The Higher Self and transcendent experience, including OBEs [Archive] - Page 11

TraineeHuman

13th April 2016, 11:40

One of the difficulties in understanding how the individual and the Universe (the One) relate to each other is as follows. Ordinary reality is clearly many-sided. But at the same time, through meditation and so on we can and hopefully will become vividly and unforgettably and wonderfully and very certainly aware that reality is also one, --that all things are so to speak glued together by oneness. The Greeks (probably borrowing from the Vedic sages) called this The Problem of the One and the Many. How can reality be both one and many, at the same time? Which they certainly are. The answer is, they can't, not if one tries to use the ordinary mind to understand all of reality. And so it is that in this area, experience takes absolute priority over ordinary reason. (Higher) experience therefore tells us that we have to put aside any notion that the individual (or the Self) and the world are irreconcilable, e.g. that such a thing as "the world out there" even exists (as totally separate from ourselves, that is).

A further interesting unsolvable dilemma for the ordinary mind occurs with the Unsayable, or the Unknowable. We (hopefully) eventually discover that absolutely everything exists within the Unsayable, and that anything we may say about anything that exists is also a statement within the broader, background context of the Unsayable. The Unsayable is the thing that transcends even the One and the Many.

The Unsayable, then, (or the Unknowable, or pure conscious Being) must be utter freedom. It is even freedom from needing to be free!

We need to eventually become familiar with the Unsayable/Unknowable, because we eventually need to learn how to ride and live with the wild horse that is freedom. That's a very long process. And it needs to eventually be a true freedom, that embraces life and doesn't depend on some sort of withdrawal from life, or some failure to honor physical limitations and demands on the grounds that they're illusory. As the Bhagavad Gita says, freedom also means "doing the work that needs to be done".

Also, we shouldn't forget that the apparent freedom and self-assertion of our person, to which we're so profoundly attached, conceals a pitiable subjection to a thousand suggestions, impulses and forces which we have conveniently made extraneous to our little person. Our ego, boasting of freedom, is at every moment the slave, toy and puppet of countless beings, powers, forces and influences.

The illusion of maya, out of which the physical world is literally built, is an interplay between unities and multiplicities. It's formed in such a way that we fail to notice many unities which exist but do so "invisibly". For instance, our unity with others at many levels.

The One above, and the Many below. But that One can't know itself without actively realizing its potential to become Many; and vice-versa.

TraineeHuman

16th April 2016, 05:07

A major reason why we have difficulty understanding and appreciating our universality, I suggest, is that we're unable to fully understand the true nature of our individuality. After all, honestly speaking, most of us often place our awareness primarily on rather superficial parts of ourselves. And that certainly isn't what true individuality is, surely. That isn't asserting our true sovereignty. Life can be tough.

We find ourselves separated from the universal: our physical body certainly isn't universal, nor our (ordinary) mind, nor our everyday life. Little wonder we feel imprisoned. Meanwhile the subconscious impulses and subconscious mind know us intimately and mostly or often reign over us quietly -- unless one day we will have integrated Divine consciousness, or at least Superconsciousness, into us. Then, to quote T S Eliot, himself quoting Julian of Norwich: "The end of all our explorations will be to come back to where we started, and to know the place for the first time."

Whatever is the larger part of us is what governs us. (I’d like to repeat that, but I won’t because it might bore some readers.) This ties in with the whole question of what is free will and in what sense do we have any, and if we do, how/when? In all the major ancient Eastern traditions, true free will, and even all forms of false free will too, involve following Nature. Nothing else. So, then, the ego itself is one facet of Nature, as are the physical senses and the life-force and the ordinary mind. (But so also are the higher faculties, of Superconsciousness.) Usually, when someone wants to assert their "free will", I claim (along with ever so many philosophers both Eastern and Western) that most or all of the time they are simply indulging their ego, which is a false form, or a very inadequate and limited form, of individuality. Even though the ego all the time totally believes it is altogether the only expression of individuality. (Don’t trust it! Let it go.)

Freud fully understood much of this, but he went a little overboard and claimed that all human behavior is deterministic and moreover is caused by our childhood conditioning – and that that conditioning, those scars on the soul, can’t be reversed, but only adjusted to. (In talking of the ego above, I don't mean Freud's sense of "ego", of course.)

All we can ever, ever do is to follow Nature -- and in that sense at least we aren't free, after all, and never can be. We can, however, lose control of or dull our consciousness, and then only follow the lower parts of Nature -- such as our ego. In that sense, but only in that sense, I claim, do we have significant freedom of choice -- the choice of how high or low a level of awareness, and hence the level of the faculties of Nature -- that we will cultivate or tune into. Ironically, true freedom isn’t freedom of choice, at all! And actually that’s nothing to lament, in the slightest, even though it may certainly seem that way to the more limited parts of our consciousness.

As the ancient Vedics explain, Nature is just the creative force of consciousness of Source, or the Divine spark, within us. The Divine is masked by its own seeming denial of itself (of its universality). That denial is what creates illusion (Maya) – but all illusion is itself created by Source. Clearly, then, only by becoming one with the Divine can we become the master of our own being. Jung believed that the Divine can be found in the lower, subconscious realms within us, but in agreement with the Vedics I claim it can openly be found by going into or through the higher, the Superconscious. The lower Nature merely works out whatever was set up for it by the higher, by Nature.

greybeard

16th April 2016, 09:48

One saying is that "We are form--formless--both and neither" think that kind of sums it up.
There could not be duality--seeming individuality by accident.
This too is the will of "God"
Experience is not possible here and now without form, without their seeming to be another.

Chris

TraineeHuman

18th April 2016, 11:33

I think the point is to play the game and not get trapped into it.

There is a kind of feedback loop going on between our surface self, our surface consciousness, and something far more vast and great inside us. That more deep and profound part of what makes "us" is forever taking delight in absolutely all the experiences we go through. It has a super-positive attitude. Behind the scenes, so to speak, it is, therefore, what mysteriously gives our surface self the strength to persevere through all our challenges and sufferings, however black a pit we may at times seem to be in through the need to earn money or through dysfunctional relationships or various other failures we may endure. That deeper part of us also itself profits from all our superficial experiences, and learns from them. That deeper part is what mysteriously "regurgitates" our experiences and from its depths moulds our surface self into possessing true character, understanding, positive motivation, strength, and so on. The world is not its master, but it is the master of the world -- though it is itself all the time learning too, learning how to "incarnate" more and more fully into the everyday world of physicality. The gradual spiritualizing of the world of matter -- that's the task (ultimately the only task) we're all engaged in.

We need to gradually learn to identify with that radiant depth, that does come ultimately from the Divine. That means learning to live in detachment. It means gradually learning to stand back in spirit, in our entire consciousness, from the pleasures and pains of the body, emotions and mind. Regardless of what some nay-sayers may claim, it means possessing the mental, emotional and physical things as experiences whose nature, being superficial, doesn't touch or impose itself on our core and real being. Living and acting in the world and yet also not being part of it. The deeper part of us is the true Witness (the Higher Self/Mind), of all we do. Just simply look, and you're there already.

This identification with the Witness -- and ultimately, as far as possible, with nothing else -- will help us to have a positive influence on others in the world. But equally important, it will open us up to becoming more aware of the gigantic whirl of the deeper impersonal forces that exist all around us. At present we may only be aware of these impersonal forces through syncronicities, premonotions, vague intuitions, omens, warnings, self-reflections, or"light bulb" inspirations or ideas. These all add up to only a trickle that manages, however imperfectly, to get through to the surface.

The inner being (the Higher Mind), however, contacts and knows the impersonal forces directly. It knows their playbook, and hence can even at times see into the likely future. But while we're in the physical world it must use our mental, emotional and physical aspects as go-betweens or the "channels" (for lack of a better word) of its expression. This makes its self-expression compromised at every turn. The challenge is to make the Witness's influence and presence in our lives, along with its superior wisdom, greater and greater, until we live more and more as it -- and hence become more and more free of unhappiness. (Hence the Christian verse: "I live; yet not I, but it is Christ who lives in me." Dying to the dominance of the surface self.

TraineeHuman

23rd April 2016, 06:50

Some "meaty" exercises which may help create greater understanding of how to communicate with or in the Higher Mind/Self can be found in Rudolf Steiner's book, Knowledge of Higher Worlds. (By the way, the text of that book is available for free at http://sacred-texts.com/eso/khw/index.htm -- the only book of Steiner's that's available for free, I believe.)

Although I don't agree with many of Steiner's views, that's really not so important at all, because I find that simply looking at and understanding why he held the views he did unlocks a great wealth of wisdom imbedded there. In any case, in this post I'm interested in spiritual exercises (which, along with experiences, I of course see as the basis of nearly all spirituality, -- apart from its application to daily life, that is, which of course is the most important part).

One of Steiner’s exercises, in chapter five of the above book, is that of practising having “openness” to Life. I guess you could describe it as one version of “living in the Now”, except that I’d say not many people, unfortunately, seem to fully appreciate what’s truly involved in staying in the Now, and with learning the art of finding delight in anything. But I think Steiner’s description is a considerable help in that regard. Particularly with what seems to be the most central issue, that of definitely going into unknowing but at the same time integrating unknowing with what’s already known to you:

“The thinking, and together with it the willing, reaches a certain maturity if one tries never to let past experiences rob one of open-minded receptivity for new ones. To declare in the face of some new experience: “I never heard of such a thing, I don't believe it!” should make no sense at all to a pupil of the Spirit. Rather let him make the deliberate resolve, during a certain period of time to let every thing or being he encounters tell him something new. A breath of wind, a leaf falling from a tree, the prattle of a little child, can all teach us something, are we but ready to adopt a point of view to which we have perhaps not hitherto been accustomed. One can, it is true, carry this too far. We must not, at whatever age we have reached, put right out of our minds everything we have experienced hitherto. We have most decidedly to base our judgment of what confronts us now upon past experience. That is on the one side of the balance, but on the other there is the need for the pupil of the Spirit to be ready all the time for entirely new experiences; above all, to admit to himself the possibility that the new may contradict the old.”

Does anyone have any comments about their experience of trying to do this exercise?

I should add that one usually learns how to do something by attempting it and often failing to do it fully or correctly at first.

Guish

23rd April 2016, 12:56

If you say that you should be open to anything and not hold on to a certain belief, you are accepting the subjectivity of knowledge and the infinity of knowledge. I remember Bodhidharma had to give a lecture and he went there and sat silently. I believe only one student got the essence of the act.

TraineeHuman

23rd April 2016, 23:51

If you say that you should be open to anything and not hold on to a certain belief, you are accepting the subjectivity of knowledge and the infinity of knowledge.

I would say that openness to Life involves considerably more than not having a dogmatic belief system. But certainly, Guish, I appreciate that the trap of being stuck in a belief system is a very common trap for Western people -- including presumably all Christians, for example. Also for true believers in the religion of science and scientism. That trap of holding a belief system has a low level of energy "vibration", as eventually becomes apparent to one after death.

I've noticed that Asian people don't have that dogmatic attitude to belief systems -- except for a few who've been totally Westernized.

And yes, a liberated appreciation of one's subjectivity is very important in achieving and living in openness. Western people have been subjected to a huge dumbing-down operation, or psyop, in relation to scientism, and hence to the true nature of subjectivity. It's universally agreed that Descartes formulated the modern scientific method in his work Meditations. In that work he began by pointing out and irrefutably proving that the only things we are ever can be certain of are subjective -- such as the fact that we exist. Philosophers call those things "intersubjective". They are subjective, but everyone experiences essentially the same thing. There's also another form of subjectivity, which is concerned with individual fantasy. But anyone serious about spirituality won't be interested in that particular form of subjectivity. One way the dumbing-down program was implemented was to wrongly and deliberately use the word "objective" to describe anything that's inter-subjective -- which includes all measurements (i.e. acts of measuring) and virtually all physical observations.

Nothing objective (in the correct sense of the word) is or can ever be certain. Consider the fact that a scientific theory is only considered acceptable if it is falsifiable; and anything that's falsifiable necessarily has to be false, even if it hasn't been disproved yet.

Guish

29th April 2016, 16:34

Th, you are saying that we can't rely on observations.
How do we make sense of the world if we do not analyse?
Not everyone can act from the higher mind which bypasses subjectivity.
I'd say objectivity is a good step when one starts acting without the ego.

animovado

29th April 2016, 19:56

Nothing objective (in the correct sense of the word) is or can ever be certain. Consider the fact that a scientific theory is only considered acceptable if it is falsifiable; and anything that's falsifiable necessarily has to be false, even if it hasn't been disproved yet.

I completely agree with the first part of your quote, but the second one seems not clear to me, particularly "a scientific theory is only considered acceptable if it is falsifiable; and anything that's falsifiable necessarily has to be false" provides a riddle to me and more clarification on that point would be most gratefully received.

TraineeHuman

30th April 2016, 02:16

The "industry standard" throughout the world of science is that a scientific theory is only considered acceptable if it's clearly falsifiable. That's a statement of fact, not my individual opinion at all. That standard is very well-known to and adhered to by all philosophers of science and by all well-informed scientists in the world.

People might like to read some introductory textbook on the philosophy and foundations of science. Or maybe read some of the writings of (or listen to public statements or lectures by) Paul Feyerabend, who was the most influential figure in the philosophy of science throughout a number of decades of the later twentieth century.

Let me state again that it's simply and demonstrably a fact that absolutely all certainty is subjective, and a certain type of subjective, namely, inter-subjective. That inter-subjectivity includes (applies to, is true of) all measurements and many observations (including all scientific observations), as well as many more interesting, more inner things. As far as I know, no professional philosopher anywhere in the world disputes this. However, it's true that a certain big faction within contemporary philosophy flatly denies the existence of anything other than the physical world and wants to glorify science and so-called common sense at the expense of all else. They don 't like to use the term "inter-subjective". But the facts about inter-subjectivity were demonstrated and explained in very, very simple language by Renee Descartes in his Meditations. I'd appreciate it if members could read that work, which by the way is considered the foundational work which marked the beginning of modern philosophy. It's also the work in which the scientific method, in its modern form, was formulated.

By the way, Guish, I certainly didn’t say or in any way imply that scientific observations are unreliable. As the saying goes: “Don’t assume. It makes an ass out of u and me.”

In the university which seems to have one of the two strongest sociology departments in my city, semester 2 of the freshman unit Introduction to Sociology is devoted to explaining how in fact all certainty is inter-subjective, and to exploring the implications of this. So, knowledge of these truths doesn't seem to be confined just to the world of professional philosophers.

It's interesting, though, how the masses have been very carefully conditioned, partly through the nihilistic religion of scientism, to believe the lie that certainty is supposedly objective -- partly, as I said, by expanding the popular meaning of "objective", from what it originally and correctly was, to dishonestly make it encompass all that is inter-subjective. In this way the power of one's subjectivity, of human greatness and sovereignty, is swept under the carpet. Particularly since there's then a total denial, at a popular and uninformed level, that the inter-subjective is subjective at all. (And please remember, folks, throughout this post I'm using the word "subjective" in its true sense, and not in the psy-oped sense you may be very used to using it in. I hope that sheds some light.) It's interesting to note that while I was trying to write this post I experienced more severe attacks, and more attacks, on my computer than ever before. Fortunately I have PC protection in place that prevented anything serious from happening, such as my hard disk being wiped out. It did take more than a little wok to recover my PC's ability to connect to the internet, though.

Incidentally, once you have hopefully managed to "wake up" from this particular psy-op, but not before, you'll probably appreciate that actually the difference between "being subjective" of the inter-subjectivity variety, versus "being objective" in the sense of "objective" that doesn't try to include the inter-subjective as part of what is "objective", has something to do with being more like a subject as distinct from an object -- i.e., much more alive, not inert, more (effectively or constructively) active, freer, not a victim, potentially creative, fresh, and so on.

Guish

30th April 2016, 17:55

It's funny how deeper truths are relieved when we actually stop the urge to constantly observe or adhere to something.

TraineeHuman

5th May 2016, 02:28

There's one issue that's come up recently among some individuals I've met outside the Forum, an issue which I've talked about early in this thread. One way to partly describe the problem is found in how Krishnamurti would begin every discourse of his. He would declare that the root cause of absolutely all our problems is "thought, and the movement of thought". By "thought" he meant the ordinary mind and the effects of being totally caught up in its delusions. Delusions such as the ego and the kind of society and civilization we find ourselves in. Thought, or ordinary mind, can't change or improve itself one iota, however hard some may try and however fancy its models of inner reality may be. As the saying by Jesus goes: "Who among you can ever add an inch to their height by using their mind?"

The point I've made earlier in this thread is that plenty of (drug-free) experience needs to come first. Only then is philosophy even useful -- and necessary -- for one's understanding of what one has been experiencing. The correct balance is always way more direct experience than discussion or conceptualizing. Anything else is a form of spiritual suicide, so to speak. Early in the thread I've continually tried to emphasize that. I've certainly included a considerable amount of philosophy in this thread, but unfortunately I don't have any control over how it may be misapplied. To read the philosophical stuff without having a great depth of experience first is worse than useless. It's a terrible trap, a hole one can dig oneself into and never see the light of day again.

I made the original title of this thread to be about OBEs primarily because I wanted to talk about spirtitual or inner realities but in a way that tended to force or encourage the reader to come from direct experience first, instead of from the ordinary mind.

In my own case there was a huge depth of experience even throughout childhood. And from close to my sixteenth birthday I would enter the Divine worlds regularly, usually every week. For that reason, and that reason only, I can go into the philosophical issues at great depth and in great detail. As Krishnamurti would say: "The word is not the thing." Unfortunately, a reader of parts of this thread may well not appreciate that all the philosophy to be found in the thread is derived from my experiences. It's not some sort of armchair parlor game. I've many times exhorted readers to do plenty of meditation every day, as well as certain other things. That shouldn't be taken at all lightly, or lazily.

Guish

7th May 2016, 17:05

A calm mind can see clearly.
I agree that Experience is vital as it gives all explanations a different vibration.

TraineeHuman

8th May 2016, 23:48

A calm mind can see clearly.
I agree that Experience is vital as it gives all explanations a different vibration.

When I started this thread, I had assumed that any serious reader would have already mastered the art of not-thinking. That is a big part of what I meant by the skill of "letting go". That was square one. It's not a concept of letting go, but a simple doing of it. It's an ability to listen to the music of silence. To hear a wonderful, joyous "concert" when one does so.

Only when one is stable in being able to do that easily and at will is one ready to properly utilise the concepts I have written about. Those concepts point to other higher realities.

The following video by Barry Long describes square one: U7tczw4Icr8

TraineeHuman

14th May 2016, 02:11

Earlier in this thread we've seen how the worlds of formlessness lie immediately beyond the mental/conceptual worlds. In this post, I'd like to bring up some things about the transition, from being caught up in some level of the mental to being in the formless. Everything in the formless worlds is indefinable. You can't (fully) grasp at anything there, because to grasp would be to give it a form. It's "neti, neti", not "this" and not "that", either. For that reason, the formless worlds are worlds of non-attachment, i.e. of freedom from unhappiness, at least temporarily, while one is in them. As I've said at an earlier time, I've seen how many, many very serious spiritual practitioners will spend decades trapped in some mental level and not make the transition to the formless -- or do it only with great difficulty.

For those who need it, I included the video on not-thinking that was in the previous post. I'm assuming that anyone who watched that video has been putting it into practice.

Rather than talking about consciousness or attention or awareness, I'd like to start by looking at concentration. There are different levels of concentration. The lowest level is that of alertness, or attention. This normally involves the body-consciousness and the ordinary mind. Also, such things as self-discipline and asceticism mostly involve the ordinary mind trying to change itself -- and, of course, not getting further than itself but probably in a more orderly condition.

A more difficult, but fruitful, type of concentration is concentration directed inward. This involves going to the very essence of any idea or experience or thought that may be going on in us. To do this successfully, we already need to have learnt how to make our concentration one-pointed. In other words, to unwaveringly stay with a single stream, a single subject, and ignore all else. It also involves the use of the will and of our intention.

The Christian/Jewish/Islamic practice of contemplation -- also used in Yoga -- is designed to eventually take us to this place. One concentrates on a single topic only (say, that of how God is Love), until the thinking mind runs out of thoughts on that subject. At that point we are penetrating into the essence of that topic.

All attachment arises out of the ordinary mind 's thinking over and over again about one subject or thing or person. As I've said, attachment is what gradually destroys love. So we have the situation that 99% (or 99.9%?) of the population seem to believe that finding the right romantic partner is what makes one happy. Yet that belief is itself a heavy form of attachment, apart from not being true. We need to bring our own freedom from unhappiness into our relationships. Then we can share its reflection in the other person, and we can also share in whatever degree of freedom from unhappiness they can bring too. Maybe one way to become free of an attachment that already exists, though, is to use contemplation and detachment to go through the attachment and on to the other side of it. Then one might be able to retain the full initial "spark" of love for another indefinitely.

Taking the concentration process further, it is possible to learn how to move into the pure intention in us, or the pure point of view in us, that underlies our stream of concentration. We do so by uniting with it from its inside and from our inside also. That involves temporarily uniting with it, with no judgment, no trace of rejection. At that point we are in the Higher Mind, and in a formless dimension. (Even though a point of view or an intention does possess some aspects that have form, I claim that it also possess a subjectivity, a freedom, that transcends all forms.)

Guish

28th May 2016, 15:44

2VVXhzCIZYQ

TH,

Listen to it.

TraineeHuman

30th May 2016, 03:44

Absolutely wonderful video, Guish. The Zen Patriarch Shunryu Suzuki is so right, and not exaggerating, when he says that everyone absolutely has to find their own unique way to liberation. For some years in my own life, now in the distant past, I used to be far more independent-minded than anyone around me seemed to be. Inner courage. This greatly puzzled my friends and acquaintances, anyone who got to know me. It seemed ever so "far out". They could see no reason why any sensible person would ever be that way. But it's the only way to get there, as Suzuki so eloquently explains in this video.

The Higher Self/Mind is the fullest and highest expression of one's individuality. The only way to transcend it fully is to go totally into extreme individuality -- and not being radical or nonconformist for the sake of being radical, either (except in the sense of breaking free of habits). Instead, it's a matter of totally seeking to live one's own individual truth. When that's done fully enough, something greater can blossom inside one.

greybeard

30th May 2016, 06:17

Its a very narrow line between self indulgence and walking a higher path.
"My way" would get me into all sorts of trouble.
Discernment discernment.
Who is the doer?
I am responsible for actions but not the end result.
Yet I surrender surrender to what is.

Chris

Guish

30th May 2016, 16:29

Enola

7th June 2016, 23:56

I wanted to give this channeling stuff a try and see if I'd be able to channel my higher self or guardian angels.

I haven't made any effort until now, I've just noticed my intuition working well lately. Or, if I need some ideas or have a problem to solve I just lay down and empty my head, and the answears seem to flow in by themselves.

So I did some reading and preparation for it and just made myself open. It started right away, and felt kind of like having a weak energy transmitted through my brain. It was very soft and slightly euphoric. At first I received some answears I was looking for, but at the end it started showing me images of doing some kind of white magic.

I used to be curious about rituals when I was younger, but never really understood it or felt like I could do anything. But I've now learned much more about the spiritual dimension and had some real experiences. And, last year I watched the Christmas service on TV with a priest who had a real sense of the holy spirit about him (they're not all like that) and realised I was watching some form of high white magic or advanced lightwork (and many don't even realise this).

Although that is usually portrayed in a very boring way, but it doesn't have to be. You could use all kinds of beautiful hymns, invocations, music, scent, and colours. But you don't see any of that in popular culture.

TraineeHuman

8th June 2016, 01:31

Hi, Enola. Congratulations. It sounds like you're doing plenty of things right.

Early in this thread I described being in the state of stillness as the same thing as being in one's Higher Self/Mind. The Higher Self/Mind is really the true you, the authentic, nonjudgmental (but still discriminating) you. It's not something separate, but just something that's neglected in most people these days. So, I would say you don't "channel" it so much as step back into it. Rather like that "normal" life is a "film" in black and white, and then this is like stepping into full color, which was the reality all along anyway.

It's paradoxical to us how stillness could be anything other than some kind of totally empty space or nebulous fog. (More on that on in another post soon.) But as the great spiritual teacher Barry Long explained in the video below, according to him what we experience as stillness is actually a going into one's "unconscious" -- though here I would prefer to call it one's subconscious (experienced in a totally neutral and impartial fashion, even if also in a very foggy and formless way) plus one's Superconscious (which is like Heaven).

He also describes the state of (so-called) stillness as the only state where one knows, or begins to know, who one truly is. I realize I've already said that too, but it's only when one is fully and consciously in one's HS/M does one learn how to flex and use one's psychic muscles and talents. It's a position of psychic power, which I believe should indeed be used as some form of "white magic" if even in little ways for the benefit of the people we encounter. I guess one form of white magic that does have considerable acceptance these days is feng shui. But most of us are very much in need of the services of good, fully developed white magicians and healers. One I can recommend to anyone and who's the real deal is Chris Kehler from Winipeg, at chriskehler.net Maybe the images you've "channeled" of yourself doing white magic are a message from your HS/M (or your angels, who closely collaborate with the HS/M) that you should use your expanded consciousness and love for the benefit of others in some small ways? At least you can spread a little of the intense joy that the HS/M lives in all the time to others around you in your everyday life a little?

If nice hymns or songs or incense or whatever are an easy way for you to raise your consciousness level (or, rather, to be true) to the level that your HS/M exists at all the time, that's great. Unfortunately, many people are very disenchanted with Christianity, but it sounds like it definitely works for you.

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Enola

8th June 2016, 02:40

Well, I love Christian Mysticism/Esoteric Christianity, or the kind Peter Deunov taught.

I think it's on par with the Eastern traditions and that we should be able to recognise the greatest example of enlightenment in our own culture. The problem is that it has been made impossible for most to learn from, but that is mostly because of its negative angle from our culture and the media.

I don't care that much for regular Christianity, but sometimes it takes me by surprise and I have to acknowledge there's some real power there. Because there are also some highly evolved individuals drawn to the church. But you need spiritual discernment to tell the difference.

I can also see how it's possible for someone to become enlightened, or illumined, on that path. Bhakti-yoga and Karma-yoga are very powerful, even if someone lives in relative ignorance.

And I like meditating on "The Lord is My Shepherd", it definitely raises my consciousness.

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures.
He leads me by the still waters.
He restores my soul.
He leads me down the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.

Yea, even as I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I shall fear no evil.
Because you, Lord, are with me.
Your rod and your staff they comfort me and make me feel safe.
You prepare a table before me in front of my enemies.
You anoint my head with oil.
My cup runneth over.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.
And I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

TraineeHuman

10th June 2016, 01:38

One saying attributed to Jesus that I find particularly interesting is that in higher planes of existence "the first shall be last and the last shall be first". I suspect this was intended to mean much more than just the fact that in the afterlife there's no money but only energy instead, and so someone who was very attached to money and material success or power will have a much tougher time in the afterlife because that attachment will be a handicap there.

I suspect a considerable part of the intended meaning of "the first shall be last and the last shall be first" is also captured in the saying that we need to "become like little children". In young children, the personality hasn't entirely formed yet, and in that sense they are very flexible and open, and are a "blank slate" in various ways. With the onset of adolescence and adulthood, however, a strong attachment to a fixed personality and belief system and rigid likes and dislikes develops.

Following physical death, the quicker anyone can shed their entire personality, the sooner they will stably reach the level of existence where the Higher Mind dwells, beyond all mental and astral levels. Unfortunately, few seem to manage to get this far, at least in recent centuries. (Also, any kind of after-death trap etc only works in the astral or mental planes, but not anywhere higher.) We need to learn how to shed -- or, at least, detach from -- our attachment to personality while we're still physically alive. That includes our resistance to anything -- resistance to enjoying whatever work we are doing or whatever our lot in life is, and so on. I think this is what is meant by "Blessed are the poor in spirit". Not having a spirit of wanting to live in poverty or asceticism, but of accepting all things as they are (and then acting on them appropriately).

Orph

10th June 2016, 03:04

That includes our resistance to anything -- resistance to enjoying whatever work we are doing or whatever our lot in life is, and so on. I think this is what is meant by "Blessed are the poor in spirit". Not having a spirit of wanting to live in poverty or asceticism, but of accepting all things as they are (and then acting on them appropriately).You kind of lost me here. If you used the word "attachment" instead of "resistance" in the above statement, then it makes sense. (to me, anyway). Unless you're saying resistance and attachment, in this context, are basically the same. ??

(sorry for the interruption)

TraineeHuman

10th June 2016, 09:49

I claim that people usually become very attached to their own resistance. They "love" it, in most cases. Mostly subconsciously. For instance, there's plenty of evidence that at least 80% of the population shows enormous resistance to leaving an unpleasant comfort zone. They won't leave an unsatisfactory and dysfunctional marriage, or a job they passionately hate, even when an undeniably better alternative presents itself, because the discomfort of changing to something better is too much for them. I agree with you that it doesn't seem to make sense, but such is "human nature". Such is how the mind/personality works.

There are also some extensive psychological studies which claim to prove that people typically spend at least seven times as much energy resisting or disliking a job they don't feel enthusiastic about as compared to the energy it takes to actually do the job.

Guish

10th June 2016, 15:00

L6udHlXfd2s

TraineeHuman

20th June 2016, 10:44

L6udHlXfd2s

"Whatever you do", Suzuki says, as distinct from sitting cross-legged or doing some supposedly special thing,"is true zazen". The point is, though, that there needs to be absolutely no trying within you, for it to be "true zazen" and not be "special". As soon as there is any trying, any effort, some unnecessary thinking has crept in, and you'll have immediately fallen out of freedom from unhappiness. For all unhappiness occurs only within the realm of thoughts.

Suzuki also says to genuinely be yourself, and that often you aren't that. But when you aren't being genuine, any attempt to change yourself at such a time will be failure, because that involves effort. The only way through, then, is to see and accept yourself exactly as you are.

We need to give up the materialistically inspired urge to snatch whatever we can from our transient existence because we want to however briefly set "our own life" in stone just for a moment.

TraineeHuman

25th June 2016, 08:16

To be honest, different individuals are at different broad stages of spiritual development, and that makes it difficult, if not almost impossible, to write about higher worlds in a "one size fits all" way that everyone will find useful and easy to make sense of. Nevertheless, I'd like to offer a very brief and rather oversimplified overview of what those stages of development usually involve.

In my experience, the permanent descent of the HM (or the “silence” relative to the ordinary thinking mind) into one's body coincides with one's having a "baseline" continual state of feeling contentment -- contentment with everything. That doesn't mean one doesn't still get negative feelings. But underlying everything there's normally that constant contentment, which later on develops into an impartial delight or bliss in response to every situation. That contentment is essentially a freedom from unhappiness, or at least it's the early form of something that grows into that freedom.

Prior to that descension of the HM, there's a very long stage indeed where one has to learn how not to abuse power, and where one also has to learn how to deal more and more with escalating (emotional) suffering and ultimately how to transcend it. This may take many lifetimes, of course. The only way to learn not to abuse power seems to involve first abusing it, though hopefully one can do this with a huge degree of self-reflection and constant self-observation. Plus also use that power to also do positive things.

The necessity for the journey into and through power comes about because our conditioning and our civilization have, of course, altogether misinformed us regarding how innately powerful we are. We know that some individuals involved in politics and so on go through the power journey at a purely materialistic level. But at a more evolved level, this involves the unlocking of one's psychic abilities (such as OB travel and clairvoyance and psychic healing), which are the first unique fruits of the HM's development. (The Christian belief that at the Pentecost day “the Holy Spirit” descended suggests that there probably was indeed some kind of temporary descent of the HM. But in the fifth century Tertullian, who unfortunately wasn’t exactly the brightest spark but was power-mad, formulated the bulk of Christian dogma. At that time he declared that “the Holy Spirit” was part of the Divine. I suspect this has something to do with the very big prevalent misconception that the HM is the Divine operating in you. However, the HM is certainly far from being the same thing as the Divine.)

I’ve really been surprised to learn that some people can still experience (personal) depression even after the permanent descent of the HM into their body-mind. I had supposed that contentment and depression were so incompatible they couldn't exist at the same time. But it's a very long journey. In my case I didn’t ever experience depression once the HM was fully stable. Before that, I did sometimes feel depression, in the form of loneliness, up until thirty-five years ago. Since then I’ve only been able to feel depression in the form of the human Group Soul’s unhappiness, or in someone else but not myself. I’ve met a number of others who were the same. Similarly, for instance, I’ve never been able to feel such a thing as boredom since over nineteen years ago. Those naysayers who claim it isn’t possible to permanently get rid of negative emotions seem to me to be very ignorant of certain plain realities.

The next very major stage beyond development of the HM is the development of the Superconscious. This involves transmuting some of one's individuality into universality somehow. This is far removed from attempting merely to escape from the suffering and chaos that usually come with physical existence. It means learning to have a perfect combination of inner silence with outward activity that accords with the requirements of love and truth. It means making the small be beautiful, and finding ways to convert evil into good.

Guish

26th June 2016, 17:23

Good insight TH.

Instead of using the word "contentment", I've always always used "calmness" as a measure of one's spiritual advancement. I spent a year after the Kundalini experience where a lot of extraordinary things happened to me. I remember being very calm in tough times. I've got busy this year because of work and construction of a new house and I have noticed that this power of calmness decreased. Nevertheless, the selfless nature of my being still is here. Most decisions made are rarely self centered.

Haakon

28th June 2016, 21:34

I get what you write in post 2536 TH. When negativ energies constently put voices in my head, to take me out of the "present" moment. And also interfere with dreams/ob. And brainwave interference(bzz in head) I cant meditate peaceful anymore. Problems converting this evil into good. Does not suit me. This thing. I miss meditating peacefully. The higher relms.
Thanks for guidance though
Happy travels to all !

TraineeHuman

1st July 2016, 00:23

Instead of using the word "contentment", I've always always used "calmness" as a measure of one's spiritual advancement. I spent a year after the Kundalini experience where a lot of extraordinary things happened to me. I remember being very calm in tough times.

Calmness is a very interesting thing. If you go into it deeply enough, it is the most delicious of all experiences, and it seems to be the very heart of the Divine, of Source. It's like experiencing the coolest drink and shade on the hottest, most parching day. You can equally call it passivity or space (space in a much more than physical sense). Passivity or space is not inert, because it bears everything and is the very ground of everything, and is the wellspring of all freedom and all tolerance whatsoever, including absolute freedom, and is invisibly active in everything there is or could be. It's the stage on which everything takes place, and without which there would be nothing at all.

Even as you experience the calmness at the level of Divinity, though, you also become aware of profound activity, all of it paradoxically arising out of that profound inactivity, and from nowhere else. I also have found myself becoming instantly conscious of the universal nature of all that is Divine, and that universality to me implies activity taken to the point of perfection somehow.

However, in this thread I have emphasized that the highest wisdom for us while we are in the physical is totally about descension, of continually bringing Heaven down and into Earth. For that reason, after consideration I suppose I would much rather talk of equanimity rather than calmness.

Guish

1st July 2016, 15:51

There's equanimity when there's detachment and calmness while dealing with events though.

Foxie Loxie

1st July 2016, 16:15

I love that! Detachment & calmness....a good guideline!

TraineeHuman

2nd July 2016, 06:26

There's equanimity when there's detachment and calmness while dealing with events though.

I'd like to try and be more specific about my understanding of equanimity. I do certainly consider the successful application of equanimity in one's life to be a major pathway into living in the Higher Mind/Self at least semi-permanently. (In this thread, in the second half of May 2013, I suggested a number of such pathways into the HM. One of these was that of not taking things personally while remaining empathic and grounded and inwardly still, and I suspect that would amount to something pretty close to equanimity.)

You mentioned that having to cope with building a house would at times take you out of your calmness, Guish. My understanding of equanimity is, it's the quality that enables one to retain one's inner calmness even while one is immersed in dealing with chaotic activity. Since you apparently didn't succeed in holding your inner calmness all the time, it follows you didn't always retain equanimity in the sense I have in mind. The immersion in activities, and the will to be so immersed, and the facing up to whatever that then implies and remaining fully in touch with your feelings, seems to me to carry equal weight with the calmness. That's what makes that inner balance so wonderful, may I suggest? Seamless weightlifting. And that's also what makes it harder to do in real life than it is in meditation.

In order to get to a state of such perfect inner balance, we need to have significantly liberated ourselves from our ego or lower nature. I would say we do this through sufficiently realizing the equality or sameness of all things, or through realizing impartiality. I guess "detachment" is an accurate enough word to describe that, but only as long as that includes an active side that is continually negating the impact of the dualities that are seeking to trap us (including the fear of anything or anyone; and many other things as well).

Detachment (or seeing the really big picture) is something I consider to be crucially important in any situation, but other things are important as well, in conjunction with it.

The ego manipulates us in a number of ways, and we need to be relatively free of them all. The biggest way our ego (and, indeed, anyone) manipulates us is through trying to suck us into a "roller-coaster" of pleasure one moment and despair later on, of feeling unfortunate then fortunate, in danger sometimes and safe at others. Also the ego strategically withdraws and subtly tries to influence us to feel boredom or dissatisfaction , with the aim of getting us to want excitement, which the ego will then use to trap us with. Equanimity means learning not to allow any of these to pull us out of a constant, peaceful underlying state of (relative) freedom from unhappiness.

Guish

6th July 2016, 13:05

Trainee, you seem to differentiate between the calmness in meditation and the calmness in reality. However, I find them interlinked. Regular meditation lowers mental noise and helps one to stay calm in any case. I'd say that at a very primitive stage, one would say that: " I'm very stressed and I need to meditate". Meditation is simply breathing deeply. The same intensity is carried to Physical reality with constant meditation.

With time, we live more fully and calmly. Impermanence is discovered by oneself by direct experience and all the treasures and wisdom are revealed to us.

TraineeHuman

7th July 2016, 03:15

Guish

7th July 2016, 12:22

Actually, in my last post I was talking about equanimity, and I didn't mention meditation.

But to comment about meditation, I'd say different individuals use the word "meditation" to mean any of a big variety of different things. In this thread, though, I‘ve often used that word to refer to any practice that tends to quickly take one into a higher level of consciousness.

Meditation usually begins with some kind of concentration, but hopefully, with practice, that transforms into a contact with the very essence of what one is getting immersed in. So, I guess good meditating should of course eventually give one some appreciation of what true equanimity feels like. And certainly, that should become a state one eventually aims to be in and remain in during meditation, and then to learn to apply more and more into one's ordinary life. I think equanimity means having a great inner balance. I suspect that’s not possible without having a very considerable breadth and variety of life experiences, rather than just sitting in meditation.

A lack of satisfaction and suffering are usually factors that push one to question everything and explore the spiritual side. Anyway, these were factors which pushed me very hard. My childhood was not very joyous with my struggles with Epilepsy and the occasional violent behavior of my parents. Being beaten up really sucks the life out of a child. In my teenage years, I struggled by being an introvert and in early adulthood, I had my emotional problems with my heartbreaks.

Without these occurrences, would I be the same person?
Would Bruce Wayne become Batman if his parents weren't shot in front of him?

We fall to learn how to rise up.

Excellent point, TH.

3WwVOKxh8hE

TraineeHuman

8th July 2016, 01:17

Thank you very much for that sharing, Guish. I guess we all experience the toughness of living in a world of limitations. No doubt not always as greatly as happened in your case, in your current life. Still, every single person gets seriously traumatized by at least one event some time in their first nine years.

