Michael Sternbach

I don't understand. Whether he shifted to the right or left solely depends on which foot he kicked the scum with. I would never say that. In fact, I encourage people to learn how to defend themselves (rather than relying on the "authorities"). Your bashing me with this story just demonstrates the truth of the last two sentences of my previous post.

I am using this terminology here in its common (although admittedly somewhat vague) sense as one's overall political orientation which is expressive of their world view. Not all of them are young males, and among those who are, a majority is well behaved, for all I know. Responsible individuals should be arrested and sentenced, no question about that. What I consider a shift to the right has got to do with blanket judgements against refugees and indifference regarding genuine war victims. Typically, when people feel threatened, they suspend their neocortex and resort to more primitive parts of the brain. In other words, they exhibit a sharp drop in intelligence.

I don't have the book handy right now, but Layayoga by Shyam Sundar Goswami, a book strongly based on traditional texts, indeed talks about the eighth chakra. I will be back with more if I manage to dig the book up.

The idiom "I'm in over my head" comes to mind.

In Zen Buddhism, there is a story of a recluse finding enlightenment on a mountain top, then returning to the suffering people on "the market place". If you look around among the hermits and avatars of renown, even among the shamans of various cultures, you find this same pattern over and over again. Bottom line: There are times for withdrawal, and there are times for engagement. The sage is not limited by a codex of sage-like behaviour but will always follow what they feel is right for them here and now.

As futuredaze said, a perplexing shift to the right is observable on many forums now, including this one. It doesn't take very much to make even supposedly "conscious" people either show their true face, or to modify their views and join some collective cry. This demonstrates once again, how easy it is to manipulate the majority of people.

In the Golden Dawn's fundamental Middle Pillar exercise, you visualize the highest energy centre (corresponding with Kether)a little above your head.

Hello, KundaliniLinguini, and welcome to the forums, Your membership is approved and we're happy you found your way to us. We look forward to accompanying you on some of the way that you still have to go. Please take the time to read the two posts pinned at the top of this Welcome page and take a look at the forum terms and rules. This covers all you need to know when getting started. For the first week you will be restricted to ten posts per day but after that you can post as much as you like. Also, until you’ve posted fifteen times in the forums, you’ll be a “Junior Bum” with somewhat restricted access and will be allowed only two private messages per day. Good luck in your pursuits and best wishes to you, Michael Sternbach and the TDB team

############### Moderator Notice This thread has been repeatedly brought to the attention of the moderating team for hostility and abuse. It is therefore currently closed and under our review. ################

Mankind is now standing at a crossroads. Spiritual traditions emphasize that most humans exist in a state of delusion, while science says that most of our brain lies dormant. The question is: Will humans learn to access their true potential more fully? Or will they degenerate while more and more relying on technology coming to their aid? Are we going to join our individualities in spiritual union? Or are we going to loose them in a collective Borg hive? Will we be accessing the Akasa chronicles via our intuition? Or have our brains cybernetically hooked up to an omnipresent Internet? Will we conquer disease and other miseries by a final understanding that the outer world reflects the inner? Or continue to aspire perfect control over outer reality by purely external means, while neglecting the internal realm more and more? Will we achieve longevity and (spiritual) immortality in the way of Western and Eastern Alchemy? Or by having more and more of our body replaced by technological substitutes? For every potential spiritual achievement, there seems to be a technological chimera. But this is not to say that all technology is bad. Using it with wisdom is key... Will there be two types of human beings in the future? The spiritually awakened and the technologically enhanced ones? Which would you choose to belong to?

It also raises the question if Buddhism is conceptually bound to a cultural environment at all. Arguably, many Western Buddhists might actually be 'better' ones, because they are Buddhists by choice and genuinely interested in its deeper teachings and practices, rather than inheriting as part of their overall culture. While there is a tendency to think of Western Buddhists (Daoists etc) as somehow less genuine than Eastern ones, we should consider that it has been travelling quite far already long ago; nowadays, there are few Buddhists in India where it was created. Likewise, Christianity is not the prevalent religion in Israel but was spread all over Europe with the Roman Empire as mediator. In Japan, there is definitely a lack of interest in Buddhism among members of the young generation. Maybe historians will one day consider our time to be the stage when Buddhism and other Eastern religions started moving to the West. I guess I cheated - my post is rather short, plus I used my computer for writing it.

Nature gives us our desires for good reasons, and generally speaking, the best way not to suffer from them is simply fulfilling them.

Hello, Alexander, and welcome to the forums, Your membership is approved and we're happy you found your way to us. We hope that you will find some useful advice here. At the same time, it seems recommendable that you seek professional help in your environment. Please take the time to read the two posts pinned at the top of this Welcome page and take a look at the forum terms and rules. This covers all you need to know when getting started. For the first week you will be restricted to ten posts per day but after that you can post as much as you like. Also, until you’ve posted fifteen times in the forums, you’ll be a “Junior Bum” with somewhat restricted access and will be allowed only two private messages per day. Good luck in your pursuits and best wishes to you, Michael Sternbach and the TDB team

Only too much stress for too long is damaging. A moderate level of stress keeps you in form. Just think of the astronauts who are in a constant fight against muscle degeneration because they lack the "stress" of gravity. Nature's simple rule is: What you don't use, you lose. Also with desire, whether it's good for you or not is a matter of how it affects you.

