the next breath. After a few days' practice, as soon as I would sit to visualize the symbol, it would project in front of me, then move over and into my body, so that I was basically breathing the symbol and identifying my body with it.
I would do the practice at night before bed, and carry the visualizing into bed with me to fall asleep practicing. Some nights I would spend quite a while with it, other nights just perfunctory honoring of the practice.
I found another benefit -- during the day, when any anxiety triggered, I would breath and see the master symbol, to help me get back in balance.
So, I plan to keep working with this and exploring it more deeply. At some point will start to bring in the other symbols and do the same with them.
I believe one can benefit from meditating with any symbol or picture of divine practice. And the effect of having the symbol absorb into me confirms my belief that holding visualizations in front of our mind's eye, like a movie screen, should only be transitory, as it can reinforce the notion of separateness from the observed.
Also I suggest, that if you try this and find yourself breaking a sweat, back off and try less effort and more breath. Let it arise within you, like taming a wild animal -- that is exactly what you're doing, by the way -- or is it releasing a domesticated animal into the wild??
Blessings,
Aronaya
P.S. Thanks, Buddh01, for touching off the flame of debate, and prompting my experiment!