I didn't suffer physical abuse. At the age of five, my parents wanted to give me the belt because they believed it was "good for me", but my response was to seriously try to run away from home and otherwise refuse to allow them to do it (including grabbing my father's belt so it wasn't able to connect with my body). In my first five years my mother was generally more affectionate and loving than any other mother. But then she became attached and very possessive plus her romantic relations with my father ended, and so for the next few years I was living in a kind of (psychological) prison, no exaggeration, particularly because she was super-clairvoyant. That can be very abusive in a subtler way than usual. Also, a major lesson I was born wanting to learn in this life was how to live with disharmony. Consequently, my biggest trauma happened when I was nine and my parents told me they were about to get divorced. My initial response was to hate God and hate everything.

I guess only in a world of dualities can we learn to appreciate how wonderful light is, because only there can we directly experience how different it is from the dark, and how powerful we must be because we can find it and still somehow be unscathed when we do so. I think equanimity means we no longer mind the dark, and are able to see it as being the same as the light, in a sense.

Guish

8th July 2016, 14:57

Does suffering exist so that the search for inner peace exist?
I think your conclusion is spot on. We get less carried away as we become more spiritual. We see the fake ness of certain things and we stay away from many things.

Enola

8th July 2016, 15:03

TraineeHuman

13th July 2016, 13:12

In my first five years my mother was generally more affectionate and loving than any other mother.

My mother had a kind of Marilyn Monroe personalty and never really lost her purity and innocence. So she was an ideal mother for childhood. But later, not as good, as it didn't really prepare me for the world.

On the one hand we shouldn't be too judgmental about our parents. Not only were they not perfect, just like everyone is, but when they had us they were too young to truly know themselves or to have gotten rid of most of their baggage. But they still surely did the very best they could at the time.

On the other hand, when we're at at the age of one and two we adopt parts of our parents' identities, because they're the only examples of successfully surviving human beings that we have access to. As adults, we now need, if we can, to impartially become aware of and evaluate what it was we unquestioningly imitated back then and made part of who we are. It's our own responsibility as mature adults to find our own true heart and our own sovereignty.

I think it's very hard for anyone to get motherhood perfectly right in our society. In modern society women have of course been ever so unfairly imposed on in that they're expected to work in a full-time career at the same time as they carry out a full-time unpaid job as a mother.

Guish

20th July 2016, 17:19

"A flower falls, even though we love it; and a weed grows, even though we do not love it."

TraineeHuman

22nd July 2016, 11:55

"A flower falls, even though we love it; and a weed grows, even though we do not love it."

What to do about that weed, or that thorn? How to cope? That's the question, ultimately the only important question in this life, perhaps.

I've noticed, Guish, that you seem fond of saying we shouldn't get too upset, anyway, about anything that's impermanent. The implication there is that we truly know that which is permanent, or at least we regularly experience it. So yes, if one truly knows the One, then the weed or thorn can't hold a candle to that. It makes our worry altogether trivial and petty, making it soon die away.

Or, maybe we're feeling upset by the presence and the unpleasant effects of that weed or thorn. In that case we're trapped, in the negative emotion of feeling upset. The only way out is to honestly face that negative feeling. Initially this will to SOME extent involve going boldly into that very upset that's giving us our pain. In order to truly face anything, we need to go into our Higher Mind (Higher Self), or even something higher. Temporarily. We can all do it, and sometimes do. One of the biggest problems is that people just don't know how immensely powerful and magnificent they actually are (inside). But we have to detach, to be awake, to look nonjudgmentally at whatever is there. Once we do so, the upset will get dissolved, or gradually dissolved over several sessions of doing so. The only way that upset was ever able to infect us was by tricking us into becoming it, temporarily. As soon as we separate or detach out from what we were identified with, the spell is being broken. Also, giving in to the HM creates bliss, and so we can't help injecting some bliss into the upset. And that ultimately transforms the upset into just another flavor of bliss.

Maybe we're not upset about the weed or the thorn, but still it's a problem. Well, the ultimate kind of problem-solving is creativity. If we're truly creating something original and majorly significant, then that involves engaging the Divine Mind within us, at least fleetingly. That's if we're able to do so at the time. Well, actually, we're all able, we all have the Divine inside us, but the question is, of course, have we prepared the "soil" in the right way for that seed to flourish? And are we right now up to surrendering our very self (our apparent self) in favor of something even higher within us?

Thank goodness for the thorns. If we truly face them, they are the veils of the Divine which most easily turn into open gateways to the One.

Guish

23rd July 2016, 07:15

Th, you have summurised it very nicely. Being in bliss help us to look at problems in a detached way. Ultimately, the best decisions are made when we are calm. I understand calmness is one thing and divine intuition another. Hence, as you said, going into the higher mind is important. I also appreciate the fact that you're always fond of saying that personal effort and initiatives are very important rather than just sitting in meditation. As you know, for me meditation is not an escape and sitting in Zazen transforms everything and modify the perception we have. Spontaneous thinking is an effect of thorough Zazen and in Zen, sitting meditation is to most important and all actions are Zen anyway, like me talking to you right now.

TraineeHuman

3rd August 2016, 12:18

"Everything is one." That's an accurate description of what has for me been the most noticeable thing that one sees or is while one is consciously in any of the Divine worlds. I understand that many consider the philosophy based on this statement that was developed by Shankara from the eighth century to have been the most important formulation of Advaita Vedanta ever made. But what is the statement really saying, and implying?

Firstly, consider what reality would look like if we were indeed continuously living in a state of full oneness. May I suggest that the concepts of "one" and "many" would then be completely meaningless? Because all there is would then be the One, it wouldn't make any sense to us to consider the concept of "many". To us that would be a totally meaningless concept, I suggest. It's a bit like living in a world where absolutely everything is and always has been pure white, and the only color or shade anyone can ever see is white, and trying to talk of "black" without ever being able to produce even a shred of an example of what black would look like.

The truth is, the statement that "All things are one", or Shankara's statement that "There is only one Consciousness (the "I" in everyone)", only has any meaningful content in a world where the reality is there are many. A more intellectually honest statement would be: "All things are one, and all things are also many." It's a paradox, but "All things are one" is only a powerful statement if we are thinking "All things are also many" at the same time.

If anyone says: "All things are one, and the apparent manyness is just an illusion," I'll think the following. "Not quite. A more accurate picture is that reality is ultimately both one and many at the same time. The manyness is real and the Oneness is also very much real."

Guish

3rd August 2016, 14:40

From my point of view,

When we say everything is one, it means everything is connected, deserves love and respect. While operating from my higher self or bliss, I see the faces of all people to be familiar and I'd in fact treat each individual I come across with love and respect. For example, while driving, I'd notice the person walking on the pavement and ensure that none of the water/mud on the street gets onto that person. It's not an intellectual efforts to do so. It's just the way it is. This is how I've experienced interconnectedness or oneness.

It's also many because we are all different at different stages in terms of consciousness but we are still all consciousness. Am I talking right, TH?

TraineeHuman

4th August 2016, 01:55

Whenever one enters any of the Divine worlds, in my experience the most noticeable and vivid thing one sees or knows or experiences or joins with is the intense oneness of all things. Notice, though, that that's a oneness of many, not quite a oneness of nothing. The many are still part of the mix.

Unfortunately, reality is by its very nature unsayable, ultimately. If we try to capture it in one statement, such as "There is only Oneness", or any other statement, we will always fail. That's why I prefer a contradictory or paradoxical statement such as "Reality (or Consciousness) is one but it's also many." At least that statement is implying that we need to rely on something higher than reason, such as (genuine, higher) intuition, to perceive the truth more fully.

Also, the truth is that anyone who clings to believing that some statement sums up the truth about reality is clinging to a belief system. In the afterlife, everyone with a belief system gets stuck, often for years it seems, at an astral level that isn't the most desirable place to be, and certainly is ever so far from the realms of greater onenness.

Guish

4th August 2016, 17:47

So, ultimately, the aim of the physical existence is to live with detachment and operate with the higher mind or what we call in Zen the 'no mind'in a continuous basis. I have learnt it quite harshly that clinging to anything brings pain in the end. Live fully but also detached seems a paradox like the one and many but this us ultimately the way.

TraineeHuman

9th August 2016, 05:23

The Higher Mind is relatively closer to the One, as distinct from the Many, than the ordinary rational consciousness is. But it's my direct experience that the HM is still very much not the Divine, the One itself. There are many who want to equate it with that. But I follow the principle of always trusting in the certainty of my direct experience. Not to do so would be a certain giving up of one's power and sovereignty anyway. And my experience has always been that just because one is in the Witness consciousness, that doesn't automatically put one into the universal One, even though it does bring clarity and bliss or easy access to bliss if one is doing it properly and continuously.

In another thread I've recently reiterated that one of the simplest ways to access the HM is by remaining in a state of looking, or seeing, or observing, including continual looking at or observing of yourself: http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?92390-The-voice-within&p=1087879&viewfull=1#post1087879

Incidentally, anyone who has a mood disorder (a psychosis) will compulsively be permanently stuck in a position of looking at everything from outside of their body, but unfortunately that doesn't count, because one needs to be conscious of both looking from outside one's body and also of the point of view from inside one's body at the same time. Also, in childhood we are continually in the process of gradually incarnating more and more fully, while around retirement age one perhaps involuntarily goes into a long process of discarnating (but still keeping the big picture and retaining our body-consciousness, unless we get Alzheimers). This explains why grandparents and grandchildren can often communicate with each other so well.

The contrast I usually emphasize, though, isn't between the HM and the body-consciousness, but between the HM and the ego. The ego has a limited consciousness whereas the HM is much more "rounded". To the HM, all the ups and downs that the ego suffers through are like waves that rise and fall on the ocean's surface while at a deeper level the ocean remains unperturbed and doesn't get excited by the ups or upset by the downs. Successes and failures are both tiny when compared to the glory of simply existing. The HM certainly knows and understands its oneness with the One. Indeed, I would say that sense of oneness is often the indicator that one is living continually or almost continually in the HM consciously.

Guish

11th August 2016, 11:50

TraineeHuman

12th August 2016, 10:42

Serving others does not make one tired but more powerful. This is a line from the Gita. I have done that many times and I have mentioned selfless actions in this thread. It does put people in this state of calmness, detachment and observer that TH is talking about.

To serve someone and something outside one's self is to push all the preferences and agendas of one's own cunning mind into second place at best. But you still exist, and so the part of you that just exists and watches everything becomes visible.

TraineeHuman

14th August 2016, 03:31

I'd like to make some clarifying and I hope revealing comments about how various forms of self-hypnosis work, and what some of the assumptions are that they evidently rely on, and how, as I understand it, they try to find access to the HM by force, unfortunately. The forms of self-hypnosis I have in mind include nearly all visualization techniques in the form they are popularly used. Also all Silva mind control techniques, and supposed applications of the Law of Attraction as these are usually presented. This also includes Buhlmann's and others' methods for astral travel via autosuggestion, I'm afraid.

All these self-hypnosis methods seem to be, I suggest, attempts at finding an easy and reliable "shortcut" to the freer and happier life one lives through gaining access to higher realms (higher than the mental planes, that is). Each of them a way of taking Heaven by storm, supposedly. But not successfully and validly, I claim. The HM is essentially formless, and can also choose to express itself in the world of forms. But it cannot ever be grasped at -- because that would be attachment. There is no substitute for the HM. Any attempted substitute is idolatry, and a fake matrix of self-delusion, and creation of a fantasy world.

The HM has access to bliss, or, at the very least, it has a very positive take on the current situation, however tragic or limited or inadequate or unfortunate that situation may currently be. This means, of course, that the HM interprets every situation in a very positive way internally. And that's without losing clear sight of the realities and limitations, but in spite of all these, the HM always finds a positive and extremely sane interpretation, and actually sees the true (and the more deeply underlying) reality more fully.

"Creative" visualization and the like attempt to jump straight to exactly such a positive interpretation, and rely on that to do all the work. They do so insincerely, because the individual certainly doesn't actually feel that extremely positive about reality as it currently is. Visualization is a form of fakery, of self-delusion, I'm afraid. Unless, that is, one is independently already coming from one's HM.

The point is, you can only find happiness in the situation just as it currently is, and not in some changed or ideal situation. It's not the situation that's relevant.

The point is, practitioners of visualization are typically thinking something like: "The cause of my unhappiness is my current job," or "The cause of my unhappiness is my romantic partner," or "The cause of my unhappiness is my lack of adequate money," and so on. Or even "The cause of my unhappiness is my apparent inability to astral travel, and thereby experience what the Witness position is really like." The truth is, though, that freedom from unhappiness comes only with a certain inner recognition. The recognition that one is already complete and fulfilled, and has not the slightest need to search outside oneself for fulfilment. Indeed, dropping the expectation that anything external could ever make you happy, except in some superficial sense of "happy", is a prerequisite. It may still be necessary or sensible to change your job or career, or to make perhaps much-needed changes in your family or financial or social situation, but you'll be deluding yourself if you suppose that these will have anything to do with true happiness -- other than to make it easier to enjoy the fruits of true happiness provided you already have the latter.

Proponents of visualization (and self-hypnosis generally) would argue that the mind works through visualizations anyway, and what they are doing is simply making the visualizations more precise and accurate and effective. I would counter that what is missing here is that inner core of awakeness that is the HM. Without that, the visualizations are just mechanical and zombielike, and merely a way of adding extra conditioning, which the individual will have to eventually undo anyway if they want to be free.

Guish

15th August 2016, 17:44

Thanks TH. When people complain about their current state, job or financial position, I think of Buddha. He left all luxury to live in a simple way but found true inner peace as a result. The inner work is important and happiness shall flow as we have access to the true self. Negativity blocks our potential. I remember focussed on just doing the best at work after being frustrated with management for years. I experienced states of bliss and everything just unfolded. I got a promotion and had a baby boy just after that phase. I mentioned that earlier but just thought of this while reading your post.

TraineeHuman

27th August 2016, 09:18

What exercises may one do to possibly enhance or intensify one's ability to ultimately experience or even stay in equanimity? As was mentioned in posts #2542 to #2546 and after, the acquiring of equanimity is partly a matter of life-experience (of suffering, plus development of one's consciousness) and of attaining emotional maturity, and normally only over a period of decades. In many ways it's what life is ultimately all about, apart from undergoing the experiences themselves.

In meditation traditions such as Zen, the most central “exercise” of all is to first learn to perfect one's equanimity more and more through one-pointed meditation, usually over many years; and then to eventually learn to apply it to an equal degree in ordinary life, building on one’s life-experiences to do so. In Zen meditation, equanimity is something one absolutely keeps coming back to, rather like a mantra.

It may also be helpful, at least at the beginning, to try out Rudolf Steiner's suggested exercises for developing equanimity. These are to be found mostly in Chapter 5 of Steiner's book Knowledge of Higher Worlds, to which I provided a link in post #2513. Steiner suggests that a good way to start is through ensuring one makes a review each night of all that happened during the last day. At least we can cultivate some degree of equanimity in hindsight, even if perhaps we had lost it at a certain time during the day. Conscious review of the day is a great exercise. I have to recommend it, though not at a late hour -- say, not after ten p.m.

My only criticism of this is that this may only be a mental or memory-based review rather than one that brings consciousness in more fully. Early in this thread I remarked how one major difficulty in spiritual practice is for the individual to come to distinguuish between mental reality and the reality of pure (higher) consciousness. However, I did also assert that pure intention is the first level of higher consciousness. And Steiner does also have an exercise in learning to control one's will, to be mastered before one gets to making the daily reviews. (Control not in the form of repression, but of free mastery.) I have no problem with that, as long as the individual can clearly tell the difference between lower forms of willing, such as desire, on the one hand and pure, subtle intention on the other. Steiner's exercise is that first one concentrates on the outward expressions of one's moments of falling from grace, and one gets these under control and in balance. Steiner expects that it will then be easier for one's inner experiences to change to an equanimous and forgiving state also.

Steiner adds a further exercise, of deliberately becoming aware of positivity at all times, as a way of hopefully deepening one's equanimity. If we were to change that to "feeling the positivity", we would virtually have the feeling the aliveness exercise (that was invented by Barry Long) that I have emphasized in this thread. Certainly Steiner has a point in that there is always a positive side to be seen in every situation, and moreover, equanimity itself opens one's eyes to seeing positivity that until then was invisible. Steiner gives the example that if we come across a dead dog, we can still observe how its teeth remain perfectly clean and white and uncorrupted. The positivity that underlies equanimity, though, is a positivity that has no opposite. It is the positivity that comes with taking a position beyond both attraction and repulsion.

It's all about learning to be truly "cool". But getting there isn't always cool. It takes enormous endurance, for instance learning to bear things that previously were unbearable. More and more. And it always takes much longer than one imagines. Also necessary is the gradual emergence or further development of the Witness side of oneself. One is split into two yet paradoxically one is better integrated as a result. The observer in one eventually isn't troubled by the stirrings of one's lower nature and simply doesn't sanction or support them. With the Witness there is also the emergence of infinite space in one, of formlessness and freedom to act with control and effectiveness and power in totally new ways, because it is a freedom from preferences.

greybeard

27th August 2016, 09:23

Hi TH your thread has had over a quarter of a million visits--all credit to you particularly as you have maintained the thread so well, for in the main part unaided by videos and others contributing regularly, apart from a few like Guish.

All respect to you

Love
Chris

gdelisle

29th August 2016, 03:13

Hi TH,

It's been a few years since I remember being active on this thread, and something has been urging me back to it, and thankfully it's well and running. I still remember those exercises in which you took the time to visit all of us who needed help with our OBE endeavors, and the past few months I have been noticing a more controlled ability to induce the vibrational state. Although I am sometimes able to feel a "lifting" feeling, I have struggled with any full seperation and clarity beyond that. I'm not sure what brought me back to this thread, but I though this was something I needed to share. Thank you so much for your help and attention!

GD

TraineeHuman

29th August 2016, 07:28

Nice to hear from you again, gdelisle. Three years ago I completely gave up trying to "visit" others, except in the sense of doing traditional remote psychic healing. That was because absolutely no-one recognised me when I did try to visit. At least some (well, most) individuals who described dreams in this thread saw me in their dreams, though. But again, they never recognised me. I know they did see me because I saw the detailed scenes they described, but always from a somewhat different angle. Also because they described me without knowing it. Unfortunately, though, usually the ego hugely messes with the memory of one's dreams and distorts everything to indulge its own ends.

Maybe you'd like to consider the suggestion that "lifting off" isn't even necessary and even isn't the best way to go. Instead, you could view "lewarning to fly" as a matter of turning on a different level of "seeing" (and feeling) than the physical one, and turning off (or strongly turning down) the physical senses. After all, in astral travel or dreams we have some kind of non-physical sight and hearing and feeling. And surely, the seeing and hearing and feeling are what make up the astral experience you have anyway, wouldn't you say? Moreover, it's my experience that anyone who can sometimes astral travel seems to be able to "astral see" much more easily, kind of like putting on the right glasses.

I discovered that most or all very experienced astral travelers -- and certainly Tom Campbell, Robert Monroe, and a number of well-known others -- eventually developed a preference to visit higher dimensions totally without any kind of body, including any higher "body". As it happens, I had also acquired that preference years ago. Eventually you learn how to do it just through pure being, without having to travel. It certainly sounds to me like the professional remote viewers do this also.

Trying to "lift off", as I understand it, involves barging your way every single time (or gliding your way, if you know how) through the hell world where the earthbound souls dwell. A very bleak place, and quite rough. I certainly found (decades ago) that getting into higher dimensions through any of a variety of forms of meditation was the royal road, the silky smooth way to do it. Ever so easy, eventually. There's an enormous amount of material in this thread on what the relevant issues are in learning to do that.

One can learn, alternatively, to live consciously at the Witness level as well as at the level of experiencing. Those two aspects are constantly at work in everyone, only in most the Witness is mostly kept in the unconscious. The Witness is a part of you that exists and operates in a higher dimension. You can learn to activate it consciously through watching, observing yourself, ultimately all the time.

samildamach

29th August 2016, 11:41

Catching up on four years of posts seems daunting at first,only a hundred pages to go.
I am very new to one and come with an open mind.
I've Bern trying for about three months .
My question I would like to ask is there any connection between the vibrations that people describe and kundelina ,qui,prana energy .
Every time I relax and even think of one I feel it call forth in my lower back.when I actively try for one the energy flows like a wild torrent in my lower legs back,and like a tornado in my head coming and going.since yesterday I've started relaxing into the energy flow .I was hoping u could shed some ideas if this is obe or something else.
Many thx for taking the time to answer and share your knowledge

TraineeHuman

30th August 2016, 01:19

Hello, samildamach. Firstly, in order to experience any higher dimensions consciously, one needs to have greater energy, or higher quality energy, at work inside of one. Obviously you have that going on in your case. Yes, the "tornado" in your head sounds exactly like "the vibrations" that take one into the astral if one merges with them. Also the feeling of your body's energies. Sounds very good. You've done more than enough preliminary work. Now it's just a matter of relaxing more and trying less. Just letting everything be exactly as it is. That's less passive than it may seem, but just let go of everything.

Secondly, I consider that the topic of kundalini energy is mostly a distraction here, but I'll address it since you've raised it. I used to have a spiritual teacher for over five years who was very much a master of kundalini yoga (and recognised as such by some of the most famous Indian gurus). What gets said about "kundalini energy" is a combination, as far as I understand, of a real phenomenon and some mythology. Everyone possesses a Divine part, but typically it lies dormant in an individual. But it's possible for Divine light healing energy to become partly active, or "awakened". This happens once, for example, during meditation one finds one is regularly or sometimes experiencing an energy flow up out of the top of one's head into the crown chakra. (That's the most reliable indicator I know of -- except if one can see auras clearly, in which case the best indicator is that the crown chakra and the oversoul chakra above the head turn a violet color plus bright silver or pure white (or, better yet, a shiny gold color).) Once this has occurred, one becomes a natural psychic healer, with the ability to apply Divine healing light to others. One also at that point comes regularly in touch with one's Higher Self. This gives one a natural ability to more easily and smoothly develop many psychic skills, including astral travel. In nineteenth century India, awakened kundalini was a very rare phenomenon (hence some mythologizing and exaggeration), but today I happen to know for a fact that it's almost common among spiritually inclined individuals, at least in the West.

Once one has experienced a kundalini awakening, one may experience more of them. It isn't purely a physical experience at all. Rather, it just has a physical or energetic component. The physical energy actually starts from below the feet and travels up the body, eventually going up the spine and through the top of the brain. Each time, the individual experiences a major psychological or even spiritual breakthrough in their lives. Another part of the mythology says that for the experience to be genuine, one needs to experience such things as involuntary twitchings or energy blockages breaking apart, and so on. Actually, the fewer strange physical phenomena one experiences in the body like that, the cleaner and more powerful the experience is. The one exception to that is that awakened kundalini energy can make one's body and one's brain overheated. In the past I've spent a number of years where I would sweat abnormally and at inappropriate times, because my body was always somewhat hot. I spent four years not being able to have any sheet over me (let alone any blanket) while sleeping in summer, and only one top sheet and no blanket in winter. I also had to take precautions against getting dehydrated, by drinking filtered water with a little sea salt added. (Otherwise, I believe it's possible to develop epilepsy because of the brain getting physically overheated.) That's all I wish to say about kundalini energy, other than that it's a useful thing if yours has been awakened.

But as I say, thinking or worrying about what is the connection between kundalini energy and astral traveling is a distraction at this point.

And be patient. Also, usually the mind plays tricks on you and writes off initial out of body episodes, trying to convince you you're still in the physical. This is why little exercises, such as doing a body-length corkscrew, can help alert you that you're not in the physical at such a time.

gdelisle

30th August 2016, 20:30

Thank you so much TH!

I am hoping these few years have helped me learn to deal with fear and anxiety, and maybe I feel a little bit wiser as what to expect and the progressive method of approaching such tasks. I have also been reading Robert Monroe's book, and with his information in addition to your personalized help, it will help my progress steadily and significantly.

Thank you again and I will keep up!

TraineeHuman

31st August 2016, 06:53

When I used to use an astral body to astral travel --as distinct from doing it as a formless "point" of consciousness and delight --, the easiest way to do it for me (and for most others, as far as I know) was by going "lucid" within a (normal) dream. My intuition suggests that may be helpful for you too, gdelisle, or probably clarifying at least. One just has to be willing to let it happen some time when one will be asleep, plus sharpen one's level of general awareness sufficiently. Once I knew how to do it, I had no trouble succeeding at it every night, actually.

"Lucid" really means "fully aware" or "highly conscious". That may sound a paradox, of course, because one is doing it while asleep and not when physically awake. And how does one heighten one's ability to be "awake", in the sense of aware and conscious, even while physically sleeping? Well, that's precisely what all forms of meditation are about. (That's excluding such things as visualizations and affirmations and hypnosis from strictly and purely and in themselves being forms of meditation, as far as I'm concerned.)

You could, if you like, say to yourself: "I am not these physical sensations. I am not this body" while you observe that this is the case. Then you could say and observe : "I am not these (passing) emotions", and "I am not these thoughts or this one identity or identities -- they come and go like clouds in the sky." Then: "I am not this mind, because my inner being is at one with all there is, and because "my" universe is exactly the same as "the" universe." You could do that, but that is precisely what happens during any proper meditation session. The only difference is, it doesn't usually get verbalized.

So, "lucid" means, precisely, "genuinely conscious", or "in the Witness position" if you like.

Just by the way, it's very very common, after a lucid dream, for the individual to believe they've physically woken up when actually they haven't. Some tiny little detail just won't be in tune with the real world ... (Salvador Dali, anyone?)

Another suggestion is to check if you can fly. If you can, then my experience is that you're lucid dreaming (or, later on, you're consciously in both the astral and the physical simultaneously).

TraineeHuman

2nd September 2016, 06:09

I'd like to begin on making some more comments regarding how might we cultivate greater equanimity. Call it impartiality, seeing the sameness of all things, detachment, even-mindedness, or whatever else you may like, nevertheless it isn't "nothing". Not as if such a thing as nothing really exists anyway, strictly speaking.

My own experience has been that equanimity springs from something higher, and that higher force is intimately interconnected with formlessness -- which, again, isn't "nothing" at all, but something (well, not any kind of "something", but language fails my ability to find a better word) that's blissful and liberating, and gigantic, and beyond being stuck in any identity. So, going into states of formlessness during meditation (or sleep) is certainly helpful for the acquisition of greater equanimity.

One thing that's necessary as a preliminary here is that one's mental self, one's entire thinking process, needs to acquire and exercise a certain type of humility, or an awareness of the implications of what its limitations are. How do we learn to think or visualize without being victim to our habitual attachments? How do we come to view all our preferences as somewhat arbitrary or accidental or ultimately meaningless? Somehow we need to find a way to do that, for starters. Can we make ourselves vulnerable enough to strip away all our self-justifying opinions and preferred ways of doing things or seeing things? Perhaps only, I fear, if we already have some inner higher knowledge that whatever "we" truly are is truly something extraordinary and timeless, and as pricelessly valuable as it is formless.

gdelisle

2nd September 2016, 17:43

Thank you TH, I have realized a couple days ago that I had a dream (or maybe not) of some interesting happenings that seemed to resonate with one of the stories in Robert Monroe's book. First of all, even a week later, I can vividly recall the dream and while many of the events seem like nonsense, they might be the most direct associations that the brain could make out at the moment due to recent memory, etc..., as Robert Monroe explained in his book. The events involved me and several people, one of them my younger brother, riding on a bus while some sort of destruction was going on outside. Three airplanes would line up in the sky and sort of crash dive into the ground, causing destruction, while this bus seemed a sort of a "protection" that was getting us to a better place. I remember in one instant not seeing my brother and asking if he was okay, but I woke up after that. I am not sure this dream has any significance other than it was extremely vivid and easy to recall, but it did seem to resonate with some of Monroe's "dreams" that somehow manifested themselves in different ways using the dream events as symbols for what actually happened in his physical life.

Anyway, sorry for the long post, wanted to share this interesting dream, thanks!

TraineeHuman

4th September 2016, 01:11

First of all, even a week later, I can vividly recall the dream and while many of the events seem like nonsense, they might be the most direct associations that the brain could make out at the moment due to recent memory, etc..., as Robert Monroe explained in his book. The events involved me and several people, one of them my younger brother, riding on a bus while some sort of destruction was going on outside. Three airplanes would line up in the sky and sort of crash dive into the ground, causing destruction, while this bus seemed a sort of a "protection" that was getting us to a better place. I remember in one instant not seeing my brother and asking if he was okay, but I woke up after that. I am not sure this dream has any significance other than it was extremely vivid and easy to recall, but it did seem to resonate with some of Monroe's "dreams" that somehow manifested themselves in different ways using the dream events as symbols for what actually happened in his physical life.

Anyway, sorry for the long post, wanted to share this interesting dream, thanks!

If I may take the liberty of commenting on the possible significance of your dream, I'd like to say the following. I believe there aren't many dream symbols that have basically the same meaning for everyone. But one of the most common and universal dream symbols is that of a plane or car or train etc, and it represents one's own life, or the course of one's life. So, I'm glad to hear that although, unfortunately, the lives of some others around you and your brother are crashing and burning, for you and your brother things are going much better than that.

I believe the dream is also saying that somehow it's in your interest to accept your good fortune more fully. Can you practise liking yourself more, perhaps? I appreciate that may sound quite odd, but the truth is, most people secretly don’t like themselves, so such an exercise isn’t as silly as it sounds. You may also like to consider practising the exercise described in post #114.: http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?52121-The-Higher-Self-and-transcendent-experience-including-OBEs&p=606494&viewfull=1#post606494

TraineeHuman

5th September 2016, 03:53

In ancient Eastern thought, understanding was the supreme virtue (with love the secondmost supreme). But if we have equanimity, that does require us not to get ourselves fully tied up with either "being right" or "being wrong". After all, the very meaning of being wrong or ignorant implies that there is truth waiting to be liberated in us. We can only be ignorant if we're ignorant of something that is the truth. Equally, however wonderful some truth that we've found may be, we'll be betraying ourselves if we treat it as something greater than ourselves, or as something we need to be bound and limited by. That's the greater understanding, the true understanding. (The Divine is something that's indeed greater than our superficial selves, but the Divine is something alive and not merely some kind of truth.) Otherwise, we won't be open to the freshness in every new moment and to seeing other truths also, not to mention the greatness and sovereignty of our true inner nature, and the very power of the universe. So near yet so far.

Such a type of perfect balance in our thinking (coming from an inner balance in our being) plays such a huge role in bringing transcendence about. We must at least have it in glimpses, in moments. How tragic that it's so rare. It even seems equally rare among Chinese people, despite the central importance traditionally ascribed to "perfect balance" in Chinese culture. I come across so many spiritually serious people who it seems are altogether self-imprisoned in their own belief system (or in some common belief system -- Buddhism, Christianity, hypnotic visualizations, rationalism, whatever).

samildamach

5th September 2016, 20:08

Hi th
I've been doing some work with hs using the suggested post 24.what's coming across very strongly is that hs has my sence of humour and answers the questions before they have been fully asked.
Today I asked hs what is the question that I want to(the answer came here but I carried on anyway)ask you the most.
What is the easiest way for me to obe.
I am sitting g in the theatre blank screen up mind blank not focusing on anything and shortly am image of a skydiver appears and we are both standing in a box looking down at a forest,they jump out and its my turn.so I got my answer vividly in colour, loud and clear.

gdelisle

7th September 2016, 15:20

Hi TH,

Thank you for the feedback! I can see some correlation with your thoughts about the dream, and I will definitely look into post 114. My brother's presence was very interesting, and while I don't remember his overall "being there" throughout the dream, I remember the point where we entered the bus and he was left behind, causing me great trouble in the dream.

On another note, now I haven't even been able to sleep lately! My body is tired, eyes wanting to close, especially after some 'sleepytime' tea to help with the recent insomnia, but everything just seems uncomfortable. I don't think it is anxiety at first, but it very well could be subconscious, I just wouldn't know how to 'know'. Thanks TH, all the best!

gdelisle

7th September 2016, 15:23

TraineeHuman

8th September 2016, 01:11

I believe the dream is also saying that somehow it's in your interest to accept your good fortune more fully. Can you practise liking yourself more, perhaps?

This really resonates with something that I might need to do

Yes, liking yourself is certainly something you can consciously practise. It's very important to do so, though not in any conceited or dishonest fashion, for various reasons. One reason is that otherwise it's hard to accept that the extraordinary qualities and abilities of the Higher Self are actually part of who/what you truly are, if only you can manage to disentangle enough from the false "you" that conditioning and society tend to get you trapped in.

The exercise in post #114 is one major way to strengthen your ability to like (or, rather, accept the reality of) your true inner self. That's one reason why I suggest serious practising of it.

It's also important because you need (everyone needs) to progressively get in touch with greater and greater positivity within yourself in order to more and more face and thereby overcome your shadow (your unconscious ego or negativity). There have been various threads about the shadow or dark side, mostly with "Wetiko" in their title. E.g., http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?42499-Interview-Pul-Levy-Wetiko-the-Dreaming&p=455688&viewfull=1#post455688

When I used to astral travel every night, I would always use the positivity coming from my silver cord (which when stretched out -- on trips to other planets and moons -- was actually a violet color with a silver "star" at intervals). This is an energetic part of or offshoot from the Higher Self. It was very noticeable that this protected me with great feelings of positivity and calmness. I could also see, out of "the corner of my eye", that there was some frightening dark energy attached to me (as there is attached to everyone), but it was very clear that the violet and silver cord shielded me from being harmed by that energy.

Sueanne47

10th September 2016, 14:54

gdelisle

10th September 2016, 19:40

TraineeHuman

11th September 2016, 02:43

Hi TraineeHuman,

I read a thread on Avalon about Horus Ra, on there it said "The new age awakening can be dangerous as there are portals for dark forces to manifest" meaning people can get a psychic attack, this is why I have stopped meditating. What are your thoughts on that?

Sue

Hi Sue,

In all my lifelong experience (more than six decades, since I started naturally in childhood), proper meditation is generally the most powerful means there is of summoning positive and protective and benevolent forces and (benevolent, positive) light, and also all inspiration. (In some forms of meditation this can occur more subtly, but more subtle is ultimately more powerful.) It increases one's "level" of positive energy. Much of this is too subtle for most people to observe, but the light that's generated actually dissolves some of the very many little darker energies inside an individual. In my experience, it's the key to Heaven (and the only legitimate key I know of, though I guess I consider "deep prayer" to be effectively a form of meditation). In all my experience, it's also exactly the energy that one has to use to rescue individuals who are trapped in some hell. The subject of how to protect oneself as far as possible is more complex than it may seem, but speaking generally, proper meditation is all to do with taking ioneself onto stronger ground.

Also in all my experience, the only times when a "normal" person will experience psychic attack seem to be either during a drug episode (and, incidentally, marijuana is a very strong drug from a psychic point of view, I'm afraid, unless perhaps the individual is very, very strong and very, very advanced) or in a drug flashback, or at night while sleeping or going to sleep or maybe when having half woken up from sleep. The exceptions to that, in my experience, are, firstly and primarily, someone who has major emotional problems. (I can't make any judgments about any possible emotional problems, if such exist, of anyone writing in the Horus Ra thread, as I haven't met them in person and therefore it would be totally unprofessional of me to profess to diagnose them long-distance.) It's also the very rare case that some individuals seem to have very weak ego boundaries and that makes them overly suggestible or overly vulnerable to such things as psychic attacks. Such individuals shouldn't try to meditate, but should avail themselves of appropriate psychotherapy and also of plenty of healing.

A major facet of meditation, in my experience, is that it gradually and seamlessly teaches one how to come to know and gradually submit to the Divine will better and better. One normally can't just decide one day to follow the Divine will like that was some New Year's resolution.

Meditation does a great many things, and most of the posts in this thread are about them. There are so many, I can't even begin to summarize them or point towards them in one post. But as Jesus said: "Watch always." As I believe I've explained in this thread in huge detail, such "watching", and its mastery, is the very center of what meditation is all about, and the most central skill within meditation.

Also, one doesn't necessarily succeed in summoning positive forces or positive energy just by saying the name of Jesus or calling for your guardian angels or whatever. The safer and more effective way to do it is to first rise to a higher level of awareness. I know of no more effective, or as safe, a way of doing so than (proper) meditation. I would insist that by stopping your meditation you're now probably opening yourself up to greater influence by dark forces.

Do you have any other comments?

TraineeHuman

11th September 2016, 03:48

Hi TH,

Thank you for the feedback. You mentioned that this dark energy was always in the "corner of your eye" when you were astral travelling. In terms of the astral reality you travelled in does this mean that you somehow just felt the dark presence in your area, but well suppressed by the positivity of the silver cord? In addition, did you require constant focus to keep the dark energy from getting an edge, or was the initial "summoning" of the positivity enough to keep you protected the whole trip. Thanks for the interesting ideas, especially since you also suggested visualization of the silver cord's positivity, which might help bring positivity into daily life as well!

No, it didn't take constant effort at all to keep all dark energy totally "at bay". It didn't take any effort actually, except initially, when I didn't appreciate I was safe.

The first year when I astral traveled almost nightly, I would be very aware of my silver/violet cord almost constantly. It would make me feel extraordinarily peaceful and totally safe. It also had an incredible beauty and purity to it somehow, that exerted a strong pull of attraction. So yes, although I did also see some dark energy which, like everyone else, I also had in my energy field (my dark side), I quickly learnt, in some kind of energetic, nonverbal fashion, that the dark energy wasn't a threat that I should be concerned about at all. Much more scary than any of that, to me, was the first time I realized I was drifting through the vastness of space somewhere beyond Pluto and the only "lifeline" I had was my cord, however protective the cord may have felt.

Sueanne47

11th September 2016, 08:58

ulli

11th September 2016, 11:49

Sueanne47, the images in one's dreams are very important, as they can be messages from one's soul. But they are symbolic, and it would be a good idea to get a book that discusses dream symbols, and learn about them.

For instance, dreaming of a dog: a dog is symbolic of faith.
Dogs have faith in their owner, so the mind uses them when issues arise that are to do with faith.

The wounded dog is you, having just had a crisis of faith.
You are deeply hurt, maybe by the rift that has occured between yourself and others who are still stuck in unbelief.

The other image, of falling off a high building. Again, this is a symbol. You became high, maybe a bit too high.
When we first discover that the other dimension is not only populated by evil, but by immensely loving and beneficial beings, and behind them is the greatest love of the Creator himself, then it is only natural to get high.
Nothing has changed, they are always there, just that your own faith took a beating recently, and you are starting to crash.
Please do not worry. Carry on with your meditation practise, and slowly but surely you will make your way back up.
For our consciousness to grow it gets regular tests. We are in a gym here.

TraineeHuman

11th September 2016, 12:07

Do psychic mediums have to have a spirit guide to ward off harmful evil spirits when they are trying to reach a particular person that passed over?

Well, I'm sure that many if not most mediums tap into some of the memories of a dead person rather than directly communicating with the dead person themselves. One reason why I know this is because I'm sometimes able to communicate with dead people directly, and accurately. If the medium claims to need a guide for protection, the theory here is that the medium's spirit has completely left the body (which doesn't even make sense, I believe, because the medium hasn't died), and that the medium needs a guide to protect their body from being permanently taken over or walked-into by some other (discarnate) human spirit. "Just to obtain a message for you, I am vacating my body" is good dramatic theater, except it doesn't make sense. (I've investigated it carefully, with very expert mediums.) Plus, I happen to know it's amateurish. Many years ago I used to go to a very good spiritual circle. Everyone else in the group used to have one or two guides, and always the same ones. Mine were many and were mostly all different every week from those of other weeks, so I guess you could say I'm a "graduate" at working with guides -- and at never needing to have one "take over my body" in order to give me accurate information.

It's very convenient, as far as not taking responsibility for inaccurate information or for saying something shocking, if: "My guide said it, not me. Blame them, not me."

