Bindi

This concept is an interesting take on ways of experiencing the world, perhaps finding ourselves trapped on the left side, and trying to find a way to at least visit the right side, and then perhaps ultimately to incorporate the right side into our lived experience.

If you open all the gates and invite them in, then yes, clearly entities will visit, and it's almost inevitable that you would lose control of the invitation process. But I believe it is also possible to build impregnable defences against entities and energies, if that were your intention. I wonder (because you wrote shit happens) if entity visits for you are positive, negative, neutral, or all of these?

I would say emotional work is a fine place to start, though I don't mean as part of a meditational system. More in the spirit of good psycho-analysis. In fact I would see it as an alternative path to meditation. I found emotional work to be very effective and relevant for the lower chakras, which can flow into energy work + emotional work for the heart to throat, which can then flow into working directly with subtle energies for the head chakras.

I'd just not come across the concept of yin/yang beyond the earth plane, but I'm interested in the idea that this division does also exist on other planes. Is this concept your personal experience?

So you do not describe the state of liberation as pure bliss, from a personal or Buddhist perspective. Hinduism on the other hand does see liberation as including an endless state of bliss. If all roads lead to the same enlightenment, I wonder how you explain this difference?

For myself, mental clarity is related to the process of dismantling lower manas (mind), the minor chakra found to the right of the heart, and reforming it as upper manas (mind), at the level of ajna (third eye) chakra. I understand this process to be mainly concerned with breaking down persona at lower manas, which begins to be developed in us at a very young age, which is then reformed at upper manas in mature awareness and consciousness. Upper manas is also the place that the higher senses can become active. Persona; [ pəˈsəʊnə, pəː- ] The aspect of someone's character that is presented to or perceived by others. So I understand mental clarity as being achieved at ajna level, but emotional clarity as being achieved at heart level. I definitely see mental clarity (upper manas) and emotional clarity as being interrelated though, with mental clarity playing an important role in achieving emotional clarity.

Do you see the bliss referred to in these quotes as being an endless state though?

Buddhism does not describe the state of liberation as pure bliss. Hinduism on the other hand sees liberation as including an endless state of bliss. If all roads lead to the same enlightenment, I wonder how this difference can be explained?

I would define absolute emotional clarity as an end point in the clearing process, though not the end point on the path. For myself, the clearing process includes: Removing the mind’s habitual hijackers such as fear, shame/guilt, and anger. I include desire here as a hijacker, though I don’t believe it needs to be removed entirely, but merely well contained. Clearing the chakras. Resolving and then burning karmic issues. Stagnant emotional energy that still remains throughout the body after these processes have been completed needs to still be removed, and in my understanding this is achieved by activating the minor chakra to the left of the heart, Hrit. My personal understanding of Hrit is that when it is activated it acts like a vortex, similar to the filter in a pool, and all the final layers of waste and emotional overflow are drawn into this vortex. This system would also ensure that no new impurities are added, and no new karmas.

Dementia is mainly caused by toxic waste from plaque, which builds up when the lymph system loses the efficiency to be able to remove the plaque. A certain happiness can be realised in dementia patients, because they do tend to forget their 'issues', but it isn't an increase in consciousness, merely an increase in forgetfulness.

If I really stick to my dream context, which was the impetus for this thread after all, bliss arose after absolute emotional clarity had been first realised, and then transcended.

ok, thanks. In my initial post I referred in the quote to bliss beyond freedom and peace, to 'absolute bliss consciousness'. This is not my experience, but seems to capture the sense of joy that I felt in my dream. I imagine this bliss to be an abiding bliss, certainly not a more temporal orgasmic like energy flow, or a momentary meditation induced state.

Yes I think I did move the goal posts, sorry about that. When I said ‘the better question would be what is your personal experience or expectation,’ it was really just a response to Jeff’s post, I was actually asking him specifically for his personal opinion as opposed to a Buddhist quote.

To say ‘the bliss I seek lies beyond the personal’ doesn’t seem to disprove the concept of joy/bliss as a marker of enlightenment/liberation, it does however suggest to me that bliss is related to higher mind and emotion, in other words to that which is ‘beyond the personal’. This however doesn’t seem to concur with your earlier post in which you said you knew bliss was completely unnecessary. edited to remove the goal post shift

“The Very Joyous” (in which one rejoices at realizing a partial aspect of the truth) cannot be compared to the singular emotion of joy/bliss, though indeed Buddhism does not describe the state of liberation as pure bliss. Hinduism on the other hand sees liberation as including an endless state of bliss. So the question seems to go beyond any religion or philosophy’s opinion. Perhaps the better question is ‘what is your personal experience or expectation of joy/bliss.'

