Bindi

When you saw your children having mental breakdowns, did you see this as somehow just illusory? Were you unmoved by the situation?

If you’re already engaged in actively doing your best to avoid death then fear would get in the way, fear just motivates activity, perhaps when there is no action possible to avert the danger the fear just starts echoing beyond the actual moment. Perhaps it’s whatever is the best state for survival, sometimes cold hard mental processing unhampered by emotion, sometimes fear followed by action. I do wonder if fear is a conditioned response actually, after being bitten by a dog I developed a fear of dogs, it was a learnt behaviour.

I was once out with my kids when they were a toddler and a baby strapped to me, walking along a bush track, when a tiger snake reared up half a metre in front of where my toddler was walking towards, and a sound came out of me, it reminded me of a monkey howling ‘owowowowow’ and my toddler stopped and came towards me, and the snake ‘stood down’ and slithered off. My fright was so intense I bypassed words, but apparently to very good effect

Yes probably that, I am not the actor, emotions and thoughts happen but I am not the actor or the director, I am the witness perhaps. To me emotions and thoughts, maybe body identification and karma as well, are functions of the two subtle side channels, when flowing freely they are perfect duality in action, the Yin and Yang operating perfectly together, but instead of no-self after separating from these as sense of self I suspect the sense of I instead becomes established in the central channel, and this channel is the realm of alchemy, it’s where earth and heaven can meet, it’s where the ‘immortal’ body is created, not as a thing to be disassociated from, maybe more as a vehicle for consciousness after death, though I know far less about the central channel than the two side channels for now.

I like your answer, next time maybe you could just answer your own question right away Agreed, fear is required for survival. We can even be afraid of the idea of something happening when actual situations aren’t there to stimulate the stored fears. I don’t mean as a general anxiety state, more specific, for example fearing being abducted by aliens, in the past fearing vampires, creating threatening characters in the imagination to trigger the stored fears. I see it as once created, the fear has to be fully felt and processed before it can dissipate and stop repeating itself, sounds like ghosts of our pasts that have to be put to rest. The question is, is nonduality in and of itself enough to actually resolve these fear echoes?

I have no issue with this as a personal experience, though to believe that it describes reality is just a belief. I might also believe that consciousness is not dependent on the physical body, but this doesn’t make it true either. I don’t feel these experiences are really so hard to comprehend, lots of people have experienced different states, I think they can be described well enough. What I find unconvincing is the depth of change in self-proclaimed awakened non-dualists, it seems to me that parts of life that don’t fit the nondual story are remodelled and adjusted on a shallow level, eg., fear, oh I’m feeling fear, I’ll just stop feeling that because fear is just a story, and I don’t need to run that story anymore. I find this unconvincing, and just another story to tell oneself. A turning point it may be, but it doesn’t appear to be a complete and final disassociation from all physical and emotional and mental and karmic identifications, and this complete disidentification seems to be the greater achievement (to me).

Is it? Fear is at bottom life saving, designed I believe to protect the organism, but major early fears do tend to reverberate in dysfunctional ways into adulthood. I see the dysfunctional manifestations as a restriction on our freedom to live happily/peacefully and achieve personal goals, but the subconscious source of dysfunctional fears can be confronted.This is actually empowering, and certainly emotionally healthy.

“Be in service to heaven, obey the earth, and store the Essence where they join.” ~ Yellow Court External Illumination Scripture

Wouldn’t the nondualist accept that fear is present, not wishing to change it or the manifested action in any way?

Fear is the conditioned action, arising prior to conscious awareness, not acting on that fear is the thought reaction, it relies on a conscious response to a specific manifestation of fear.

Sorry, I’m unconvinced. You choose to ‘allow’ pleasant experience instead of old conditioning, choosing this instead of that, because you have a preference for pleasant experience instead of fear. The fear undercurrent - coming from a psychological POV refusing to act on it is behavioural, but the driver of fear remains beneath the surface, unnoticed, still driving. This is spiritual bypassing. You can choose to behaviourally change each manifestation of fear, having to remember each time to allow pleasant experience instead of fear, or face the driver head on by digging into the subconscious and removing it. And fear is just the first of the emotional hijackers, there are more, all hidden, all in charge.