Just lately though, I'm getting a lot of headaches and nightmares ~ dreams that upset me all day if I think back on them.

If your memory of a dream from the previous night is greatly upsetting you, that may still be a good thing because it may mean you're facing something very unpleasant about yourself as you have been up till now. But on the other hand, a nightmare is always an urgent message from your Higher Self that you need to do something major to change the situation.

I had 2 dreams about being in the sea,
Usually, the sea is a universal symbol for spirit, or the Higher Self or higher consciousness.

2 dreams about being in a maze and cant get out,
So, some part of your life works as a trap that you can't seem to get out of. The biggest step out is to simply face the fact that it's happening. If you keep facing it, your consciousness will start to come up with ways of breaking free of the trap without too much financial or emotional loss.

one where I'm hanging off a tall building..about to let go,
This suggests you're being way too ambitious in some major way, and you need to find something else instead, that matches your current capabilities and level of experience.

and just recently ~ 2 men had a dog in a room, it was curled up undercover and it had the most horrific wounds.

Again, it sounds to me like you're probably being either too tough on yourself, or submitting yourself to unnecessary suffering inside, and to being treated very cruelly? Maybe you're treating yourself cruelly? Certainly, you seem to have been pushing yourself too hard.

Sueanne47

11th September 2016, 16:26

Thank you Ulli and TraineeHuman,

In the past few months I've been really sobbing to myself (once out in the garden hanging out the washing!) because of too much suffering that's going on in the world...and I take that on, and I feel like Jesus does of this hopeless situation, why are people being so evil (child blood sacrificies/yulin dog festival/fur trade/cruel family members etc.)

That is so interesting about my dream meanings! also I had a dream about the bible, and the pages were turning over. I started reading the bible after that..but since found it is all fabricated by king James.

TraineeHuman

17th September 2016, 13:42

Equanimity seems to me to be closely related with the whole notion of "balance". What does it really mean to be balanced, how do we know when we are there, and how do we make ourselves become less unbalanced? And, we can only remain balanced if we're anchored or centered in our inner true reality.

Equanimity involves at least two quite different aspects. One is that of union, or relative union. Before I talk about the other side, I’d like to suggest that everyone does experience mild or “baby” forms of oneness at the very least. Such as experiencing love, or affection, or communion, in some relationship, or some synergy in the workplace, or just being truly at ease at some point. These are all forms of union, even if they may be passing or you have to wait for them to happen. Hopefully one can progress to (as far as possible) uniting one's consciousness with the oneness, with infinite forces, no less, or at least eventually with such forces.

The other side of equanimity is that of diminishing or negating the interference to our experiencing the union, the oneness. Traditionally, the second side, which amounts to the gradual taming or reducing of the influence of our lower nature, often involved harsh self-discipline or self-denial of some form or other. But it also involved practices such as meditation designed to "still the mind", or at least put the ordinary mind onto the back burner. I believe that many of the forms of harshness or extremism are unsuitable in these times, or at least unnecessary. Monastic times are, or should be, over, I believe, at least in Western culture. I'd like to make a comment, in that light, about how the process of overcoming the lower nature works.

Certain forms of self-denial are indeed necessary, but not indiscriminate self-denial. It's not about such things as poverty, chastity and blind selflessness per se. The aim is to gradually unhitch us from our addictions to pleasures of “the flesh”. This is necessary because animal or egoic pleasures are very good and thorough at taking up all the space in us where higher consciousness should be able to come through. But as soon as we create such space, by holding off and “sacrificing” our lower pleasures by saying no to them and holding our energies still, the higher consciousness does come through. It’s about consciously and often willing and creating the space for the higher. There’s nothing wrong here with enjoying a good, healthy meal, for example, as long as the pleasure of such a meal, or other forms of lower pleasure, don't dominate one's whole day. There's nothing wrong with pleasure in itself, as long as it doesn't turn into The Sorcerer's Apprentice.

We all have two different consciousnesses in us that get reincarnated. The lower one of these considers you, or your Higher Mind, to be the God in charge of its existence. The lower consciousness is given various names, such as "the human animal" and the "inner child". In this thread I have called it "the body-consciousness". The lower consciousness is the playful part of us that knows how to communicate with others in a friendly way, and generally has an instinctive understanding of how to deal with physical realities and the basics of physical existence. The higher consciousness isn't expert in any of these areas, but nevertheless ultimately is, or should be, in charge of the lower. The lower consciousness doesn't live in or understand nonduality at all. The higher consciousness absolutely needs to ensure that the lower consciousness's needs for pleasure are satisfied in a sensible way. But the higher consciousness also needs to draw the line somewhere and give its needs for peace and bliss priority over animal pleasures.

Obviously, some level of quieting of the ordinary mind and of one's "matrix" of perception is absolutely necessary in this. Otherwise it will be impossible to tune into whatever is coming to one out of the oneness, or out of whatever union or synergy or whatever that you may experience. The oneness isn't silent, just huge and very, very interconnected. (Speaking of "listening", some individuals appear to hear certain beautiful, often rather musical sounds when they are experiencing a higher dimension. Others see bright light, and quite a few experience both the light and the sound. In my own case I usually have a more abstract kind of experience, but certainly always an inner "sensation" or "feeling" different from any physical sensation or emotion.) Incidentally, when I say we need to quiet the ordinary mind, that doesn't mean killing it. It simply means being able to not use it where it's appropriate not to, and also keeping it in harmony with the Higher Mind. Rather like keeping one's hand still when its activity isn't required, but not condemning or despising or failing to appreciate one's hand either.

The stilling or downplaying of our ordinary thinking and animal desires isn't the only thing we need to do. A further thing is, this needs to be accompanied by a willingness to bear all experiences equally, or to do our best to do so. If we can't be happy with what life is dishing out to us at a given moment, then at least we need to deliberately not indulge our feeling unhappy about it -- no blaming of others, no feeling that we were hard done by or overlooked or insulted, as far as possible no indulging in like or dislike or egocentrism, and so on. This takes much practice. I'd suggest that the proper use of grounding makes this much easier, though. Several months ago I mentioned a basic qi gong grounding exercise, that involved one drawing on and combining "earth" energies and "heavenly" energies and bringing both into one's body intermixed.

Then we also need, further, to actively will that a higher and less piecemeal form of Mind, which I call intuition, will at appropriate times take the place of the ordinary mind.

Rai

20th September 2016, 20:23

Hey :)
Recently I had many dreams, mediations and signs from my higher self.

On Sunday I was out with a friend of mine and we both fell my higher self around us. The atmosphere of the higher self itself was a very high frequency. The last time I had experienced this was 2015. But not at this high frequency...

Last week I found a new member of my soul group...
Yesterday she told me about a dream where she saw me and another man in a castle. A meditation place of mine. And there were many stages of "quests" and "learning" like an astral plane school.

Now... I make this post because I have thought of some experiences in my lifetime. I'm in a melancholical mood and think of many things at this time. I have changed my life recently.

I don't think the decisions are bad because my Higher Self is about to "join in". Give me signs. Many Synchronicities and contacts that live near me in my new Place... two streets away ..

And now I had the feeling to write this post here....

The thing is, since Sunday I have the feeling that something huge is coming in the astral plane. Like 2011 - 2013. But I don't know what it is exactly. The dreams (preparing for war -> cabalistic, Gevurah) are coming more often like 2011-2013.
Maybe someone else have this feeling, experiences?

TraineeHuman

21st September 2016, 07:59

Hello Rai,

Welcome to the Forum. It's so great to hear that you've felt moved to make many changes in your life for the better. That sounds like you're really putting the wonderful inspiration that comes from the Higher Self to use, which everyone should do, ideally. It's the only wise way to live, for anyone who can do it, or for as long as they can do it. Turning in, and living from the "I" and never the "me". Living always from the other side of "me", from not treating yourself like an object, like a mere thing. Having trust for "I" and not for "me".

Yes, the Higher Self does try to give us so many signs, if only we can learn to look for them, to listen, like you have been. If we never listen, eventually the Higher Self just has to give up, for the time being. Then the person will say: "I can't get any message or any knowledge from my Higher Self." So sad.

I felt and intuitively saw some great changes in the astral world in December 2012, but big or small changes keep on happening at various different times. I know that Tolec and Simon Parkes have both claimed, independently of each other, that recently the leading Reptilians controlling us were punished and permanently removed from the planet. They implied that the less powerful Reptilians that remain will follow before too long. Various individuals have also claimed that after earlyish 2017 the portal by which Reptilians have access to this planet will be permanently closed.

TraineeHuman

24th September 2016, 11:46

If we attain some measure of equanimity, or even just of deep inner peace, then we will automatically be seeing the whole of reality in an extraordinarily different way than before. For, we will in some way be seeing and appreciating the sameness of all things, no less, and feeling the outpouring of inner power and simplicity that that brings. (The sameness is always easier to see and feel than the Oneness is.) Plus we will be aware of some things which I'd like to partly describe in this post.

About unleashing our true power. This is done over time, but I would insist that we don't truly and fully discover our sovereignty until we have made various inward changes, even though some external changes are necessary also. That's not to denigrate the importance of making the external changes. To give one example, I found myself making some such changes in a major way when I first became self-employed. Fortunately, at the time I was able to survive quite well economically. Provided you can do so, there is such a gigantic experience of freedom that you experience when you are responsible for absolutely every decision about how your business needs to operate. In a sense, the only limits become those that you create yourself. The burden of total responsibility becomes mostly a delight. You soon acquire enormous "initiative" and "proactiveness", and these become normal for you. It doesn't matter if your business is something like selling buttons, say. As long as it's lucrative and it's either practically needed and useful to people or it brings either joy or genuine improvement to others' lives, you will still be making a difference. The rest of my comments in this post, however, are mostly about how the unleashing of our power at an inner level works. All the more so because external power (of any kind) corrupts greatly, unless internal power has been cultivated and mastered first -- which is much easier said than done. Having said that, I guess I should add that the inner and the outer should properly always stay joined to each other. And that abuse of power occurs "only" because the individual has lost their connection to the inner.

Equanimity is not as passive, nor as neutral, as we may perhaps suppose. From the viewpoint of the ordinary mind (the ordinary mind as we commonly know it), equanimity is certainly passive and neutral. But one thing that has to happen is that the ordinary mind needs to be transformed. Compared to the "normal" role the ordinary mind fills, that of fully dominating our lives and our identities and how we see reality, the ordinary mind does indeed itself need to become more passive and also more neutral in the sense of less excitable and much less judgmental and less dominating and much more open to being led by intuitions and inspirations. It becomes a whole new world. Another way to put this is that the lower mind needs to be majorly transformed, or converted, in such a way as to make it much less petty and attached to its wounds and much more sympathetic towards the Higher Mind and the Higher Mind's values and outlook. The ego, and hence the ordinary mind, needs to be transformed. It needs to learn to accept metaphysical concepts and realities -- such as it hopefully will in part begin to through reading posts in this thread, for example, and also through learning to accept self-denial at appropriate moments. It also needs to become more and more "neutral" in the sense of learning to cushion the impact of the difficulties of existence in this physical and chaotic and duality-ridden world.

"Normally", the Higher Mind seems to be passive and absent, at least to our conscious awareness. So, for equanimity to take hold, our higher consciousness, our higher knowing, needs to become more active, and noticeably so. That greater (inner) activity isn't neutral (in many ways), but it's more in harmony with the higher realities. It accepts the beauty, and the truth, and the greatness of the higher realities, and actively allows them to begin to flower within our lives, not least through allowing bliss, and also quiet inspirations, to permeate through into more and more the activities of our everyday lives. Unlike the lower mind, the Higher Mind has a strength that's the equal of the entire world that it faces in our lives. Where before there were continual reactions of either pleasure, pain or indifference to the phenomena in our life, now that gets replaced more and more by a certain type of endurance. That endurance needs to have sufficient power or strength to match the lower urges and pleasures. This means not shirking from bearing the suffering that confronts, but also bearing it, ideally, only in order that one may learn to inject bliss or joy that transforms that situation. As it says somewhere in the Bible: "To him [or her] who overcomes will I grant them to sit with me [the Divine, or the Superconsciousness] in my throne." The former constant restless and excited seeking for pleasure gradually gets replaced by a calmish contentment. This isn't mere quietness and indifference at all, nor is it a withdrawal from experience, but it's a superior way of living than how one did before.

In other posts I've talked about the importance of quieting the ordinary mind and transcending all thought, particularly during meditation. That continues to be important when one is meditating, but as one progresses one needs to eventually keep the gates very much wide open to the influx of higher thoughts. By that I mean inspirations and intuitions coming down from the higher parts of us and then entering the world of form by expressing themselves in a thought and feeling. (And incidentally, these always won't be negative if we are at a higher level or so-called "frequency" of consciousness.)

TraineeHuman

25th September 2016, 10:46

In the previous post we looked at the replacing of one's eager seeking after pleasure or pleasant things with inner calmness, which over time hopefully develops into bliss. It's not as if pleasant things aren't there any longer then, nor that we cease to enjoy them. Rather, we learn to enjoy everything overall, at any moment, because we're in touch with existence itself, though against that background we may also certainly feel physical or emotional or intellectual discomfort. We will still feel both pleasure and aversion, but will no longer be swayed by them so much. After all, bliss is a kind of ultra-pleasure, rendering all "normal" pleasures ever so partial and unfulfilling by comparison.

Are there methods for cultivating an impartiality towards that pull in us to seek pleasures rather than the universal Pleasure? There are. I do have reservations about one's living in any way that could be considered monastic or that involves "dropping out of" normal society. For the record, though, some examples of such methods include the following.

In the previous post I have already mentioned the method of having (or developing) great endurance -- while holding some kind of insight into the glory of the higher worlds. A second method is as follows. Through using one's will and awareness, one can learn to consciously cultivate impartiality. A first step on this path might be to cultivate a nonjudgmental approach. Being nonjudgmental doesn't entail being nondiscrimintaing. It just means one genuinely considers all points of view first, including those one is unaccustomed to or feels an aversion to, or considers insane or extreme. I know someone who professes to cultivate a nonjudgmental attitude, and considers his position on 9/11 as a prime example of how nonjudgmental he is. His position on 9/11 is that he sits right on the middle of the fence regarding whether 9/11 truth is valid. He dismisses all the evidence as too inconclusive. The trouble is, he is the sole judge of how good the arguments and evidence for 9/11 truth are. He seems to have no insight at all, as it seems to me, that he is actually very reactionary in his views and heavily invested, at a subconscious level, in certain kinds of dogmatism and narrowness. (A common problem, in the sense that someone can be stuck in one identity for half or all heir life, all the while believing that being that idenity is being themselves.) As my mother used to say, though, it's best to ignore bad examples as guides to how we might behave.

Learning to consciously cultivate impartiality towards all experiences will be a huge task, one that may take a lifetime (or a few). Another partial form of it is learning to have impartiality towards all individuals. There are many professions or occupations where this is in theory required. These of course include all healing or helping or caring professions, all customer service roles, and professions where one has a client for one's services.

Another method is through learning to cultivate true detachment. As I've mentioned in this thread, that involves being able to be aware of oneself as a Higher Mind or as a Witness but at the same time to actively, consciously observe the lower mind's busy goings on without taking any part in them or giving them any support. This method depends on one's developing an understanding of (not so much an intellectual one), an insight into, the difference between the Higher Mind and the lower.

Another method is that of total acceptance -- of everything and everyone in one's life. Something which many women may find themselves close to doing whne they have young children.

Another method, if we can do it, is through having genuine direct consciousness of the Divine sufficiently often, or sufficiently memorably, that we remain very aware of how partial and incomplete and our lower faculties and our ordinary mind's point of view are.

Once we learn to hold an impartial consciousness, we'll find that the impartiality starts to become more active. When that happens, the impartiality will turn into a consciousness of the oneness and harmony of all things.

TraineeHuman

1st October 2016, 08:28

We've seen how although equanimity may at first glance seem to be a passive thing, actually in many ways that isn't so. This is because it's a matter of the Higher Mind and the higher faculties becoming active, but admittedly also of the lower mind not disappearing but shifting into a relatively passive role compared to its former dominance of us. The truth is, the world of the lower mind does itself unavoidably always involve certain kinds of dullness and inertness, which I'd now like to describe.

Unfortunately, there does exist a certain false matrix which underlies, and for centuries has underlain, Western thought. This matrix was not present in ancient Asian cultures. The matrix involves the blind but very deep-seated assumption that reality is made up of objects only (plus the space they exist in); and that objects by their very nature interact accidentally with one another most of the time, if they interact at all. Hence "reality" is unwittingly taken to be, by its very nature, necessarily very much an alienated and alienating place, ultimately meaningless and arid. What makes an object an object is its separateness, its estrangement, from all other objects. Hence the matrix "tells" us that separation and inertness, not unity and harmony, is centrally and inextricably built into every single example of all that is "real". One of the aims of equanimity is to stay free of this matrix.

So, this matrix makes us believe that there is nothing and no-one that is not, purely and solely, an object. Unfortunately, though, whenever one treats oneself solely as an object, that is exactly to treat oneself as nothing but the ego. And to treat anyone else purely as an object (as distinct, for example, from a subject that isn't in any way an object) is to give them very little space to act in any way other than as the ego as well. It's also to effectively relate to them only through grasping of some kind, and hence always, always through attachment. You can only be a victim if you are fooling yourself that you are an object. This matrix has ruled Western thought with a rod of iron for at least two thousand years, a great darkness broken only by the light of mysticism and humanism and by quantum theory, and partially by existentialism.

Much of the blame for promoting and rationalizing this view that everything that's real is an object lies with Aristotle. Aristotle himself fully admitted that Heraclitus's view of reality was a superior and fuller and more accurate account of what there is. However, Aristotle believed, along with Socrates and Plato, who also acknowledged the superiority of Heraclitus's philosophy, that in the time they lived in their fellow countrymen wouldn't have been able to understand Heraclitus.

Heraclitus's view of reality, of what there ultimately is, was essentially the same as that of Taoism (and hence also of Zen), and (where most important, and overlooking some details) was also essentially the same as that of the philosopher Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein was probably the most influential figure in the world of philosophy for more than half of the twentieth century, at least in English-speaking countries. The most important parts of this view of reality can be summarized as follows. Firstly, the meaning of any word is like the meaning of the word "this". It varies greatly, depending on the context, the situation, in which it's used. (This was possibly the biggest philosophical discovery in the twentieth century.) Secondly, instead of being made up of objects, reality is comprised of gestalts (or "views", if you like) and of interconnections. Each gestalt always has a foreground and background. The foreground and background are constantly interacting with and modifying and at least partially changing each other (whereas an object remains constant in all backgrounds). One way Heraclitus described part of this was: "You cannot step into the same river twice." Why not? Because the second time, the river is no longer exactly the same as it was even a short time before, plus one part of your background, the second time, will be the fact that you've already stepped into the water before, so you're no longer the same "you" in that respect. (This is also the implicit philosophy that goes with living in the Now.)

You can always rebel against this matrix and stand free of it whenever you refuse to treat anyone as an object in any way. Whenever you successfully don't treat yourself as an object, and only then, however you may manage to do that, it will immediately put you into your Higher Mind, and into being truly authentic.

TraineeHuman

8th October 2016, 11:50

It should be clear by now that the Higher Mind operates with and from a certain degree of equanimity, while the lower mind, being always reactive, never does. But the influence of the lower mind doesn't go away for a very long time, if ever entirely. This can sometimes appear confusing. One day, or in one situation, one of the two types of mind seems dominant, but this doesn't last. This will be true even if we can at last find ourselves for significant periods adopting a general mindset of impartiality to all things -- because we come to be more and more aware of how wonderful it is just to exist, and for us the beauty of that mostly overshadows any suffering or trouble.

At this stage we'll find ourselves feeling many of the difficulties and griefs of others just as if they were our own. These all get added to our own, making the opposition to the emergence of our higher nature all that much greater. Forces within us get magnified at this stage, and ever after. If we persist and don't give up on holding a very strong intention to free ourselves, though, eventually a greater strength within us emerges, a strength that more and more becomes equal to and even stronger than all the obstacles. At that point the higher and lower nature begin to get more and more separated and unentangled with each other. But that is a very long process.

The reason why stronger forces within us get permanently unleashed has to do with the true nature of individuality. All our individuality is actually a veiled or misperceived version of our universality -- of all that there is and can be, but as seen from our "own" unique angle. As we misperceive the true nature of our individuality less and less, we come to see and concretely live in our true vastness more and more.

TraineeHuman

16th October 2016, 23:58

Advaita Vedantins seem to be fond of speaking of self-observation, or being a witness of oneself, in terms of doing so by becoming directly, experientially aware that you are the One, the sole Consciousness. However, my experience has been that one can very effectively observe oneself simply through going into any of the formless worlds. There's no need to enter a divine world before you can do this. It's also much easier to put oneself into a formless world (i.e., into one's Higher Self/Mind). Certainly it takes everyone some practice to achieve this, through meditation or certain other methods, until one can do ultimately do it at will, by and large. On the other hand, experiencing the divine worlds seems to be a rare event even for quite a few of those individuals who do manage to experience them.

I personally would define a "divine being" to be someone (if such exists) whose consciousness continuously remains in some divine world at all times and who moreover can apply ultimate Divine power into the physical world, e.g. by being able to create a new physical body for themselves (not a clone body) at will. I've noticed that some Advaita Vedantins seem to reserve the word "enlightenment", or "enlightened being", for individuals who have reached such a stage, or something similar. But others seem to use the "enlightenment" word to apply to anyone who has experienced a divine world (perhaps very recently) and is currently still under its spell. I.e., the individual still feels that the entire Universe or Source is the only thing that's "driving" their body. Then there's the intermediate position, which I personally favor. This is to define "enlightenment" as freedom from unhappiness. Actually, there are gradations of this and it's not as clearcut a phenomenon as it may sound, but neither are the other two notions of "enlightenment". In my next post, I'll explain why I consider the Advaita Vedantin eagerness to emphasize self-observation from a state of consciously being the One may be misleading, and certainly has been in the past for me.

TraineeHuman

17th October 2016, 23:55

Let's take a careful look at the meaning behind a certain Zen anecdote. The anecdote involves Basho, who would go on to become one of the most famous Zen masters. At the time of the anecdote he had not yet achieved masterhood. I suggest the anecdote is rather subtle, and has at least two important meanings. It goes as follows.

One day when Nangaku came to Basho’s hut, Basho stood up to receive him. Nangaku asked him, “What have you been doing recently?”

Basho replied, “Recently I have been doing the practice of seated meditation exclusively.”

Nangaku asked, “And what is the aim of your seated meditation?”

Basho replied, “The aim of my seated meditation is to achieve Buddhahood.”

At that point Nangaku took a roof tile and began rubbing it on a rock near Basho’s hut.

Basho, on seeing this, asked him, “Master, what are you doing?”

Nangaku replied, “I am polishing a roof tile.”

Basho asked, “What are you going to make by polishing a roof tile?”

Nangaku replied, “I am polishing it to make it into a mirror.”

Basho said, “How can you possibly make a mirror by rubbing a tile?”

Nangaku replied, “And how can you possibly ever make yourself into a Buddha by doing seated meditation?”

One point I have no doubt this anecdote was intended to imply is that there's little value in using mind (in however subtle a sense of "mind" you like) to try to change mind for the better. The mind trying to make itself very pure is still just more mind, and therefore not what/who we really are. But I suspect the major point intended is something else, based on my own experience and also my understanding of the Zen culture.

Going back to the first point, though, I have come across some teachers of Advaita Vedanta or nondualism who believed that all that was necessary was for the mud, the baggage, inside us to all fall away, and that it would do so provided only that we experienced the Divine with sufficient clarity or frequency -- in other words, to make our tile into a clear mirror, at least temporarily.

I recall how in my early twenties I was working in a job I hated -- though at that age I probably would have hated almost any job. It was all a matter of me projecting my own baggage onto the job. Work is work, and its nature is intrinsically neutral. In more recent years I've been able to do any form of work and always inject some bliss into it, leaving others with the impression that I must love that particular line of work. But back in my early twenties I hated the work, even though in the evenings I would often experience going into one of the divine worlds. The puzzle for me was that my experiences in the evenings didn't manage to transform what I did by day into something wonderful. No doubt they made it seem less unpleasant, although I was also haunted by the contrast between what I experienced by night and what I endured by day. Clearly, the evening experiences weren't enough to dissolve the "mud". In this way I came to the conclusion that what I needed was some form of personal growth work, or psychotherapy (not in the sense of having anything other than "normal" problems to resolve). I also became aware that at an esoteric level some of the ancient Eastern paths were indeed psychotherapies.

Experiencing and seeing profound harmony and unity doesn't of itself give you the insight into how to overcome the discords and conflicts that lie mostly in your unconscious or subconscious. By looking more deeply at unity alone, or pure harmony, you'll only see unity, or harmony, and you won't even see the discords that are in you. You won't even know what they are in your specific case. What's needed is to experience those discords through involving yourself in everyday life and entering situations where your baggage comes up to the surface, out of your subconscious or unconscious, and reveals itself to you. At that point the insights coming from your higher awareness become considerably more useful, in what's effectively some kind of psychotherapeutic process, mainly because they give you keys to resolving each area of discord that comes up. The higher consciousness also gives you the positivity not to feel overwhelmed by or trapped in or identified within the negativity. So yes, the insights and understanding that come from experiencing the higher worlds are essential , but so also is the having of all the everyday life experiences. Some self-analysis is needed here, but what's more important is self-understanding, insight.

To add further subtlety, it's not a matter of how much experience of the everyday world you've had, but of how deeply and fully and superconsciously you've been able to face its challenges -- its disappointments and limitations in particular, and of how fully you've discovered and transformed all that was hiding in the shadows of your subconscious and unconscious. Even more specifically, I have found, it's a matter of facing and dissolving your own negative self-judgments.

TraineeHuman

30th October 2016, 22:27

Earlier in this thread I have talked about the formless worlds, which I learnt about entirely from my own experience and not as a result of hearing about them or from any reading. I'd like to say more about my experiences of them, and in the following post I'd like to describe where I believe they may fit in the hierarchy of dimensions and why I consider I know that their formless nature is no illusion.

I initially knew them as "the infinite worlds" (my term for them). I discovered them like this. At the age of 15, for very mysterious reasons I suddenly found myself going through total psychological death. I didn't have any terminal disease, and wasn't feeling suicidal in any literal or physical sense. But once I'd started on this and it had gained overwhelming momentum, it felt so right, to stop would have seemed completely ridiculous. I immediately found myself every day having the most extraordinary and overwhelming experiences of the beauty of nature. Even though I didn't expect to physically die, I became extraordinarily appreciative of many of the huge old trees close to where we lived -- as if I was going to lose my current experience of them, once I'd inwardly gone through that total loss of my current identity. Since early childhood I'd in any case been used to communicating and interacting very closely and extensively with nature spirits, and I soon now developed particularly close, intense, intimate relationships with some of the ones near where I lived.

The more evolved among the nature spirits almost immediately now began to teach me meditation in a very intense way, a subject some of them obviously had very expert and advanced knowledge about. I soon began to notice that when I meditated -- which I would do with my eyes half-open or partly open -- , I could see a circle of energy covering the ground around me. That circle's area soon started to expand, and before long I seemed to be able to quickly make it expand all the way to the horizon. Then I'd push it out even further, and try to make it go around the earth as far as I could, beyond the horizon.

Further again beyond that, though, I discovered that if I kept "expanding" my field of attention I could shift gears and suddenly go into what seemed to be a very different, non-physical world. I almost immediately discovered that that world was infinite somehow. It never occurred to me to doubt that it was anything but infinite. Clearly also, I had no doubt whatever that such a world was at least partly (if not wholly) beyond all time and space. Which I found mind-blowing and ever so fascinating, and in the first months I spent considerable time pondering how one could ever grasp what that really meant -- sometimes while I would be staring at the stars at night. Today I would call that world a formless world. Ever since then I've been living with a very, very strong daily consciousness of the presence of formlessness in my life, a presence that refuses to ever fully go away, as if I was married to it. Being (as far as I know) infinite in nature, though, the formless worlds always bring wonderful detachment and a sense of great vastness and inner power --- and of the ability to move around in them effortlessly and without having any kind of body at all. But they're also a place (or should I say a "no place"?) where one always feels a sense that it's possible to get hopelessly lost, even if only temporarily, and even if that's lost pleasantly though in some partly escapistic sense.

Shortly after I turned sixteen I began to experience the Divine worlds. But that's another story. I continue to be amazed, though, at how little awareness or mention there seems to be of the existence of the formless worlds and of their place in one's spiritual experience. All "Emptiness" (or manifestations of sunyata, or the Void) is initially, or at its lowest dimensional manifestations, formlessness -- and it certainly isn't empty in any nihilistic sense either.

TraineeHuman

31st October 2016, 01:53

The first dimension above the physical one we live in is the world that's inhabited by earthbound spirits. A bleak and difficult place, though a place where there are still physical-like senses and colors are brighter and where the experience of sensuality is actually much more intense than in the physical world. (Warning: don't at any time or in any sense let yourself get trapped there, the way drug addicts and alcoholics and sex addicts and the power-mad do.) It's sometimes called the "etheric" plane, although the term "etheric" is instead used by others to refer to something quite different and much higher, namely, the fascinating "creation" plane, the site of the birth of all ideas, that's between, or at the intersection of, the lowest of the formless worlds and the highest of the mental planes.

Next we have the various emotional planes, which up until now I've called the "astral planes". I intend to start using the term "emotional" instead now, because many use the term "astral" to cover all the emotional planes plus the mental planes. In this thread up till now I've often used the term "4D" to refer to emotional planes, "5D" to refer to the mental planes, and "6D" to refer to the lowest of the formless planes. However, there seem to be probably five levels within the emotional planes, and some people could and no doubt do give them numbers such as "4D" to "8D". Gravity no longer operates once one gets past the two lowest of the emotional planes. By the way, the dimension number, such as the "3" in "3D", has nothing to do with spatial or mathematical dimensions (such as length, width and breadth) as far as I am concerned (and many others are also), once one gets past 3D.

Incidentally, non-duality becomes part of "the landscape" only when one gets to the formless worlds. There are deep philosophical problems in explaining what the formless worlds and beyond are like, because they are beyond "having an identity", because the very notion of "identity" in the particular way we usually think of it is arbitrary, rather like agreeing to drive on a certain side of the road (although there's more to that as well, which I won't go into here).

Gravity is just one example of how "as above, so below" is always true but also "as below, not necessarily so above" is also true. Some people point out that reality is always holographic, which is true, and they wrongly then suppose this proves that "as below, so above". But they forget that the "lower" or smaller scale version of a hologram certainly doesn't contain or do or display as much freedom as everything that's in the larger scale version.

As far as I can determine, all memory comes from, and gets stored in, a plane (a dimension) that lies between the lowest mental and the highest emotional planes, or at their intersection. This is sometimes called "the akashic plane".

The mental worlds contain concepts, thoughts, symbols, pictures, identities, personalities, and languages. As far as I am aware, the mental worlds are made out of electricity and the emotional worlds out of magnetism. The formless and divine worlds lie quite beyond and outside the electromagnetic spectrum, though forces or beings in them can and do reach down into the electromagnetic worlds.

It's true that the lowest of the formless worlds seem to be dominated by very bright lights. But as far as I can tell, the "light" there is not electromagnetic but rather, all my experience suggests that electromagnetic light is some kind of lesser version of that "light". I believe this is rather like the way that some people see auras. They see an aura as colored visible light, but actually what is there is some kind of invisible energy.

One way to appreciate one aspect of what the formless worlds are like is to consider the meaning of a mathematical free variable, such as "x", where "x" stands for no particular or individual thing, yet it's not nothing either.

TraineeHuman

7th November 2016, 11:40

In India to this day, one comes across many sadhus (holy men, and sometimes holy women), many of whom spend their time mostly doing nothing, apparently, but sitting in a state of bliss. I'd like to make some comments, based on my own experiences of the divine worlds, and also of "everyday" bliss, regarding why I consider such sitting in bliss not to be as great an achievement as many believe, not at all. Not unless, that is, it is actively and frequently combined with intensive facing of one's individual baggage and of all the limitations inherent in one's living in the physical world.

If my own experience is any guide, one's experiences of the divine worlds eventually undergo certain very major changes -- once one does get to consciously experience the divine worlds, which itself is an advanced subject. Also, one's whole attitude to "seeking enlightenment" or "seeking the Divine" goes through an even bigger number of transformations as one progresses in this advanced subject. To describe some of the transformations in attitude towards "seeking enlightenment / the Divine", in this post I'll comment about the meaning of the seventh of the ten Zen Oxherding Pictures, based on my own experience. In two later posts I'll similarly comment about my experience of what the eighth and the ninth Pictures are apparently referring to.

Pictures one to six are as follows, where "the Ox" means "the real Self". (1) Searching for the Ox. (2) Discovering the Ox's Tracks. (3) Seeing (part of) the Ox. (4) Catching the Ox. (5) Taming the Ox. (6) Riding the Ox Home.

This brings us to the seventh picture, where the Ox disappears, forgotten, or is transcended. Let me explain, more specifically, that what this refers to is that at this stage, having already experienced the divine worlds a number of times at least, one now gives up seeking to reach anything "ultimate" or "Divine" or "One" or that is "enlightenment".

In this way, although at the age of sixteen I would experience some Divine world(s) each weekend for over six months, some twelve years later I stopped experiencing them (as anything "external", at least). But that happened because somehow the urge to experience any of the highest levels of reality no longer drew me. At the time I didn't understand why, but looking back I can see that I had somehow made some of the bliss of the One become part of my inner self, so that in some way it was always with me and it was possible to feel it directly, in part at least, simply by going inwards. Another very noticeable thing was that, as far as I can see in retrospect, my individuality grew bigger and bigger, so to speak, until one day it had become altogether too vast, and too greatly flowing with, and permeated by, the formless, to be contained in just one set of points of view and memories. This brought much inner wildness, the unleashing of massive forces, even though I believe I seemed to largely maintain an outer discipline that kept the wildness constrained, or even over-constrained, as far as others could see.

I also noticed, though, that I had a fond attachment to formlessness at that time. My favorite way of enjoying that was to go "flying" (initially in my emotional body, but later always in my mental body) even while I was engaged in everyday activities of work or travel or other activities in the everyday world.

greybeard

7th November 2016, 12:35

Deleted not relevant to the thread
Chris

TraineeHuman

13th November 2016, 01:49

The eighth Oxherding Picture is all about experiencing and even being universality, complete nonduality, and complete forgetting of "me" through going beyond. Here universal consciousness is all there is. It's the Mountaintop.
The poem that goes with the eighth Picture goes as follows:

"Whip, rein, person, and ox all merge into emptiness,
No words can reach across this vast blue sky.
How can snow build up on a burning stove?
Here finally, I walk with the Patriarchs."

In the Zen tradition, this state is considered incomplete and, when divorced from ordinary life, to be escapist, and denying of creation, not to mention quite denying of integration and of true oneness.

As I've said in other posts, my own experience, and that of almost all others I have met who have had conscious experience of the divine worlds which are the Mountaintop, is that experiencing the Mountaintop is only the beginning, albeit the "advanced" beginning. And that the ultimate involves coming down from the Mountaintop but learning the much, much harder task of how to eventually retain the equanimity and bliss while in the midst of everyday work and life. (This is also why in the Zen monasteries one was required, and still is required, to do four hours of hard work every day.) As Kipling's poem "If..." eloquently explains, the next step after the Mountaintop is learning how to stay inwardly at the Mountaintop while engaged in every form of conflict or great misfortune or insanity that comes along and seems to leave you adrift and drowning at sea.

TraineeHuman

17th November 2016, 06:57

The ninth and tenth Oxherding Pictures are about coming down from the mountaintop and returning into "the marketplace," the "real world". This is seen as the ending that the whole story of living a life on this planet, or many, many lifetimes, is invariably heading towards as its final destination and flowering and as its fullest essential expression.

And so in the Zen tradition, no matter which stage(s) one may appear to be at, the "return" to ordinary life is considered integral to every day that one lives even if one may be living in the "hothouse" that is a monastery. So integral, in fact, that the Zen tradition is that meditation and "practice" in the sense of physical labor, among other everyday things, need to go hand in glove in many different ways, regardless of which Oxherding stage one might seem to be primarily at. One of the implications of this is that one is expected to use meditation to let go of the "stuck energy" of any specific tensions or traumas one has, by getting in touch with the horribleness of how such a stuck energy feels and facing it head-on but also by at the same time staying detached enough from it to relax and dissolve it into "empty" equanimity.

The ninth stage is the first of the ten stages that one remains in permanently, more or less, once one has experienced it. I would call it the "freedom from unhappiness" stage. Notice, however, that even if we aren't living at this stage we may still learn to have many experiences of equanimity under certain limited conditions. This can become rather like gradually reclaiming more and more land from the sea. In my next post I'll attempt to describe some things that, as best I understand, are necessary for the achievement of freedom from unhappiness (in most of one's everyday life).

Guish

29th November 2016, 17:13

TraineeHuman

30th November 2016, 07:42

Whiskey_Mystic

30th November 2016, 07:55

greybeard

30th November 2016, 08:15

Yes, enlightenment is not a state, its the removal of ignorance.
Chris

greybeard

30th November 2016, 09:19

It seems to me that there may be common ground between the various "beliefs"
This is possibly even more so with the original teachings before they became religions and people debated what the teaching meant.

I never claim my thoughts are right or am dogmatic about my belief of the moment.
The belief being that only "God" is and Self realization reveals that there is not an individual person, never was--thats the illusion.
What seems to stand in the way of enlightenment is self identification with anything--I am a monk--I am a Christian and so on.

Further into all that I have read (not necessarily my current belief) statements pro-porting to come from Nasargadatta, Ramana Maharshi--The Buddha--There is no world--neither creation nor dissolution--only The Absolute, by any name.

Any thoughts on this post welcome.

Interesting discussion here

Adyashanti and Francis Bennett – "The Embrace of Jesus and Buddha" - BatGap Interview
http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?860-Enlightenment-and-related-matters.&p=1117342&viewfull=1#post1117342

.Chris

Eram

30th November 2016, 10:26

greybeard

30th November 2016, 11:53

The Gita also says something like this. You come back to the world and enhances everything that you do and comes close to you.

Yes, but it seems there are many who believe they understand that true spirituality is about living in a superior world or state, and denying the ("full") reality of the physical world. And that is out-and-out escapism, ultimately. (Been there myself.) That's the problem.

Very good point. Many teachers and traditions do seem to teach that to become enlightened is to transcend humanism. Different Buddhist schools debate on this. In Taoism, to become enlightened is to become fully human. That's why we came here.

This may very well be one of the chore points of spirituality.
One that is also perhaps least talked about and least understood.

The ego, who is always eager and willing to jump to wrong conclusions and steer the wheel into the wrong direction, gets confused at even hinting to enlightenment and immediately believes that there exists a short cut to escape the misery and suffering that it experiences here in the physical world.

It would be a very nice thing if in the near future, there would be a bright and acute mind who would dedicate a book to the subject, written in an exactness of words and language that would make confusion near impossible.

The big challenge Eram is that after the "shift" there is sometimes a period "maturing" Ramana Maharshi spent years in silence, Eckhart Tolle two years just sitting on a park bench, Dr David Hawkins even more years in virtual isolation meditating eating only enough to sustain life. No doubt there are others with similar experience.
Also to muddy the water further it seems there are stages of "awakening"

Nasargadatta give a full account of enlightenment from the Absolute perspective.

I would not want to claim that Advaita-Vedanta or any other "path" is superior.

