Sekhem: Sekhem Inner Sound, Perception, and Grounding

Sekhem Inner Sound: The Steady Tone

Sekhem teachings with Patrick Zeigler.

The key to inner sound listening is to listen to the highest, most consistent tone. At first, a lower tone may become audible, or the sound may be uneven and wavy. Listen for the sound within that sound, continuing toward the highest and most consistent tone.

Eventually, the tone becomes steady. There is no wavering and no movement in it. This distinction is important within the practice: a sound that still has movement or a wave is not the tone associated here with the infinite state of consciousness. The steady tone is the one that takes consciousness into the delta state.

Inner Hearing and the Senses

Sharing: Imagine a pitch that only animals can hear, like a dog whistle. That is what it feels like inside the head. It is not something you would have heard outside yourself with your ears. It is a frequency as though you were a dog hearing it; your pure nature is listening.

Animals offer a useful comparison for exploring perception. A dog has an extraordinary sense of smell and can distinguish particular scents. Other animals have remarkable hearing or can see things that humans ordinarily do not perceive. In this teaching, humans also have latent capacities of perception.

Patrick Zeigler offers an account he had heard and believed to be true: during a war, people could detect opposing soldiers by the smell of their soap. The example raises the question of why such sensitivity is not ordinarily available to everyone.

The distinction offered here is judgment. A dog does not judge what it smells in the same way a human does. A dog may eat excrement, while a person smells it, judges it to be bad and does not want to eat it. The teaching uses this contrast to suggest that judging an experience can narrow or cut off sensitivity to it.

Perception in Darkness

Patrick Zeigler recalls an experience during a dark-room practice. After being in darkness for a few days, he found that even with his eyes closed, he could still see his hand moving. He was in total darkness and wearing an eye mask. As he moved his hand, he noticed, “I can see my movement. I can see the movement.”

Ordinarily, people rarely spend several days in darkness, so the eyes do not have that opportunity to adjust. Attention remains intensely focused on the spectrum of light visible in the room. In this teaching, that ordinary focus leaves other levels of seeing undeveloped, although the capacity remains latent.

The dark-room example describes how, after three or four days in darkness, other visual experiences may begin to arise. The same principle is applied to hearing: once attention begins to focus inwardly, sounds that were not previously noticed may become audible.