Forgive me for being dense, but do you mean you experienced a nondual state, which your teacher advised you to not attach too much importance to?

I do understand what you’re saying to an extent, my approach is also to untangle from as opposed to build up, but in my process this inevitably clears subtle channels which inevitably leads to an increasingly functioning subtle energy body. I suspect my sense of I will transfer completely to my subtle energy body at some point, I don’t expect it to disappear, though I don’t know this of course, I am merely making an educated guess. I do wonder if nondualists are attempting to destroy ego without having an alternative vessel prepared for ego. Nondual theory will shoot down that idea of course, but it might be true. edit to add: I am agreeing that we need to disidentify from the body and mind etc, but it is likely going too far to disidentify from the subtle energy body as well, especially when that subtle body is not fully functioning first. That would be like disidentifying from the emotional or mental aspects before they are healthy, ie. spiritual bypassing, probably one of the greatest potential errors of nondual practices. Yes I probably am asserting that, I have said you have a preference for nonduality, and that one can choose nondual methods and ways of perceiving, this is what you react to.

So many different beliefs about the Self, is yours one of the prescribed beliefs above? Or did you come to your belief independently?

Just curious, you say forgetting the self, do you have any perspective regarding the ‘higher Self’?

The "me" wanting to practice non-duality is the very illusion that non-dual philosophy is geared toward dismantling. ~ Some random nondualist.

Whenever I suggest nondual perspective is a choice you react. Manitou can say she has to remember to dive down through the conditioning, which implies making a choice, but you are very defensive when I suggest you are making the same choice. In the words of a nondualsplainer: Pointers are useful, but they become a hindrance when we fixate on them and turn them into fundamentalist dogmas. It’s easy to see this tendency when it shows up “out there” in fundamentalist Christianity or fundamentalist Islam, but it’s harder to see it in ourselves. We think we’re beyond all that. But I see this dogmatic fixation and fundamentalism happening all the time in the nondual subculture. We fixate, for example, on the notion that there is no choice, that everything is a choiceless happening, that there is no individual chooser. This is a very liberating discovery, a profound insight. But it’s only a partial truth—reality itself can’t be boxed up that way. And if we fixate on that as the whole truth, then if anyone dares to speak of “choosing” in any way whatsoever, we instantly pounce. Wrong! We tell them. We don’t listen anymore to what the person is actually saying. Our mind has already been made up. We’ve landed. We’re stuck on one side of an imaginary divide, identified with a particular formulation, ready to defend it to the death. I’ve certainly seen this tendency in myself at times—it’s quite human. It’s how the mind habitually works. ~ Joan Tollifson

Ji, chi, shen. Yes, that’s one way to put it, also LDT, MDT, UDT. Father, son, holy spirit. But isn’t the only way to the Father through the son, therefore the only way to the roots is through the stems?

Exactly, and my way is indeed to work with the leaves and branches because I believe it is impossible to work with the root first, but but I still aim to end up at the root. Sure. Yes and no, after a spontaneous experience of nonduality a person might choose a nondual method specifically to re-experience that state, another might have a nondual experience and accept that it was a taste of things to come but not an invitation to try and grasp it repeatedly. Others might fool themselves into obtaining a mental approximation of nonduality after reading the literature, but as I tried to demonstrate earlier this belief system can be shown to be shallow if/when the body starts to fail. Removing all conditioning first is a most formidable undertaking! Where the Buddhist sees muddy water and carefully lets the mud settle, ever mindful of not disturbing it, I stir up the mud and over time and with the help of extra water I clear the muddy water until its crystal clear and I can frolic about in it to my hearts content! Yes, though our choices are necessarily limited by the methods that are available to us in our search. The historical Buddha demonstrated his dissatisfaction with the choices on offer to him, and created his own solution.