Tim, an Avalon member, gave a good account of awakening here.

http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?43027-Enlightenment-A-direct-succinct-account-of-what-occurs...&p=456904&viewfull=1#post456904

Chris

greybeard

30th November 2016, 19:50

Nasargadatta definition of spirituality was simple---Find out who you are--thats it,
Find out what you are not via Neity Neity.
To be clear he meant let go of the impression of a separate individual--he claimed all, without exception is a mirage.

Advaita means "Not two"
Nasargadatta also said that all spiritual experiences are of the ego. ie that implies separation--subject and object.

Im open minded and tend to view most things as "May be so"

Chris

TraineeHuman

2nd December 2016, 00:28

greybeard

2nd December 2016, 07:45

greybeard

2nd December 2016, 10:47

This is what I am pointing to.

Adyashanti and Francis Bennett – "The Embrace of Jesus and Buddha" - BatGap Interview
Adyashanti and Francis Bennett in a public dialog about the parallels and differences between Jesus and the Buddha, as two complimentary yet very different models of awakening. Where the Buddha emphasized inner peace and the transcendence of samsara, Christ emphasized embodying divine humanity in the midst of samsara, embracing the human condition in order to serve those who are lost in ignorance.

Adya came to a deeper appreciation of Jesus by way of his study of Zen, while Francis ─ a former Trappist monk turned non-dual teacher ─ came to Buddhism by way of immersion in mystical Christianity.

“The Christ comes to disturb, to stir up the pot, to descend to the chaotic earthly realm, and to get people to move out of their limited comfort zones and indifference toward others and life in general: to help us transform and transmute the personal and social dimension of what it means to be a human being in a human society. The Buddha comes to bring inner peace by awakening us up and out of our over-identification with the personal, and help us to realize who we are in transcendence, who we are as “trans-personal” persons. You need both approaches. They are opposite sides of the one “coin” of awakening.” — Francis Bennett

Adyashanti, is an American-born spiritual teacher and author devoted to serving the awakening of all beings. His teachings are an open invitation to stop, inquire, and recognize what is true and liberating at the core of all existence. Asked to teach in 1996 by his Zen teacher of 14 years, Adyashanti offers teachings that are free of any tradition or ideology. “The Truth I point to is not confined within any religious point of view, belief system, or doctrine, but is open to all and found within all.” He teaches throughout North America and Europe, offering satsangs, weekend intensives, silent retreats, and a live internet radio broadcast.

Website: http://adyashanti.org

Francis Bennett entered the Trappist Abbey of Gethsemane in 1981 and in the 90’s subsequently lived at a “daughter house” of Gethsemane in Moncks Corner, South Carolina. Until recently, he was living in a small urban monastery in Montreal Quebec. He has been a “spiritual seeker” during all those years, practicing in the Christian mystical/contemplative Tradition and working deeply with teachers in both the Vipassana and Zen Traditions as well. In 2010 he experienced a profound perceptual “shift” in which he realized the ever-present presence of pure Awareness, which some would call, the Presence of God.

You may contact Francis by email, Skype (francisdale3), his Facebook page, or through his website, http://findinggraceatthecenter.com. Francis’ book: “I Am That I Am: Discovering the Love, Peace, Joy and Stability of the True Self“.

Recorded 10/26/2016 at the Santa Cruz Open Circle.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3CmXbkdxc8

Guish

2nd December 2016, 15:36

Clear Light

2nd December 2016, 15:45

I prefer the approach of Zen Buddhism. In the Zen monasteries, one isn't ever given the opportunity to "drop out" from concentrated daily engagement with the physical world, in the form of four hours of physical work of some kind, every single day, plus mandatory participation in the admittedly narrow version of "society" that's within the monastery. Not ever even for a day, unless one leaves the monastery, which traditionally would have been considered a very disgraceful thing to do. Why? Because as the Oxherding Pictures try to explain, the real gains in mastery over one's lower nature only -- and I do stress only --- ever come if and when, and to the extent that, one fully integrates the "Mountaintop" energies with the world of mud. (Which is also part of the intended meaning of the phrase: "After enlightenment you chop wood.") That's a fact, in my experience and that of others. I also thought the Oxherding Pictures (posts #2597, #2599 and #2600 so far) made that pretty clear.

The ox herding picture is clear to those who have that belief system.
"Be in this world and not of it" is also clear.
While you inhabit a body it would be impossible not to chop wood and fetch water--but who now is doing that?
More than one way to chop wood and fetch water is there not?

Chris

Oh, if I may say, and with the deepest of respect Chris, just as "The Map is NEVER the Territory", so too in the same way, the Conceptual Map (Belief System) of the "Ox Herding Pictures" is "left behind" as the ego-self drops away (the mask of "me-myself-and-mine" LOL falls off) as the true-nature-of-reality "Dawns" (so-to-speak) :heart:

Or, IOW, ALL "Belief Systems" serve a purpose until they are no longer needed ... which from a Buddhist perspective means that the "truth of Emptiness" has penetrated the shield of Egoic defence-mechanisms to reveal the Ego's lack of inherent substance as was heretofore accepted as "Reality" !!!

greybeard

2nd December 2016, 17:41

Yes Clear light I thought that was clear from the line you high lightened.
All concepts belief systems are not it---there has to be some one there to believe that..

There is no one left to chop wood and fetch water--that just happens.

You have read enough of the posts elsewhere to know that there is no fitting into any belief--philosophy--unless you describe "seeking" Self realization as a tradition on the pathless path.
What seems to happen is cross referencing from various teachers and various traditions as Adyashanti and Francis Bennett speak of in the video.
This more or less confirms your statement--the map is no the territory. They are saying, in their experience one "path" did not hold the whole truth.

Which is what I maintained several posts back, in fact one path can lead to identification, with that tradition, to the degree that separation is maintained or enlightenment is a temporary experience rather than the real permanent eternal Absolute (or any other name you care to give)

In other words I am in agreement with your post as best I understand it--no being a Buddhist or studied in depth

Chris.

Ps the Ox herding pictures are helpful as they point to levels---the thing is not to get stuck on a level--its like getting off the train at a rail station when you have not arrived at your destination.--That could be know as nesting.
Pointers point. Eventually they are released too--Neity Neity.
You are that which can not be perceived or conceived

Here in lies the misunderstanding on even trying to discuss that which can not be spoken of..Thankfully I have gone beyond the concept of having to be right Lol

Ch

TraineeHuman

3rd December 2016, 00:09

Clear Light, yes it's true that conceptual thought (including words, symbols and pictures) is ultimately very, very limited in comparison to higher means of understanding, and it's separative and not uniting. But, as I've said before in this thread, I expect readers to see past my words and grasp the (transcendent) meaning behind the words.

I don't like saying the same thing twice if at all avoidable, because I think that's a form of shouting, and I consider it extremely rude in a discussion forum (not referring to you, by the way). It's true that earlier in this thread I've said similar things on a number of different occasions about, e.g., stillness a number of times, but hopefully each time the specific point I was trying to make was different.

TraineeHuman

3rd December 2016, 00:51

I shouldn't need to say this, but just to clarify. I don't use the Zen tradition, or the Zen Oxherding Pictures, as a belief system. Actually, for many years my working hypothesis was always something quite different, something which I now consider partially but clearly amounted to escapism. Thirty-nine and forty years ago, for instance, I was engaged in consulting genuine experts in three cities (and two from overseas) regarding how to develop tools for exploring past lives. I guess the first thing I learnt was that over half of those experts told me I had had fewer past lives in human form than anyone else they had ever met. It was only years later that I realized I had an abnormally strong preference for not integrating with life in the physical world. No doubt this came from the fact that in past lifetimes I had been used to living in less dense kinds of worlds. Also probably because I had been regularly experiencing some of the Divine worlds from the age of sixteen, so those worlds tended to attract my focus.

Although I engaged in many, many forms of self-development, it took quite a few years before it started to become clear to me that I was developing myself on various higher planes than the physical but neglecting what was happening in the physical, where my body and personality could have used plenty of help in finding better ways to survive and thrive during those years. And it would take decades more before I fully realized that (apparently) the whole key to freedom from unhappiness involves full integration with life in the physical. That's full integration of Divine healing energies with the physical. It's not a matter of either-or at all, but totally (as far as one can) of both-and.

Anjani

3rd December 2016, 08:54

Hi TraineeHuman,

One of my unforgetable OBE experience(if i can call it OBE experience) was when i was in Junior High aged 11 or 12. One night i was lying in my bed almost asleep. I was facing the wall on my left with my bedroom door on my far right. A secon later i was standing infront of my bedroom door going out, then i was thinking to myself 'but i was just about to sleep on my bed a moment ago' so i turn around and there i saw my body laying on the bed suddenly turn around facing me. For a couple of secons we just stare at each other but i can feel myself (or my conscious, i dont know) torn between the one standing infront of the door and the one laying on the bed. It was so horrifying, the feeling of being split in two places at the same time. Suddenly the infront of the door me felt like being sucked in, back to the laying on the bed me and i jolted up out of breath. Is that possible? I mean being at two places at the same time, both conscious/awaken. Cos i asked one of my friend with OBE experience (who are much more experienced, he could do OBE or astral projection anytime anywhere, laying down standing up, sitting down without ever need to meditate - i dont know how he did it), he said he only knows that if youre out then youre out, meaning your body will be unconscious. He never experienced being awaken on both side. I would realy appriciate your answer to this cos it has been a lot of time wondering and questioning for me. Thank you so much.

TraineeHuman

10th December 2016, 03:30

samildamach

18th December 2016, 10:50

Hi trainneehuman ,I would like to share and update my progress and experiences from following this thread over the last four months.
The feeling alive excerise really took a while to understand and make progress,I think I was ready to give up untill I asked hm for some guidance.what I got back made me laugh,I picture of a little girl playing with a hola hoop.that image reminded me to look at things from the joy of being a child ,not to force things to happen not to have expectations .since then the feeling alive just comes without any effort.
If you have the time I wonder if you could advise on two dreams which I am sure are linked together.
The first needs a little background.
I was awake all night and sleep seemed to be a million miles away,nothing was bothering me no mind racing e.t.c.I never have trouble sleeping as a rule.finally 7:30 in the morning I managed to sleep.at 11:30 my partner woke me up right at the end of a dream as work was looming.
I can remember every detail of that dream and it seemed the whole episode of sleep was to make sure I did.
The first dream.there are three road side shrines each has a glass front which leaves a gap of about one foot at the bottom.it's snowing a deluge of thick white snow.in the dream I clear out each shrine with gloved hands and then clear a path to the road with a curved shovel joining all three shrines to one path.
In the second dream I am creating a tapestry with a very basic bubble shaped tree.
I can't say why but know these dreams are linked .
Much more has happened and I'll update in another post if that's o.k

TraineeHuman

18th December 2016, 23:17

Hi again, samildamamach. Yes, the exercise of feeling how it truly feels simply to be alive is deceptively simple, and it's not easy precisely because it's so simple. So simple it's very hard to truly master, without much practice and much endurance for one not to give up. But as I've said, that's really just practising (temporarily experiencing) what freedom from unhappiness feels like. (And freedom from unhappiness is, precisely, what true "enlightenment" is. One could call it "equanimity" also.) In my experience, it seems to help if one has had experience of the divine worlds, even extensive such experience. Which does seem to eventually come for quite a few individuals these days, but usually only after they truly learn to meditate (and practise total acceptance) properly. I would encourage you to continue practising that exercise whenever you get reminded, for as long as you can.

In dreams, death doesn't mean physical death but some level of psychological death, such as starting a new chapter in one's life. Three graves probably means three different narratives of the life you're living that you've recently closed because you've outgrown them. Great! Congratulations. I'd say keep doing more of the same. Usually, who people think they are is mostly just a collection of memories anyway. Again, I'm impressed by your endurance.

What rain, and also snow, normally represents in a dream is the universal soul (or Suchness), or going within. It also represents a cleansing, and therefore a fresh start. Sounds great. I would also suggest you try to remain aware of your feelings, because you've dropped some old baggage or identities but you now need to support whatever new things are growing in you -- in the spring, that comes after the snow has gone, so to speak.

samildamach

20th December 2016, 11:01

Many thx trainee for your time and patience and your willingness to share your thoughts and knowledge.

Anjani

21st December 2016, 06:33

Dear Anjani,

When one astral travels or mental travels, a smaller part of one's consciousness remains with the physical body and the physical body-consciousness (which is roughly the same as one's inner child plus one's basic instincts), while most of one's awareness (most of one's sense of "identity" and also of one's ability to act) is with and at the projection. Yes, one's awareness is therefore split somewhat. But everyone's awareness is normally split in some sense or other most of the time. It can take some time for a person who is "out" to even notice that they still have some awareness "anchoring" their connection to their physical body. I only first noticed it because I was curious about how come I wasn't dead if I was out of the body -- what was the difference? It was hard work to trace back through my silver cord and discover that the silver cord itself feels things and it's all the time monitoring the condition of the body. It's a bit like the way you may not notice one of your fingers if you're not using your hands, but if the finger suddenly got injured then you'd immediately notice that your nervous system and your brain must have been monitoring what was going on in that finger all the time.

These days I prefer to astral travel or mental travel without using an astral or mental body. I just close my eyes (usually) and watch the scenery move around. Experienced astral travellers all seem to get to the point where they prefer to do this, as far as I know.

Now that you're older than 11 or 12, can you still unstick yourself from your identities the way you could back then? Because that's a big part of what would have made it easy for you to go with the flow, or to let go and flow.

Thanks for your explanation, it is quite understandable for me. Although there are still questions remain, for these things came to me since I was very little with no understanding of it at all and there are rare ways of getting informations about it. Since age 11 or 12, I was never having the same experience again. Only often I have visions of a situation in detail that people involved swore that I wasn't present at the moment but I know I was there and witness the whole situation in details but I don't remember how I get there and I rarely dream when sleeping but when I did it felt real and not like dreaming at all. Cos when I woke up i had to catch my breath and felt exhausted. Maybe it is party because i tend to get lost in the dream world, sometimes when i dream, i need to wake up for 7th times to realy wake up in the real life. It's like having 7 layers of sleep when i woke up turned out to be im still sleeping and so fort. It was quite tiring. And also what I dreamt of often happened in the future. Also there is one handy skill in finding lost things lol. Everytime my Mom would forget where she put things like keys and all, it was easy for me just to concentrate and there will come a vision if where the lost things are. But I never specialty practice these things. Only when there is a situation and someone asked me too. Mostly my family. But most of the time I am lazy to do it cos its kind of drained me out afterwards. And in order to use the finding things skill, I need to sleep first and soon as I woke up, just need to concentrate for a minute. I think it is probably related to the delta or theta condition when we are still have strong connection with our subconscious - I've read somewhere about this - im not sure. Also these things comes and goes often, that when I am an adult about age 26, there was a time when I experience the healing ability just by touching a person where they experience pain and concentrate in shooing the negative entities away from there. Most of the times one ability is stornger or dominant above the other, never all as strong at the same period of time. I always wonder about what cause it. Is it life experience, maturity or what? I don't know.
Sorry BTW for being OOT. Just want to share for answers.

TraineeHuman

22nd December 2016, 00:20

Anjani, you bring up many different topics all in one post. I think they've all been discussed earlier in this thread, but here are some points of view about them that haven't been discussed here before.

The experience of believing you've returned into the physical after astral traveling but finding that you're still "out" is a very common one, as is the difficulty (initially) of being able to tell whether you're "out" or not, because the lower levels of astral/emotional worlds look almost the same as the physical world and still have gravity and you still have seemingly-physical senses which are stronger than in the physical world, and purer.

One reason it's hard to tell is that the way to go higher -- i.e., further away from the physical -- is to be more awake, but on the other hand when we return to the physical we also like to say we've "woken up". Another reason it's hard is because the only way to go "out" is through using the exact opposite of any kind of force. I regard that as a great lesson in spirituality, because to progress to the much higher planes (beyond the astral/emotional and the mental/conceptual/symbolic) you have to learn how to be very, very vulnerable and open and sensitive.

Also, in Western thought the most fundamental concept and belief is that what is real is an object, and that the only things that are real are objects. But it's only possible to experience the Divine worlds by totally letting go of supposing you're an object. In other words, in the Divine worlds you get flat-out proof that reality is certainly not made out of objects at all, and that the belief in objects is in reality a false one, and just a belief, a societal fantasy, and not the truth at all. The reality is interconnection, and not separation. And learning to astral travel is a good first step to learning how to let go and be vulnerable enough that you'll later be able to let go of what you had believed was the very nature of "reality" but actually wasn't.

Many years ago I discovered that if I left a book open beside my bed, usually I'd somehow manage to read the open pages while sleeping, and often I'd even somehow read the whole book or half the book while sleeping. Not only that, but I'd have insights and understandings about what was in the book that were better than what I could come up with while awake. This happened because the higher the plane of reality we go to, the more "super-powers" we naturally have, at least while we're on the higher plane. And even the lowest astral level is already higher than the level the physical world is on. For similar reasons, in this thread I've urged readers to ask themselves important questions just before going to sleep, and expect that when they wake up they'll have excellent and very valid answers, as you say, Anjani. Things such as the healing abilities you mention are examples of "super-powers". Those powers get stronger and stronger the more often you access higher planes, particularly the Divine planes (which are well beyond the astral and mental levels), plus the more you learn to integrate the higher planes with life in the physical world.

Anjani

22nd December 2016, 06:42

Thank you TrainneeHuman. I agree that the only way to go 'out' is to be very very relaxed, open and vulnerable and sensitive. I actually knew that for a long long time , I was just trying to avoid it or going around it to see if there is any other way, influenced by my own fear that i knew i should have let go somehow. Thanks again.

Guish

10th January 2017, 04:13

Another way the higher self operates in total equanimity.

“If we learn to open our hearts, anyone, including the people who drive us crazy, can be our teacher.”
― Pema Chödrön

https://z-1-scontent-amt2-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-0/q83/s480x480/15590207_1473023379392016_6656665013929978774_n.jpg?oh=b0c5e20cfb22a01d4dec3924c2aa827f&oe=58DC6B30

Guish

12th January 2017, 04:29

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it...” ~Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Practice until you see yourself in the cruelest person on Earth, in the child starving, in the political prisoner. Continue until you recognize yourself in everyone in the supermarket, on the street corner, in a concentration camp, on a leaf, in a dewdrop. Meditate until you see yourself in a speck of dust in a distant galaxy. See and listen with the whole of your being. If you are fully present, the rain of Dharma will water the deepest seeds in your consciousness, and tomorrow, while you are washing the dishes or looking at the blue sky, that seed will spring forth, and love and understanding will appear as a beautiful flower." ~Thich Nhat Hanh

https://z-1-scontent-amt2-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-0/s480x480/15965268_1491921784168842_167607383076993700_n.jpg?oh=78ac1a37c7ef0b8f77d35bdaf5440b18&oe=58DAA11F

Guish

14th January 2017, 05:57

Zen Master Nan-in was visited by Tenno, a Zen teacher who, completed his apprenticeship. It was a rainy day, so Tenno wore wooden clogs and carried an umbrella.

After greeting the young man Master Nan-in said: “I imagine you left your wooden clogs in the vestibule. I wish to know if you put your umbrella on the left or right side of the clogs.”

Tenno, confused, could simply not answer. He understood at that moment that he was not able to carry his Zen every minute. He became Nan-in’s novice, and studied many more years to accomplish his every-minute Zen.

Orph

14th January 2017, 15:56

.... Master Nan-in said: “I imagine you left your wooden clogs in the vestibule. I wish to know if you put your umbrella on the left or right side of the clogs.”

Tenno, confused, could simply not answer. He understood at that moment that he was not able to carry his Zen every minute. I'm a little confused by this. Naturally, in my everyday life, I have to "be aware" of what I'm doing. For instance, when I'm at work, .... I have to know what I'm doing. What steps to take in what order. Where things are at so I can do my next task, etc., etc., .... (I'm not saying that's zen. Just giving an example). :)

Anyway, at other times, for instance if I'm out for a leisurely stroll, I slip into a feeling of "Now". Everything becomes part of the "now". Suppose you came up to me and asked me what I had for breakfast, (Which would break me out of my "nowness" trance by the way), :lol: but anyway, at that moment, that question wouldn't make sense. There would only be the "now".

So I'm not sure what's the connection of Tenno knowing where his umbrella is, and what's every minute zen.

Guish

14th January 2017, 18:12

Guish

15th January 2017, 06:51

JdLBpcguoDM

TraineeHuman

16th January 2017, 05:36

"The best portion of a good person's life is their little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness..." ~ Wordsworth

Guish

16th January 2017, 17:23

"If there is peace in your mind you will find peace with everybody. If your mind is agitated you will find agitation everywhere. So first find peace within and you will see this inner peace reflected everywhere else. You are this peace. You are happiness, find out. Where else will you find peace if not within you?"

~ Papaji ~

https://z-1-scontent.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/15894456_1491921004168920_2105397719423831586_n.jpg?oh=be173e4364b4d11622c7a800c422135e&oe=590EB249

Guish

16th January 2017, 17:27

The bodhisattva—the renowned ideal of Mahayana Buddhism—is not a god or deity but a way of being we can all aspire to. As Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche explains, those who take the bodhisattva vow make one simple commitment: to put others first, holding nothing back for themselves.

ohQY7kpOc50

Batman sacrificing himself for Gotham

Guish

20th January 2017, 16:53

Fuyu's interview is a good one.

http://zen-buddhism.net/blog/interview-with-lay-zen-master-miyazaki-sensei-part1of4/

TraineeHuman

21st January 2017, 03:58

Although the Zen/Ch'an tradition is generally and rightly considered (at least by the majority of scholars of comparative religion and philosophy) to be the traditional approach which is the most focused on and most fully describes and understands genuine enlightenment, it's still only a tradition. Taken at purely face value, as a collection of customs and so on, it's the menu, not the meal. And I suggest that as soon as one treats Zen as a religion, like you seem to perhaps suggest doing in your last post, Guish, to me that's too much like substituting attachment for genuine love. One needs to penetrate to the underlying essence, and fully reinterpret that essence in terms of contemporary Western ways. With no footprints left behind, from the Eastern religiosity. (Though I admit I do also find many, indeed most, nontraditional contemporary versions of spirituality somewhat horrifying.) It's particularly important to get real about what some of the necessary specific skills are, and to understand them in language which isn't vague or mythologized.

At a certain moment in early 1998, I found I was expressing to myself and to the "air" all around a very strong intention to find out the complete truth about what genuine enlightenment is and all about how it works. To my surprise, a moment later I experienced what would traditionally be called a vision. (Not an astral projection, I believe, because I opened my eyes for twenty seconds to check.) I saw about ten beings all sitting in a row on thrones, wearing extraordinarily beautiful and very long royal robes. The one in the middle was talking to me. He asked me who did I think I was to presume to want the likes of him to actually talk to me. I didn't reply, but noticed he was going through all my past human lifetimes, which took him one second to do. Then all my past non-human lifetimes, for another second. Then he said: "All right. I will help you, after all." Then he laughed and said: "I am the god of enlightenment, and liberation. Your question is a really easy one. That's no problem at all." (My question being what is the real, complete truth about genuine enlightenment and how it works.)

He seemed to consider it necessary to begin by describing many common misconceptions about enlightenment. He said that real enlightenment is about how you are living your life, and not about having exotic experiences. He also said that true enlightenment is about the integration, the full combination, of the nondual with the dual, of the Divine with the ordinary and everyday. He said that ignoring ordinary life, or the ordinary world, and seeking to cultivate pure nonduality, has nothing to do with enlightenment. That would be an escapistic denying of true oneness, he said.

After a few more general statements like that he stopped and said: "Wait a minute. You come from Sydney, don't you? There's a female spiritual teacher in Sydney whom you'll meet in three months less ten days. She'll very capably and thoroughly teach you all about real enlightenment." He then instructed me about various other topics, and I'm aware he was also teaching me some skills while I slept. Then in the morning, now in a childlike, almost cartoon-like form -- which the gods sometimes seem to like to assume --, he tried to fill in some more gaps in my knowledge for a further half-hour. Which was very generous of him, I thought. Particularly since he seemed in certain important respects to be a class above the few other gods and Buddhas I had encountered in the past.

Three months minus ten days later came. Somehow, at the time I'd forgotten all about Shiva's prediction and that that was the predicted date. No doubt I'd forgotten because of my unconscious resistance. It so happened that that day was a Saturday, and a "psychic fair" was being held two suburbs away from where I lived. The fair had speakers on every hour from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. all weekend. I went to two-and-a-half of the presentations that morning, and was thinking of going home. I checked the program to see if there seemed to be anything definitely worth my coming back in the afternoon to hear. My attention was captured, though, by a speaker who would be on if I waited a further hour. It was intriguing because this speaker was obviously a Westerner but she described herself as a master of kundalini yoga. Not only that, but she claimed two potentially even more outrageous things about herself.

Out of curiosity, I came to her presentation but sat in the back row, in the seat closest to the exit. I was expecting I'd leave after five or ten minutes, but ended up staying the whole hour. I was clearly aware that she fully maintained part of her awareness in nonduality (in the Divine worlds) throughout her presentation. I was also aware that she was demonstrating some extremely advanced psychic healing skills, which she had full control over, and so on. She invited all interested to come to her monthly group classes. However, I decided not to accept that invitation. One advanced psychic skill that I had developed is that I can look at a person's face and see and experience what is going on inside their consciousness, and also see details of their baggage and the history of the times when it was formed or reinforced. (Not a skill I would recommend to anyone else to try to learn, not without very expert, advanced supervision and about a thousand hours of intensive practice. The danger is that one can adopt some of the other person's baggage or "karma" and permanently add it to one's own.) So I could see that this woman had started life as an orphan. Orphans usually spend the rest of their lives firmly believing they are quite unlovable, tragically. I could see that this woman had probably made a much better fist of dealing with her orphan issues than any other orphan I'd seen (and that's at least five per cent of the population, folks -- they still feel they're an orphan if the grandparents raise them). I could also see that this lady had other unresolved baggage. And even though I suspected she had the psychological healing skills to totally heal herself, so far she hadn't done so. For that reason I decided I didn't want to attend her classes.

I went home, and began experiencing something I haven't experienced before or since. This was a loud voice inside my head, that wasn't coming from my parents or my conditioning but from outside. I used some clairvoyant skills to ascertain that the voice was benevolent. The voice kept repeating the same things over and over without ceasing. It somehow managed to remain extremely enthusiastic about what it was saying, however many times it got repeated. The voice said that this woman was the reincarnation of the famous Oracle at Delphi and head of the Apollonian religion, the one who had advised Alexander and predicted everything that would happen to him in advance, and caused him to create a social security system throughout his empire comparable to the twentieth century West. The voice described various wonderful things this woman could do for me, and complained about what a fool I was not to take advantage of the opportunity. The voice continued non-stop for the rest of Saturday and all day Sunday, then on the Monday it started adding new items to its "broadcast". Eventually it added that this woman was the teacher of enlightenment that Shiva had promised I would meet that day. As soon as the voice said this, I agreed to attend her next class, and the voice immediately stopped and vanished.

In her classes the topic she most emphasized, even more than the topic of mastering kundalini energy, was that of facing one's shadow. Because of that emphasis, for some years I had assumed that Shiva had meant to imply that facing one's shadow properly was at the center of, or was itself the center of, what real enlightenment was about. Only in the last year or so have I realized that it's no doubt one component, but not the complete deal. The way she introduced people to that topic was by firstly pointing out that most individuals don't actually like themselves, if they're being honest. So, her first step was to teach people how to genuinely like themselves. This in itself was a long process, which I can't describe in a few words. The next step was to teach people how to deeply accept themselves, warts and all. Only after this had been achieved could a person even face their shadow side properly. This is because a statement like "I want to face my shadow" means the same as: "I want to face whatever the things are that I really don't want to face", so it's not as simple to do as one might suppose. One has to genuinely love oneself enough to bear facing one's unconscious toxicity. Although she emphasized the importance of deeply accepting and forgiving oneself, she also emphasized how important it was to be totally honest with oneself, particularly about oneself. Her seeming obsession with truth and honesty was something whose intensity had to be seen to be believed. (Incidentally, I understand some unfortunate self-development groups seek to teach individuals to face their shadow via receiving baldly honest feedback about their toxicity -- a practice which I consider very benighted and abusive and retraumatizing.)

Today I would say that facing one's shadow is a very important part of facing one's self, which I would consider the main content of the "ordinary life" component that makes up genuine enlightenment. I consider that here facing oneself also requires the skill of being able to fully or almost fully disidentify from all one's emotions and thoughts, to be able to treat them as if they had no significance. It takes years of practice to develop that skill, but it's taught in some meditation traditions -- assuming one is so very lucky enough to have a teacher with genuinely adequate expertise about advanced meditation.

The other side of genuine enlightenment, as I understand it, is to have the ability to enter nonduality (the Divine worlds) at will, or at least at will in certain kinds of situations. For example, in this thread I have described the exercise of feeling the aliveness. I eventually learnt how to use that exercise to inject bliss into any work situation. If I found myself doing a job or task that was extremely uncomfortable, or painful, or that I had a strong aversion to, for the first minute or so I would experience the suffering. But then the bliss would come in and fully overpower any and all negative feeling. In a truly difficult work environment the bliss might only last for several minutes, but I could bring in another wave of bliss by again consciously feeling the aliveness in me -- hopefully well before the negative feeling could take hold, or do so only for a few seconds or so. In this way the bliss would eventually win out. And others would scratch their heads and wonder why I apparently loved that type of work.

I also know of another exercise that allows one to experience nonduality at will. This is known as sambhava upaya. It involves letting go of everything -- even of oneself -- so deeply that that takes one into the Divine. The teacher who was the reincarnated Delphic Oracle was apparently able to do this at will. I myself have experienced it, but haven't as yet learnt to do it at will, though I experience it after extensive meditation, such as continuously for weeks or months after a meditation retreat. Only one exercise to take one into nonduality is required, though, for one to achieve real enlightenment, according to my current understanding.

Guish

21st January 2017, 05:23

Hi Trainee,

The last post was Fuyu interviewing someone who practises Zen in an unformal way. I've been practising for a while too without taking vows or fully joining a group. I'll come back when I read your full post.

Guish

21st January 2017, 09:36

I don't know how genuine Louise L hay was but she focused on loving oneself a lot and having positive thoughts about oneself. I read her first book when I was 15 and it stayed with me for some years. I have to say that my life changed positively a lot. I had a serious heartbreak when I was 22 years old and I had to go to dark places to get a hold on myself again. Since then, I have been practising Zazen rather consistently. The only vision I have had while being awake was that of myself in a Buddhist robe and guiding a group of people. Right now, I stay awake during the night for a few hours as it's as if I'm getting a calling to go and meditate. I can't even remember how many hours I sleep.

TH, Can you link the exercise again? What would you suggest I do next?
I keep it rather simple. I don't have routines except a fixed 30 minutes session in the morning and I try to bring that zen moment in everything I do. It's natural and not forceful, I should say.

TraineeHuman

22nd January 2017, 00:52

TH, Can you link the exercise again? What would you suggest I do next?
I keep it rather simple. I don't have routines except a fixed 30 minutes session in the morning and I try to bring that zen moment in everything I do. It's natural and not forceful, I should say.

I don't know what "exercise" you're referring to, Guish. If you mean feeling the aliveness, that's really more a way one comes to learn to live, at least in moments. However, mastering it does involve probably a thousand hours of intense conscious practice, for everyone, and maybe needs many hours of practice in the presence of a true master, I'm afraid, or guidance from such a master. It seems to take years of such intensive practice -- at making yourself very simple. You don't need a link, because the exercise is too simple. The whole exercise is to feel and have full awareness of what it's truly like simply to exist, to be alive.

Feeling the aliveness was ingeniously invented by Barry Long as an “exercise”, and it was the most central or basic practice in Barry’s teaching. Barry’s teaching was all designed, or intended to be, an extension of Krishnamurti’s teaching so as to make it more practical.

When the aspirant is ready, the right teacher will come, physically into their life.

TraineeHuman

24th January 2017, 07:13

Guish, as far as practices which may teach one to face oneself properly go, what I would regard as one major component of that would be something like all the exercises in Patanjali's system of Raja Yoga, seeing that you seem to be familiar with Patanjali. Or, indeed, one could fully master other forms of Raja Yoga, for example -- among other systems.

In my experience, by far the more important thing is the nonverbal, supra-conceptual side, i.e., endless practice. It seems to me that to discuss the concepts involved without being immersed in such daily practice specifically tied to them is harmful, and a form of self-deception -- unless, of course, one has truly mastered the practices already.

There are of course different stages of one's development. Patanjali puts considerable emphasis on developing one's one-pointed concentration ability by learning how to really know any object/etc from the inside, to speak. But, as in all good schools of meditation practice, once one really masters concentration properly one no longer needs it because one can then go into pure or genuinely "awake" awareness, which is characterised by a continual awareness of formlessness or even oneness -- or, if you like, awareness of awareness itself. So, someone like yourself might not need Patanjali's concentration mastery exercises but go straight to the exercises at the level of awareness of formlessness.

As I've said, in my experience learning to face your shadow side is terribly important. It took me far, far longer than I had expected. It's easy enough to understand the concept of facing your shadow, and of why the Prodigal Son, who made the journey to truly understand all his dark side, was worth more than 99 of his brothers. They all lived very ethically at a conscious level but in denial of the toxicity they were unconsciously inflicting on the world and others. There were many points in time where I believed I had at last gotten the gist of this practice, only to have it pointed out to me how much further I still needed to go. It helped greatly to have someone with extraordinary clairvoyant insight to very accurately point out what I was still missing. Today I can interpret my own dreams reasonably well, and also those of others. Since most of one's dreams are simply snapshots of what's featured in one's dark side over the last three days, I take that as evidence that I've at least got the gist of how to overcome the inner resistance to seeing what's in one's shadow.

I have to admit it seems that the "transmission" of aspects of very high consciousness seems to be another essential factor, however superstitious that may sound. However, it seems to be more a matter of one being able to "read" and receive the transmission, which shares the very essence of the sender's highest consciousness. As you know, the Buddha chose his successor because the latter was the only one able to receive what the Buddha was transmitting during his verbally silent Sunflower Sermon.

Eram

24th January 2017, 08:32

As I've said, in my experience learning to face your shadow side is terribly important. It took me far, far longer than I had expected. It's easy enough to understand the concept of facing your shadow, and of why the Prodigal Son, who made the journey to truly understand all his dark side, was worth more than 99 of his brothers.

I can totally second that TraineeHuman.

The shadow side of any human is such a tricky and illusive mechanism.
It often hides in plain side due to our tendency to spin all sorts of justifications for our actions and or the tendency to "keep up appearances".

I also think that this shadow side is in general not fully understood. What it is and how it behaves etc.

For instance: I imagine that most people think about immoral behavior or a lust for it when thinking about the dark side, but it contains much, much more.
I recently faced some expectations about who I was supposed to be in the eyes of my father that I projected on myself all my life, which kept me from becoming who I was underneath all those expectations.
My family from fathers side are somewhat intellectual snobs, so it turned out that everything that they look down upon was suppressed in me and apparently, this was a big part of me.

So after I struggled with this for some months and it became more clear to me exactly what I was dealing with and learned to turn it all around, many changes in my life began to happen.
For instance (something that I would have never dreamed off until recently), I started to collect all sorts of music that I used to look down upon before, like these singers that sing totally from the heart and emotions. sentimental music.
gkX7ga_uR-U

It still feels unreal to me sometimes, but strangely this music is what really does it for me these days. :o

Another thing that I did was accept a job as an industrial cleaner (not really in line with intellectual elite values eh?)
It doesn't pay much and it is hard labor, but I've never felt so good about doing my job as this one.

The guys I work with talk about soccer and make silly jokes, but it's all good to me.
There is a camaraderie that I have not felt before anywhere.

Do I need to explain that this process of self accepting gained me a lot of energy too? ;)
I honestly think that I have about 30 to 40% more energy to get me through the day now.

Rumi had it right when he wrote: "Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it". :heart:

TraineeHuman

2nd April 2017, 01:29

p5mPdtigMio

TraineeHuman

2nd April 2017, 02:35

jfocK7bYkes

Guish

11th April 2017, 04:00

TraineeHuman

11th April 2017, 07:45

Gautama didn't fight it.

I agree that one shouldn't fight against one's shadow. (But the shadow isn't an illusion, except to the extent the self is an illusion -- which the self largely is except in the sense that universality needs our individuality, and we as individuals are the entire "universe" in the context of our body and our situation.) Many spiritual "seekers" try to repress whatever emotions are coming out of their shadow, and that will never ever work. There's a fine line between repressing such things and, instead, merely not giving them your support. Ditto for the ego exactly as for the shadow. Not giving them your support is in itself a form of self-denial too! But it's more like a Mexican stand-off than a war. (Plus, you eventually become whatever you resist.)

Also, one will never ever transform one's shadow into light (or shine much light onto it) unless one learns to hugely (but very honestly!) like oneself, and even to profoundly and intensely love oneself, warts and all -- which means shadow and ego and all, so that means loving your shadow and ego too, rather like loving a naughty child. As the Dalai Lama said (roughly): "Thank goodness for your enemies, and love them. They make you strong."

Eram

11th April 2017, 09:03

I suspect that there are two ways that transformation of the shadow can occur.

One is a the total separation/discarding/healing of the thought and emotional patterns that form this part of the shadow.
Psycho therapie can achieve such instances in rare occasions.
You've mentioned experiences in your work Trainee, where people have a real "healing" moment and you can see some pinkish light surrounding them (paraphrasing from memory) right?

The other option is indeed how you lay it out above: The Mexican stand-off (love that analogie :) ).
- accept/love/embrace the shadow part without really clinging to it.
- Train to deny giving strengthening energy to it (denial/resistance/let it fuel emotions and thoughts/ let it drive actions).
To take it a step further, gaining higher ground in the Mexican stand-off situation is to give energy to actions, emotions and thoughts that take it away from the shadow. "The Wolf that you feed most is the one that wins"

TraineeHuman

11th April 2017, 12:07

I think the biggest problem with the shadow is that, as its name suggests, it hides itself from ourselves. Other people will notice some of its actions or their effects, but to us the shadow remains invisible, unless we manage to work on it skilfully enough. And that's the main problem: it's initially made up wholly of things in our unconscious, and we have to play hide-and-seek with it to gradually uncover more and more parts of it -- not that that's just a game at all, either.

The shadow is different from the ego in the following sense. My theory, at least, of what the ego is, is that the ego is just the electromagnetic field that's built out of all our thoughts (which are all just electric currents) and emotions (which are just bits of magnetism). That electromagnetic field lives on intact for centuries after physical death too, actually. To me, then, the ego is the same thing as our personality (actually, "our" own collection or "committee" of sub-personalities). The personality sometimes hides from us and tries to influence us from that position, but it also more often controls us openly, through our preferences, i.e. our likes and dislikes. I have such-and-such a type of personality, and I let that control most of my choices and decisions. I'll go to great lengths to stay true to it -- which is pretty ridiculous once we consider that in many situations it would be more advantageous if we could adopt an identity that's better suited to the situation. Why does everyone try to be very loyal to "their own" personality and fight to defend or improve how good an impression it makes on others?

The video in post #2642 describes only one (reasonably major) way to unearth and work on some of your shadow. I've recently talked a little about seriously working very hard at cultivating detachment from and disengagement from all your "own" thoughts plus allowing all your emotions to come up and staying in Witness position to them and therefore outside of wanting or not-wanting in relation to them, plus acting in original ways preferably in all situations, and thereby somewhat avoiding the influence of your habits.

Whatever ways you manage to work on the shadow, though, everything depends on your having absolute honesty with yourself about yourself, as far as you can possibly manage. If you do start living with such honesty, one of the first things you'll notice is that everyone, including yourself, is almost constantly lying to themselves and in denial of this.

