In my recent post on Pagansquare I shared six anthropomorphic assumptions (and possible solutions) that can show up in your magical work. If you don't want those anthropomorphic assumptions to show up you need to develop some type of technique that allows you to get around them. The technique I've been developing, at least for working with the microbial life in my body, has involved using tactile awareness as the means through which to communicate with the microbial life. Tactile awareness refers to the sense of touch and kinesthetic awareness of feeling your body. Approaching non-anthropomorphic work in this way has been very useful because its cut spoken language out of the equation and focused instead on experiencing sensation and using the sensations as a guide for the interactions with the microbial life.
I've also used this technique with my latest round of communion with the neurotransmitters. Just as with the microbial life, I've found that using the sense of touch as the basis for the pathworking has lead me to experience altered states of consciousness consistent with earlier experiences I've had with neurotransmitters. What's most fascinating however is how the sensations nonetheless have become symbols. In other words, the feeling of the experience will replicate itself in specific ways each time I work with a given neurotransmitter and that pattern then becomes a symbol, which can be meditated upon and used to experience the physical sensation, provided the person understands how tactile pathworking works.
Learning Tactile pathworking involves conditioning yourself to be aware of both surface and internal kinesthetic sensations. you can do this in several ways. First, I recommend learning and practicing daily some type of breathing practice, which forces you to pay attention not just to your breath, but also to how your body responds to the breath. If this practice also involves working with your internal energy, then so much the better as it'll teach you how to pay closer attention to the kinesthetic awareness of your body. As you learn how to move your kinesthetic awareness in your body, you can also try directing it to a specific part of your body and maintaining awareness of that part. What you'll discover is that your body provides you a lot of information that you normally suppress. However, suppressing that information isn't always useful and by mastering kinesthetic awareness you can learn ho to process and experience that information without the need to suppress it.
I also recommend stillness practices. Stillness practice teaches you to be still. That stillness will help you become awareness of surface feelings on your skin. It'll also help you tap into your deeper kinisthetic awareness, especially if you focus on a sensation like breath or your heartbeat. In fact, your heartbeat can be an excellent teacher for kinesthetic awareness because its something you experience all the time, but its also something you learn to ignore. You actually have to consciously focus on it to be aware of it, but if you focus your awareness on it, you can use the heart beat to create a rhythm that leads you into a meditative experience with your body.
Another practice that's useful is movement practice. Movement practice can be as simple as being mindfully aware of your body and how it moves when you are doing something, or it can be as focused as doing specific movements in a sequence and maintaining awareness of your body while doing those movements. When doing these movements, you want to pay close attention to how your body moves and how it feels as you move. For example, how do your joints feel when you move them in specific ways? By focusing on those sensations, you'll learn a lot about your body and how it feels when you are doing this tactile pathworking.
As you practice these various techniques, focus on cultivating your tactile awareness, both inwardly and outwardly. Pay attention to what your skin feels or how your fingers feel when they touch a surface. Pay attention to how you carry your body and how that makes you feel internally. When you do breathing meditation and move your internal energy, focus your awareness on how your body responds. By learning to do that, you can then focus your kinisthetic awareness inward. Then when you work with your microbial life or neurotransmitters or whatever else you'll be able to use that sense of touch for that purpose. In a future post, I'll cover how you can also apply this concept to sound.