Bindi

I had a dream that encapsulates my end point as the “oceanriver.” There is the same ocean, but the river as “me” remains distinct. There’s a unity, but not a total dissolution, a coexistence but not a transcendence, a continuous flow rather than equilibrium.

Do you equate ‘modern’ nondual realisation with enlightenment? My path is ‘cobbled’ together by a wisdom that has access to the blueprints of my entire system across three levels, physical, subtle and causal. It’s an intrinsic wisdom perfectly designed for complete integration of these three levels. I am neither the driver, nor the cobbler, I’m just catching the bus. I can conceive of many selves, my emotional self, my mental self, my kundalini self, my Atman/original spirit self, every one of these selves need to be attended to in differing ways. They all exist within the grip of karma and samskaras. Removing the karmic grip and samskaras doesn’t cause these selves to not exist, it just leaves them free to exist in unity with each other. Four healthy selves integrated. It is a very different vision to yours.

This makes me think of an experience I once had of thoughts suddenly being ‘unstuck’, it was brought on after being in emotional pain and it was a huge relief because I had been very entangled in my thoughts and emotions at that point. It too stopped, like your nondual experience, it only lasted a couple of days, so I fully agree we can have these experiences, perhaps in moments of severe stress, but what these experiences mean is something we may disagree about, in fact we most likely would disagree. I see it as a pressure valve that gave me some relief in the moment, but not a state that I needed to re-engineer, for example via meditation or whatever. I suspect it might be one of the outcomes of my journey, but only one aspect, and not the method of my journey. I don’t discount your experience at all, but I do question how you interpret that experience as part of the whole. I question whether disidentifying with the story before being ‘whole’ is beneficial or if it actually leads to splintering of wholeness. I don’t mean to offend you, I’m just trying to explain my position. I have come to the same conclusion about karma.

I was just using Freud to make a point - dwai said I practiced dream yoga because I work with dreams, but my method is vastly different to dream yoga’s method. So I asked if Freud, Jung and the Tsimshian people also practiced dream yoga according to him. To me there is a word in common, ‘dream’, but the method used means one is yoga, and one is psychotherapy for want of a better word. Freud became an issue because dwai discounted him on the grounds of sexual obsession, hence my example of a yogi with an apparent sexual obsession. Yes both are imbalanced, but that wasn’t my underlying point.

In the right places at the right times in the right way, it’s absolutely indispensable.

I think dream information spans the three levels of the body - physical, subtle and causal, not really much beyond that though. Nonetheless relatively objective information about issues on any of these levels is beneficial. Dream information may be superseded when one becomes fully conscious of all realities within these three bodies, but before that I see them as beneficial. I also acknowledge other forces are required beyond dreams, even to to get to the ‘spiritual’ level, I concur with the idea that true spirituality only begins once one has cut through rudra granthi, and i certainly don’t believe that can be done with dreams. In a way it’s all just a huge puzzle, and I appreciate any internally available tool to get me through it.

How can one abide in the unconditioned when karma and samskaras are a reality, unless karma is considered illusory? How does Dzogchen view the physical, subtle and causal bodies, are they illusory or manifestations of reality? Is there any emphasis on healing these bodies?

freuds obsession with sexuality disqualifies him in your opinion from being a practitioner of dream yoga. So I’m asking if muktanandas apparent obsession with sex disqualifies him from being a practitioner of yoga in your opinion. I value consistent positions.

Swami Muktananda practiced yoga and was very interested in kundalini, but there have been many sexual abuse allegations against him. One could characterise this as obsessed with sexuality, does that mean he wasn’t practicing yoga and doesn’t count?

All spiritual methods, including nondualism, are conceptual models that offer conceptual frameworks with specific goals. Proponents of nonduality very often seem to feel these methods lead to transformations that confirm their frameworks validity, and sometimes very quickly. However, achieving a stated outcome, like nondual realisation, doesn’t necessarily prove the ultimate truth of that outcome. While nondual realisation may feel profound and internally coherent, it is not ipso facto absolute truth. You say “To end suffering, we need to see reality plainly as it is.” I agree, but reality as I see it is very different to reality as you see it. You are not automatically correct because you believe in your model and your transformation. I see nondual transformation as quite horrific, like turning my back on all the precious aspects of myself. In a dream this might be portrayed as someone in a cell with no light, no airflow, no food, locked away and ignored. I choose to act compassionately towards these aspects of myself and to work to make them healthy. Nonduality may claim that all aspects are included, nothing is being ignored, but what’s the value of including the crippled and restricted parts of myself in the rush to end my mental and emotional suffering as quickly as possible.