Guish

14th April 2017, 04:37

The video in post #2642 describes only one (reasonably major) way to unearth and work on some of your shadow. I've recently talked a little about seriously working very hard at cultivating detachment from and disengagement from all your "own" thoughts plus allowing all your emotions to come up and staying in Witness position to them and therefore outside of wanting or not-wanting in relation to them, plus acting in original ways preferably in all situations, and thereby somewhat avoiding the influence of your habits.

Whatever ways you manage to work on the shadow, though, everything depends on your having absolute honesty with yourself about yourself, as far as you can possibly manage. If you do start living with such honesty, one of the first things you'll notice is that everyone, including yourself, is almost constantly lying to themselves and in denial of this.

I think that we have reached that conclusion a number of times on this thread now. Is the willpower a part of our buddha nature or is it the self trying to perfect itself? I usually get a calling to slow down and I see the world with complete detachment at that point. I could have a chaotic day but still come out unfazed. It's very important to stay physically fit, maintain spiritual practice by meditating and bringing awareness in all activities and eat reasonably. Like you said TH, it's non stop work but you don't get tired of doing it. It's a bumpy and scary ride at times.

TraineeHuman

14th April 2017, 07:10

It's very important to stay physically fit

Firstly, Guish, just to clarify, I don't consider that being physically very fit is somehow essential for experiencing great awareness or living constantly in the Witness position etc etc, at all. What I did (try to) say a while ago was that if one has a kundalini rising experience while suffering a serious and major, or temporarily major, health problem, the kundalini rising energy can get stuck in the body for some time (days or possibly weeks) before it rises to the oversoul above the head. In that case what it's doing is alerting you to the need to fix that physical problem. I've only ever experienced such stuckness once (due to a hereditary problem with my heart, which I believe has since largely healed). I also for example experienced kundalini rising energy non-stop for a period of more than two years, day and night, without any stuckness, over ten years ago -- though I wasn't super-fit at that time by any means.

I do agree it's important for us to remain frequently aware of and show respect and kindness to our bodily consciousness and our inner child. Part of that means taking reasonable care of our health, and respecting our bodily or instinctive needs for good diet and sleep and companionship and so on. I'll respond to the rest of your post later.

TraineeHuman

15th April 2017, 00:55

Guish, you're bringing up the whole huge question of "Do we have any free will?" plus the question of "What is the Buddha nature?" The majority of philosophers, both Western and ancient Eastern, have agreed that the correct answer to the first question is "No". Admittedly, though, the existentialist philosophers reject that and posit free will as being the most fundamental quality a human being has. There's also a problem about publicly disclosing that free will doesn't ultimately exist (apart from the fact that most people will gigantically misunderstand what that does and doesn't really imply). Psychological experiments and studies seem to prove that when exposed to this idea, the average person at the present time tends to behave considerably less ethically and more selfishly.

Unfortunately, these days I'm not willing to talk directly about the Buddha nature, because until one has truly experienced it and then largely integrated it and experienced all that that implies, it seems to me that theory mostly gets in the way of practice, as far as I can tell. I am willing, though, to explain a little about why the notion of the Buddha nature is embedded in a very different metaphysics than the metaphysics underlying Western culture, and hence it's bound to be misunderstood by Westerners.

First, a question. What are we all in Western culture taught from age one is the (supposedly) most basic concept? In Western culture we're taught that: "Everything that's real is ... what?" Well, philosophers agree that the answer is: "Objects". Actually, philosophers use the term "substances", but that's just a fancy way of saying "objects". If objects are what makes up reality, then what's the most essential property of reality? What's the most essential property that makes an object an object? Again, philosophers are in agreement that the answer is: "Separation". Reality is arbitrarily and falsely assumed to be by its very nature a place of separation; of alienation, and unavoidably so. I say "falsely" because, for a start, our highest experiences directly and undeniably show us that the underlying reality is actually one of utter interconnection, and that's the exact opposite of separation. Without omnipresent separation, though, objects simply could not exist. In an objects world, identity means the same thing as separate identity.

And, separation demands that it's necessary to set up at least some major barriers, and hence hostility, against all other objects. A universe that's intrinsically violent. Any true vulnerability, to anything or anyone, is a threat to one's very identity as "that" object.

The (so-called) universe of objects is a (pseudo-) universe that's inherently random and chaotic and entropic throughout. It's a place where everything other than continued isolation happens merely by chance. And, again, please don't forget, this isn't reality; it's just the false matrix of reality construed as objects that's been ever so deeply ingrained in us all, that most people are unknowingly trapped in. There's been a great deal of talk about our being trapped in a false matrix. Those who talk of this often seem to me to have little understanding of where the artificial limitation is coming from. I suspect all the misplaced concern over a holographic and computed version of reality was manufactured by the misinformation agents. All of reality is holographic, and nearly all of reality within the worlds of form is computable or can be approximated in a computable form, so please get over it. That's not a significant false matrix, but the objects pseudo-universe is.

You may object at this point that something like, say, the human body is an example of something that's undeniably an object. But, the cells in the body all get replaced at least once every seven years, if not much more frequently. So, the body can also be considered as a "flow" rather than as necessarily an object. Anxiety over bodily death can be dispelled if one truly sees oneself as a flow and not at all as an object. The river simply flows on to its next stage. Also, time-exposure photography has proved that over decades even all mountains slowly flow, though they do it in very slow motion. So anyway, any object can be construed as a flow instead of being an object, though the speed of flow may possibly be very slow.

Philosophers can tell you, if they care to, that the object-based metaphysics is only one among some six or more other metaphysics that could equally well have been used instead. So although in Western culture we grow up believing from age one that objects and reality are the same thing, it's just an arbitrary assumption, like driving on a certain side of the road.

However, English grammar implicitly demands that the only things that are real are grammatical subjects and grammatical objects; and it also constantly demands that anything which is a grammatical object must be an object, or at least an abstract object. It also demands that anything that is a grammatical subject can also be a grammatical object. Hence the grammar you use is continually telling you that only objects are ever allowed to be real. In a sentence like "Mary throws the ball," the objects -- what's real -- are Mary and the ball, and the way the grammar tacitly analyzes reality is that throwing is an accidental property of Mary's at the same time as being thrown is a fleeting and accidental property of the ball. So the verb "throws" is considered accidental, as is any verb or connection.

We have labels for the most commonly occurring objects. Those labels are known as nouns.

Almost all the spiritual traditions identify attachment as ultimately the source or cause of all unhappiness. But the late Barry Long (Eckhart Tolle's teacher) observed that the way that attachment always gets formed is as follows. One gets attached by treating a thing or person as an object, and as nothing but an object -- to the extent that one's creating attachment to them, that is. One does this by "nounising" it or them -- in other words, by conceptually thinking about it or them and regurgitating, and in your mind sticking on its or their label, its or their noun or name, over and over and over again, accompanied at least on some occasions by some intense emotion. In other words, attachment is just: noun-ising. Thinking about it over and over.

But it so happens there are languages which don't have any nouns, nor any cultural notion of objects as being something real. This includes the Polynesian languages, Tibetan, Nepalese, Mongolian, Eskimo, Basque, a few Australian Aboriginal languages, and some American Indian, central American Indian, and South American Indian languages. This doesn't mean that individuals from those cultures are automatically free of all attachment. It does, however, mean that they don't have an underlying worldview according to which attachment and continual suffering is a quite unavoidable feature of (so-called) reality. The Chinese-based languages and mathematics and music also have no nouns.

In such languages, nouns are replaced by verbs, and adverbs. And verbs refer to relations, kind of like:
------------>
with no start or end point is required, but it's also often a valid option to have them as well as not have them. This is freedom. Anything that does occur at the start or end point isn't allowed to be an object, but it's always another relation.

Actually, I would say, the start and end points are in formlessness, or infinity, although a specific relation, one having a particular form, can also replace that formlessness.

Incidentally, the entire world of objects can be mirrored within the world of relations as those relations that are reflexive, those arrows where the start point is also the end point. But the essence now becomes relational, even though it's self-relational in this case. So, the relational version of reality is vastly bigger than the object version, not to mention far more wholistic.

So: can you think of yourself, and then even actualize yourself, as more like a verb than a noun? Surely, as I've said already, all our highest experiences prove to us that that is the true reality, that that is what we more truly and accurately are.

In other words, it's actually much more accurate anyway to say that the reality that you truly are is some kind of interconnection and not a persona that has a fixed identity that interconnects only accidentally. You are an interconnection. Or, if you like, you are a process, or you are a kind of force.

Relations typically are indefinitely big. For instance, the force we call gravity doesn't have a unique location but it's active everywhere. Can you see yourself as truly something like a force that can act everywhere? Take almost any verb -- say, the verb "to sit". Sitting can occur anywhere in the physical world. You are vast, and at least partly formless. Or, take the verb "to love". The way you experience love is by being love. It's not something you acquire like a possession, like some object. And if you receive some love, you'll only enjoy it to the extent that you can be that love, in the moment, and not possess it.

So, can you give up any notion of "your" little-"s" self as something that's tiny and totally personal and totally localised? If you can, then, for example, there's no longer a spiritual requirement to totally sacrifice the object that's your little self to a great universal object or subject, which is still not a relation, that's called Brahman or God or the One or whatever -- even though unfortunately that's the way nearly all the Indian gurus have always described it. After all, the object that's the me doesn't want to surrender to anything. Especially not the Divine, because that would really put the me in danger of being wiped out. But there's no longer any need to fulfil or liberate your non-existent tiny self because to even worry obsessively about it is to deny the greatness and vastness of what we all already are.

In any case, you simply aren't a thinker or emoter. You're not even a stream of thoughts or emotions. What you actually are is the streaming, and not some object or subject that is the stream.

Can you think of all reality as having interconnection as its starting point or building blocks, always? On the other hand the mind that wears object blinkers thinks, sees, wills, feels, and senses with division as its starting-point. That's what the ordinary conceptual mind is. It has only a constructed understanding of unity; even when it experiences oneness, it has to act from that oneness on a basis of limitation and difference, or conflict. But the life of integration with non-duality, or even of integration with the intuitive faculties, is a life of essential, spontaneous and inherent unity. To quote Sri Aurobindo regarding surrender (even though he wasn't free of object-talk himself, because for example he liked to emphasize the surrender of the object known as the little-"s" self to the object or subject known as the Divine Will): "It is impossible for the mind to forecast in detail what the supramental change must be in its parts of life action and outward behaviour or lay down for it what forms it shall create for the individual or the collective existence. For the mind acts by intellectual rule or device or by reasoned choice of will or by mental impulse or in obedience to life impulse; but supramental nature does not act by mental idea or rule or in subjection to any inferior impulse: each of its steps is dictated by an innate spiritual vision, a comprehensive and exact penetration into the truth of all and the truth of each thing; it acts always according to inherent reality, not by the mental idea, not according to an imposed law of conduct or a constructive thought or perceptive contrivance. Its movement is calm, self-possessed, spontaneous, plastic; it arises naturally and inevitably out of a harmonic identity of the truth which is felt in the very substance of the conscious being, a spiritual substance which is universal and therefore intimately one with all that is included in its cognition of existence." So, when we use our intuitive or higher faculties we're operating much more in a wholistic, interconnected way.

animovado

15th April 2017, 08:36

It's always a pleasure when abstraction doesn't lead into the cool of intellectual heights, but instead is radiating the warmth of a close by heart.
Thank you for streaming.

Guish

16th April 2017, 08:14

Thanks for taking the time and explain in simple terms without the jargon. I think whatever you are saying makes perfect sense to me. Poor use of English here because the rational mind won't get it. My realisation so far is that one's action is determined by beliefs or subconscious programming. It's easy to understand that the body is inherited and not ours. Our beliefs which made us are basically from parents or schooling or the use of rational thinking. Not us again. The so call free will doesn't exist because the subconscious is activated before someone makes a conscious decision. People were amazed when this experiment was done at plank institute. So what's left? What are we? How do we live without that mind? I have been exploring this higher awareness for years now and a lot of things have left me. The need for meat, craving and insecurity. Things look so beautiful and simple when you let go and become the flow like you said. There are still which pops up, old fears like I messaged you once but I explore more and let go. I still dream of people who I couldn't forgive in the past. Hence, there's more work to be done.

The king to Bodhidharma: Who are you? I don't know.
What should I do to create good Karma? Nothing.

This sense of objects makes it important to get/achieve things. That's something else we could talk about.

Cheers Brother.

samildamach

16th April 2017, 16:22

Hi traineehuman
For the last six months I've been daily adding in to my daily routine the exercise what does it feel like to be alive which you recommend .I am now at the the point were I don't need to say the words as soon as my attention goes to my heart with intention the feeling leaps out.last week a beatuifull sunny day in England a rare acurance in England for April I decided to meditate outside for the very first time.I had such a profound experience that for two days I was walking around in a state of bliss,my only wish was to hold onto that feeling a bit longer.once I had let the monkey chatter stop I held the feeling of being alive and just drifted.ignoring the colours of purple and turquoise as usual distractions I let them come and go ,after time my interest was peaked as these colours became surrounded by gold.observing from a distance they seemed to drop in a funnel one after the other ,untill a dark blue one appeared I followed it down,before arriving at the funnel everything changed.my vision darkened and small specs appeared blinking ,while in the center buildings and gateways appeared ,I did not travel to them they came to me if that makes sense,one particular was a castle turret with a yingyang symbol on the outside.during this time my eyelids were blinking without opening .I held focus for about 20 seconds before losing the vision and the details and experience are very easy to recall a week later in great detail,much of which is difficult to describe .my question is what I describe is that the obe travel that you describe a conscience experience or something else.also I am completly colourblind but see the colours with clarity and beauty,like a blind man seeing for the first time.

TraineeHuman

17th April 2017, 00:58

Great to hear, samildamach. The violet and the blue colours are healing colours (and they are the colours of the energy that the (psychologically) healing angels use). The violet colour is also the colour of one's third eye and of true connection to one's oversoul, plus it's the colour of the silver cord, which also has silver stars in it and when these are bunched together like an elastic band that's been contracted, the whole cord looks silver. Violet is also the colour of the healing energy that permanently removes identities and energies belonging to the lower nature from you and from the physical and the emotional worlds.

The gold colour would be coming from one of the four higher of the seven levels of the Divine or universal worlds, and I'm not surprised to hear that that was massively transforming, at least for now. You may have seen it "shining" into some astral or formless level of reality or you may even have gone into and merged with that gold level. The challenge is to learn how to make some of what the gold energy brought become normal to you as just another part of your ordinary self, immanent and not transcendent (not "out there"). Can you "contain" some of it within you as part of you? Can you sensibly and undramatically live with infinity and greatness as just parts of who you are, inside you? Being free means precisely the same thing as (groundedly) feeling free.

Yes, it happens that colourblind individuals lose the colourblindness altogether once they are in an astral or higher world. Wonderful. And yes, the buildings you describe would be very typically something from an astral world and so yes, you succesfully astral projected yourself there.

Guish

17th April 2017, 07:51

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TraineeHuman

17th April 2017, 13:30

Regarding the word "heart" as mentioned in the above video, I'd like to point out, as Alan Watts explains in detail from around 8 to 10 minutes into the following video, that in Chinese and Japanese what they mean by "heart" is the mind and heart combined (and perceived and conceived not as object/s, but as pure activities, pure streamings), and even primarily the higher mind-and-heart:

VBKsE-61vxg

TraineeHuman

18th April 2017, 14:41

Just to clarify something additional about free will, most of us do need to most of the time act not only as if we have free will but to maximize the efficacy and the creativity and the sovereignty of its exercise, as fully as we are able. Just like the hero in every movie or story does, against invariably difficult odds. We need to always take advantage of that apparent reality of freedom of choice whenever we can and whenever we're not aware of the best possible way we could act in the current moment and situation. The latter will always be the Divine Will for us in that situation -- but then there's no purpose served in exercising choice once we're committed to do what we absolutely know to be the very best. At such a point, and only at such a point, the Divine Will replaces any need for a will of our own. The Alan Watts video in the previous post also sheds some interesting light on how this really works.

TraineeHuman

27th April 2017, 07:34

Some more thoughts regarding the "Mexican stand-off" that's necessary for us to outgrow or transform our lower nature (by which I mean such things as the dominance of our desires (be they material or emotional or intellectual), or e.g. our making our decisions based on our emotions and then rationalizing them as supposedly valid). As has been said already, the need to transcend whatever dominance our lower nature has over us is deceptively subtle because the lower nature operates so much from our shadow, from our unconscious, staying hidden until it achieves a fait accomplis and we then wrongly presume that what it wants is what our true inner self wants in relation to the temptation or habitual behavior in question.

One thing we need to be honest about is that our lower nature is and must remain what we actually are and it must remain how we understand things. We have to consciously accept that. (This is part of the stand-off.) That's until we change. But the changes are (normally) always piecemeal. We only change in part. That's one reason why we need to keep embracing each piece of our shadow and being honest about it and identifying just exactly how it's been creating mischief for others or for our environment or for ourselves. Precisely and impassively identifying the problem is already over half the solution to it (provided we have a "higher" activity to embed it in). Which is very good news, really. But we have to be totally honest about this.

One surefire way we can tell if something is coming from our lower nature, though, is as follows. Anything that's coming from our higher nature is always wholistic. It always creates some kind of unification, and the overcoming of some kind of limitation. Action from the lower nature, however, means always feeling in the end slightly even more limited (or habitual, or less fully engaged with life). The lower nature can only act through division or divisiveness.

As has been mentioned already, the repression of the lower nature through self-denial or self-disciplining usually doesn't work so effectively in the very long term. Building a will of iron ultimately isolates you from being open to reality.

The alternative is to transform our lower nature into something higher, through enormously expanding it, in the right way, into something that finds delight in things which to the lower nature of ourselves and others had seemed miserable. This is in one sense the opposite of escapism into a transcendental world. It's a gradual transforming of earth -- or, rather, hell -- into heaven. That transformation only comes through suffering, but it's right suffering. Yes, there is such a thing, and it's even pretty much necessary, I'm afraid, unless you can raise your awareness to such a high level that you can bypass it through sheer insight, through temporarily looking at the mud through a Godlike consciousness. At the end you're able to experience bliss, or at least equanimity, whenever you're in that formerly miserable or desire-bound situation.

TraineeHuman

27th April 2017, 14:40

As "luck" would have it, our entire lower nature is a kind of distorted mirror-image or lesser version of our higher nature. Everything we individually know about ourselves and life is worked out in our higher nature. But the lower nature is too contracted and too absorbed in and attached to and overwhelmed by its suffering to have a balanced view of things, let alone to be a competent listener to what the higher nature clearly sees and would like to bring about for us. The lower nature sees all that "through a glass, darkly". Most of the time, at first, it all seems so vague and uncertain. We are too enmeshed in its web, its matrix, too much surrendered to established mechanisms where our unconscious is running our lives on a kind of auto-pilot.

But whenever we see everything consciously, in Witness position, or witnessing just pure awareness itself, we rise at least temporarily to our higher nature. If we manage to do so frequently, we cannot help but be inspired to climb much higher. We then feel the impulse more and more strongly to transform our lower nature, to widen our horizons. That impulse becomes natural to us, and won't be quenched, however much or often the lower nature subverts it -- which it will do again and again, usually for a very long time. Its biggest trick is to convince us and our teachers that we're no longer making significant progress, even though usually we are.

We even eventually discover that there is not only an infinite but a Divine part of us somewhere inside. Then it becomes a matter of making the Divine become manifest in ourselves, somehow, even though at first and for a long time we don't have a clear idea of how that will work. But we know the seed is there, and the unthinkable process of allowing the seed of the Divine, no less, to flourish inside us has begun.

Guish

27th April 2017, 17:09

Detachment is wrongly viewed as not having feelings and not getting involved emotionally. A colleague of mine told me that she wants to join spiritual group X because they don't have attachments and therefore their lives are less complicated and they can find peace. In my experience, detachment is being in the witness position TH is talking about. One acts wisely or one speaks wisely only if it makes a change not to the little self but if it makes a change to the whole.

TraineeHuman

29th April 2017, 02:52

I would draw a distinction between feelings and emotions. All emotions are one type of feelings, but so also is something like love or bliss , or the feeling of freedom (such as the freedom of going beyond our "normal" limitations), or the experience of profound oneness. Feelings (and sensations) are how we directly experience anything. They are the foundation of everything. They are like oxygen in our lives.

And yes, Guish, certain types of powerful (yet peaceful) feelings are what makes detachment possible. Detachment always very centrally involves expansion, and seeing the really big picture. Easily, without force or effort. It also involves inspiration, and involvement but at many levels of reality rather than the limited experience we are otherwise "normally" stuck in.

The subtle part is to find out how to expand without wanting "more". That wanting of "more" unfortunately turns everything (i.e., you) into desire. This is where mastering the feeling of aliveness comes in. That feeling of your aliveness is the feeling of fulfilment itself. Desire then has its "legs" undercut from it. Because you feel with certainty how no fulfilling of any desire can compete with the delight of what you already feel.

Guish

1st May 2017, 07:54

I think that the last paragraph is very important as often spiritual seekers want to live in their bubble while bringing the bliss to routine tasks or relationships brings more peace and wisdom.

TraineeHuman

9th May 2017, 06:50

I think that ... often spiritual seekers want to live in their bubble while bringing the bliss to routine tasks or relationships brings more peace and wisdom.

Indeed. Yes. At the beginning of this thread I mentioned the centrality of letting go. In some early posts I indicated that such letting go needs to be applied not just during meditation and for astral travel and psychic healing, but in life generally. After all, to quote from a song by Jennifer Warnes:

"Ain't no miracle bein' born
People doin' it everyday
Ain't no miracle growin' old
People just roll that way
So it goes like it goes and the river flows
And time it rolls right on
And maybe what's good gets a little bit better
And maybe what's bad gets gone."

In some posts I've also mentioned how proper letting go also very much includes staying involved to a certain degree. Partly because this is the only way to view the biggest picture: the "beyond" plus also the nitty-gritty. This means, then, seeing or feeling the "beyond" as it permeates its way all throughout every niche of the nitty-gritty level of reality.

It's analogous to how in sitting meditation, and in moving meditation, one releases one's back muscles by more than 50% from "normal". But one also consciously retains a certain lower level of tension in the back, just enough to keep it from dropping to the ground.

So, during meditation, the aim is to let go of unnecessary tension generally and leave only what's needed. This gives one a physical feeling of (seeming) effortlessness. Ditto with emotional/psychological tensions that the particular situation or your particular thoughts at the time are bringing up. But this doesn't mean escaping from, nor "fogging up", an awareness that these tensions exist, even as one ever so gradually lets a little more of them go. Not so easy to do, and as we know, it often takes ever such long practice, practice, practice to finally get things just right. But your older-age years will genuinely be just peaches and cream then.

Clearly, it's harder to keep on doing this outside of one's meditation periods because usually one will be more engaged with -- well, lost in, -- the tensions. But yes, as you say, Guish, that's the ultimate challenge, and it's most certainly the source of all the greatest gains and rewards. And staying that way permanently is precisely what genuine enlightenment is about, says he.

Beginner meditation usually involves learning to physically relax plus simultaneously learn to cultivate being aware or "mindful". One should ideally learn quite quickly to turn the letting go of physical tension into bliss at a (purely) physical or sensual level. The hard part is to then learn more and more how to turn (dissolve, just drop) all one's emotional tensions straight into bliss. At the physical level, the aim is that one quickly learns to tap into (or "switch on") the body's natural physical bliss, and as very much the normal or (higher-) "natural" state. The much harder part is learning to equanimously retain that bliss -- and freedom from negative emotions -- however badly lost at sea emotionally your circumstances may some days threaten to supposedly make you.

Yes, that's what it's all about. Absolutely.

Guish

12th May 2017, 18:02

I was recently talking about Master Dogen to Fuyu, a Buddhist monk and Friend of mine. Master Dogen was trying to find the right master to learn true Dharma and he stumbled on a Buddhist Cook. The cook told him that cooking meals for the priests was his true practice and he was not interested in doing another activity to learn true practice. The point is that any activity can bring our true nature out and each activity is actually practice.

TraineeHuman

13th May 2017, 02:10

Master Dogen was trying to find the right master to learn true Dharma and he stumbled on a Buddhist Cook. The cook told him that cooking meals for the priests was his true practice and he was not interested in doing another activity to learn true practice. The point is that any activity can bring our true nature out and each activity is actually practice.

A major issue in this is that although the Western notion of "God" supposedly says -- according to theologians -- that God is both imminent and transcendent, in practice God is treated by most (including at least some of the theologians) as being 100% transcendent. In other words, there is supposedly, Westerners believe, an infinite, largely untraversable gulf between God and man or woman.

Only in such a state of affairs does it seem so desperately important to have "very special" experiences. For these mean one is temporarily crossing that gap, however much also incompletely and wildly and (psychologically) harmfully this may perhaps in most cases be being done. In this way, the myth of the vast infinite gap is given even greater credibility. But what I'm talking about is not buying that myth at all -- and eventually (hopefully) living and experiencing everything in such a way that the myth no longer makes sense.

Yes, at the very least Dogen had the right idea. He was a 12th century Japanese master who tried so hard to really strip Zen Buddhism (which was ultimately based on ancient Taoism as much as on Buddhism), and indeed also the essence of Mahayana Buddhism, of all its ritual and formality and other clutter, and just keep the essential direct experience (just of immanence, hopefully) and the practice of such experience. I believe he didn't entirely succeed, no doubt partly because the Japanese are, and even back then were, probably the most formal people in the world (even worse than the British). Some scholars believe that Zen reached its peak in the fourth to sixth centuries in China, as Ch'an Buddhism, and that by Dogen's time too much clutter (too much of "special" behaviors) had wormed its way into everything. But maybe not. After all, immanence has no problem with time.

samildamach

14th May 2017, 17:29

Guish

14th May 2017, 17:34

35275

Hi TH,

My Buddhist friend sent this from Eiheiji. It's connected to what we are discussing here.

TraineeHuman

15th May 2017, 02:26

The more I practice bringing forward bliss through the heart as a focus I notice a slight synchronicity with the third eye chakra light a pulse as though the two are joined at bliss.

As I've mentioned before, ideally one should learn to access one's higher faculties through the heart and the mid-head and the oversoul together, with all three combined. But initially it's easiest to learn to do it via the heart center only, and to build further from there.

Are there a difference between types of bliss, such as bliss generated from the heart as a focal point to that of the mind

Well, you're talking about "bliss" and unfortunately that makes things tough for me. As I understand it, that question seems to me to be implicitly and indirectly seeking a definition, or at least a partial definition, of what bliss is. The truth is, virtually all of reality is quite undefinable, and also unknowable in any complete sense, unfortunately. (For example, strictly speaking, truth is undefinable. The mathematical proof that that is precisely so was considered one of the most important achievements in twentieth century mathematics, and in twentieth century philosophy as well.) I would say it's also true that all our experiences are expressions -- usually very distorted expressions -- of the infinite bliss. Bliss is ineffable, yet it's also certainly not nothing (in the nihilistic (non-)sense of "nothing").

Which bliss is "the real bliss"? My reply is: how long is a piece of string? To quote from the Kena Upanishad: “From Ananda (i.e., Bliss) all existences are born, by Ananda they remain in being and increase, to Ananda they depart.”
Any attempt to define something is an attempt to turn it into an object. In post #2649 http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?52121-The-Higher-Self-and-transcendent-experience-including-OBEs&p=1146404&viewfull=1#post1146404 I explained how the metaphysics (the "worldview" regarding everything) on which Zen and Taoism are based is relational and contextual, and how that's in stark contrast to, and indeed very much superior to, the dominant Western metaphysics that Westerners (all of you guys and gals -- though hopefully not any more, once you've appreciated what's in that post, hopefully) unknowingly have used from childhood and so have wrongly imagined to be "reality".

TraineeHuman

15th May 2017, 12:24

Further to my previous post, I believe I may need to include a reminder for the benefit of some newish readers. Please don't forget that, unfortunately, you can't begin to properly access the higher faculties (even psychic skills, such as to astral travel smoothly like I and some individuals do) until you master how to consciously step aside from the mind. In a word, here first you'll need to master ignoring and taking no interest in your thoughts. And you may not be able to do that unless you first learn something like how to be fully awake to ("mindful of") all your physical senses at once, and how to be quite often aware of all your thoughts (or most of them).

Then, to continue my comments regarding the heart, mid-head and oversoul centers, in my experience the heart center gives you intensity and warmth and positivity, while the mid-head center gives you clarity and higher understandings and insights. The oversoul combines the two together, so that, among other things, you experience the spaciousness, the all-pervadingness and power, of the delight that's in your heart center; plus the jewel-like beauty and the miraculous-seeming effectiveness and truth of the clarity in your mid-head.

In my experience, the oversoul is also often about interconnection with formless realms, and even with universality, or let's say infinity at least.

Guish

19th May 2017, 18:13

To study Buddhism is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be awakened by all things.” ~Dogen

TraineeHuman

20th May 2017, 02:29

The question is, though, can one directly experience being, and living constantly with oneself as, at heart formless (and nameless)? No more of Fred Nurk (or whatever your name is) supposedly being you. That's finished, except it takes a very long time -- years -- to fully shake it all off. In other words: can one forget or discount the superficial "self" (the "self" that is in any sense an object and not, instead, a relation, or a flow, quite beyond objects in its essence)?

If so, one will actually be living beyond time, or at least with one "foot" beyond time and one "foot" in it. And what if actually, everything was so interconnected that living beyond time (but still being able to handle the superficial world of working for a living etc) would mean living in reality?

Memory is just a thing we do, not who we are.

Guish

21st May 2017, 17:54

You are asking a very important question here. One gets away from the drama, the normal aims of chasing money and fame. One stops getting carried away.
Are we still in the "reality" ?

TraineeHuman

24th May 2017, 06:54

What is this true “self” that exists beyond time and beyond one’s superficial self? Some talk of being aware of awareness itself. Let me clarify that this doesn't mean awareness of any concept of awareness. It’s pure awareness, quite beyond the mental world of concepts. It means being aware of -- as distinct from only passively being -- the one who experiences the physical senses. It also means being impassively aware of the one who is taken over by emotions and temporarily becomes this or that emotion. It also means being the unmoved watcher of one's thoughts who can consciously take or leave those thoughts, and the points of view behind them, with equal indifference. And it’s very much linked with being the authentic “I” as distinct from the superficial “I” that’s tied up in, or hijacked by, distractions. It's very important to get a sense of what are distractions and how the energy of them feels (i.e., no good).

What are some exercises to access this state directly? One is to practise physically letting go of tension progressively down your body over and over again in one sitting, until one achieves a super-great calm in relation to anything that's going on in the body, and outside it too. Some may even ultimately then experience the illusion that much of one's body has been temporarily replaced by great holes: maybe now there just seems to be a hole where one's chest or belly should be, maybe even most of one's arms and legs seem to have dissolved, leaving just points of contact like elbows and soles of the feet.

Different individuals find different methods more useful. I personally seem to warm to all of them. But one has to practise at least one of them daily – and in the very, very long run, ideally, keep practising all the time throughout when one is going about one’s daily life. To continue this list, my experience of mantras (repeating just one phrase or sound that is meaningful to you over and over, such as “I believe in love”, or “Only this, what’s here, exists right now” etc etc), has been that quite quickly the whole physical environment around me seems to start “saying” the mantra over and over. Once that gets established, the mantra seems to be “saying” me. After all, if the mantra has seemingly taken over my entire environment, it’s only a matter of time before it will (apparently) take over me. But when it does, it’s still possible to detach, to separate from the mantra and just watch the mantra. Some similar considerations apply to the use of contemplation rather than a mantra. In contemplation one allows one’s mind to roam freely with its thoughts, provided they are all about, and remain only about, one topic that you select beforehand.

I’ve already discussed the exercise of feeling the aliveness in you many times in this thread, and I’ve discussed the exercise of letting everything be just as it is several times. Both of them super-powerful, provided you learn to do them properly. I would say both of them also put you into awareness of awareness as long as you are really doing them “correctly”.

Another type of exercise is that of watching the breath, as I have described in detail in this thread. One practises this exercise until one is no longer using any effort to watch a breath, because one has let go of effort altogether.

Guish

27th May 2017, 08:07

Thank you Trainee. You remember that you told me that the right teacher comes at the right time? I have joined a Soto Zen Sangha led by Jundo. The lineage comes down from Master Dogen and the main practice is Shikantaza zazen. It's the perfect platform for me right now. Our conversations have helped my quest a lot my friend and I'm sure that I have much to discuss and learn from you.

Meditation reflects your day and your day gets reflected in your meditation session.

Gassho,
Geerish.

TraineeHuman

28th May 2017, 07:57

That sounds great, Guish. There are many practices in Soto Zen that are advanced, or fairly advanced, and quite deceptively so. I’d like to ask you some details about your experience of what’s involved in some of those practices, but only after you’ve experienced practising them a while under the teacher’s guidance. I can’t help but laugh at the expression “just sitting”, for example, because as I understand it the “just” really means ideally or eventually being totally in touch with all of Reality. Also, I know that at least some of the Japanese Soto Zen masters have had the practitioners sitting in two rows, facing each other and performing what I would describe as a certain variety of eyegazing meditation. As far as I can tell, that’s a significantly different type of eyegazing meditation than the very ancient variety that comes to us from pre-Vedic Indian culture. A related practice, in my view, is that of (“just”) “walking between two posts”. I understand some of the most famous twentieth century Japanese Zen masters liked their practitioners to spend as much time walking as sitting. At some later point I may have questions about some of the details of what’s involved. From my own experience I know it can be described as involving more than “just walking”.

When I started this thread, I was feeling much frustration about the abstract way most Forum members seemed to talk about spirituality at that time. So I deliberately highlighted out-of-body experience, because I wanted to nudge contributors to the thread towards speaking about, and on the basis of, experience rather than theory. I was also trying to operate from the assumption that contributors were already seriously engaged in some type of spiritual practice. My strong preference is to bring things back to experience and practice wherever that is possible.

My own out-of-body experiences (occurring over many years, but early on almost every night, and also every day) had mostly come spontaneously, and in accordance with the traditional method for inducing them, which was from one's being in a state of meditation, or asleep. In meditation, as in sleep, one is practising a deep level of effortlessness, which I still consider the only natural way, the only smooth way, and probably the only 100% safe way, to undergo such experiences. To my great surprise, most contributors were apparently very solidly stuck in the assumption that what was needed instead of effortlessness was very great effort and usually brutal self-forcing, combined with some form of self-hypnosis! I also regret the confusion post #10 may well have caused, as it described a self-hypnosis method for accessing or at least getting a glimpse of one’s past lives.

samildamach

28th May 2017, 09:48

Due you consider intent a forcefull effort or a guidance in direction ?.

TraineeHuman

28th May 2017, 11:35

Due you consider intent a forcefull effort or a guidance in direction ?.

That's a very good, very incisive question, samildamach. One of the things I would need to point out or explain in reply is (I certainly claim that) there is a very big difference between our inner consciousness and our outer, surface mind. The former has far more awareness, and far more interconnection with other realms or dimensions. Not only that, but the inner (initially subliminal) consciousness contains, among other things, all our psychic abilities, including the ability to astral travel.

As I understand it, meditation is a powerful tool to enable us to learn how to disidentify somewhat with our surface mind. The more we manage, through letting go, to develop the skill of so disidentifying, the more easily we can naturally experience our psychic skills.

On the other hand, holding a very strong desire to grab access to or reach any of our psychic abilities is, as far as I'm aware, primarily an action of the surface mind -- a "forceful effort", primarily. I guess it seems to me the self-hypnosis method involves making strenuous efforts with the surface mind to concentrate on its desire, but also a fuzzily implied willingness to slip into a dreamlike state. The trouble is, the dreamlike state is at odds with the strenuous surface desiring. My guess would be that the only reason the self-hypnosis method sometimes apparently works is that in such situations the intensity of the slipping into the dreamlike state manages to be much stronger than the surface desiring effort. (Maybe because the surface mind momentarily short-circuits itself somehow in all the strenuous effort of the egoic, surface mind.) But isn't that rather like trying to accelerate a car while the handbrake is on?

To answer your question fully would require probably many pages on the subject of what is consciousness and how does it work, and what are all the different forms of existence that harbor intentions, consciously or not, and incompletely or not (such as the Divine, higher parts of us, the ego, unconsciousness); and then how does that apply specifically to this question. I'm willing to attempt a shortened version of such an essay, but it may take a month or so for me to gather all my thoughts on this.

samildamach

28th May 2017, 12:03

My thoughts were that you could do yourself harm with forcefully intent,force yourself indirections your Simply not ready for.for myself while meditating I do bring intent at the beginning for a short time then let it go.I figure if the hs wants to answer then your ready to hear and process that information.if hs does not answer that your not ready or it's simpley just not important for your growth.
I would kindly ask for the short version of this question ( and very happy to wait) as it's a fundemental interaction between us and are hs.

TraineeHuman

30th May 2017, 00:58

Some brief comments to begin with about intention, and intentions. At one time I used to have a spiritual teacher who would sometimes say: "Intention really is everything." She would say this to encourage me, or some other individual, when we were attempting some challenging but very worthwhile or laudable project. I believe, though, that part of what she had in mind was that the Divine has intentions about you and for you, so that when you adopt an intention that's roughly aligned with that, you'll be getting some support for its success from the entire universe, no less.

The notion that "intention is everything" also has a shadow side. Many of our intentions are unconscious, and these may cause us to fail even though our conscious intentions are positive and strong. When I would be unsuccessful despite my strong intention to do well, that spiritual teacher would tell me I needed to work on my shadow side in that sphere of life.

I'd also like to suggest that the primary reason we find movies and plays and fiction stories of all kinds interesting is that they show us the characters' primary intentions working themselves out. In other words, I’m suggesting that what we really want to see when we watch a movie or play is the conflict between the inner, often somewhat secret intentions of the central character and those of his or her antagonist(s). This is the really important “action”, I suggest, and it’s inner action, and mental and emotional action. We find this interesting in movies because, as I see it, life itself is ultimately a “game” of intentions interacting with or colliding against one another.

In any activity or situation, if we have an inadequate attitude then it doesn’t matter how expertly or conscientiously we may perform a role or job, because eventually our bad attitude will create a bad intention which erodes the entire quality of our performance.

Also, let’s note that although the Divine (or Source, or whatever you may call it) has clear and very justifiable intentions for us, it very often (apparently) doesn’t push these on us – although I guess we consider any tragedy, or miraculous-seeming “luck”, in our lives or the lives of those close to us an “act of God” if it seems quite outside our control.

TraineeHuman

30th May 2017, 07:52

Okay, here's another piece regarding intention, but there'll be more material to come. Let's look at the phenomenon of the Divine intentions.

Because our minds are tainted by ignorance, by ego, we crave or desire all sorts of things, big and tiny, and imagine they will make us fulfilled, at least for the moment. Which they never really do, and never will. This is because of our ignorance, in the ancient Eastern sense of "ignorance", meaning our failure to be mindfully aware of or even intuitively sense what the outcome -- and often even the real underlying intention -- of our every action will be, not to mention the "big picture" background. That ignorance guarantees that we'll fall short of the Divine intention in each situation -- except when we are in our highest moments.

The Divine intention, after all, is based on omniscience and universal interconnection, and not on the limited understanding of a mind out of touch with the Divine Mind. But the good news is (I claim) that the Divine intention always exists, however destructive of its workings such things as war and corruption and so on may be. Consequently, all our practice of meditation and mindfulness and love and selfless service amounts to a tuning in, albeit often incompletely or somewhat incompletely, to the Divine intention as far as that affects us and those around us. Such a tuning in happens without our effort.