Ramana spent a large part of his life in intensive meditation after his awakening at 16, I assume this was in some sort of samadhi because he had no awareness of what was happening to his body. It makes sense to me that it might have been nirvikalpa samadhi, otherwise why make any effort to meditate? Later in life he spent less time in meditation, perhaps he was more able to remain in the primal state without effort? Ramana Maharshi on Samadhi Question : What is samadhi? Ramana Maharshi : The state in which the unbroken experience of existence-consciousness is attained by the still mind, alone is samadhi. That still mind which is adorned with the attainment of the limitless supreme Self, alone is the reality of God. When the mind is in communion with the Self in darkness, it is called nidra [sleep], that is, the immersion of the mind in ignorance. Immersion in a conscious or wakeful state is called samadhi. Samadhi is continuous inherence in the Self in a waking state. Nidra or sleep is also inherence in the Self but in an unconscious state. In sahaja samadhi the communion is con-tinuous. Question : What are kevala nirvikalpa samadhi and sahaja nirvikalpa samadhi? Ramana Maharshi :The immersion of the mind in the Self, but without its destruction, is kevala nirvikalpa samadhi. In this state one is not free from vasanas and so one does not therefore attain mukti. Only after the vasanas have been destroyed can one attain liberation. Question : When can one practise sahaja samadhi? Ramana Maharshi : Even from the beginning. Even though one practises kevala nirvikalpa samadhi for years together, if one has not rooted out the vasanas one will not attain liberation. Question : May I have a clear idea of the difference between savikalpa and nirvikalpa? Ramana Maharshi : Holding on to the supreme state is samadhi. When it is with effort due to mental disturbances, it is savikalpa. When these disturbances are absent, it is nirvikalpa. Remaining permanently in the primal state without effort is sahaja. Question : Is nirvikalpa samadhi absolutely necessary before the attainment of sahaja? Ramana Maharshi : Abiding permanently in any of these samadhis, either savikalpa or nirvikatpa, is sahaja [the natural state]. What is body-consciousness? It is the insentient body plus consciousness. Both of these must lie in another consciousness which is absolute and unaffected and which remains as it always is, with or without the body-consciousness. What does it then matter whether the body-consciousness is lost or retained, provided one is holding on to that pure consciousness? Total absence of body-consciousness has the advantage of making the samadhi more intense, although it makes no difference to the knowledge of the supreme.

Perhaps the only difference is that I prefer to work on completely removing all the conditioning first, as well as establishing relevant underlying support mechanisms, so there doesn’t need to be this continual diving down. Ramana Maharshi spent years in nirvikalpa samadhi in order to be at one with the ‘Self’, in the end it became somewhat present all the time, though I suspect never quite fully.

I’ll try to explain my perspective in non-sexist terms, because I think it’s actually a most important point. In Daoist terms the Hun (spiritual, ethereal, yang) soul wants to ascend, the Po (corporeal, substantive, yin) soul wants to descend. These need to be reversed so that the Po soul rises and the Hun soul comes down, all I’m saying is that IME reversing the Po soul is the first thing to attend to. Rationally, this makes sense because the corporeal or earthly is more familiar to us, the spiritual or ethereal is the unknown. Dealing with what is within our sphere of comprehension (with you wei, self effort) leads to the spiritual soul force reversing its direction of its own accord (Wu wei).

My subtle energy body develops, but I didn’t set out to develop a subtle energy body. What happens to it at or after death I have no idea, nor is that really my interest, for now I’d like to go on until I see what a fully functioning subtle energy body does while I’m alive.

Ultimately we need to go beyond male and female, but to get to the ultimate we need to start with the female subtle forces. Sometimes I throw in a word like matriarchy because I have a slightly warped sense of humour, but I do stand by my assertion that starting with Yin is what has been missing from all the cultivation systems on offer.

Yes this is the nondual line, but I prefer to work on the subtle energy body because I think there is a fundamental problem with it that needs to be resolved. All very dual, but that’s where I’ve laid my bets. Here’s my theory for today, nonduality is the culmination of the patriarchal fix, initially emotions were suspect and then with the introduction of meditation mental activity also became suspect, until we came to the ultimate rationale that they are all illusion anyway. The new way is a matriarchal system where emotions are meaningful and their health starts to heal the entire subtle energy system, mental activity is part of the whole, and a foetus that represents our spiritual self has to be created and birthed. Edit: Just to be clear I think humanity in general has an emotional problem, and the real fix involves sorting this out.