Stirlings response is “Karma isn't really a thing that has its own existence. Karma is a story you tell about yourself, like, "I am a vegetarian", or "I am a cancer survivor", or "I am a Buddhist", that subtly (or not so subtly) filters the way you encounter your day to day experience.” But this is itself a belief that you are filling your mind with. I imagine someone told you or you read that identifying with these stories is the problem, so you went about disidentifying from these stories. This is a conditioned response.

There was one element that I haven’t referred to here, though I did refer to it many times years ago on the daobums. I did work exclusively with dreams for decades, but I also worked helping my family with their dreams including my mother’s dreams. A couple of decades of helping her work with her dreams kicked off her ability to see what was happening in both the subtle body and the physical body. This in turn led to her guiding me through the actions I needed to take to develop my lower and middle dantian and balance upper and lower forces, and she also was able to give me information on what was happening in my subtle channels, which was happening without her direction, it was just feedback. To make a long story short, I am led to believe from her seeing that clearing Ida and Pingala nadi’s with appropriate emotional and mental work leads to the natural waking of kundalini, which then uses the previously prepared dantians to sojourn in on her way up. I believe this is why my experience with kundalini is different to what seems to be offered in methods like kundalini yoga, for me kundalini has time and space to do everything she needs to do at various points and she remains cool while doing it, leaving nothing undone before she continues to rise, and not tearing me to bits in the process. My mother died a couple of years ago, but kundalini was already awake at that point, and my dreams have kept me informed about her movements from that point on. What I perceive as the “grip of karma” I found in subtle body heart work that touched on the causal level, allowing kundalini to break karmas grip there before she returned to the subtle body. Just to be very clear, I haven’t finished this kundalini journey yet, I am aware that rudra granthi remains to be cut, so I’m not suggesting I understand everything or have accomplished everything.

I fully agree that circumstances will pop up to help us recognise if we are still holding onto wrong views, but when deeply karmic wrong views are entangled with unrecognised and unresolved driver emotions, I am personally unable to just drop them.

If what is happening in this moment is driven by karma and samskaras, wouldn’t that make them the most important issue?

I think the danger Sahaja pointed out is highly relevant here - how do you know if you’ve reached some “void level (truly empty, nihilistic,negative). This void is different than “emptiness”.” As I see it, yes we are caught in stories which are the samskaras, but our fundamental and life steering stories originate from karma that we are born with. The source of this level of karma is deep within but it is as real as this table in front of me. I can choose to see both the karma generator and this table in front of me as unreal, but both are going to hurt my shins if I ignore them and walk straight into them. I have been grappling with the concept of reincarnation since I was twelve and had a dream about a particularly devastated old man whom I was informed was me. Not surprisingly it’s been mainly his karma that I’ve played out in my life, but by addressing it, even if it’s taken many decades, I can finally see an end in sight. So as much as I’d prefer to be a reincarnation and karma denier, I have been pushed in the other direction, and have in effect prised these stories open to resolve them.

I agree, but having our attention directed by dreams avoids getting stuck in any way as dreams remain fresh. Dreams are my preferred method, but any method that equally addresses this problem should work. I would go further and say the transcendent will bypass the vehicle we are in, it’s written into the product description - everything is illusory, engage with nothing, add in compassion if you’re Buddhist which adds to karma because it is a conditioned intent.

I think clearing issues without kundalini is the bulk of the work, no matter what method is used. To stop karma at its source and remove all samskaras, so as to be a perfectly clear channel for the original spirit to operate through takes an extraordinary means, and that extraordinary means is supplied from within in the form of kundalini, it’s just part of the operating system though it’s wise to read the instruction manual before use.

Interesting. I wonder, what do you think happens to the karma you have transcended when you die and if you are reincarnated?

