What does it mean to bow your head in prayer? We have been having quite the discussion about that, in terms of consciousness and energy, discussing this topic in terms of our consumer-oriented article about what is meditation and what is hypnosis.

Starting with JORDAN’s Comment 1, you were (and still are) invited to an experiment involving consciousness and prayer with my Comments 10-12.

Wonderful responses have come in already from JULIE, JORDAN, MELANIE, AMANDA, LARA, MERRIT, JNANA, and DAVID.

The consensus was exemplified by JNANA’s Comment 33:

• Head erect – Lots of clarity, I’m in control, full awareness of physical body, awake and comfortable.
• Head bowed -Definitely less clarity, losing awareness of physical body, happy to let go because it comes easily.

I do want to give a special shout-out to AMANDA, who provided a contrasting perspective informed by her professional work as a teacher of yoga and meditation:

• Head up – I felt alert, centered and calm.
• Head bowed, I felt receptive, relaxed and could feel my back muscles releasing.
• I do think the body should be able to move through all states and would be highly cautious of interpreting this difference in a negative or “one vs. the other” way.

My comment about AMANDA’s comment? It’s the exception to prove the rule. Everyone else responded in very human terms about what happens to everyday consciousness, paying attention, and how the person feels emotionally, energetically, spiritually. (That would be noticing head position for prayer with consciousness positioned at the Human World, one of The Three Worlds.)

By contrast, yoga and meditation can both involve learning how to inhabit and reframe different human experience, altering consciousness to “move through states” with awareness positioned in interesting, educational ways. ((That would be a perspective with consciousness positioned at the Astral World or Divine World, depending on the system involved.)

Following is my human-based perspective on head bowing for prayer, or other traditional gestures of religious submission accompanying prayer. An aura reading article, of course. Because any Smart New Age Consumer would be wise to learn how to read chakra databanks. Of course I am going to use….

Aura reading to assess whether the experience is meditation, prayer, hypnosis, or whatever

Of course, I’ll be using the system of Aura Reading Through All Your Senses(R), reading regular photographs.

Two chakra databanks will be read in each example:

• Aura Reading Chakra Databank at the Third Eye Chakra for Connection to Spiritual Source
• Aura Reading Chakra Databank at the Root Chakra for Connection to Physical (Human) Reality

How would I define meditation in this article?

In meditation you move your consciousness in the direction of the meditation technique being employed. As noted in our main article on this theme, “Hypnosis OR Meditation,” a meditation technique could bring your awareness to any of The Three Worlds. It’s a do-it-yourself process that is, in itself, significant for developing consciousness.

I define prayer here as a form of meditation where you move your consciousness in the direction of the God of your understanding.

Hypnosis I define as another potentially sacred process, but entirely different. Hypnosis is a process of letting go, or being directed, allowing awareness to drop down into the Astral World, a.k.a. The inner realm of subconscious functioning.

Under hypnosis, experience could have content or information about subconscious experiences or ideas, Divine World experiences or ideas, or Human World experiences or ideas. Nonetheless, it is an astral experience, as clearly shows with aura reading.

And trust funny old Earth School… Labels can be completely misleading. Much of what passes for meditation or prayer really is, technically and aurically, hypnosis. While some hypnosis methods that claim to move people into spiritual awakening, or towards Enlightenment, cannot succeed. By definition. Although a person might believe that there has been spiritual awakening. There might even be post-hypnotic suggestion about this.

Further complicating what really happens energetically and aurically, in contrast to what the person believes?

Many meditation trainings include hypnosis that is not done during the meditation technique itself.  It happens before and/or afterwards. Thus, the rest of the meditation class can include group hypnosis that implants hypnotic-type suggestions, expectations, and beliefs. Cults usually do this, but so do many meditation trainings that are not necessarily cults.

Thank goodness, each of us can develop Energetic Literacy skills to sort out what is really happening, case by case. Aura reading is so important for protecting yourself. Reading auras can always inform you about the truth of what is really happening with consciousness, in contrast to what is promised or assumed.

A human-level social gesture of submission

Bowing your head, especially in a group can be mostly a posture or social gesture.

It’s like kneeling, only easier on the knees.

In any social situation, at a prayer breakfast or a regular breakfast including prayer, etc., the group can be asked to participate in a prayerful ritual.

Posturally, in such a situation, you are being asked to show that you submit to God. Could be that simple.

Anyone who refuses to bow that head is sticking out like an unkempt thumb, an easy target to be ostracized by the group.

What happens with consciousness during a group prayer, or public prayer?

This depends so much on your own positioning of consciousness, plus your background. It takes aura reading to tell what is happening. Fortunately, I can use visual aids from the Internet.

Many people go nowhere in consciousness. They start off at human frequencies, “Assume the position,” and continue to have consciousness positioned at human frequencies.

A great example is this photo of a woman in a different position, traditional and submissive, the joined hands apart from the body. This photo comes from “The Revangelical Blog.” Here is a Photobucket copy, in case the blog undergoes change.

Don’t let the special lighting, symbolizing golden experience, trick you. At the level of aura reading, what happens energetically during this moment of prayer? Here’s what I find at the time of this photograph:

Aura Reading Chakra Databank at the Third Eye Chakra for Connection to Spiritual Source

It’s two inches of smug satisfaction, righteousness, and celebration of the woman’s wonderful personal ego.