I could quote from any number of texts, but I don't personally know, as I haven't arrived at bliss yet, and I've had no information regarding beyond bliss. Rainbowvein had a suggestion about what might be beyond bliss.

When joy/bliss arrives will be soon enough to know what comes next

I read the story of a woman whose daughter had been taken and brutally murdered, she was a devout Christian who obviously went through hell, and after much grief and time she found a deep and abiding peace that she said she wouldn't have found in the normal course of things. But she also said that she would prefer her daughter back to the peace she had found. This was decades ago, but I always remember it as a particularly poignant story.

"Typically, the freedom and peace comes first and the bliss a little later." Many years ago, I had a taste of 'peace', I found my way from feeling particularly miserable to feeling the peace stage for a day, as a contrast it was incredibly nice, it was like a jack hammer being turned off, and the silence that ensued was wonderful. I remember at the end of that day my normal thinking process finally resumed, and I could almost see the words as I thought them float into the emptiness, and start to pile up there. Not long after, I was back to normal but thankfully the jack hammer didn't turn on again As for joy, that was in a dream, when the pool filled up with clear water after flushing all the mud from out the pipes beneath the pool, I caught a branch overhanging the pool as I wasn't to stay in the water, and as I came up out of the water, I started laughing and felt 'joy'. Water in dreams = emotions, and this dream really explains my path, working through and clearing emotions, and then having to rise above even the clear emotions, which must lead to joy

Hi thelerner, Are you saying that you believe 'the last supper' to have been Jesus saying the normal Jewish prayer over the bread and wine, with no mention of it being his body and blood, or for the remission of sins etc. That this is all later overlay, by non Jews, or Christians with Jewish heritage? That really does make sense to me.

Darkness and light are evocative words in Hebrew. Darkness evokes everything that is anti-God: the wicked, judgment, death. Light is the first of the Creator's works, manifesting the divine operation in a world that is darkness and chaos without it. While light is not itself divine, it is often used metaphorically for life, salvation, the commandments, and the divine presence of God. http://www.biblestudytools.com/dictionary/light/ Light is used as a metaphor. 1. metaphor [ ˈmetəˌfôr, -fər ] NOUN noun: metaphor • plural noun: metaphors a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action to which it is not literally applicable: “light” is not a secret reference to light bodies, though people will always see what they want to see, and hear what they want to hear.

If you had left it as this question, I very probably would have had nothing to say. But there is no mention of light here, at all. Ascension yes. Light no. But to see this as referring to light bodies is your interpretation, it doesn't specify that Jesus was a light body at any stage of his life. And again this is from John anyway, and his take is decidedly more enigmatic than the synoptics. "The symbolism of John's gospel while it is probably the most evocative of any in the New Testament, is also provocative. The language of John's gospel is intentionally antagonistic at times toward Jewish tradition and toward Jewish sensitivities. The idea of the Passover of course is very Jewish but John tends to turn some of those ideas in a much sharper way against Jewish tradition. At one point in John 6 Jesus says, "Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood you will have no life in you." But the idea of drinking blood is absolutely abhorrent to Jewish dietary regulations. So the very language and the symbolism that is so rich within John's gospel also has a decidedly political tone to it in terms of the evolving relationship between Jews and Christians. John's gospel is witness to a Christianity that's moving farther and father away from Jewish tradition. And in fact it's seeing Jewish tradition often as actually hostile to the Christian movement."

In John, but as mentioned earlier John is not one of the synoptic gospels, and his is the furthest in time from the actual life of Jesus. Paul saying Christ in you doesn't refer to light, and once again Paul came along after the life of Jesus, though he highly influenced Christianity nonetheless. If you post these many verses of Jesus being the manifestation of light they can be considered one by one, generalising doesn't cut it. In your quote "In the Christian tradition and esoteric Judaism it is called "the resurrection body" and "the glorified body." St. Paul called it "the celestial body" or "spiritual body." This doesn't support the notion that Christianity embraces the concept of light bodies. I don't deny that other traditions might, I am specifically saying that Christianity doesn't support this view, despite the single reference from John.

as·cen·sion (ə-sĕn′shən) n. 1. The act or process of ascending; ascent. 2. Astronomy The rising of a star above the horizon. 3. In Christianity, the bodily rising of Jesus into heaven on the 40th day after his resurrection Light bodies might be a part of Bon or Dzogchen tradition, and there is Daoist reference to light bodies, but why do you try to use biblical Christianity to falsely support your personal agenda?

I had SQL server error problems this morning as well, I couldn't load the TDB site at all, I tried loading another site and there was no problem. An hour later and after shutting down my computer it was fine again. The SQL message said it was my problem, not TDB's, but it's only ever happens for this site for some reason.