The Divine intention is at work all the time, but it also allows us to make a mess of everything, because trial-and-error is the best way of learning to ultimately know better. The Divine intelligence even factors in the fact that many of the Divine intentions won't succeed immediately, but are still necessary for achieving a better final result. It factors in the reality of human impotence and ignorance. The Divine itself ultimately grows stronger through this.

Another very major consideration is the fact that we all contain and even embody the intention to become better, greater, more aware and in better relationship with our environment than what we already are. Extrapolate that inbuilt intention in us all to become ever better, however poorly and benightedly we may at times apply it within the world of matter in our daily lives, and you have the potential, the seed, of transformation that is ultimately limitless. Though of course, first we will need to outgrow our current limited state in many ways.

An interesting situation occurs if we deliberately and commitedly make it our biggest priority, above and exclusive of everything else, to do absolutely all we can to find and live by the Divine intention for us. Provided we can maintain having such a priority over a long time -- which no doubt very few do --, then we are opening ourselves to certain inputs from that Divine intention. Not yet to all the knowledge that that Divine intention carries within it, though, because as long as we are stuck in limitations we won't be able to make balanced, helpful use of something that's unlimited relative to us.

TraineeHuman

3rd June 2017, 03:35

Let's agree to say that "the soul" is the same thing as the higher levels of what I have been calling the Higher Mind/Self. Then the soul is something that certainly exists in everyone. (I claim it also can't really be stolen or annihilated, by the way. On the other hand, the personality, or astral body -- which is probably what so many use the term "soul" for --, can be annihilated after death, or stolen. Such annihilation may even be a good thing, because it isn't who we really are but while we're physically alive it's "normal" to unquestioningly believe that we actually and totally are our personality -- unless we've done enough advanced work on developing our awareness, and sometimes not even then.)

It's important to get the hierarchy of existence straight:

Our Divine part, then

Superconsciousness below it, then

the soul, then

the lower HM (the psychic self), then

the personality, then

the physical body.

To say the least, there's ever so much confusion and misleading myths around in New Ageish circles as the result of mistaking phenomena on one level for those at some other level in this hierarchy. And that's understandable enough, for reasons some of which I'd like to briefly explain.

"Normally" -- while we're physically alive, and usually also for some time after our physical death -- the soul gets overpowered or overridden, undercut, at almost every turn by -- well, by the personality, meaning the ordinary thinking mind plus the emotions, plus (while we're physically alive) the urgings of the physical life-force or life-energy within us. Still, the soul does manage to shed a certain amount of light to the individual on a better way to live than the standard superficiality. It does that through premonitions, "light bulb" flashes of ideas, symbolic warnings that we sense are hinting at something major, synchronicities, dreams occasional intuitions that turn out to be correct, suggestions from others that resonate with us, unexplained attractions, and so on. All of these are coming from the lower half of the Higher Mind/Self. However, these are all piecemeal and often only half-correct (which is still nothing to be sneezed at), because although that lower half does have some true knowledge, that knowledge is always incomplete and therefore requires some reliance on mere guesswork, plus it's also tainted by the distortion of truth caused by our unconsciousness and our ego.

Clairvoyants will tell you how the (lower) astral realms are a kind of jungle, a relentless battleground where everyone's desires seem to conflict with everyone else's, but the forcefulness and energy available to each individual is considerably greater than what we have in the waking physical state. all that effort, though, is an expression of the things I've described above. It's at best semi-ignorant, and hence it's almost inevitable that the intentions we have at that level will be somewhat misguided. This often makes the effort to try and make them come true a waste of energy.

If, on the other hand -- as unfortunately happens in only a minority of cases --, the soul can eventually learn how to penetrate deeply into our shadow side and still remain mostly stable and peaceful, then it can finally become the master of all our thoughts and actions and urges. That's the point where intentions become sovereign, because now they're the soul's true intentions. And the soul achieves that mastery not through force and effort, but through understanding and insight primarily, as well as through love or gentleness or sensitivity or creativity -- which all become immensely powerful once the soul makes our thoughts and acts authentic, because it has quietly (coming from a position of obvious greater strength) taken them over.

From where will the soul attain such strength, such certainty? A major source is that the soul which has achieved such mastery sees that everything lies inside of it! This is because it has seen that going deeply enough inside oneself is to go into the universe, into all there is. Not only that, but that the only way we can know with certainty that anything else exists, and that it has this quality or that quality, is because it has been there inside us all along, but until this point our "eyes" were veiled. Let me try to elaborate a little.

You and I might agree -- if it happens to be so -- that we are at the same physical location and that there we see the same table. But that knowledge will be at the superficial level. If we're almost completely out of contact with our souls -- as most unfortunately are while in the physical world --, then we'll have no idea at all that the whole source of our certainty that that table exists actually comes to each of us from our soul. The soul lives in another world, so to speak, a higher world, yet the paradox is, it's much more the real us than who we ordinarily believe we are. Not only that, but the soul's world is what contains and sustains the superficial world and gives it its coherence.

Early in this thread I've said that consciously having intentions of any kind puts us into the lower levels of the HM, at least momentarily. But the intentions will only be semi-effective, and semi-powerful at best -- unless they come from the soul level of the HM and moreover the soul's intentions aren't being drowned out by the "noise" within us. So many New Age-ish individuals quite mistakenly tend to believe that all they need to do to manifest something is to have a strong (intense, if not, indeed, forceful) enough intention for that state of affairs to come true. But no. The reason so-and-so didn't get the check for a billion dollars materializing in their mailbox was that it wasn't their soul's intention for them to do so. Or even if it was their soul's intention, that intention probably got steamrolled or shouted down by the louder, semi-ignorant intentions coming from the lower half of the HM, or by desires coming from their (even more ignorant) surface mind and their emotions.

The soul doesn't have any identity in the same way that we "normally" believe that we have to behave consistently as "Fred Smith" or whatever our name is. The soul is too flexible and open and elusive for that. It may be helpful here to consider how, as I described in post #2649, who/what we really are is a relation, not a subject or object. To give just one example of what this means, the soul does does not have any goals, something to achieve "there" rather than "here", or in the future rather than now. From the soul's point of view, the journey is itself the goal. And the soul does choose to go on certain journeys, but it knows that reality is always a process and not anything that's fully completed or closed or not "elastic".

Another example is how the soul sees memories. To it, "our" memories and "our" past lifetimes are rather like lenses it can use to gain certain detailed knowledge and understanding. But beyond that, the soul doesn't view them as being "itself" in some way. They just happen to be the lenses which are the most accessible to the soul. The acquisition of some new, quite different lenses will often be preferable to the soul, if such are within its reach.

There is a big gap, a big quantum jump, between the lower levels of the HM and the soul. The creation and cultivation of that gap involves many very major spiritual practices or qualities, including: equanimity, "No thinking", detachment, "no-mind", formlessness, clarity, being nonjudgmental, serenity, unconditional bliss, and some others. All of them grand things to aspire to. The more fully and masterfully and frequently one cultivates those qualities or states, the more the soul will be able to at last take greater and greater mastery.

TraineeHuman

8th June 2017, 06:54

How do we get started on making that quantum jump to the soul's level, and becoming able to "hear", at least in our highest moments, what the soul's urgings are? Well, most meditation techniques are specifically designed to enable us to make such a start. However, this does involve navigating our way through all the experiences and half-correct intuitions of the psychic self. (So that in my experience, unfortunately only some 10% of professional, or part-time professional, psychics are accurate enough not to be a waste of one's money. And about 99% of all channellers.)
Another helpful tool here is that of learning to embrace (and face) our shadow side, our dark side. In this thread I haven't often gone into how to do this at a practical level, so here's a video that I consider to give some good pointers regarding how to overcome desires, etc by means other than repression:

mzOiLu3EkvY

I'm not denying, though, that something that's also necessary is the cultivation of conscious obedience, or at least receptivity to and cooperation with, the urgings of one's higher consciousness, which one of course becomes more conscious of through going very deeply inwards, and by in some way then allowing that consciousness to take one over more and more. After all, one's lower nature seeks to use error to (attempt to) arrive at truth, and suffering to attempt to arrive at bliss.

TraineeHuman

9th June 2017, 08:51

I'd like to share some thoughts regarding the differences between how the soul acts and how the ego acts (or the personality, which I consider to be virtually the same thing). The ego relies on effort and force, of varying degrees of subtlety, for all of its actions. This is because the ego is ultimately all about individual survival, and nothing else.

The soul acts from an inner understanding, of what I have called the Divine Will. One thing which can be confusing here is the fact that the soul, once truly awakened, has much greater power than the ego. In fact, the soul has the strength to defy all social expectations. It does this with very great confidence because of its insight into what is truly the right thing above and beyond all social conditioning. The soul accepts and admits greater and truer insights and forces within it. It often asserts considerably greater individuality than the ego in most cases ever dares. But it does this not as a result of consciously exerting force but through relaxing into an inner radiance, into a greater level of being that comes from within, carrying gigantic certainty. In the soul's world, everything seems to flow. Everything feels fulfilled and complete. The soul really doesn't care about "what people will think", although out of kindness it does also rise to the challenge of dressing up its unconventional behavior in a socially acceptable form where possible.

There are certain situations in which any person may notice that the soul is at work and quietly taking care of them. Many will call this "God" or say it's a greater power than themselves, but actually it's their own soul, and more truly themselves than what they've imagined themselves to be. These include any situation of personal tragedy or great loss. Such situations can become major turning points for us of a good kind -- even though at the time we will at least initially see them as the opposite of that. Everything gets swept away from us at such times, leaving our whole existence temporarily at the mercy of something "other than" what we consider to be ourselves.

The freeing of the soul – the unchaining of many of its powers and abilities – does result in making all the forces inside an individual bigger and stronger, regardless of whether any of these are positive or negative. I believe this is why such a considerable number of leaders of spiritual communities have in recent times been exposed as behaving unethically with regard to sex, money or power. Presumably such individuals had managed to overcome their egoic temptations at an earlier time, but became unable to continue to do so in the face of the more powerful temptations and, presumably, the greater opportunities for unsupervised mischief.

1Watchman

13th June 2017, 07:48

This means a lot to me. I go in and out of it all the time.

TraineeHuman

13th June 2017, 10:01

Yes, Watchman, it's so important to do what our soul (our "heart") truly wants. Not only longer-term, careerwise and partner/friend-wise, but also in each moment, whenever we can manage it (through having an intensity of singlemindedly focused awareness on, and in, each moment). And it's so important to separate what our soul truly wants from all the subtleties of our conditioning -- such as what a parent would have ideally liked to do but never got the opportunity -- and to separate it from the urges of our lower nature, as well.

Guish

14th June 2017, 17:23

TraineeHuman

16th June 2017, 05:46

TraineeHuman

22nd June 2017, 01:02

The soul is something quite elusive, in my own experience and also in traditions such as Vedanta, Taoism and Zen Buddhism. One of the principles of Gestalt psychology is that the whole is always greater than the sum of its parts (if we’re talking about any psychological or spiritual phenomena). And the soul is whatever it is that remains stable and equanimous and keeps all the different parts of you together in one piece. The trouble is, probably you’re not aware of quite all of the parts, let alone their sum total, and so to most people their soul is effectively “invisible” most of the time and watches kind of in secret. The true soul is something that’s our ruler but has (for now) delegated all its authority to less senior rulers and only rarely changes or overrides their decisions.

If, however, an individual’s inner development becomes strong and rich enough, then the soul will come forward openly. But where humanity is at at present, we only seem to see that in rare individuals, at least in Western society. The trouble is, the soul lives in a different kind of world, in the sense that it uses a quite different and superior kind of knowing (and not-knowing) and understanding than most individuals normally use. The soul won’t compromise with that, in the sense that it won’t give up using that type of knowing and remaining true to it. I suspect that fairy tales originated because of this fact. Also the myth of the hero. The truth is, the soul is the real hero, the very essence, so that every individual does have a hero inside them. But unfortunately in most of us that hero has retreated to the true center, from where it works ever so patiently to transform our actions and life into something higher.

It might help if I say something further to post #2680 to clarify how the soul (or the true inner center) is different from the personality or the astral body. It’s a very common mistake for Westerners to presume that the soul is simply whatever it is that lives on immediately after our physical death. And that’s just our personality or astral body, or, to put it another way, everything we feel inside plus how such feelings were structured (by thoughts). I suspect this mistake is traceable to a superstitious and ill-informed ancient Greek myth that the soul was a certain kind of shadow (“shade”) of ourselves that was a type of imprint very much like a complete, detailed photocopy of everything we were. Almost a pre-invention of 3D printing, in concept, I guess. It seems that few of the ancient Greeks knew how to meditate properly and thereby regularly go deeply into the “clear Light” of the land of “within”, so the Greeks generally didn’t seem to know, or at any rate emphasize, that part of us.

As it is, almost all of humanity lives a life of intimations from a source we can’t trace. The true humility which we need is for the ordinary thinking mind to acknowledge how erroneous its judgment usually is, how limited its knowledge and how petty its will often is, and how difficult it makes our lives generally. Plus how desperately it needs to submit to what lies waiting within us, behind the thick veil.

TraineeHuman

25th June 2017, 04:30

More about what the soul is, and how its world differs from the personality's world of suffering, whether out of the inadequacy of pleasure or out of pain. Each soul sees itself as being in all things, in the sense that it can reach into all things instantly through a special, direct kind of understanding/knowing, and having reached in, it can directly know what is there. This sounds strange to us, but only because we don't usually live from the soul. Sometimes we will experience this type of understanding through love, such as of a child or a partner. We should remember that the soul lives in a world of understanding (and love), and most of the time not directly in the physical world (or the emotional or (ordinary) mental worlds) -- unless it has achieved full descension, which only a fully Divinely realized being will have done.

Although the soul sees itself as in all things, it hasn't as yet learnt to see all things as being in it, in unity and harmony and relation with it. And so a big part of the soul's journey, in its (higher) world, is to come to realize the inseparable interconnection of all things, all beings whatsoever.

Meanwhile, to enlarge the degree of contact and communication with our soul, the essential "exercise" is that of learning to face and absorb the painful shocks, and the never quite fulfilling pleasures, of our life but without falling into suffering, which is always a type of contraction, and of self-limitation and even of violence to oneself. If we face these properly and fully, what we experience is an equality, a neutrality. Initially this may take the form of an aware indifference, but eventually it needs to develop into a gladness, and in the end even, ultimately, a bliss, at all experiences, all contacts, even all problematic situations. That is the journey into the unfolding of the soul, a journey which the soul also makes from its end.

samildamach

25th June 2017, 11:17

TraineeHuman

25th June 2017, 13:31

Is the soul linked to the hs directly?

The connections between what I consider my 3d personality and the many parts of myself ,heart ,gut, soul,and hs minds slowly so slowly moving together as one,these altogether seem to make the whole .I hope that makes sense.

Well, I guess each soul could be said to have a unique "personality" of its own, but that's something very different from the mental and emotional construct that people more commonly consider "their personality" to be. Personality in the latter sense is the same as, or corresponds to, the life of Fred Smith, or whatever your name is, and whatever identity (well, collection of identities and behaviors) goes with that name. It's significantly defined or limited by what "your" habitual preferences and memories are.

The soul witnesses the entire life of "the personality" in that latter sense, but my understanding and observation is that in most people the soul remains aloof from it most of the time. The soul doesn't use the processes of the ordinary thinking mind, but instead its knowledge comes from intuition (from "light bulb moments", which it has constantly). It's a little analogous to how a small child doesn't have the capacity to think abstractly, but the lack of that capacity doesn't mean that abstract thought and abstract understanding isn't possible. Nor that it's not the case that anyone who can use abstract thought lives in a world separate from, and in certain senses superior to, the child's world.

Did my post #2680 make any sense to you?

TraineeHuman

28th June 2017, 02:30

The soul "thinks big". Or, to be more accurate, it sees big, feels big, knows big. Unlike the thinking mind, the soul doesn't see its true self as limited by the outlook of the personality. The soul seeks as far as it can to be attuned to all things, to the infinite, instead. That’s not to deny that its effectiveness is usually frustrated and its practical vision clouded by the ego (including unconscious ego, which is the shadow), which for now is like a dead albatross around its neck.

Here I can mention the fallacy I believe is found in much New Ageish talk about applying the Law of Attraction. Yes, you do deserve “it”. Yes, you can bring greatness into your life, at least at "small that’s hugely beautiful" levels. But I suggest that's not done by creating idolatrous images with your thinking (and visualizing) mind. It's done by going beyond your own intellectual ideas and your own desires and preferences, and jumping into the formlessness but also the perfect strength of the universal. Through meditation practice you can eventually learn how to “expand” inwardly to what at least seems to be an infinite level.

When I talk of going beyond your thinking mind and your desires and into your being, I also at the same time acknowledge that the only way out is by going “through”, in a sense. What I mean is, the intellectual seeking for something higher and beyond is also one essential component, as also is the need for it to be seized on by the heart as the thing to be sought above all, and by the will as the most important thing to be done, no matter what. To access something higher, we need to use what we've currently got and where we're at, but also be ready to leave it all behind so that we can let in something higher. Then to let the something higher mix with and transform what we've got.

dpwishy

28th June 2017, 23:32

Really impressed this thread is still carrying on. I came back just to check this out and am blown away with the dedication and time you still put into this. You are a digital Bodhisattva. ;)

Guish

1st July 2017, 15:06

I think some methods have focused on neglecting the self completely while some have focused on transcending it.

Let's be precise. Whatever transcends "the" (so-called) self is another (higher, masterful) "self", surely?

But I have no issue with talking of an individual self, as long as it's absolutely and uncompromisingly understood that the true nature of the self is that it's (in reality, ultimately) neither a subject (an "I") nor an object, but something else -- a relation, a process, or a flow, or something verblike but not nounlike. (I've of course already explained that in post #2649.)

Only in that sense will I ever deny the real existence of "the self". When you buy some items at the supermarket, there's an individual human body handing the cashier money or credit for that item. And it's "your" body, or else we have a case of something like demonic possession or maybe extreme amnesia or bizarre remote control or whatever. And the "your" does indeed refer to a self, and moreover it's "your" self, which therefore you know does undeniably exist..

Hi Th,

Sorry to go back to this old post. Well, the body is yours and not yours too. The body is an extension of our parents and it has been going on like this from parents to parents. When I said self, I was more thinking of status, culture, belief, job position, whatever way people identify themselves. The body and the mind is the same. We balance the mind with the the body by having the right posture and the mind balances the body with balanced thoughts or like we say in zen, thoughtless thoughts.

Gassho,
Geerish.
Great to to be here again.

TraineeHuman

2nd July 2017, 03:24

Yes, Guish, "the body is yours but not yours too". Very well said. By "self" you say you meant one's self-identification. Fine, I guess that's the usual thing most people do. But of course, there's also "self" in the sense that you exist. Cultivation of a significant amount of philosophy seems to usually be necessary for a "spiritual" life, though of course it absolutely needs to be balanced with extensive practice (of meditation and "cathartic" insight and of mindfulness in ordinary life, at the very least) and service and devotion of various kinds.

My most influential teacher of philosophy actually appears to have been a disembodied one (beyond words, somehow), who was the (nondualist) Greek philosopher Heraclitus (whom Aristotle and Socrates and Plato all described as an indisputably greater philosopher than themselves, even though the ordinary Greeks of that day weren't up to understanding his ideas). I strongly suspect that Heraclitus fully reincarnated as the nondualist Indian philosopher Nagarjuna (who among other things insisted that the ordinary world is also fully real), and then in the nineteenth and twentieth century as the nondualist Wittgenstein. As I understand it, Wittgenstein was the one responsible for the whole notion of what we today know as "postmodernism". That's because in his later period, Wittgenstein proved that all meaning is determined by the context (so that the meaning of every word is similar to the meaning of the word "this", in that it varies considerably depending on the situation it's used in).

It seems to me that nearly everyone without what I would consider a professional training in philosophy misunderstands exactly what the contextual nature of meaning really implies. They (e.g., Ken Wilber, and his friends) seem to assume that the contextuality implies that the nature of reality is "relativist" in certain ways that it isn't. That's a very significant problem, in my view, infecting the whole milieu of nontraditional spiritual teachings today.

In post #2649 I explained how untrue to reality the notion is that reality is comprised of objects. But when Western, or Westernish-educated, people use terms such as "body" or "(ordinary) mind" or "Source" or "self" and so on, usually they implicitly pull in the notion that the body, the mind, the universe, and so on, is some type of object (or some type of subject, in the case of Source). That leads to all sorts of paradoxes and much confusion. To avoid the confusion and paradoxes, it's necessary to instead frame "the body", "the (ordinary, thinking) mind" and so on as contexts or situations (or, maybe, gestalts, or processes). And by the way, Guish, I happen to know that when we physically die the physical body stops functioning while our (lower) mental and emotional "bodies" continue (for centuries, though most souls disengage from these, usually after some years) -- and for that reason, to say that "the body" and "the mind" are the same thing may also confuse some people. I do appreciate, though, that a dualistic split between body and mind is nonsense while the physical body is alive. Yes, while both are alive they do intermingle with each other, sometimes quite seamlessly, making it a "both-and" situation rather than an "either-or".

Guish

2nd July 2017, 07:51

TraineeHuman

2nd July 2017, 10:15

It so happens that the Zen tradition is considered to have a much bigger quantity of written material than any other meditation tradition -- even though it's primarily all about what's ultimately inexpressible. Quite a lot of that material is very philosophical. If I remember correctly, the most often recited Zen sutra is the Diamond Sutra, for instance, which is all about how form is really the same thing as space, and so on. The reason why the quantity of written material is so huge in Zen, I believe, is because the extensiveness of profound spiritual experience has been so much greater in that tradition.

I think the most important thing is that one needs to not retreat into some kind of comfortable behavior pattern, because that is always mostly ego. One needs to stay on the edge and keep truly open to life and never shrink from making a fool of oneself as long as one is doing one's best, nor from staying vulnerable to others and to learning to love our life in this world -- whatever it brings us -- better and better. The world, the environment, is in big trouble these days, so it needs us all to expose ourselves to making real contributions to it locally.

I consider one needs to intelligently reflect on and understand one's experiences (in daily life and in meditation and mindfulness), though, in order to communicate properly with oneself regarding them. It's a matter of having done so, to then leave all the theoretical conclusions behind, to not-know about them -- unless they come up again when one next reflects.

Incidentally, since you've also brought the (quite philosophical) topic of "the now" up, the only "time" that exists is the Eternal Now, which in certain senses does contain the entire future and past, because time doesn't "flow", at all. I claim to know, as a result of direct experience, that the Eternal Now is distinct from the present moment without any reference to the past or future.

Guish

2nd July 2017, 17:14

Very well said TH. Life is our temple. In pure Zen Tradition, all activities are done with full devotion and single mindedness. In Soto Zen, every step taken is enlightenment and enlightenment is not something to aim for. I listened to my teacher Jundo the other day and he said that Equanimity is not about being passive to the misery of life. It's about being still in the storm and do your best to improve your surroundings and yourself. At a deeper level, we are already perfect but moods and emotions do come to stir the mind and we need to observe the clouds and let go. For some, the clouds just come and pass. it all depends.

TraineeHuman

3rd July 2017, 06:52

I suggest that a very important part of the "spiritually aware" person's task is to understand the society and the age which they are taking part in and hopefully contributing to at some small level. So, it's quite crucial to understand, and even to a certain extent to briefly study, what postmodernism and what some of its implications are. That's because, in Western countries at least, we're living in an age and a civilization that's partly modernist but also partly postmodernist, and is inevitably becoming more and more postmodernist as time goes on. I would consider that the only things that could stop the rolling on into a fully postmodern age would be either major thermonuclear war or some catastrophic natural or astronomical event, such as a full-on ice age or a gigantic meteor's collision with the planet.

Modernism was probably characterized by three things:
1. The factory system and technology/technocracy, plus
2. Scientific dogma and the "worship" (or, at least, the unquestioning belief in the validity of) the scientific method and "positivism" (which is actually a variety of nihilism), or, equivalently, of the notion that reality is composed solely of objects, and all that that implies at a practical level, plus
3. The corporate system, and rule by corporations.
Obviously, it's still going on, at something like full speed.

Postmodernism, as I've very briefly explained in post #2694, is characterized by following the implications of a contextual and relational view of reality. I happen to have a postgraduate degree in philosophy, so I won't go into details here of how and why this is so. But post #2649 provides some background. Suffice it to say for now that there are considered reasons for saying that the prospect of a future where we're ruled solely by corporations and AI isn't as likely as many alternative people imagine. And the foremost reason for this is, I suggest, that it seems unlikely that modernism -- even in the form of worldwide fascist, 6G oppression -- can totally prevail when the postmodern consciousness seems to be an inevitable byproduct of modernism, one that slowly eats away at modernism's foundations rather like a cancer.

TraineeHuman

3rd July 2017, 09:14

With regard to science and scientism, there was a thread in 2011 (started by Bill Ryan) titled: 'Science is really a religion'. You can find it here:
http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?14553-Science-is-really-a-religion&highlight=science+religion
That was the third thread where I've explained some of the fallacious (or irreparably deficient) assumptions on which the scientific method is based. (The previous two threads where I did this were in the previous incarnation of this Forum, now found in the Archives.) I'm not willing to restate some of that material in a fourth thread now. But since science really and absolutely is a religion, I fear some of its believers maybe won't want to even admit the possibility that they are merely believers. Rather, they may try to erroneously insist that science = truth, absolutely. If so, for some of them it may in that case be perhaps asking too much to suggest that they should read and reflect in depth on the philosophy of science, particularly the writings of Paul Feyerabend, who was the most influential figure in that field for a number of decades.

This is not to deny that science and scientism was in many ways an improvement on the religions of the Christian Church(es).

Orph

3rd July 2017, 13:37

Ooooops. Sorry for the interruption

TraineeHuman

6th July 2017, 09:08

I think some methods have focused on neglecting the self completely while some have focused on transcending it. There's still a chit chat in one's head but the effect of the chit chat decreases with practice and one easily recognizes the calling as it brings true joy, peace and it feels right.

As far as I have seen, the easiest way to get more fully touch with the soul is to let go of "the self", in the sense of any opinions, or beliefs, or "your story" or your emotional preferences or addictions. This is something we need to do occasionally, and even regularly if possible. Without leaving everything behind in this way, we block ourselves from seeing and benefiting from new possibilities, which are always presenting themselves if we only look (from a space beyond fear, or at the very least not too much frozen in fear or habit). There are many ways to do this. One example would be Byron Katie's method (www.thework.com), but good meditation is another example of a way, as also is the practice of feeling the aliveness.

When we let go of "me" in this way, what we're really doing is opening ourselves to the infinite, to the universe. Not having "our" self-centered thoughts, purposes, lights and consciousness there, what flows in instead are the universal purposes and knowledge and inspirations. These blend and harmonize with our "own". In this way we are in fact surrendering to the Divine will. It's all done through the soul.

Virilis

8th July 2017, 04:03

Thank you so much TraineeHuman for starting this incredibly useful thread. I just stumbled upon it, so still have a lot of reading ahead of me.

I used to meditate extensively a number of years ago, which resulted in a profound state of altered consciousness after several months of dedicated engagement in this process. I was overjoyed and gratified to be blessed with many profound and illuminating experiences as a consequence. I feel that I had reached a certain level of "psychic attunement" during that period of my life, and came tantalisingly close to evoking OBE's, but experienced difficulties with stabilising and holding that special state of consciousness to facilitate deeper explorations. The vicissitudes of life were such, that work commitments etc presented significant challenges in regards to finding sufficient time to maintain my meditation regimen, and eventually I wasn't meditating at all anymore.

I'd like to try again. OBEs represent an important "spiritual technology" for me, one that may be a powerful transformative agent in reconciling dualistic thought and experience. I have encountered a wonderful book entitled "Wisdom of the Mystic Masters" by Joseph J. Weed. The content and associated practical exercises articulated in that text seem to be anchored in the mystical traditions of the Rosicrucians. In it, he provides details on a methodology whereby "Etheric Projection" may be achieved.

https://i.ebayimg.com/thumbs/images/g/sFIAAOSwGJlZGycq/s-l225.jpg

I would love to hear everyone's thoughts on the potential efficacy of this approach. Perhaps some Avalonians may find it useful too. :)

Preparation
"1. Do not attempt this when you are physically exhausted, or have just finished eating or at any other time when the blood is likely to be drawn from the head to other parts of the body. This is important. Your mind must be clear and active, not cluttered and somnolent. Thus a full complement of blood in the brain is necessary.

2. Take a bath and cleanse yourself thoroughly, including your mouth and teeth. In a word, remove from yourself as much extraneous physical matter as you can. Usually a shower is better than a tub. This cleansing process is quite important, so do not neglect it. It has both a practical and a psychological effect, practical in that it will free you from both material and astral contamination, psychological in that you will actually feel mentally and emotionally cleaner.

3. Put on a light garment, a nightdress or a set of pajamas or a single clean robe.

4. Select a place where you will not be interrupted, a place which is also as quiet as it is possible to find.

5. Sit in a comfortable chair with a back high enough to rest your head, or lie flat on a bed or couch. A large arm chair is better, as a rule, because it is easier to maintain awareness in a sitting position. We are all too prone to fall asleep when lying down.

Practice
1. When comfortable and relaxed, take seven deep breaths. These should be even breaths spaced in a rhythmic fashion. Inhale to the count of four, hold the breath to the count of eleven, then exhale to the count of seven. The counting should be even and regular, never hurried, never too slow.

2. When the breathing has been completed, close your eyes and visualise the place to which you wish to project. It may be the next room or it may be 1000 miles away; it doesn't matter. But it is important that you know this place, that you have been there and are familiar with it in all its details. Then see yourself in this place. Imagine that you are in this spot you have selected. In order to do this successfully you must shut out your awareness of your present physical surroundings, shut out all sights and sounds, and see in your mind's eye the appearance of the place you wish to visit. Endow this picture with every detail possible for you to recall, the colors, the lighting, the arrangement of objects, the characteristic sounds, the smells, all that you would be aware of if you were physically there.

3. When you can actually visualize yourself in the place selected, look about. Observe furniture arrangements, people who may be present, how they are dressed, listen to what is said. Then return your attention to your body seated in the chair or lying on the couch.

4. It is important that you retain full conscious awareness throughout. Do not fall into a dream state. There will be a strong inclination to do so but you must resist it. The moment you slide into a dream state, you have a tendency to become an actor on the stage and not a spectator in the audience. Good projection depends upon your ability to control yourself. The dream state brings illusion and unreality. Therefore, stay awake.

Review
When you open your eyes back in your room, write down the exact hour and all that you observed. Later you may have an opportunity to verify your observations. This is the proper scientific approach, the attitude always encouraged by the Rosicrucians. Try, then test. Try again, then test again. And again."

Excerpt from "Wisdom of the Mystic Masters by Joseph J. Weed (1968)

I'm also keenly interested in regards to alternate methodologies employed by Avalon members, and their degree of success experienced. Has anyone supplemented such practices with meditation aids such as Binaural or Hemisync sounds? If so, which ones were particularly conducive to facilitating an OBE?

IVZG79y4lbk

TraineeHuman

9th July 2017, 08:48

Hi Virilis,

I read the book Wisdom of the Mystic Masters over 50 years ago. I agree it contains various kinds of seriously useful or interesting information. If anyone out there is wondering what the Masonic degrees before the 32nd involve, or the corresponding Rosicrucian degrees, this book, as also its sequel, presents a useful version of a significant amount of the material that's taught there.

With regard to the method you've quoted for learning to astral travel, I unfortunately have reservations about the use of visualization, in the following sense. I believe that about 99% of the visualizations (and also of all the attempted applications of the Law of Attraction, or of "focus") generally carried out appear to be carried out by the (lower) mind or by the personality. But the personality, and likewise the lower (ordinary, thinking) mind can't ever command or bring out or accurately imitate the soul. On the other hand, the soul is what actually does all of our astral travel (and all of our dreaming). The soul never gives away its power, but it doesn't enforce all its power either.

I suggest that instead of seeking to force the soul to do anything (which is also physically a nauseating experience), including astral travel, the right behavior is to learn how to invite it to graciously descend and consider your request to it to choose to astral travel (initially, for any beginner) when your body is asleep.

TraineeHuman

10th July 2017, 11:04

The soul penetrates to the heart of every topic or issue in our lives. It doesn’t see things just in terms of our desires and cravings and our dislikes and personal prejudices or preferences, the way the personality does. That doesn’t mean it pretends these don’t exist, nor that they don’t need to be taken into account. It’s rather like when we see a movie or read a work of fiction or listen to music and so on. The story or the music may, for example, be tragic, but if it’s well crafted we’ll enjoy experiencing the beauty of how such tragedy is portrayed. From such an experience we usually won’t feel sad in our own lives, because we’ve been absorbed in the story or the music and we’ve forgotten about ourselves. In a similar way, the soul stands back from our personal dramas and adventures, but it’s still following and understanding every move.

Because the soul is free from the conflicts and frustrations and constant uncertainties which the personality undergoes (the only true freedom), clearly the soul is subject to and operates from higher laws or forces. However, the soul is itself also of course going through the learning experience of observing and vicariously experiencing the bondage that the lower self needs to endure and ultimately overcome. The soul needs the personality to eventually somehow learn to listen to the soul's promptings, and ideally even surrender to them. For only when the individual has completed his or her lessons in the school of the physical world will the soul become fully unburdened, fully free. In Christianity we have the notion that one must be “born again”. Quite similarly to this idea, the soul’s entire task is to patiently bring about the individual’s gradual rebirth, into now having a higher nature.

Guish

11th July 2017, 06:24

Interesting. In Soto Zen, we are encouraged to sit in a very noisy atmosphere at least once a week to train. The point being that peace is internal. I'd recommend watching Samsara. It shows how a monk came back to the Physical world after 3 years of meditation. However, he got lost when he came back and was tempted by lust and even committed infidelity after he returned to a normal living and got married. The world as it is is the real challenge and in fact the place to be free.

IvSm2Xnc_UA

TraineeHuman

11th July 2017, 10:18

Real spirituality involves learning how to be very simple in various particular ways. Not that this is ever by any means easy to achieve -- until one does it. Also, it's not just a matter of becoming simple, but of holding your state of simplicity while you allow the world around you to remain very complex. So it's really a matter of finding constant simplicity in complexity. I'm not sure what connection your post even has with what I've been saying about the soul, Guish, other than that the soul always remains very simple, and at a profound level. So I'll respond in terms of the theme of simplicity.

In a monastic type of environment, the external world is greatly simplified in some ways. In such an environment, it's much easier to find (relative) inner simplicity. (I say "relative" because one will still have many internal divisions, a huge can of worms at work within one, just below the surface.) But that doesn't guarantee that the (relative) inner simplicity won't fall apart out in the big bad world. I believe the idea here is that the monastery (or ashram, etc) is like a nursery, a hothouse. That one stays in that environment until the inner simplicity is so strong it will supposedly endure even in the world outside. But in our times we're living in an exceptionally complex world.

Unfortunately, I believe in most cases this monastic strengthening is only likely to work if one has a way to tune into (listen to) the soul (the intuition) continually, and only if one has largely surrendered to following the soul's promptings and advice. If my own experience is anything to go by, this means then living with formlessness as a constant companion every day in one's life. In as complex a society as ours, there is no such thing as "the one true path". Instead, we need the enactivated soul, which always sees higher but also wiser and also more accurate truth. It's not a matter of removing obstacles through practices of austerity (which in any case will totally fail to embrace our shadow side). The real "austerity" is that of removing the blocks to hearing the soul. It's not a matter of not having taste buds, or genitals, or reasonable ambitions and plans, and so on. It's a matter of holding our center in the midst of dealing with all such things as they come up.

TraineeHuman

18th July 2017, 03:16

The body and the mind is the same. We balance the mind with the the body by having the right posture and the mind balances the body with balanced thoughts or like we say in zen, thoughtless thoughts.

I'm aware that in some forms (all forms?) of Soto Zen they apparently have the slogan that: "The soul is the body". I suspect the meaning of this is in part metaphoric, but (apart from pointing towards avoidance of any mind-body dualism) the idea is that all one's movements should be graceful, one's postures should always be balanced and appropriate, and one's breathing always slow and deep into the belly. In other words, all the above physical expressions of oneself should be reflections of an inner state of profound equilibrium.

In this thread I've emphasized the importance of being grounded, and I would consider this Soto discipline to be one very effective way of guaranteeing one remains grounded at all times, or , when not, that one always quickly returns to being so. In practice, being grounded and being mindful often amount to the same thing. When one's movements are always slow, it becomes easier to make them mindful, and graceful, and grounded.

In most spiritual traditions the breath is also of tremendous importance. Often (e.g. in the Yogic tradition and inthe Western alchemical or hermetic tradition) the "real" breath is considered to be what we would call "the awareness of the breath" and primarily not the physical breath itself. The in this sense "real" breath can continue for a few days after physical death, because it interconnects the soul and the life-energy and the astral body with the physical world.

Guish

19th July 2017, 15:29

Hi TH,

I'm sure you know that grace in movement comes from the idea of practice- enlightenment which Master Dogen brought to Japan from China. In Soto Zen, we do not sit to attain enlightenment. Sitting is enlightenment. Now, it's not that a violent person will just sit zazen and become Buddha. It just means that consistent practice in sitting meditation and bringing the zen state to all activities in life is enlightenment. However, meditation is the center of everything one does.

I started to practise KINHIN since I joined the Soto Group. I'd recommend it to people. In simple terms, Breathe in deeply and do half a step of a normal step. As you put your foot down, exhale. Inhale again and do another half a step. The point of doing this is that there is nowhere to go. The moment now is complete and we need to live it fully. Do it by being fully immersed and feel it in your bones.

TraineeHuman

20th July 2017, 11:21

In the Soto Zen tradition, I understand one’s encouraged to use the practices to learn a way to "be natural" as fully as possible, and ever in new ways more and more. For us "nature" then gets seamlessly extended and developed more and more into the Divine Nature.

We know the Divine Nature's way -- when we can be properly aware of it -- is to just "be", to have profound presence, to truly be itself. The Divine Nature is also so powerful that, from the Zen point of view, resisting the fact of its existence is ridiculous. Such resistance is like foolishly trying to swim against a flood rather than at first just letting it carry you to wherever it wants. This is where we see the power behind non-resistance.

Stopping halfway through the step is of course also a concrete physical enactment of the fact that you already have being and you don't need to go anywhere, or use effort to do anything, to have full being. Wherever you are is already the center of the universe. So really, you don’t need to take even half a step in order to be fulfilled and complete -- as you're saying, Guish. We just need to learn to be Divinely natural, and go with that flow.

On the other hand, though, however fully we are flowing, we of course do need, and our soul keeps gently requiring us, to continually manifest our higher awareness in practical or small ways that affect life in the physical world constructively (without making ourselves a victim of anything not Divinely natural in the process). For that reason, we do need to complete the whole step.

Guish

21st July 2017, 07:56

Greetings,

I think Zen or other genuine spiritual practice is done to realise being this "divine nature" like you say; realisation of one being the flow.
Is Realisation all?
When one lives according to the divine nature, there's no suffering. Suffering comes from resisting life changes, judging it and expecting it to be in a way it isn't. When we accept it and in fact do changes to make it more harmonious, we feel at ease because we are living in a natural way. It's like gardening, you accept weeds will grow but you uproot them making the garden look tidy. Getting mad at the weed will make you suffer.

I referred to KInHin because slowing down stills the mind and as you know everything is revealed when the mind is still. What is exactly half a step? Anyway, it's all about bringing it out in life in the form of actions.

Regards,
Geerish.