Aura Reading Chakra Databank at the Root Chakra for Connection to Physical (Human) Reality

Fills the room plus two inches. Strongly aware of her physicality. This model has a lot invested in being beautiful and looking good. While posing for this photograph, she is doing a special process she has figured out, a little like what you might do to copy a cat feeling really sensuously aware in the body.

She feels very powerful as she glories in her wonderful physical appearance and becomes the center of attention.

Another posted photo with hands in prayer, head too.

We are so used to seeing posed photos, with professional models, makeup, photography, PhotoShopping, etc. We are used to thinking that what is represented is real.

A definite chuckle for us aura readers, being able to tell the difference.

Just to read another posed photo, the one at the top of today’s post…

Aura Reading Chakra Databank at the Third Eye Chakra for Connection to Spiritual Source

40 feet. This model may be an actress as well as a model. Although her consciousness is positioned in the Human World, she is remembering how she feels when she prays.

This is why the chakra databank is so expanded. However, I wasn’t kidding about the quality of the chakra databank. She is not making a connection to the Divine. IMHO, she is remembering how it feels to make a connection to the Divine.

Aura Reading Chakra Databank at the Root Chakra for Connection to Physical (Human) Reality

40 feet. Working to look just right. Primarily c0ncerned with how she looks, secondarily concerned with interacting with the photographer and her props in the room, the lighting, etc. at this photo shoot.

Attempting to look pious, saintly, believable in her performance. Holding her eyes just so.

Okay, Blog-Buddies, now for a couple of additional examples of someone photographed in a sort of submissive prayer position.

Head bowed in Catholic Prayer

This next example comes from the Duke Catholic Center. I will research the man, as he is kneeling with head bowed. A copy for your reference is at Photobucket. Guess what? For easy reference, I will call this guy “Joe.”

Aura Reading Chakra Databank at the Third Eye Chakra for Connection to Spiritual Source

3 inches of strongly felt shame and repentance.

Aura Reading Chakra Databank at the Root Chakra for Connection to Physical (Human) Reality

18 feet. A sense of life as suffering.

Joe has, evidently, developed a kind of meditation technique that he associates with a prayerful state. It involves feeling like Jesus on the cross, interpreting life as suffering, interpreting his own subconscious STUFF as suffering, identifying with Jesus as a process of personal sanctification.

Most interesting. This way of relating to life has become (at the time of this photograph) the man’s experience of God.

To this practitioner of energy spirituality, with all respect to Joe, what an ingenious mix he has created. His version of Catholic prayer, at the time of this photo includes deeply felt personal pain, theological beliefs, and habitual way of making sense of it all. It’s especially fascinating how human suffering has come to mean “Jesus” to this man, and how being aware of human pain — whether his personal pain or pain belonging to others — has become synonymous for connection to the Divine.

To be technical, Joe is having an Astral World experience of meditation. Neither chakra databank researched here reveals the slightest glimmer of Divine World experience.

Group Prayer with Head Bowed

The last photo in today’s article comes from Bob Mayfield’s website. For your reference, a copy is here via Photobucket.

This is a fabulous photo because many people are involved in prayer with heads bowed. One official technique, one prayer circle. Yet each person is having a unique experience. Perhaps some of you experienced aura readers would like to research different members of the group from the one I’m reading here.

I’m choosing “Gladys,” the woman on the left, with the huge hairdo and silver hair. Without stopping to read anybody’s aura, I notice that her head position seems slack compared to the neck positions I see elsewhere in the group. Based on my experience reading auras, there are a couple of possibilities about what could be going on with her consciousness.

So, hey! Let’s bring on aura reading research, rather than conjecture.

Aura Reading Chakra Databank at the Third Eye Chakra for Connection to Spiritual Source

18 feet. An experience of hypnosis. Gladys is having a hazy, familiar, comforting experience of being connected to Jesus.

What makes this identifiable to me as hypnosis?

The quality of the chakra databank experience is distinctly astral, not Divine, in frequency.

An all-over haziness is like when a photo is taken with Vaseline on the lens, smoothing out details, rather than providing a clear image.

The quality of connection to the Divine is a kind of composite of many experiences. This is like having a rich history of going to a particular hypnotic state/destination. It gets better and better, sweeter and sweeter.

It is an astral-level “Safe Place.” Visiting a past experience, with many overlays of hypnotic suggestions added in.

By contrast, connection to the Divine is ever fresh, totally in the present, an ever-present, with no sentimentality or confusion with other experiences. And no hypnotic suggestions are experienced at the time.

(Although after coming out of a prayer or meditation, the spiritual aspirant may be loaded with suggestions or cult programming etc. The experiences after the meditation, back in the waking state, are different, and would show as such with aura reading. Make sense, Blog-Buddies?)

Aura Reading Chakra Databank at the Root Chakra for Connection to Physical (Human) Reality

2 inches. Gladys is in a state of hypnotic trance. She is unaware of her physical body or surroundings. There is just enough awareness of the physical to be related to the physical sensations going through her hands from direct contact related to holding hands.

And in case any of you woo-woo readers are thinking about energy being transmitted through this circle, not to Gladys.

No physical position guarantees energy anything, consciousness anything. If you want to know better than you would surmise from a theory, read that person’s aura.

Back at Gladys, to be technical, what makes this such a hypnotic version of experience at Astral frequencies.

She is available for control. She is available for suggestion.

In Gladys’ case, she is eager to receive move lovely suggestions.