Seems a bit disjointed, I was replying to your statement that “what you describe as your method IS yoga. And it seems to rely heavily on Kundalini yoga to be precise.” Now it’s svapna yoga. Ok, but I don’t agree with the underlying premise of svapna yoga that both dreams and waking life are illusory, I deliberately engage with dream emotions and feel the feeling, I don’t just observe them, and I see no evidence that svapna yoga is in any way associated with any sort of kundalini work. Was Freud engaged in yoga or svapna yoga, or Jung, or the Tsimshian people that commonly share dreams as a communal practice? Because we breathe are we all engaging in kundalini yoga? A samskara is ultimately a conditioned response initiated by karma from the causal layer. Any samskara, being a knock on effect from karma, perpetuates ego-identity, and is a limitation on one’s true nature. Kundalini dissolves all layers of conditioning, she doesn’t distinguish between positive and negative samskaras, she burns the lot.

Kundalini yoga employs breathwork, kriyas, meditation, mantras, postures, sounds, and observation of emotions. All I’ve done is mainly work with dreams, analysing them and recreating the feelings in them. The fact that this leads to clearing of subtle channels and kundalini rising does not make it kundalini yoga - I suspect kundalini yoga might also aim for transcendence via the crown, bypassing aspects of the subtle and causal body that I engaged in. I would characterise my method as a person centred method that has an outcome that in some specific ways are similar to kundalini yoga, though not in others, and apparently it is a far less complicated route. I consider samskaras to be the presentation of causal karma within the subtle body. This karma may manifest in this case as feelings of worthlessness or ego stoking, and this can be seen as what drives people but the causal karma remains the true driver. What is distorted about this view?

subtle body structures just are - it just is. The problem is some of these structures aren’t working, they’re blocked, the right energy doesn’t flow. The fundamental basis for this flow is emotions, they are the lowest common denominator, everything is built upon them. The emotional energy signature has to be purified or transmuted when working with dantians, and that is a whole other ballgame, but emotions remain the base, not sexual energy or mental energy or spiritual energy etc. Hunnerd percent! People have been here before, and have created words to describe these outcomes. I like the Shakti/Shiva analogy, shakti rises from her place in the root chakra in the subtle body to unite with Shiva who exists only in the causal body. The ultimate alchemical act, joining subtle and causal, truly nondual. But the mind and emotions still have a place in the subtle body system, they are part of the integrated machinery of the whole, once purified they are part of the conscious link between the subtle and the causal.

This method is not “best practice,” it’s the method you were taught, and that you clearly believe, but it’s not actually the only method and it’s not necessarily the best method, simply because it’s ’always been done that way’ in your spiritual system. Then I’ll make sure I never do any yoga, because separation between the mind and awareness is not my aim. Integration of a clear mind with the Original Self or Atman is the goal. I recall threads where you were saying you could bring someone to nondual realisation in a matter of weeks. It wasn’t about purification then, only about realisation. Have you changed your mind? Another justification of samskaras. Yes all samskaras are bad, if they’re there it’s because they are an unhealthy way of interacting, eg. If one is motivated by feeling worthless or stokes their ego from helping the needy.

Not accumulating karma doesn’t equal removing karma you already have though does it?

Does moving toward pain mean that I am not acting ignorantly? If ignorance arises when we act out of fear, desire, or unconscious reaction to pleasure or pain, then moving towards pain might be a way to bypass this ignorance. By moving towards emotional pain and examining false thoughts and beliefs this is effectively clearing Ida and Pingala nadi’s. This in turn leads to the waking of kundalini, unwilled and without effort, and kundalini then carries out her work of cutting the granthis and loosening the grip of karma in the causal body. Understanding my true nature follows from observing this action, and doing my part in the process. For me, real transformation requires emotional, mental, and spiritual and energy work. I now believe that only Kundalini can dissolve karma, samskaras, and granthis completely and relatively quickly once ida and pingala are cleared and flowing. Kundalini is the only force that activates and transforms at a level deeper than mere thought or will. Kundalini energy is what actually removes the karma generator, the ingrained patterns, and energetic blockages because Kundalini is capable of working at the causal level as well as a deep subtle body level, transforming and dissolving patterns and blockages that are too deep for mental effort or willpower to reach. I disagree with the idea that intention or understanding alone can break karma, and this system has a bad track record anyway of removing samskaras, all sorts of excuses are made for why samskaras remain in the nondual awakened. For me, Kundalini is the key to true liberation from the cycle of karma and samskaras, and it starts with owning and processing emotional baggage.

Can you specify what you mean by delusion/ignorance in the context of karma?