TraineeHuman

24th July 2017, 08:52

Suffering comes from resisting life changes, judging it and expecting it to be in a way it isn't. When we accept it and in fact do changes to make it more harmonious, we feel at ease because we are living in a natural way. It's like gardening, you accept weeds will grow but you uproot them making the garden look tidy. Getting mad at the weed will make you suffer.

I think the analogy of weeds being like our suffering is very good.

Someone might wonder if there is ever a point where the weeds stop showing themselves altogether? Well, I've known and have observed many, many spiritual teachers of all sorts over most of my adult life. I’ve known quite a few of them extremely well, and others at least for shortish but intensely interactive periods. I've had many sorts of profound spiritual experiences since early childhood, except that once I'd reached my fifties such experiences seemed to have become somewhat "ordinary" and "regular" and "subtle" rather than so profound. (I believe they hadn't really become less "high", but I believe what happens is that each time one absorbs some higher awareness plus uses it to do some work on oneself and hopefully also creates something just a little more constructive in the sphere one lives and acts in, one inwardly increases one's overall (so-called) "vibration" a little. And then that becomes what seems normal and nothing special for one. But one doesn't ever lose any ground one has gained spiritually.)

What I've found so far, including in my own experience, is that one can become -- and some of us really do become -- gradually better at finding almost uninterrupted joy and content and acceptance, and hence an absence of significant suffering in oneself, in more and more situations. Some may call it finding "gratitude" for whatever happens, but really it's just joy in existence itself, as I think you're saying, Geerish. Suffering hopefully teaches us to find bliss instead, eventually. But it does happen gradually, over a period of years. That's in all the types of situations one frequently encounters in one's life -- including one's job or occupation and one's relationships, and also in the traffic and with unpleasant individuals and so on. But change the scene to some quite unfamiliar situation, whatever that may be: for some it's possibly a job interview, or perhaps public speaking, or acquiring great responsibility, or having to be something one has never successfully been or had a talent for -- a very good salesman, or a very good diplomat, or a very good publicist, or someone responsible for an entire organization, and so on and on. In such unfamiliar situations, it's my experience, and seems to have also been the experience of people I’ve known who I believe had spiritual mastery, that there's some serious suffering while adapting to the new challenge. Probably the suffering occurs only while the individual is in the uncomfortable and unfamiliar situation – though as you said, it could only be uncomfortable because of their resistance to being willing to see those weeds.

There seems to be no end to anyone's hidden flaws. The more interesting question, then, seems to be how best to bounce back from one's failures. Not just by deliberate effort or will, either, but by remaining open and surrendered to the unknowable and formless.

So, it seems there's always the challenge of some new kind of situation where we haven't as yet conquered suffering, even though through developing spiritual mastery (or, for starters, listening to what the soul is saying in one’s dreams, or through learing the art of listening to one's soul directly), one can eventually acquire the inner tools, and the inner higher guidance, to usually get rid of the suffering there rather quickly. As I understand it, the primary meaning of spiritual “enlightenment” is making our burden of suffering less heavy. ("Enlighten" being an Old English word meaning "lighten".) Therefore, it seems (because how long is a piece of string?), no-one in fact ever gets “fully enlightened”, at least not on this planet. They still have to pull out some very tough weeds now and then. If things were otherwise, that would be quite bland by comparison with how it actually is. Personally, I’m not even sure the concept of “enlightenment” as some sort of McGuffin that people should strive to get is more useful than it is misleading. I'd much prefer the expression "freedom from unhappiness in most situations" rather than "enlightenment".

Guish

25th July 2017, 17:04

You have written it very nicely TH. The journey starts with suffering and we bump into it from time to time as we keep learning or I must say as we keep dropping, accepting and changing. Dropping, accepting and changing seem to be contradictory but we do all of them at once. Some actions lead to suffering and some not. I have some bud-hist friends and even teachers who accept quite rightly that our animal tendencies are always there and this is why we live according to the precepts. In my view, we all have the divine nature and acting according to it will always result in something harmonious. Not everyone agrees with this though and I understand why too because a lot of "enlightened teaches" did act in amoral ways.

Cheers mate,
Geerish.

TraineeHuman

31st July 2017, 03:50

I would say that mindfulness can be considered "full" or "complete" mindfulness if it includes a nonjudgmental awareness of what is there. (That's in addition to one's centredly staying in the present moment in one's thoughts, of course.) This means that even if a thought or feeling or impulse we experience at a certain moment is negative, proper mindfulness means seeing it "neutrally" in the sense of accepting that thought or feeling etc for what it is (i.e., that it's negative), and not resisting the seeing or the experiencing of it, nor getting dramatic or reactive at all about the consequences of the fact that something negative is there in us. Such equanimous acceptance always has the effect of partially or completing dissolving that piece of negativity.

Equally, on the other hand, consider someone who constantly tries to repress any and all awareness of negativity occurring within themselves. Such an individual denies themselves access to the power of awareness to heal any aspect of their negativity.

We should also appreciate that many of the thoughts and feelings that find their way into our attention are not ours, and that includes quite a few of the negative ones. I would emphasize that this surely quite unavoidable as long as we're living in a dualistic world. However, spiritual mastery certainly has much to do with being able to continually dissolve negativity, or to overcome or transform it.

Unfortunately, there has traditionally been enormous pressure on spiritual masters and gurus etc to appear to be perfect, and to have permanently cleansed themselves of all traces of negativity or imperfection. I consider that whole notion of "saintliness" to be an abhorrent thing. Heaven preserve us from "saints", and from having any aspiration maybe one day getting close to becoming "saintly", or "absolute". If students or practitioners can be willing to admit that their teacher or advisor is human too -- as they often are willing to do these days --, and is certainly also flawed in certain ways, then that is a more mature relationship and more completely in touch with reality.

Guish

31st July 2017, 07:24

I think that it's a human tendency to venerate our ancestors. This is why a lot of the stories about spiritual figures have been distorted. For example, when Buddha was born, the mother felt no pain and he started to walk just after he was born. My parents(who are hindus by birth) think of Buddha as Lord Buddha too and the reincarnation of one of the Hindu deities but in SOTO Zen, we say that he was a great teacher and a man after all. Even Master Dogen cried when his closed ones were affected. There was acceptance of the emotion and the human nature. We accept the negative emotions like you said but don't cling to them just like we do with the good ones too. I remember Dalai Lama saying that Buddha became the "enlightened one" when he accepted Mara to be a part of himself. Hence, lust, greed,attachment and so on are there but they get dissolved with practice and if we stop walking the path, we start to get wired back to these instincts.

My teacher has told me that even after 30 years of walking the path since he received the dharma from Gudo Nishijima, he still feels angry at times but there is great awareness as well. One thing I find alarming is that there is an urge in for example in India to find a master to liberate you and the master is the liberated one or saintly one or knowledgeable one. In ceremonies, one would see the spiritual one as completely separate from the followers while in ZEN, everyone is one when they sit and the teachers are the simplest people you'd ever come across.

Gassho,
Geerish.

TraineeHuman

4th August 2017, 02:43

The soul has one foot in the infinite world, where it can access bliss, and one foot in the world of being a specific individual and adopting and living out particular points of view. This makes the soul potentially a precious gateway – the only gateway we have – into a world of true unity and the truer “self”. The ordinary thinking mind is simply not conscious of that unity, that oneness and direct contact with truth, and with existence.

Spiritual traditions have usually insisted that there cannot be more than one true self. Therefore, they have insisted, the “normal”, mentally constructed identity of you as Fred Jones must be a false self, not “who/what” you really are at all, even though quite a few traditions concede it’s something that’s in itself quite real as well. It’s a distracting marionette that so often won’t allow us to ignore it. Not only that, but because we’re here in the physical world and the world of ordinary mind, there’s only one possible way we can live here in genuine happiness. That is through activating the link that joins the two worlds, and explains those worlds to each other.

This is why meditation is so important. It’s a method to hopefully teach us how to access the world of unity and largely or even wholly leave the world of the physical senses and the thinking mind behind. But what we’re also learning in meditation is how to at least begin to flex the soul’s muscles, so to speak.

The soul makes use of what I have called “higher mind” or “intuition”, something which sees right through to the essence and the real truth of things. But it manages to do this and hold to its higher knowings in all the chaos and false appearances that confront us in this world at every turn.

TraineeHuman

6th August 2017, 02:48

Unlike the soul, the (thinking, or symbolizing) mind is unable to manifest existence, nor is it able to manifest wholistic consciousness (including the experience of oneness). This is at the root of why AI (presumably including certain types of Greys) can never have consciousness of the Divinity that underlies and holds together all existence -- unless, that is, the AI comes to itself be inhabited or adopted by some soul (such as the ET spaceships that themselves are conscious beings, presumably, the lead female character in the movie Ex Machina).

The soul knows/feels by means of a higher type of power or energy than what we normally mean by "power" or "energy". That higher power is what can collapse all distinctions (all differences) into something so unified as to be distinctionless, yet that power also silently pervades all the distinctions we make or use in this world. The soul's cognition exists prior to all movement and form (and physical matter) whatsoever. That makes it impossible for anyone to describe directly or precisely, because all language is made up of certain forms.

The soul's cognition originates from the Divine Consciousness's reaching out to find a way to look at and reflect on itself. The Divine Consciousness sees the whole picture, and therefore it sees everything as in harmony, not divided but contributing to the whole in its own way. Hence the soul also sees reality as being genuinely more harmonious than we usually do from our limited and partial view.

As well as seeing the whole picture, though, the soul sees our individual situation with deep understanding, and with greater wisdom than we usually use, and greater knowledge of what is really going on behind the scenes and behind our backs. What a pity that in our culture and civilization few people make the effort to once every week or so read what any of their dreams are saying. Our dreams are (mostly) the best possible advice, delivered very concisely and metaphorically by our soul, on what the real biggest challenges or problems are that we are currently going through, on an inner or psychological level, and what the most constructive and truest way for us to deal with them is.

TraineeHuman

9th August 2017, 03:43

What the soul really is is a deceptively simple-sounding question. The Gita (and hence Yoga and Vedanta) draws a sharp distinction between the soul (Purusha) and Nature (Prakriti). For the Gita, the whole journey to freedom involves the soul’s in the end coming into a right relationship with Nature. But the Gita also says that such a relationship isn’t initially possible. This is because until we reach a certain stage of development, the soul – as far as we know it -- acts through the ordinary mind. Admittedly, through the ordinary mind analyzing or interpreting our intuitions or dreams. The ordinary mind may struggle against Nature, but most of the time it isn’t strong enough to do anything other than submit to Nature’s forces and manipulate their impact as best it can. In recent centuries particularly, the Western mind has tried very hard to prove that the ordinary mind is stronger than that, more clever. But, as I need hardly mention in this Forum, the result has been the creation of problems some of which the ordinary mind could solve but doesn’t want to, and others that require a higher kind of true intelligence.

On the other hand, the Divine is totally the master of Nature and of all things. The Divine is therefore free to enjoy everything in Nature – even the hurricanes and earthquakes. The Divine knows how to no longer be subject to Nature. Our journey is that we initially need to master (not conquer), to equanimously understand, our own inner nature. That means being able to work harmoniously and cooperatively with it, rather than just being able to calm it during meditation. The mind below, the Divine above (and within). There are ancient Taoist poems about how the masterful individual walks through a pond but creates absolutely no ripples, and so on. I believe those poems are talking (metaphorically) about the soul that has achieved mastery over its inner nature. That’s the point where the soul largely takes over from the ordinary mind -– or, rather, it takes control of the ordinary mind in the role of that becoming merely the soul’s valued servant.

The soul’s journey can be described as one of learning to universalize itself. That involves “thinking” (or, rather, seeing) big –- which is a wonderful experience, surely. It involves gradually learning to stop clinging to one’s own ideas, desires, preferences, intentions, impulses, and so on. To the extent that these remain, they need to be made “bigger”, more universal, though still applied locally.

TraineeHuman

13th August 2017, 23:26

The soul is in essence immortal and formless (or, we can think of it or experience it as pure unending Light), but while we’re alive here it resides in, or with, the mortal physical body, and in various ways in a state of limitation. The life-energy it brings also connects the etheric, emotional and mental and “higher mental” bodies to the physical body while the latter is alive. Because “as above, so below” is true (but not vice-versa), the soul’s perception penetrates into everything that these bodies on planes below it see or experience. The formless and eternal can penetrate into and understand forms and time, but not vice-versa.

The soul is also considered to be a lower expression of what is often called the spirit in Western traditions, and Atma or Atman or Jivatman in Indian traditions. (However, to add some slight confusion, the word “spirit” is also instead sometimes used to refer to some things quite different from this, such as ghosts or other beings or entities from some level of the astral or etheric.)

The spirit is the universal self we – our souls -- can all become and, according to many traditions and teachings, eventually will all become. But actualization of the spirit is still considered to be a lower level of evolvement than becoming the One. Only the One is considered to be the ultimate, the Source.

This is paradoxical. How can a universal self not be one with all things and beings, yet not itself be the One? I recently viewed part of a video by one of the authorized international exponents of the Theosophical Society (which seeks to preserve and keep alive the true esoteric teachings, particularly those that were preserved in Tibet), and he seemed to appreciate this dilemma. He said that the spirit is a universal self, but with a definite “sense of individuality about it”.

Edgar Cayce was also aware of this dilemma. What Cayce said was:
“The idea of returning to God means a loss of individuality is paradoxical, since God is aware of everything happening and must therefore be aware of the consciousness of each individual. The return of the soul is the return of the image to whom imagined it. The consciousness of the individual -- its soul record -- could not be destroyed without destroying a part of God. When a soul returns to God , it becomes aware of itself not only as a part of God, but as a part of every other soul, and everything.”

Here Cayce simply asserts that the spirit somehow doesn’t lose any essential aspect of the soul’s individuality yet at the same time it’s quite fully universal too. That certainly admits to the existence of the contradiction, but unfortunately I would say it doesn’t really offer a way around it.

Putting on my philosopher’s hat, I would point out that one of the ways a universal self is different from the One is that, being a self of a certain kind, a universal self must be something that can be pointed at – and pointed at everywhere, because it’s universal. On the other hand, the One – at least as I understand the term – is the Prime Mover in every situation. It can’t be pointed at because it’s always really the one who’s doing the pointing. As Alan Watts said, to try to point at it would be like a fingertip trying to touch itself, or a tooth trying to bite itself.

As long as our implicit underlying metaphysics (our worldview) assumes that reality is made up of subjects and objects or the like, we’ll encounter the problem that this paradox doesn’t get satisfactorily explained or resolved. (And normally, unless we consciously resist, we are automatically committing ourselves completely to a subject-object metaphysics if we are using any Indo-European language, other than Basque or Lapp.) Pardon my mentioning this again, but in post #2649 http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?52121-The-Higher-Self-and-transcendent-experience-including-OBEs&p=1146404&viewfull=1#post1146404 I presented a way out of this.

By the way, this happens to be essentially equivalent to the primary problem that Robert Pirsig wrote his bestseller [I]Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance about. (It’s equivalent because Pirsig began from the problem of how can one reconcile or compare or transcend the subjective and the objective. He argued that this can only be done by absorbing both into the One, which is what the Tao Te Ching does, and Pirsig quoted that work. To put it another way, the only way to transcend the distinction between subject and object is to enter into, i.e. become, the subject-object relation itself.) Unfortunately, I believe Pirsig ignorantly declared that he was the first individual to discover a solution to this problem, or the first person in the West. But in fact this problem, and how one may resolve it, is very well known to be, and for centuries to have been, the most discussed problem of Indian philosophy, at least within the discipline of comparative (i.e., East-West) philosophy. And even outside of comparative philosophy, for instance the well-known early twentieth century philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, which is based on the notion of reality being made of processes in place of any subjects and objects, is another example of something that resolves the already very well-known problem that Pirsig rediscovered.

TraineeHuman

20th August 2017, 02:15

The soul has its own "course" of lessons that it has to learn. It has its own realizations to discover and accept, and consequences to ultimately one day implement and live out. I'd like to offer a brief indication of what I believe the most important of the soul's lessons is.

The soul knows it’s a participant in universality and in ubiquitous contextuality and interrelatedness. The lesson I have in mind is, the soul needs to grow to accept all the implications that will have. And not just to accept the universal nature of reality passively, though as far as I know that is what the soul initially very much does when it begins many lifetimes of being connected to a physical body. (Hence in this initial phase we for example so often see the soul's ever so prolonged haziness or dullness/sleepiness during perhaps years of meditation or astral travel.)

Initially, and typically for many human lifetimes, it seems, the soul views the spirit and the Divine as partially separate from it. It consciously contributes energy and support to the worlds/realities that exist and move at a higher level than it, but initially, and for very, very long, at times it seems to want to chill out and stay somewhat independent from them, and just be a witness, almost like a fly on the wall, albeit a very aware fly. So, just as it stays somewhat aloof from the life that the personality and body are going through without missing anything truly essential that happens, it seems the soul also initially takes a Witness position with regard to the realities existing at higher levels than itself. Infinity (formlessness) is a very big place, extending even beyond time.

Hopefully, though, in one's meditation one will eventually progress to the soul's breakthrough into actively accepting the universal and the Divine, and taking active responsibility for it. As far as I know this seems to be a very long, drawn-out process. There will be many advances followed by retreats, the latter with falls from “grace”. I believe it's ideal and optimal for the process to be very gradual, though, and better for the soul if possible not to give away any particular part of its sublime aloofness until it feels truly ready to flower in that respect.

I believe this is why some see total "acceptance" as the essence of true spiritual enlightenment (not that I'm a fan of even using the notion of "enlightenment" these days). However, the acceptance of the Divine’s will and the decision to cooperate with it also brings or requires an active expansion of one’s powers and one’s interrelatedness, which means having true sovereignty. Such sovereignty doesn’t mean greed or unjustified entitlement, but it does involve pro-activeness and taking responsibility. It also involves development of one’s higher knowing, because one can’t accept the Divine will without fully knowing it in relation to the relevant area of one’s life.

Rich

24th August 2017, 23:58

Therefore, it seems (because how long is a piece of string?), no-one in fact ever gets “fully enlightened”, at least not on this planet. They still have to pull out some very tough weeds now and then. If things were otherwise, that would be quite bland by comparison with how it actually is. Personally, I’m not even sure the concept of “enlightenment” as some sort of McGuffin that people should strive to get is more useful than it is misleading. I'd much prefer the expression "freedom from unhappiness in most situations" rather than "enlightenment".

Hi Traineehuman, would be interested to read your thoughts on this.

What is the difference between going OOB and merging with Source and so called enlightenment experience? how do these fit together since in non duality every form, distinction and separation is said to be illusory:
There are the non dual teachers who say astral travel can be a distraction and should be avoided, then there are the ones who do OOB or had a NDE and merged with Source (or had some mind expanding experience).

This is from a Eckart Tolle message board where a astral traveler talks about this seeming controversy, in reply to someone else, (Eckart is quoted that supposedly no one ever got enlightened by going out of body)

"Ask yourself if Awareness has done anything, gone anywhere, or changed in any way. The experience of OOBE may be on more subtle levels of energy but has Consciousness itself been affected?"
This is a beautiful question. From my experience, yes the background "Awareness" or the "Consciousness" is the same. Simply experiencing a different type of form. A more fluid, bendy, form.

Honestly the most beautiful experience I had made me weep profusely when I awoke. Due to it being so short lived. I was grateful and continue to be ever ever grateful for knowing of such a divine reality.

I can indeed see why Eckhart has publicly said this on the matter(in one of his books I believe):
"The fact is that no one has ever become enlightened through denying or fighting the body or through an out-of-the-body experience. Although such an experience can be fascinating and can give you a glimpse of the state of liberation from the material form, in the end you will always have to return to the body, where the essential work of transformation takes place. Transformation is through the body, not away from it. This is why no true master has ever advocated fighting or leaving the body, although their mind-based followers often have."

And I can attest to this as ABSOLUTELY TRUE. He hits it right on the head. I have traveled out of body, but Every Single Time, I had to wake up... The conflict was enormous once this happened several times. The desire to have that sort of reality come into complete, full, waking truth at all times clashing with the fact that I still existed in a material body, in this material world.
That being said, he does not give it the props it deserves.. I have learned A Lot about myself and the nature of reality through these experiences. That being said, the "learned material" is of the mind. I also do not believe Eckhart gives enough credit to the mind, due to his extensive experience "beyond" it. The mind creates a wonderful, essential, and inseparable framework from which to leap into a higher states of Pure Awareness.

The fact is, we are traveling from the mind to beyond the mind. This does not exclude the mind, but absolutely includes it. If you have a pressing fear of death always on your mind, you will assuredly deal with that mental form's root cause before it can be completely released and silences. This is the unsaid step that Eckhart fails to dwell upon, due the mental "answers" being always found from the same stillness, the One Answer.

Whoever you are, do yourself a favor and start ENJOYING the mind, the meditation, the process. Throw the cynical view of the mind and ego out of the window. Learn to love the whole of your experience, even the mind, even emotions. Love it as much as you love a beautiful flower, or your most cherished love one or song. Love your ego, love your body, love your Awareness, love the stillness. Be grateful you have a mind that works properly and lets you manifest your dream reality while awake!

That is why we came here to this physical plane, to master the mind, to Transcend Consciously. Out of body experiences are wonderful, they let you see a glimpse of infinity and are as precious as any experience of life; but the most important, difficult, rewarding, and permanent work is done while awake. But as you do this work, you get closer and closer to having the same "out of body" function of "thoughts manifesting before you" taking place during your REAL LIFE! How cool is that?! Source:http://eckhart-tolle-forum.inner-growth.info/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=6163

TraineeHuman

25th August 2017, 02:32

Yes, thank you indeed, I broadly or strongly agree with you on nearly all those points, EmEx. I've certainly never intended to imply that experiencing OOB comes anywhere near to being some form of enlightenment. That would be an extremely ignorant thing to claim or believe.

What is the difference between going OOB and merging with Source and so called enlightenment experience?
Well, first of all let me make it clear that merging with Source isn't enlightenment at all. Not directly. What counts is how you e-merge from that mergedness consciousness, not how you potentially escape from everyday reality. Fifty years ago I believed, based on my experiences, that enlightenment was all about merging with Source. Forty-three years ago some very wise, old, very spiritually astute people told me that was only the beginning, the first step, the kindergarten class. Four years later I had thoroughly confirmed that what they had said was true, and for me that was followed by the longest journey of gradual realization you can imagine. The more you know, the more you realize how much more there is that you don't know at all. (Or is that what you meant by saying "so-called enlightenment"?) Enlightenment is all about integrating Source fully with everything one is experiencing in nonduality. The everyday things are all just as real as Source. (As can be proved by one's trying to walk blindfolded across a busy, so-called "nonexistent" freeway.) True oneness is in any case impossible without such full integration. (By the way, it's a pity I need to use the word "integration," because Ken Wilber has many notions about what "integration" is that I don't agree are accurate, even though Ken also has some great insights.)

Going OOB is just very clearly and very distinctly being aware of and experiencing the psychic level of the self. You can look at post #2680 http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?52121-The-Higher-Self-and-transcendent-experience-including-OBEs&p=1157279&viewfull=1#post1157279 for a description of the levels. Going OOB has nothing to do with merging with Source. My reply to "What is the difference between going OOB and merging with Source?" is: "What is the difference between the number two and the color blue?" Except, that is, that for many it can be easier to initially contact Source from an OOB position.

how do these fit together since in non duality every form, distinction and separation is said to be illusory.
They' re said to be illusory by such nondualists as Shankara and Ramana Maharishi. But not by many other nondualist philosophers, including Wittgenstein and Nagarjuna and Krishnamurti, and all the most famous Taoist and Zen Buddhist masters such as Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Basho, Dogen, and so on and on. I claim that some of the latter were greater philosophers, and certainly more in touch with reality. Also, let me clarify that in Indian philosophy, a "nondualist" position has always simply meant, and continues to mean, any position that agrees that Source, or some part of reality, is nondual.

I'll continue in another post.

TraineeHuman

25th August 2017, 07:02

One thing I perhaps should clarify is that Nagarjuna and Wittgenstein (and mainstream Zen Buddhism, among others), like myself denied the existence of an individual self as an object or subject, but did admit its existence in a relational and a contextual sense. Let me clarify what that means. Firstly, as I explained in (the later parts of) post #2649, Indo-European languages such as English have a grammar which silently demands that the only things which can be real are objects, and perhaps also subjects (like "I" as distinct from "me"). In the philosophies of Nagarjuna and Wittgenstein and "No-mind" Zen and Taoism. however, what is real can only be that which is either contextual or relational, or both. Let me try and explain.

In Shankara's and Ramana Maharishi's philosophy, the only thing anywhere that's real at all is one subject, which we can call Source. But in these philosophies that I favor, on the other hand, the only (ultimately) real things that can be identified as your self are either individual contexts, such as the Universe within and as the particular context of "your" physical and astral and mental and upper mental body and "your" soul field and spirit field; plus the relation(ship) between the Universe and all the latter. So, your physical body is only considered individually real in whatever sense it's an inseparably embedded part of the individual context of its relationship with the Universe. And when we talk of your physical body, what's real is not the object known as "your body", but only its relationship to the Universe. It's kind of like the way the ancient Greeks believed that the sky was a great dome with holes in it, and the stars were really just a big light beyond the dome shining through the holes. The relations (the interconnections) are what's real, not any subjects or objects.

Rich

25th August 2017, 18:00

Yes, thank you indeed, I broadly or strongly agree with you on nearly all those points, EmEx.

That was not written by me (the text in brown) I myself have very limited experience with OOB.
Apparently I didn't make it clear enough that it is from the link posted below which I found in relation to my question.

Will add more later...

Rich

26th August 2017, 01:00

Well, first of all let me make it clear that merging with Source isn't enlightenment at all. Not directly. (Or is that what you meant by saying "so-called enlightenment"?) Enlightenment is all about integrating Source fully with everything one is experiencing in nonduality.
You meant to say in duality?

The reason I chose the words "enlightenment experience" is that it is said to be a point where all duality ceases and you are at one with all existence. Then you move back into the world/duality but with a new reference point of the truth, supposedly now you are "enlightened".
Is this so called enlightenment experience where your personality ceases the same as those who have gone OOB or NDE and merged with source?

The latter things are all just as real as Source. (As can be proved by one's trying to walk blindfolded across a busy, so-called "nonexistent" freeway.) True oneness is in any case impossible without such full integration.

That is quite a radical statement "equally real", as you pointed out there are teachings that say the world does not exist at all or is a dream that has no reality anymore once one wakes up and those who say the world exists as a game of maya.

For me the question is; would this world remain if Love was completely realized? if it would not remain then IMO it is not real. As I believe hate/pain/suffering can only be experienced as a misconception, therefore it cannot be said to be Real in that sense because it will cease to exist. If this duality is built out of the false perception that pain is real then it consequently would cease to exist if Love would be accepted. But if the world/duality remains despite the recognition of Love then this world is just as real.

My reply to "What is the difference between going OOB and merging with Source?" is: "What is the difference between the number two and the color blue?" Except, that is, that for many it can be easier to initially contact Source from an OOB position.
Sorry I didn't mean to ask that I just expressed myself a bit clumsily.

They' re said to be illusory by such nondualists as Shankara and Ramana Maharishi. But not by many other nondualist philosophers, including Wittgenstein and Nagarjuna and Krishnamurti, and all the most famous Taoist and Zen Buddhist masters such as Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Basho, Dogen, and so on and on. I claim that some of the latter were greater philosophers, and certainly more in touch with reality. Also, let me clarify that in Indian philosophy, a "nondualist" position has always simply meant, and continues to mean, any position that agrees that Source, or some part of reality, is nondual.

Interesting point, I've seen followers of that belief deny duality completely even in the world "there is no one there to be angry, anger simply arises out of oneness".
However to say that a part can be nondual and another part duality would be a contradiction too, nondual meaning "not two" there could be nothing besides it.

TraineeHuman

30th August 2017, 07:25

You can only gain any degree of freedom from the (ordinary) mind by understanding it. That means by looking (hopefully continually) at what your actual thoughts and feelings are this moment, or recently, or when you wrote them down. You can't find freedom from the ordinary mind through understanding something higher but taken in separation or distinction from the (ordinary) mind.

So, you can only find something higher by, initially, understanding, and not denying the reality of, the lower. You only find the unknown via going awarely through the known.

Meditation (true silence) is also great, but as a way for you to know, and more and more fully understand, the unknown -- which does happen once you've mastered the known somewhat. Meditators need to learn how to take huge doses of "unknown".

Also, I prefer to use the word "self" where others might use a word such as "consciousness". (Though there I stipulate that by "self" I don't mean anything that's a subject or object.) While we're alive in the physical world, at least, the self (or consciousness) does have parts or subdivisions. You do have a location in space and time, for instance.

Some comments about what individuality means. The original meaning of "individual" is an undividable whole. So, to truly realize your individuality you do need to expand to become completely wholistic in your consciousness, embracing all that's there around you. But while you're in the physical world, that's still a particular consciousness. It's totally linked to that one particular physical body, also to that one particular (quite non-physical) soul, and so on.

TraineeHuman

3rd September 2017, 02:01

This is a continuation of my response to EmEx. One major trap in understanding or discussing spiritual reality is an adherence to what I like to call black-and-white thinking. I know that some observers (not from this Forum) have also used the term "fundamentalist thinking" to refer to something similar. I regret to say such thinking is particularly prevalent (and sometimes unconsciously assumed to be perfectly OK and appropriate) when there’s the attempt to discuss a subject such as, among others, the One, or Truth, or enlightenment, or Love, for instance. It causes ever so much mischief and misplaced perfectionism or unrealizable idealism. Not to mention causing division among people at every turn.

Before I talk about black-and-white thinking, though, let me say I would like to ask some, and indeed most people (perhaps not specifically or particularly members of this Forum) two questions, which are relevant to the topic of black-and-white thinking but not obviously so. The questions are: "How can you (or anyone) possibly want, or imagine, the complete truth if you simply don't know what it is?" And then also: "If somebody tells you what ultimate truth about how to obtain freedom from suffering, or enlightenment, or whatever, supposedly is, then even if they’re right, won't that immediately become to you a dead thing and not the real McCoy, because you hadn't discovered it and directly experienced it, and lived it somewhat, for yourself first (unless you indeed already had)?"

There's a verse in the New Testament where "Jesus" says that foxes have holes to sleep in but he has no resting place anywhere. We all need to be like that. We all need to have no resting place, psychologically speaking, ever. We all need to be like the wind that blows everywhere, or like water that fills a container of any shape, and then moves on. That's the only way to (eventually) find the truth about freedom from unhappiness, and the freedom from the chains that come from our desires. And of course to find it only through our direct experience. Actually, it seems clear to me such freedom can't be achieved through seeking, but only through the act of freeing ourselves and becoming more fully alive, and dropping all seeking in favor of being more fully aware of how it truly feels to be alive and what that implies, plus the dropping of all our forms of bondage as we become more aware of such.

Where the black-and-white thinking mostly comes in is that that type of thinking is how the ordinary thinking mind (the cunning Western mind) works, in relation to everything. Always jumping to and grabbing the extremes (such as black, and white, or, say, “nonduality” and “duality,” and so on), always “standardizing” and isolating everything and denying its setting, its environment, its context. Meanwhile anything independent of or orthogonal to the tones of black and white and grey, such as colors and hues, simply doesn't and can't exist, can it, now? Black-and-white thinking is always grasping and trying to own the supposed truth and turn it into a statue – a supposedly "absolute" statue at that. The thinking mind is ultimately based on drawing distinctions – on creating separation, and on absolutizing. Once those extremes have been put in, that sticks. Often permanently ever after. That's absolutizing. And light greys look white, even if a dirty white, while dark greys look like black, even if like black under some strong light. Once the thinking mind has broken things up and set things in concrete, it's impossible to restore the original unity, however much the thinking mind may try to summarize things or want to somehow seamlessly stick the pieces back together. That's not to say that the ordinary thinking mind doesn't have its uses, even in the field of spirituality where, however, higher understanding tends to take over the stage (hopefully).

In contrast not just to black-and-white thinking but to the ordinary mind's thinking is the experience of genuine non-separation. How contradictory and untrue, surely, to believe in a concept of non-separation when one hasn’t experienced for oneself all of what that really means – which means one’s not having experienced it at all. And how inappropriate, it seems to me, to supposedly claim to be knowing it, or even considering it, unless at the time there’s no thought present or shaped by the mind, no communication, no witness to evaluate or record anything. How inappropriate altogether, surely, I suggest, to try to discuss “full” non-separation at all, except very briefly, and then only just to let somebody else who has experienced it know that you have tasted it too.

TraineeHuman

25th December 2017, 07:37

Just came across a long but very easy to listen to talk by Osho Rajneesh which describes the Buddha's entire metaphysics [or "worldview"] in very great and thorough detail -- without ever sounding technical or like anything but easy reading. This post is for anyone who may have experienced any difficulty in fully understanding, or appreciating the implications or the truer reality of, adopting the relational metaphysics I described in post #2649.

http://www.gurdjieff-con.net/2011/06/20/osho-on-reincarnation/

Here the late Osho Rajneesh describes the Buddha's metaphysical position through a very full and simple explanation. I've always greatly liked Osho's poetic, soulful streak. Presumably, Osho Rajneesh's own preferred metaphysical position was effectively the same as the Buddha's (assuming that Osho could indeed extricate his view from a very, very Indian/Hindu one where reality is ultimately a very paradoxical kind of object known as "the Universe"). It's also effectively (or by and large) the same as my own position (which was based totally on my own experience and intuition at age 15 and not on any reading or any knowledge of any others' positions), and is described in post #2649 (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?52121-The-Higher-Self-and-transcendental-experience-including-OBEs&p=1146404&viewfull=1#post1146404).

One of the things Osho points out is that, as I also mentioned and dwelled on in my post: "Buddhism is the first religion that brought this message to the world-that your religions, your philosophies, are more grounded in your linguistic patterns than in anything else. And if you can understand your language better, you will be able to understand your inner processes better. He [the Buddha] was the first linguist, and his insight is tremendously meaningful."

TraineeHuman

29th January 2018, 05:26

Unfortunately there would seem to be enormous ignorance in the West regarding why in the ninth century Linji (or Rinzai, to use his Japanese name) founded the Rinzai sect of Zen Buddhism. Simultaneously he invented the koan, and there also seems to be gigantic ignorance, or misunderstanding, at least among Westerners, regarding Linji’s purpose and intention regarding what the use of a koan was actually all about.

It also turns out that the underlying issues behind Linji’s project have huge commonalities and similarities with what was the most central and influential issue for most of the most influential Western philosophers of the nineteenth century, also developed further in the twentieth century by Wittgenstein. Western philosophy underwent probably its most extensive and shattering revolution ever (occurring in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries) as a result of this. Again, unfortunately I find there’s a staggering degree of ignorance about all this among most New Ager types and many other Westerners professing to understand issues to do with spirituality. Over half of the philosophers involved (including Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, and Wittgenstein) were very, very spiritual and very highly evolved individuals, by the way.

For instance, Wittgenstein was so horrified by his experiences of three years as Chairman of the Philosophy Department at Cambridge that he resigned and spent the next nine years living in fairly complete isolation from society in a cave. (Maybe that’s not necessarily any proof of spiritual advancement, but it does show how sincerely he felt the need to recover himself by dwelling in or with the unsayable for a number of years. And discussion of the unsayable is what most of this post is going to be about.) I suspect it’s safe to say these individuals, except Kant and probably Hegel, became philosophers at least partly because of the profundity of their direct ongoing mystical experience, and because of the perceived need to communicate to themselves and those around them something of what all that apparently meant. All of them also made statements to the effect (and behaved in ways to suggest) that the unsayable is vastly more important than anything and everything that’s sayable -- even though the unsayable always gets left unsaid (yet it directly shows itself all the time)!

Looks like it’s my lot to attempt hopefully to undo some of that ignorance a little, or at least to try. I’ll even throw in a little about some connections with the teachings of the great Indian first and second century philosopher Nagarjuna (incidentally, sometimes known as “the Second Buddha”, and also known for his further developing and refining of the (sayable) doctrine of the middle way), as Nagarjuna’s insights fit in with all this.

I confess I do suspect that if anyone truly gets the point of what the rest of this post is about, though, they’d be a little like the Zen teacher some centuries back who had spent years collecting the best books on spirituality and then one day burnt them all. He burnt them because he eventually clearly realized that to continue reading them would be to stay attached to and deluded by the sayable. And he’d realized that the unsayable is much, much more important than the sum total of what’s sayable. Sadly, I don’t necessarily believe it’s likely that anyone reading this will by doing so get that and all it implies. But one never knows – I could be quite wrong. For the other readers, my fear is that unfortunately the mental concept of "unsayability" may merely be added to their collected baggage. (But as many Zen teachers used to say: "You're looking at my finger that's pointing to the moon, and you’re mistaking the finger for the moon.") On the other hand, the truth ought to get shared, as far as possible, so here we go.

A koan typically asks a question such as: “What is the nature of ultimate reality?” The optimal answer to this is something like “Wu”, which is Chinese for “negation” (or “I’m negating that”) and in this context it more specifically means something like: “You are using words in a meaningless way, and presupposing that your words refer to something real and profound, but they don’t.” Actually, it’s also the case that most koans ask a question that gets expressed somewhat nonsensically. The purpose of the nonsensical quality is to point to the inadequacy and the limited nature of the mental, and hence of words in general. For Linji (and all true subsequent Rinzai masters), the monk will have answered the koan correctly if the monk shows clear recognition that language is being stretched well beyond the realm of legitimacy and reality whenever any “big” word such as “oneness” or “ultimate reality” or so on and so forth is being used. Plus, the monk will need to have demonstrated the primacy of the unsayable in his (or her) daily life, a deep recognition of how the unsayable keeps continually showing itself directly.

Wittgenstein said much the same, except without any reference to koans or Zen monastic life. He said that words are being stretched well beyond the bounds of legitimacy when they try to express anything that’s in reality unsayable.

By the way, this is also exactly the reason why the TaoTe Ching opens with: “The Tao [Source] that can be spoken of is not the true Tao.”

Incidentally, Krishnamurti would begin most of his talks by saying the problem of humanity can be summarized in the need to find freedom from "thought, and the movement of thought." I believe that at least half of what he meant by this amounts to basically the same thing as what Linji was concerned with.

Kant didn’t recognize that there was such a thing as the unsayable, by and large. But he provided some very valid arguments that prove that the essence of spirituality certainly isn’t part of the sayable. Hence he considered spirituality to be the pursuit of an illusion. An example of his reasoning is as follows. Let’s ask what “the supernatural” is like. This is rather like asking what the ideal, best possible version of a sports car is like, assuming there are no limits to human ingenuity and technology. If I may pursue this sports car metaphor further, Kant proved that the supernatural would be to the natural rather like, say, a Star Trek transporter machine (the one that dematerializes bodies and rematerializes them somewhere else), or something even more way out than that, would be to a sports car. In other words, it would be so totally “other”, so different, that it wouldn’t be relatable to sports cars, i.e. it couldn’t even be called a “sports car”. That’s what the supernatural is like – too “other” to be relatable to physical reality just through words.

Nietzsche and Nagarjuna would both simply demolish everyone else’s individual position or views on the nature of reality. They did this by having such powerful intuitive insight and wisdom and genius that evidently they could (rationally) out-argue anyone else any time. This would leave the latter with no (mental) belief system to cling to, and hence virtually compel them to begin to now discover the unknowable and the unsayable.

