Bindi

Yin is exactly as important as Yang. Shakti is exactly as important as Shiva. These polarities are our inner realities. Bringing them together is our only task.

This is my example: suppose there is the monkey mind and a higher self, both at sea in a boat, and the sea is stormy. To me it is the monkey minds job to calm the mental/emotional stormy sea which then gives the whole system the chance to allow the underlying current (the Dao) to move the boat to shore. It’s the higher self at this point that is aware that nothing needs to be done to effectively get to the shore as the current is moving the boat, while the monkey mind that up to this point has been actively working on calming the storm doesn’t have the knowledge or sense to allow this to happen. It is of course imperative at this point that the monkey mind is trained enough to trust these other forces (Wu-wei), though only after its initial effort (you-wei).

Maybe they’re just words and concepts complicating what is actually quite a simple yet inexorable process. I wouldn’t think so, but who knows?

I’ve considered recently the idea that karma may be kundalini as a personal creative force creating our existential fears in the material world, because she is not in union with shiva or the higher consciousness principle, so she just keeps on manufacturing her own unenlightened fear reactions, and we keep trying to defend ourselves against them. When she is reunified with shiva, this higher consciousness principle can then direct her appropriately to create in alignment with the Dao.

Exactly which statement of Einstein’s do you take at face value?

That may be so, but it doesn’t follow that Einstein therefore had an inner experience of being in a sunbeam, which is the specific point I was questioning.

“As a 16-year-old boy, Albert Einstein imagined chasing after a beam of light in the vacuum of space. He mused on that vision for years, turning it over in his mind, asking questions about the relation between himself and the beam. Those mental investigations eventually led him to his special theory of relativity.” @Lairg, the above is not an experience, it is a mental exercise based on imagination. Being exact matters (to me), making things up and claiming them to be the truth due to your special powers of observation is one more piece of disinformation in an ocean of misinformation.

Source please.

I found a statement that Einstein imagined himself chasing a light beam when he was 16 years old,, can you point me to any source that claims Einstein actually experienced moving down a sunbeam?

Hi white rabbit, I was just wondering what the meaning of Yeshu’at is, I notice most of your recent posts have ended with it?

If you meet the local galactic logos on the road, kill him…

The local galactic logos is just another concept, I guess trying to explain anything in concrete terms you’re using concepts, though the experience itself may (or may not) be non-conceptual.

But God is itself a concept, so you are certainly in the land of concepts in terms of your beliefs and explanations.

The koshas or sheaths surrounding the Self as described in the Upanishads might say something like this, see: https://www.yogapedia.com/definition/5307/kosha Moving from one layer to the next takes decades IMO, at least it has for me. Moving from the mental/emotional layer to the intuitive layer is the equivalent to me of moving from the two subtle side channels to the central channel. This is why I agree with you to an extent that emotions (and thoughts) are the path, but to me they are only one part of the path, when it’s time the path becomes a deferral to intuition and the central channel. Whether emotions, thoughts and intuitions are all concepts I don’t know, I wouldn’t have called them that but maybe they are.

Say I believe that a subtle body is made of nadi’s/channels in flow and their points of interaction, are you saying these are just concepts? I’m still not quite clear on what you’re saying. Do you consider the neidan ‘foetus’ or immortal body or golden body etc to be a beyond concept model, or is this an exception? edit to add: Do “concepts” equal “mentation” or mental activity? How can you know what the subtle body is comprised of if you haven’t actualised it, unless you have?

Believing someone’s concept of “true nature” (Buddha’s, Jesus’s, Muhammad’s etc) or some philosophy is to gamble that their ultimate concept is the correct one, and that their conceptual path to that ultimate true nature is also correct. Many of us have taken that gamble and pursue our accepted concepts of both end point and path, but I don’t think there’s any way of knowing whether we have followed the right concepts or not. A majority voice doesn’t prove a chosen path is correct, nor does a venerated voice. We’re mostly in the dark, and somewhat madly mostly assured that our concepts are correct, and that others concepts are wrong. I guess in this sense having the correct concepts is vital, because they direct the steps to be taken. Incorrect concepts lead to nowhere, the correct concepts lead to what we all (in a general sense) aspire to.

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For a Christian take on it (not that I am Christian but it might be a good steer) 1 John 2:9 ESV Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness. 1 John 2:11 ESV But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness, and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes. Leviticus 19:17 ESV “You shall not hate your brother in your heart, but you shall reason frankly with your neighbor, lest you incur sin because of him. I suspect this might be the enlightened view.

Actually, re-reading Chöje Lama Phuntsok‘s quote I think I disagree with it myself 🤔I think “overcoming and finally eradicating one’s destructive emotions that are veils concealing one’s true nature” should be ‘overcoming and finally eradicating one’s destructive thoughts that are veils concealing one’s true nature.’ Dismantling historical self defensive emotions leaves one free to kill the ego and the thoughts that conceal one’s true nature fall away as they are unnecessary and no longer required. But IMO these thoughts only conceal the true nature of the mind, there is something beyond the mind even at its purest that needs to be actualised, I would call this the ‘spirit of the central channel’. Ultimately emotional dysfunction and mental obscurations both obscure the true nature of Self. Really just thinking aloud here, trying to fit all the pieces together.

A taught and forced neutrality is one possible solution but not for me. This is not Buddha’s world any more than it is Allah’s world or Jesus’s world. I neither hate hate nor love compassion, I see hate and compassion as merely the consequence of who runs the show, ego or unfettered mind.

I did use a Buddhist quote but my thinking doesn’t conform to Buddhist ideas in any way as I am not Buddhist, and I don’t assume Buddhist philosophy is true.

I don’t equate ego with the mind, I imagine ego as a construct of the mind that was created to serve a purpose. I don’t think the mind has to die, merely the constructed part of the mind that is unnecessary once the ego’s reason for existence is removed. To me the Self educates the mind to recognise ego, but it is the mind that once recognising ego chooses to kill it.

Is authentic compassion not inherently positive? Can hate ever be constructive because you have the right relationship to it?

It might be a matter of the negative (and self-defensive) emotions that were used to shield an emotional wound being left on, so that we operate from that place instead of from a neutral place where the appropriate emotion is free to come and go. So more destroying the shadow of old negative emotions, not the ability to feel any and all emotions fleetingly in the right time and place.

“Buddhahood is attained through the gradual process of transforming oneself into the body of perfect enlightenment by overcoming and finally eradicating one’s destructive emotions that are veils concealing one’s true nature." Venerable Chöje Lama Phuntsok http://www.dharmadownload.net/pages/english/Natsok/0014_Leksheyling_teaching/leksheyling_teachings_0012.htm If we can agree that this is the aim, then the only debate is how to go about eradicating the destructive emotions. To me there’s a certain clarity of thought and emotion required to eliminate the fundamental need for destructive emotions, and they quietly disappear when the fundamental need for them is destroyed. I am tentatively calling that fundamental negative essence ego, a core element that can only be addressed IMO when we have attained the utmost clarity of mind that we can, for in the end it has to be my minds decision to kill my ego. If I have unresolved issues that require me defending my sense of self, then I can’t wholeheartedly destroy my well and reasonably constructed self-defence network, but if I can in any moment perceive the lynch pin that holds the whole construction together and destroy it, then I have achieved everything I personally need to achieve.