Hello, Viktor, and welcome to the forums, Your membership is approved and we're happy you found your way to us. You are sure to find many like-minded individuals here. Please take the time to read the two posts pinned at the top of this Welcome page and take a look at the forum terms and rules. This covers all you need to know when getting started. For the first week you will be restricted to ten posts per day but after that you can post as much as you like. Also, until you’ve posted fifteen times in the forums, you’ll be a “Junior Bum” with somewhat restricted access and will be allowed only two private messages per day. Good luck in your pursuits and best wishes to you, Michael Sternbach and the TDB team

I am not very familiar with the Indian system. In the classical Greek view, however, the quintessence, although not really considered an element as such, indeed holds a special position amongst them, binding the proper elements together. It is placed in the centre of the Aristotelian cross - at once the origin and the summation of the four elements that form the manifest world. Mercury as the odd ball mixing various qualities seems to be a good match for that in the planetary realm. Referring to the alchemical Mercury again, it is also no far stretch to see it as particularly connected to quintessence or prime matter. There is indeed a view expressed by some early authors, that all of matter boils down to Mercury alone, although its extension to the Mercury/Sulfur theory, and later to the Mercury/Sulfur/Salt theory, gained considerable acceptance as well.

Hello, bass line, and welcome to the forums, Your membership is approved and we're happy you found your way to us. At last! Please take the time to read the two posts pinned at the top of this Welcome page and take a look at the forum terms and rules. This covers all you need to know when getting started. For the first week you will be restricted to ten posts per day but after that you can post as much as you like. Also, until you’ve posted fifteen times in the forums, you’ll be a “Junior Bum” with somewhat restricted access and will be allowed only two private messages per day. Good luck in your pursuits and best wishes to you, Michael Sternbach and the TDB team

Hello, Sarah, and welcome to the forums, Your membership is approved and we're happy you found your way to us. We hope and believe that here you might find some of the answers you are looking for. Please take the time to read the two posts pinned at the top of this Welcome page and take a look at the forum terms and rules. This covers all you need to know when getting started. For the first week you will be restricted to ten posts per day but after that you can post as much as you like. Also, until you’ve posted fifteen times in the forums, you’ll be a “Junior Bum” with somewhat restricted access and will be allowed only two private messages per day. Good luck in your pursuits and best wishes to you, Michael Sternbach and the TDB team

Well, I'm not Nungali, but he and I have a long standing tradition of answering post for one another. Yes, definitely. There are a number of different schemes to connect the planets with the chakras. The one I (and a number of Indian astrologers) favour, is this: Here, the planets are arranged in the order of the so called domicile scheme, which is basic to all astrology. Their correlations with the chakras make a lot of sense this way. Mercury falls on the throat chakra - both this chakra and the planet represent the area of communication. Mercury as one of the three alchemical principle belongs to air and water, but we must be careful not to simply equate this with its attributions as a planet. In the oldest extant Hellenistic texts, the planets are imbued with the Aristotelian qualities rather than with the elements per say. Thus, Mars is hot and dry, Venus cold and moist, Jupiter hot and moist, Saturn cold and dry. These attributions translate to the Aristotelian elements in a straightforward manner, but the first one who did this explicitly was (to my knowledge) Raymond Lull (1235-1315). Mercury's elemental attribution remains problematic, because he (always being the odd planet) combines at least three of the qualities. Despite this, he is described as "earthy" in some old texts (which happens to tie in with Virgo, one of the two signs he has reign over), but a better view might be to see him as representing the "fifth element", the quintessence, aether or akasha.

Solar inverter

Hello, Praveece, and welcome to the forums, Your membership is approved and we're happy you found your way to us. We look forward to talking about various spiritual practices with you. Please take the time to read the two posts pinned at the top of this Welcome page and take a look at the forum terms and rules. This covers all you need to know when getting started. For the first week you will be restricted to ten posts per day but after that you can post as much as you like. Also, until you’ve posted fifteen times in the forums, you’ll be a “Junior Bum” with somewhat restricted access and will be allowed only two private messages per day. Good luck in your pursuits and best wishes to you, Michael Sternbach and the TDB team

Hello, jebach131, and welcome to the forums, Your membership is approved and we're happy you found your way to us. You will certainly find plenty of people here to talk about your experiences with. Please take the time to read the two posts pinned at the top of this Welcome page and take a look at the forum terms and rules. This covers all you need to know when getting started. For the first week you will be restricted to ten posts per day but after that you can post as much as you like. Also, until you’ve posted fifteen times in the forums, you’ll be a “Junior Bum” with somewhat restricted access and will be allowed only two private messages per day. Good luck in your pursuits and best wishes to you, Michael Sternbach and the TDB team

Alright, let's see if we can fix that. How would you have me edit the "xenophobic" label on the hidden posts before I reopen that thread? How about "inhumane"? "Misanthropic"? Or... "contemptuous of human life"? Maybe they are in still in place because there are still people who think they are a good idea? I am all too well aware of the horrors of child abuse! Not only have I treated cases, I also had one so close to me that it's too personal to go into this here. Why do you think I would play it down just because I don't agree on those drastic punishments you are suggesting? Do they prevent crimes from happening? And what about the inevitable judicial errors? Here's the thing... You single out some bad cases, then make a generalization about all refugees, and suggest treating them in inhumane ways. For one thing, there are plenty of families among them. Would you want your children to live where there are bullets flying around them and bombs exploding while they're playing in the sandbox? Do you think those refugees were all just waiting to leave their countries before war broke loose? You still haven't given me any particular sources which clearly state the connections. There it is again, that gross simplification. In reality, many countries are still suffering from recessions which can't all be blamed on evil refugees. Maybe you should go back to reading your 道德經? (See my next paragraph.) Luckily for you, this is a Daoist website, so we understand that: That's why we prefer to communicate with people rather than beheading them. Something you should take to heart! Michael

vibration