Let me digress at this point to mention that clinging to a belief system about spirituality or what is spiritual reality, knowingly or unknowingly, is what I consider to be a major spiritual trap for many people, even quite a few New Ageish people, today, apparently. Over forty years ago I used to get taken astral travelling at night and I’d attend various classes, all over the solar system, it seemed. One of the first skills I learned was how to swiftly raise the level of the astral (or of the mental) plane I was currently in. Another of my first skills was that I quickly learnt to avoid the astral level that contained quasi-“heavens” belonging to different faiths, even several “heavens” for the “faith” of scepticism, and so on. I soon recognized that these were actually hell worlds, though admittedly the least unpleasant of the hellish levels. (Not like any Christian notion of “hell”, but much nicer than that. And I would say this physical world is the real hell, the place of suffering. Everything in the afterlife seems to involve less suffering, even in the earthbound world.) Robert Monroe also discovered something similar, though I didn’t read his account until decades later. Meanwhile I had become aware it isn’t uncommon for individuals to apparently get trapped in such a quasi-“heaven”, sometimes for decades, it seemed, and to subsequently regret it when they eventually escape. Sometimes an individual won’t realize that they’re strongly committed to a certain belief system until they die, and then it comes as a total surprise to them that they were.

The other very common mental-world trap I see many New Age or alternative types fall into is to fail to recognize that the inner knowledge that comes from the flow of intuition or the soul etc, at least provided one is evolved enough, is always superior to that which comes from good critical thinking/analysis. This is certainly not to say that the latter isn’t desirable and indeed necessary. But to elevate it to a supreme position can often turn it (or you) into a Sorcerer’s Apprentice, in my observations -- particularly given the fact that communication with the soul hasn’t been adequately developed in most people as yet.

Finally, I’ve mentioned the philosopher Hegel but so far I haven’t said anything about his philosophy. You may know that David Icke’s “problem action solution” formula is simply a restatement of the dialectic logic invented by Hegel. Hegel’s philosophical system (= “theory of everything”) was historically the last attempt at a “theory of everything”, because its being proved to be a failure led most Western philosophers to the conclusion that such a thing as a “theory of everything” was necessarily quite impossible to achieve. Hegel’s philosophical system was in many ways a synthesis of the major attempts that had taken place in the prior three centuries, but in each case with an ingenious “repair” designed to overcome the weaknesses of each previous system. Yet again we see how trying to stretch words and mental concepts to supposedly describing all of reality, or even a summary of the essence of reality, proved to be a futile project. Even though words can aptly summarize certain aspects of reality, such as “problem-reaction-solution”, to mention only one.

So, please deeply trust your experiences of the unsayable. They take you into the very heart of reality. If you experience “fog” in meditation, I can attest that eventually it does get replaced mostly by continuous delight, if, for as long as it takes, you first go into it deeply enough and thence through to the other side of it.

Valerie Villars

29th January 2018, 13:34

Trainee, I agree wholeheartedly with your statement regarding inner knowledge and the flow of intuition being superior, if one is evolved enough, to that which comes from critical thinking and analysis.

TraineeHuman

21st May 2018, 01:19

This post is a belated one regarding what I consider are some of the major inadequacies and side-effects of affirmations and visualizations, not to mention of such things as self-hypnosis and NLP as well. Around five years ago I indicated my strong reservations regarding the use of all such methods. Oh really, whatever can possibly be wrong with any way of being positive? you may be thinking.

Firstly, just a minor objection or criticism. In the above practices you may be saying or implying that you currently are all sweetness and light, or something similarly impeccably positive. But my criticism is that this will almost always be a dishonest or exaggerated statement to yourself -- a lie. To that extent at least, it will be alienating you further from the authenticiity of your soul or Higher Self.

Next, we need to look at the phenomenon of resistance and repression. Every affirmation or positive visualization features the assertion and highlighting of something involving sweetness and light or success or positivity (maybe, even, of a supposedly "nondual" form). But there are two sides. There's a second side -- very often unspoken -- that involves resistance and repression. (Or else, the negative side is explicit in the affirmation, such as 'I will stop smoking today' and then the positive side will be the implicit half -- such as: 'I will eat organic fruit instead'.) The resistance or repression comes from your using will power that will (supposedly, or hopefully) make the positive assertion or scene come true. Unfortunately, though, I claim that much of what passes for "will power" is actually what would more accurately be called 'desire power'. I do also concede that there is certainly such a thing as will power that doesn't involve desire. But I won't elaborate on that here (apart from what's already in some of my past posts). The trouble with all desire, though, is that --as the Buddha clearly said, and as my own experience very much confirms -- it's flat-out simply one of the most major direct causes of unhappiness and of suffering. (I do, however, enjoy a tasty meal and so on, but I deny that such enjoyment necessarily has any connection with desire as distinct from wanting a basic need to be met well.)

The trouble with resistance and repression of something psychological within you is as follows. Instead of removing it from you, it removes or weakens your consciousness of it. This means it makes that repressed piece of "you" at least partly if not wholly unconscious, usually without weakening its intensity at all. This means that the contents of your shadow side have just been enlarged. (Your shadow is simply all your unconscious negativity or dysfunctionality.) The trouble is, it seems to me that most of what I've come across in New Ageish settings (including, but not especially, this one), that describes itself as "shadow work" only exacerbates and expands the shadow further. This is because such "shadow work" is usually dominated by use of the ordinary thinking or analytical mind instead of by use of the Higher Mind (which would primarily involve such things as true intuition or inspiration) of the soul.

For such reasons as these, I consider most instances of using affirmations or visualizations or self-hypnosis or contrived "positive mindset" to usually be anti-soul, and anti-authenticity, in their ultimate effect.

I do, however, see nothing wrong with the kind of affirmation where one pats oneself on the back for making any major breakthrough, or even after any legitimate success. You're then affirming that before you were somehow being a victim of X but now you're not, and yes, it doesn't hurt to savor the fact that you're now not.

TraineeHuman

18th July 2018, 06:18

There are some common myths about "loosh" which, I believe, should be looked at in a broader context, though in this post I’ll only do that in one brief and partial way. Although the concept of "loosh" comes from Robert Monroe, as far as I know he only said it was something he encountered in a dream, as part of one of the dream-worlds he experienced. (I happen to know that the Many Worlds Hypothesis is quite valid in the astral and indeed in all dimensions that are higher than the physical. In fact, even in the lowest levels of the astral, whatever you want or expect to see will be a possible world of its own, and it will be created by you or entered by you simply through the act of imagining it or expecting it. But don’t forget that most of what makes you, even when you are in the astral, is unconscious to you, and that it will have the greater say in what actually gets created. Even so, this is why when one goes astral traveling one always finds one’s “home base” and initial locus to be with very like-minded others. And true, at death you’ll still initially be carrying much of your accumulated emotional baggage and your many sub-personalities competing with one another into one such possible world that you’ve made real, unless someone else had made that world real already.)

I'd like to present just one fact that I'm aware of regarding astral energy and its accessibility and some of its possible uses. One fact should be enough. But I do believe that various facts about astral energy just don't entirely gel with many individuals' conceptions regarding "loosh", although it's also true that there is such a thing as negative astral energy that can presumably be targeted at a human individual, though I won’t discuss that here. I suggest it's also the case that a normal individual who's sober and hasn't taken drugs (or excessively large amounts of alcohol) to a major extent is considerably safer from being supposedly able to be "harvested" as a victim than many seem to suppose. I don’t approve of using the term “harvesting” anyway, because I believe it’s so impossibly vague it actually has little meaning, except as a concept to scare people or stimulate their paranoia. Whenever and wherever two people interact or communicate, surely they can be said to be “harvesting” each other (each other’s energies) to some degree. Any relationship or communication is a “harvest” or “feeding off the other”, regardless of whether it’s, say, parent-child, employer-employee, or so on. And yes, in a minority of cases the relationship or interaction will presumably be very exploitative of at least one of the parties involved.

Now for my one fact for today (apart from what I’ve said already). Let’s note (or notice) that whenever an individual is practising something such as qi gong, t’ai chi, hatha yoga, dance, and so on, once they learn how to do it “expertly” they also learn to effortlessly draw greater energy into themselves and to flow with it. They do this effortlessly because there’s an unlimited supply of 100% good astral energy all around us. Actually, it comes from the cosmic or universal supply of energy. Indeed, the core of most meditation methods involves just profoundly letting go (of everything, which includes your identity and opinions and so on). You simply allow the universal energy to flow into you, by the truckload, so to speak. You just need to remain truly open to it. Even a beginner at meditation will come to learn how to feel refreshed every time they do this. And anyone who is truly advanced at meditation will feel tremendous joy or pleasure – call it “bliss” or “love” – on most occasions when they meditate. My question is, why would anyone, or any being, not use the process of drawing astral energy from the universal astral plane? It’s possible to also draw it from another human being, or animal, or plant. But it’s clearly much harder to do so, and the supply there will be limited anyway.

animovado

18th July 2018, 08:01

Hello TH,

about the many worlds you said that „..., even in the lowest levels of the astral, whatever you want or expect to see will be a possible world of its own, and it will be created by you or entered by you simply through the act of imagining it or expecting it. But don’t forget that most of what makes you, even when you are in the astral, is unconscious to you, and that it will have the greater say in what actually gets created.“.
Why doesn‘t that fit to the physical plane likewise, although maybe the characteristics of this oscillating field seem to differ?

Best regards.

TraineeHuman

18th July 2018, 08:53

Hello, animovado. As far as I know apparently everyone seems to agree that the physical world is a world that's limited compared to other types of worlds -- that what life is about "down here" is living with and learning to adjust to or overcome or transform our limitations and those of living in this type of world. By contrast, in the Divine worlds all possibilities are experienced and perceived as if they were real. That doesn't mean the Divine worlds are placers of pure fantasy, but , if you like, they're places of incredibly fully developed imagination. That's also the reason why the Divine created evil -- because it was possible.

Why do I say the Multiple Worlds Hypothesis apparently isn't true in the physical world? Well, firstly the majority of physicists are of the opinion that the evidence suggests it doesn't apply in the physical world. But secondly, it seems to me that Source would have insisted on creating a type of world limited enough for that Hypothesis not to apply, because such a thing was quite possible. Also, almost immediately after death I find that everyone becomes able to "fly", as far as I know. By that I mean that when they think of anything or anyone, they immediately move to whatever location whatever who or what they thought of is at. Clearly, the laws governing physical bodies and matter are inimical to that. It's something of a struggle for us to afford a car, say, and even then we need to get in that car and drive to where we desire, if we even can get there by driving. And so on. So by contrast with even the lowest astral planes, trying to do or get something in the physical world takes much more effort, and also involves the overcoming of limitations, plus often living with limitations that make it impossible at least for the time being, and sometimes (or often?) impossible forever within the current life.

My father had an extraordinarily difficult life. He was the eldest of twelve children and his father died when he was twelve. Then he suffered during the war, and so on. He died at 47 and was an alcoholic at the time, having gotten into an unhappy marriage, among other difficulties. Because he was an alcoholic, that meant that when he died he was stuck in the earthbound world. People can get caught up in there for up to several centuries after their death. I think he's just about broken free of it now, at last, after fifty-plus years. But he told me he was better off in the earthbound world than he had been in the physical because there "the alcohol" is free, he said to me, and there's an unlimited supply, according to him. But since I claim to know that before birth we all choose the type of life we want to have, I can only conclude that he wanted to experience enormous limitations, and that in the big picture he considered that was very good for him. What else but "limitations" could have been the focus of his having that particular life in the physical world, I wonder.

Bo Atkinson

18th July 2018, 10:22

Hello TraineeHuman,

Thank you for discussing “transcendent experience”. I have pushed forward into many kinds of transcendent presentations, to experience what was there. Perhaps i was backwards at times, but this provided me fascinating samples of experience, (while paying life’s costs for various lessons).

I feel my present source is the most reliable yet, (in 50 years of searching unabashed). I find this (longed for) source so validating and restorative…. Pythagorean Hylozoics as published online, (at laurency.com). Hylozoics offers a large amount of criticism on traditional meditation and prayer methods (and all traditional teachings). Details are spread throughout a number of Hylozoic books and not all condensed inside one chapter or book.

There are possibly some cautions, contextually related to “drawing astral energy from the universal astral plane”. (Post #2731). Where some forms of guidance offer warnings like the following).

A Hylozoic Excerpt: “Hatha yoga philosophers have begun missionizing more and more in the West, spreading their spurious teachings in ever wider circles, especially confusing people with their risky breathing exercises. Esoterics teaches that the centres of the etheric envelope are vitalized in the one correct way through meditation and mentally directed mental energies. Any other vitalization implies roundabout ways and entails rebuilding of the etheric envelope in many subsequent incarnations.”

Or regarding generalized, widespread hopes for the astral worlds:

An abbreviated Hylozoic Excerpt: “… It is useless talking to those who know everything better and have been taught by their masters in the emotional world (the astral world, the “spiritual world”), those who “visit Shamballa”, etc.

There is no limit to madness, imagination, and credulity. Thank goodness only higher selves are able to visit other planets…. But the “masters” of the black lodge are able to shape forms in emotional and physical matters, forms that mislead …. These “masters” do everything they can to mislead and sidetrack people. Occultists are proofs that they score heavily.”

TraineeHuman

19th July 2018, 02:42

Hi wavydome,

I'm certainly glad to hear you've found "Hylozoics" so useful to you. I think if it’s worked that well for you, you should keep pursuing it to the full – at least, for as many years as it continues to work so well for you. Certainly, Pythagoreanism was/is a very substantial and deep approach to the spiritual life. I understand archeologists or historians have proved that the Essenes were very strongly influenced by Pythagoreanism, and had virtually identical teachings to the latter, with the exception that they didn't include number mysticism to the extent of regarding the numbers as gods, the way the Pythagoreans did.

For me personally, the key thing is direct experiences, even extending thoroughly, in the end, into everyday living. It’s not theoretical frameworks, of whatever kind – though we also need to lean on theoretical frameworks until we’ve truly transcended them, if we ever do. Everything I've written about in this thread has been based on my own direct experiences, though no doubt what also comes out on the page includes my wordy interpretations of things I've experienced rather than the things themselves -- which are often beyond words anyway, strictly "speaking".

About five years ago, Eram sent me some material from laurency.com that was extremely pejorative regarding , supposedly, it seemed to imply, the whole of Indian mysticism. As I have a certain amount of knowledge and even direct experience about some aspects of the Indian traditions, it seemed to me that Mr Laurency had chosen some extreme examples that mostly weren't part of the Indian mainstream and, it seemed to me, didn't even remotely come close to painting a fair or balanced portrait of the traditions of Yoga or Vedanta or so on. It seemed to me to be comparable to taking some examples of, say, the most extreme Christian fundamentalist sects/cults and criticizing "Christianity" as a whole because that was being (I think quite misleadingly) implied to be typical of Christianity. For example, some such sects brainwash thirteen-year-old girls to be child-brides (actually, child-concubines) to old men, or so on or so forth. I think that, whatever the inadequacies of most forms of Christianity might be, nevertheless most Christians would deplore that as being very “un-Christian”.

For that reason I would currently be very sceptical of most if not almost all of Mr Laurency's criticisms of Indian spirituality. And I would certainly have expected a spiritually awake individual to present what I would see as something much fairer to that tradition. Personally, then, I unfortunately wouldn’t currently trust the veracity of anything Mr Laurency presented, at least at first, unless I verified it in my own experience.

In the end, though, teachings or models or practices are only a boat to get you to a certain level of freedom from unhappiness and all that that brings and implies. At a certain point you ditch the whole boat, if it got you there. And prior to that, getting towards the end of the journey, what boat you used becomes less and less important. But one thing I’m very conscious of these days is that it’s vitally important to be grounded in and continually live in a nonjudgmental space. Which is one of the primary core things that the true meditation traditions require mastery of, and something which few seem to truly achieve. That of course doesn’t mean one should neglect using wise discrimination wherever it’s genuinely appropriate, either.

I’ve been around, because I had very regular very profound spiritual experiences ever since childhood, but I’ve never yet come across a spiritual “path” or “teaching” where the practitioners don’t spend a huge proportion of their time falling into various traps and then extricating themselves from them (hopefully, eventually). I’ve come across various followers of Mr Laurency, and I certainly haven’t noticed anything different in that regard with them.

Bo Atkinson

19th July 2018, 11:31

I am grateful for your discussion TraineeHuman.

I share “sort of a quest”, for personally realizable experience . Above and beyond the various presentations we happen to find in our world. It will take me some time to read all the hylozoic groundwork, because it is a big system, combining both the astral-emotional and the objective-scientific in unity. This unity can seem immature or as the ultimate liberation, which baffles inquiry. Yet to trace the connection with Pythagoras, thrills my sense of exploration.

Yes, the East-West criticisms are severe and actually more condemning of the western cultures, but mostly where these teachings burden ‘selves’ with additional struggles of endless, irresolvable reincarnation cycles. (Instead of actually freeing selves from the cycles). Buddha is actually noted to be the most freed self, already, as of long ago. It is the aftermaths of ‘idiot-ization’, basically, which Laurency condemns most. Cristos, on the other hand, is presented as a far advanced self, coming down to earth’s materiality, temporarily borrowing the body of Jeshu. Where that effort admittedly failed due to human idiot-ization and of the masses. Where Cristos was not incarnating, nor subject to the laws of incarnation.

A “black lodge” dating back to Atlantis, is especially described, which captures men, for eons of reincarnation, under idiot-ized bondage. (Likely related to many thread contents on this forum). Hylozoics applies a journalism of the emotional-astral realm, outlining it’s arenas of enticements. To warn freedom seekers of such risks… “Let the buyer beware”, as we are on our own, totally responsible for our beliefs and situations, as selves. Here is also where my personal experience, of seeking such freedoms, from sort of a pied piper, who sang a version of “The Sound & Light” mysteries, dating back through Sanskrit sources, (partly plagiarized, but captivating). Ultimately, i wondered if this was just one of the countless ploys, of this “black lodge movement”.

Please advise: Let me know if sharing my personal experience on your thread is misplaced. If you prefer only your own personal experiences detailed here, i can accept that. If you ask me to remove my posts, i could do so. I expect that this forum does feature some very focussed threads, without detailed contrasts of other personal experiences. Initially i felt detailed responses were welcomed.

PS-
You wrote: “…include number mysticism … numbers as gods, the way the Pythagoreans did.”

If i may surmise this… Laurency’s ‘Pythagoreanism’ uses a number chart to describe states of evolution, of selves, in what is called “The Septenary”, (to indicate states of personalized progress). Higher evolution is designated with larger numerals, generally. The scientific hypothesis format is used, which might sound too harsh or too cold. “Test the experience personally” and then seek corroboration . Do the homework, etc..

I do see the freedom of other positions. As the hylozoic presentation of unity can be refuted by rugged individualism, or rejected by personalized feelings. May we find our personal freedom.

what is a name?

19th July 2018, 11:38

Hi wavydome,

I'm browsing through the Laurency info that you put a link up for and i'm enjoying the perspective it puts across. Thank You!

TraineeHuman

20th July 2018, 02:49

Hell again, wavydome. This thread was certainly never a place just for any one individual's views or experiences, at all. This is a discussion forum. There are a considerable number of lengthy and very well written posts mostly from 2013 where Ray, who was very familiar with and devoted to hylozozoics and a proponent of it, and had a very sharp intellect,went into great detail presenting interesting aspects of hylozoics with great eloquence and knowledge. He also presented much material from Leadbeater and Theosophy.

The biggest area that we seemed to focus on disagreeing about was that I claim that an underlying metaphysics based on the concept of "objects" as the underlying thing reality is made of (which hylozoics is also based on) is in various ways quite inferior to a relational and contextual metaphysics. If you go to post #2649 http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?52121-The-Higher-Self-and-transcendent-experience-including-OBEs&p=1146404&viewfull=1#post1146404, after the initial two paragraphs (which talk about free will) I present a summary of the inadequacies of a metaphysics based on the concept of "objects" as its most fundamental building blocks -- which nearly absolutely all of mainstream Western thought, and hylozoics, is indeed totally based on (at least before when quantum physics made it clear that if the physical world was made of objects, these are very strange objects indeed. For instance, every electron only has more or less probable locations, and can be literally anywhere in the entire universe, at any time.) In post #2649 I go on to try and explain how a relational and contextual metaphysics seems to be preferable, and truer to reality.

I was very impressed by your statement that: "the East-West criticisms are severe and actually more condemning of the western cultures". Yes, indeed. To quote Krishnamurti, Christianity has been by far the most murderous and bloodthirsty religion of the past two thousand years. After all, they (the British, ultimately under the control of the Jesuits, I'm told) murdered at least several hundred millions in India in the nineteenth and twentieth (and eighteenth) century, and also strip-mined everything valuable or worthwhile out of India's soil and then left the Indians to die of starvation, or so they apparently hoped.

I could go on and on about such inadequacies of the West, but it seems to me that the characteristic Western alienation from the environment ultimately has links to Western thought's and civilisation's notion that the basis of reality (which to the West is objects) is isolated and alienated.

I'm a direct descendant of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, and as far as I know what Lawrence Gardiner called the "dragon blood" of the original royal lines was in fact the DNA of Inner Earth humans. The latter appear to have initiated Indian and Chinese mysticism, and its more gentle and integrative view of essential reality, so maybe I'm biased as a result of that.

Bo Atkinson

20th July 2018, 09:37

Two days ago, in post 2731, you wrote:

My question is, why would anyone, or any being, not use the process of drawing astral energy from the universal astral plane?

OK, your question was not for sharing or comparing experiences. Thanks for referring to your rules here. I am a descendant from a great, great grandmother, who was a native slave in Dutch Java, of that time. Best Regards.

TraineeHuman

13th August 2018, 06:28

Many alternative or "New Age"ish individuals will often boldly and eagerly rush to some mental idea -- a goal, or an affirmation, or a prayer or visualization, or a concept, or "positive conditioning" or "positive self-conditioning". (By the way, notice that conditioning, tragically, is really mostly just the mechanical (robotic) creation of extra desires for you to get even further trapped in.) And it seems these individuals will do this because somehow they believe this will ultimately have a quasi-magical effect, making their desired McGuffin or state of affairs materialize just as they demand. In their implicit belief system, this is even how "manifestation" invariably works.

But in fact that normally doesn't work. At least, that is to say, it will only produce the reproduction or rehashing of what has already been there in the past. The (ordinary, thinking) mind, and all desires, are totally and inextricably anchored in the past. Notice also that every desire seems "positive" at the time we're ensnared by it. "Positive desires" enslave us to them just as much as "negative desires" do.

Instead of this, what needs to be done is to leave it to the intuition, or "the spirit" (the higher soul), to work out all the details of and create something new and original that's radically better. Very few individuals know how to use the intuition in a truly accurate way at all, though very many (and psychic or New Age fairs are full of these, unfortunately) delude themselves with the conviction that they are exceptionally psychic and aware, and, it seems, that whatever their mind free-associates is precisely "the truth". However, those so far very rare individuals who can actually access some scraps of truth accurately through their intuition are masterful at accessing and holding and remaining consciously very present to total "emptiness" at any moment. Anything that's not "empty" on the inside belongs to the world of forms and therefore to the world of the thinking (or picturing, or symbolizing) mind.

animovado

13th August 2018, 10:03

Hello TH,
i like to go back to the topic I had a question about in Post #2732.

For that matter I like to quote some of your words that I found on the current (edit: previous) page of this thread:

As far as I know apparently everyone seems to agree that the physical world is a world that's limited compared to other types of worlds -- that what life is about "down here" is living with and learning to adjust to or overcome or transform our limitations and those of living in this type of world.#2733

But secondly, it seems to me that Source would have insisted on creating a type of world limited enough for that Hypothesis not to apply, because such a thing was quite possible.#2733

Well, firstly the majority of physicists are of the opinion that the evidence suggests it doesn't apply in the physical world.#2733

[…] when quantum physics made it clear that if the physical world was made of objects, these are very strange objects indeed. For instance, every electron only has more or less probable locations, and can be literally anywhere in the entire universe, at any time.[…]#2738

How can these statements properly fit together? So if we’re capable of overcoming or transforming limitations, they seem not to be carved in stone (1.). So they’re not so limited instead and maybe a part of the screenplay of a not so little „trickster" (2.)? Are those scientists listening to themselves, because the strange behavior of particles doesn’t stop at "more or less probable locations", it’s becoming even stranger when a particle can be at two locations at the same time (3., 4.)?

TraineeHuman

17th August 2018, 05:19

All the worlds higher than the physical world have fewer limitations, fewer natural laws. That makes many things freer, even in astral levels, compared to what happens in the physical world. There no doubt probably are other physical worlds than this one, in the sense that some of the laws of physics in them may be quite different from ours, animovado. But no-one seems to have ever managed to "jump" out of this physical world into one with very different laws, retaining their physical body. Regardless of how much one may change one's point of view, such a change never seems to create a second version of the physical planet Earth, as far as I know. Of course I could be wrong, but where is the evidence?

And yes, animovado, we certainly do transcend or put aside at least some of our limitations while we're living in the physical world. But we only manage to do this by bringing down, or "pulling in", forces or energies etc that come from higher worlds, mostly -- though I guess we may also e.g. lose physical weight purely through the right physical diet etc.

greybeard

17th August 2018, 09:46

Its all different levels (of energy)
Hence the paradoxes.
What applies to one realm does not necessarily apply to others.

Chris

animovado

18th August 2018, 17:07

There are not so much „natural laws“ than you might think. The limitations our plane seems to offer are of other origin. You can compare this to the administrative regulations that should be based on the laws, but often deviate in a silly manner and contradict common sense. Our way of interpretation is limited by ourselves as a society and individually. That‘s okay, but no one is bound to that limited interpretatin in general.
How can you „pull in“ forces from one plane into the other, when they don‘t comply with the laws of the other and are contradictory?
What is the impetus for our moment of inertia - to which interpretation do you gravitate?
Well, and evidence,...do you believe in evidence? Quantum physics seems to deliver an example for not believable experimental results, because it‘s findings are not adopted by other scientific disciplines. But maybe I‘m not up to date.

TraineeHuman

23rd September 2018, 13:18

Early in this thread I've said various things about descension (or truly bringing Heaven down to Earth as the more advanced stage of spiritual development). I'd like to give some more specific details here, intended for those readers who’ve had or are having direct experiences of this. My comments will cover some details of where the highly misunderstood topic of kundalini descension fits in.

At least, this information is all based on my own experience and observations of certain other individuals I have known. (In the traditional terminology, ascension occurs individually only, and culminates in an experience of one of the Divine worlds --- where one experiences all things as being one, and that oneself is God or the Universe, and so on). Following this one becomes able to begin to enter the stages of descension.)

Descension does have stages, though once a stage has been gone through there will typically be further "trickle-on" of completing that stage fully, for years after. The later stages, as I understand them (assuming the individual hasn't for e4xample been trapped in lower astral levels as a result of drug use) are: the mental (or conceptual or symbolic), the emotional, the physical (which, as I'll try to explain in detail, is the kundalini stage), and the subconscious or shadow stage . It's necessary to go through these stages in that order (over years or lifetimes).

The mental stage is when one has a mental concept, or very vivid memories, of having experiences of one of the Divine worlds. (If you haven't experienced that vivid experience and the memory of it yet, then , as I understand it, I'm afraid you're still at a prior stage of descension, or at a stage of individual ascension prior to when descension begins.) Unfortunately, in a discussion forum like this we are stuck mostly in a mental world generally, like it or not. But the truth is, reality is not made out of ideas or concepts (or words, or pictures). Only mental reality is. (Many of the most leading nineteenth and twentieth century philosophers proved, by pure reason, that this is the case.)

The next stage of descension, the emotional one, is a very, very long journey indeed. I believe it took me the equivalent of a full-time person-decade to get through (hopefully) most of it. One could call it the psychotherapeutic or the "facing and allowing the truth" stage. As far as I understand, one only completes this when one becomes able to bring down bliss (or what is also known as “love”), or profound joy, into most situations, and to use such bliss to negate (most of) the sting of emotionally painful things. That’s bringing Nirvana down into the emotional level. Before you complete that, you’ll cop endless suffering and have to face it – unless you can find the right kind of awareness to overcome the suffering, though perhaps no-one does until near the end of this stage.

The next stage is the physical. As far as I know, this is, or culminates in, the kundalini stage (in the sense that it’s the stage where one has a continuous kundalini experience that typically keeps going day and night for at least several years). I need to clarify a whole lot of gigantic common misunderstandings regarding the workings of kundalini energy. There are largely two varieties of kundalini experience (as should also be clear , I believe,from the writings of various individuals such as Irina Tweedie). One variety is what I’ll call a “baby kundalini experience”. This typically lasts somewhere between one and twenty or so minutes. (It also includes the shaktipat experience.) I used to have an extraordinary spiritual teacher who was a master of kundalini yoga, in addition to being extraordinarily clairvoyant. In her classes, she was very good at spotting when someone was ready to have a baby kundalini activation. I would notice that when this occurred, a pale white ball, the size of a tennis ball or golf ball, would appear (on the astral level) in the energy field of the individual. It would linger below their feet and then at their feet or legs usually for some minutes. (I think this is because most individuals, including many meditators, aren’t connected with the energy flow that comes from the ground. To remedy this, they should meditate with their legs raised to the level of their solar plexus or higher.) Yhen the white ball would enter the physical body at the base of the spine, and usually begin to move much more quickly, up the spine. Quite often, though, it would get stuck at some chakra point or other. I found that I already had the developed the psychic skills to clear away the stuck energy at such a point while I remained at a distance. But I soon decided it was better to allow the individual to clear away their stuck energies themselves (probably subconsciously). I told my teacher I had been doing this in her classes, but she was concerned that I might not be able to avoid taking in some of the energies of the individual and, so to speak, “vacuuming” them into my own energy field. However, it so happened I already had a sufficient mastery of the relevant skills to easily avoid doing that altogether. But I consider that is a good example of the kind of skills of mastery over energy that one may need to develop during the “psychotherapy” or emotional stage. I was also certain that I have the skills to move the white ball of kundalini energy up all the way from below the feet to above the head without needing to ever touch the individual, on the forehead or anywhere else –- as long as I’m physically close by, i.e. in the same room.

The hard part, in my experience, is getting the white ball to appear in the first place. I have managed to do that on my own with a few individuals, whom I then only slightly assisted, or didn’t assist at all, as they moved the ball up their body to its destination at the oversoul area. For the ball to appear (below the individual’s feet), the individual needs to be undergoing some process of major psychotherapeutic change at that time. In one case, the individual was grieving over the loss of her father a few days before, a father she had been especially close to. Under those circumstances it wasn’t so difficult for me to use some professional counselling skills (with empathy) to initiate a sufficiently intense psychological healing to bring the white ball out. (Very well-known studies have proved, incidentally, that counselling or psychotherapy doesn’t result in any change for the better at all, in 70% of professional counselling or psychotherapy sessions. But sometimes, on the other hand, the client is very ready and willing at that particular time.)

That’s the baby kundalini experience. My teacher who was a kundalini master didn’t mention any other kind, not until when she noticed that I had been having a continuous kundalini experience for two weeks (which she was clairvoyant enough to know without my saying anything). But I need to point out here that in nineteenth century India, anyone exhibiting a baby kundalini experience would immediately be made a guru for the rest of his life. This meant that all his physical needs would from then on be taken care of and provided for, for free. Plus, as a guru, he would hold a position of great prestige in the local community. Clearly there was a huge incentive for such an individual to exaggerate and embellish what was going on during his baby kundalini experience -- and to imply that no more major and integrated form of kundalini experience existed. I’m not denying, though, that any baby kundalini experience will usually be (or include) one of the top 15 or 20 psychological breakthrough experiences in the individual’s lifetime.

The other type of kundalini experience is what we could call the marathon kundalini experience. This is incomparably vaster and broader in its transformative effects. As I’ve mentioned, it seems to usually last continuously for many months or, indeed, for a number of years. In early 2001, my master teacher told me I had been going through the beginning stage of such an experience continuously for the previous two weeks. It was true that I had gone through a number of somewhat major psychological breakthroughs all at the same time. But after two weeks I was feeling that these were kind of over, at least at a conscious level. I had however noticed I definitely seemed to be feeling the mid-summer heat more strongly than normal, and an unusually strong inner calmness. Beyond that, what I primarily experienced, on the surface at least, was a physical overheating of my entire body that went on non-stop day and night for around two years. For those two years and sometimes afterwards, I wasn’t able to wear any pyjamas at night or to use even a single blanket on my bed at night.

My teacher had withdrawn from contact with any of her students for what I think turned out to be a year and a half, so I was on my own. Without noticing it at first, I seemed to become very withdrawn for the first six months of that two year period. I was working as a contractor, but fortunately wasn’t offered a contract during the first eight months of this period. Ultimately, though, it seems one only needs to learn to calmly trust that the higher benevolent forces or energies working their way through one become stronger, usually, than any difficulties or egoic resistance or hostile forces.

In retrospect, when I reflect on what I know or have heard about others’ marathon k. experiences, it seems to me that, in many if not most cases, their marathon experience was entered into prematurely in some respects. That seems to have been the case with quite a few of my past spiritual teachers. None of my other teachers talked about the marathon experience, but I’ve deduced that a number of them certainly must have experienced it.

In my next post I’ll look at three ways in which I believe the marathon experience can be entered prematurely.

TraineeHuman

25th September 2018, 07:13

Irina Tweedie is one example of someone who seems to have undergone the marathon experience, and she wrote about it in her book about her experiences mostly with a master from the Naqshbandi sect, the advanced sect, of Sufism. (If the book’s no longer available, I know there are at several videos. My theory, at present anyway, is that most individuals who undergo the marathon experience do so prematurely, and I'll try to briefly indicate some possible reasons why. During the marathon experience, it seems that the life-energy shows itself full on, in what we can call a universal manner. Something gigantic. One of the things Irina experienced during (and maybe before) the marathon experience was that she suddenly and then for a long period became overwhelmed by what was now an abnormally strong sexual drive. It seems to me that that is one of the three most common symptoms of going into the marathon experience prematurely.

All sexual energy is actually life-force energy -- but not vice-versa, in spite of Freud's theories, which at any rate have been proved largely invalid in this respect in the psychological literature. If an individual has, for example, known extensive repression of, or unreasonable overindulgence in, their sexual drive for a considerable part of their past, they will wrongly interpret the universal kundalini energy as very intense, if not compulsive, sexual energy. But life-energy in itself, taken in a balanced way, is something beautiful and in certain ways innocent -- in spite of its ability to sometimes materialize itself as hurricanes or volcanoes and so on. If an individual has major unresolved issues or a lack of –appropriate balance relating to sexuality, they will no doubt project these onto the “pure” universal k. energy.

The descension into the physical involves a type of universalization of one’s experience of the physical world. Subtly and slowly, one develops a sense that whatever one truly is is somehow universal, even though firmly rooted in, or inhabiting, the world of physicality. That development seems to happen so gradually that in some ways one doesn’t notice it. But one does at some point notice a great sense of inner freedom and ability to take vast forces into oneself.

As far as I know, an equally common symptom of premature marathon k. experience is the acquisition of an obsession with being greedy about money. Similarly, another one is an obsession with being greedy for power over people’s lives. The universal character of how the kundalini energy is now experienced can lead to the individual having a sense that there are no limits to how far they can go. Of course, all these three types of symptoms have been seen in various leaders of spiritual communities or sects. I guess that money often translates into physical goods or into things like food or shelter, so the greed about money connects with coming to terms with the physical world. It’s not clear to me why the greed for power and influence seems to be so connected with physicality, but somehow it seems it just is.

When the descension into the physical is more or less complete (if, indeed, it ever is), my understanding is that one will continually be experiencing the physical world as being, at core, a place that’s free of unhappiness. This doesn’t mean that stop experiencing such things as physical pain, or practical problems of various kinds. (But we don’t allow pain to turn into suffering.)

There will be other areas of life in the physical world that even some years of continuous marathon experience will not have healed. As far as I know, what this means is that one will go on having baby k. experiences every now and then, each time healing or resolving such other areas to some degree. The marathon experience seems able to liberate you in most of the kinds of situations you encounter regularly in your normal life. But there are always new horizons where you will still be in need of healing. Let me add that I consider the very notion of achieving “perfection” is a myth. “Perfection” is always relative.

Finally, a quote from Irina: “There is nothing but Nothingness.. . Nothingness because the little self (the ego) has to go. One has to become nothing. Nothingness, because the higher states of consciousness represent nothingness to the mind, for it cannot reach there. It is completely beyond the range of perception. Complete comprehension on the level of the mind is not possible, so one is faced with nothingness.”

samildamach

25th September 2018, 19:19

Hi trainee
So would you say a baby kundalini experience is a pre curser to descention,or something altogether different?

TraineeHuman

26th September 2018, 00:51

A baby kundalini experience is always still a significant breakthrough. If the individual having it has, in addition, also experienced one of the Divine worlds, then he or she may indeed be moved to "surrender" significantly to the higher forces. And no doubt the "baby "experience will have taken apart part of the ego's resistance to this.

The important question will be, how long will the individual successfully remain extremely attentive and silently watch all the movements of their own mind like a hawk? There are hostile forces, within and without, that need to be overcome. Also, the individual needs to have developed sufficient inner calmness or detachment, that they can very quickly see where an idea or impulse inside them is coming from. Some will be coming from a higher part of themselves, but some will be from forces, external or inner, that are hostile to one's further progress.

On the positive side, in addition to constantly using profound attentiveness, it helps if , eventually, one can retain a sense of both profound joy and the "nothingness" of great inner peace. At least one should learn to begin to experience these during one's daily meditation, and then they should eventually come to trickle through into all of one's daily life, despite all the thorns that one runs into there. In the meantime, on the way to getting there, I never promised you a rose garden (well, not all the time), as the saying goes.

wegge

3rd November 2018, 13:29

Hey there TraineeHuman,

Can you recommend other books besides Irina's that tackle parts of the Kundalini phenomenon, as holistically as you seem to understand it?

best
Christoph

TraineeHuman

4th November 2018, 01:11

Hi, Christoph. When I was in my adolescence I was experiencing the Divine worlds regularly, without having read anything about that at all. Practically all I "read" was the book of Nature, very intensively, in some sometimes rather weird sense. It did take certain very deliberate "practices" of my own creation but not original, such as spending hours on the weekends being disengaged from everything I did during the week, plus developing powerful concentration and then attention and the ability to truly go within,. Not to mention also being powerfully disengaged from any entertainment or anyone else's company, usually. It helped greatly that in my first five years I had had a mother who was quite exceptionally loving, so that in some ways on an inner level I felt extraordinarily empowered and validated and lovable. Ever since, I've regarded true spirituality as something where experience has to always come first and then any reading or discussion about it needs to be related mostly just to looking at what you've already experienced. Period. Only then do the philosophical and psychological and poetic concepts help one to see more clearly that -- ah, hah! -- "this" is what I've really been experiencing. Then they can be genuinely empowering instead of misleading, because they'll direct your attention more fully into higher, more positive territory. The alternative seems to me disastrous, or, at least, mostly ineffective.

When I started this thread I'm sorry to say I was amazed and horrified to find that some readers seemed to believe that theoretical concepts or knowledge regarding some aspect of spirituality was in some way or sometimes a substitute for direct experience. There's no easy way, no royal road, no "sly person's path" in that sense. The via negativa is the only true way, I'm afraid.

Sorry, but I don't know of any other authors than Irina Tweedie who have tried to explain in considerable detail what (as I would describe it) premature experiences of the marathon or true kundalini experience are like, if one goes into it prematurely -- which she obviously did, and many spiritual teachers or masters obviously did or do also. Perhaps most of what I learnt about true kundalini experience I learnt through having extensive non-verbal mastery of certain skills to do with handling and "reading" pure energy, and through extensive nonverbal "reading" of what was going on inside someone who was indeed a genuine kundalini master whom I saw often about once a month for a few hours, over about ten years.