juan

Hi CarsonZi. After years without posting, I find you in the same situation. Maybe you don’t remember, but you were the one who helped me, in December 2013, when my Google search landed me in the AYP forum. And you kindly answered my most urgent questions: Has anyone had similar experiences? Can this be controlled? Is it dangerous? Your answers were key for proceeding forward, and this led me to a path of unexpected and wonderful experiences. I agree that AYP is not the perfect system, and after some time I saw that it was not for me, but your answers and what I picked here and there in the forum were a great help at that time. So in my case your apologies are not accepted. You have nothing to apologize in front of me, you have not my pardon but my gratitude. Cheers

Hi friends. Some time ago you gave me here the concept of Yidam, and I am very grateful for that. Now I would like sharing my experience with this practice - and my questions too. I hope it may serve as inspiration to some, as the experiences shared by other bums inspired me. My apologies to those who might find my words heretic or even insulting, if this is the case please forgive me. I understood Yidam as an exercise of fusion, and I focused it as attaining the same feeling of fusion I had already experienced with a real woman in tantric sex. So I fused my belly in sex with the idealized memory of my finest lover and it was great. I fused in love with my lover in our hearts and it was awesome. Our heads fused in joy and it was exhilarating. But fusion has a limit, i.e. when we were totally fused we were no longer two, only one remains. This emergent “one” seemed to be just me, a new “me” who apparently was the owner of this inner body made of feelings. And the feelings coming from this body were quite weird. Fusing in sex wiped out the concept of being one half needing another half to be complete. This inner body was neither male nor female, or both at the same time. These concepts became meaningless, this body was just whole. Fusing in love had the strange effect of changing my perception of space. It was somehow confusing at the beginning, but as I combined this new perception with my “energy” practice, the limits of my perceived body slowly faded away. First it was felt as a sort of tube, with openings at my hands, feet and head to an apparently limitless space. Then the membrane that made the walls of this tube became more and more porous, and when it became transparent enough I could only perceive a limitless void filled with a feeling of pleasure, love and joy, without spatial references to tell what was near and what was far, what was in and what was out. This inner body was boundless, without a centre, without a periphery. Fusing in the head produced an unexpected orgasm of joy, but a very specific one: shared joy, the kind of joy experienced with others when we fulfill together a common desire. I think this is the same feeling that thrills soccer fans when their team scores, or communities when they sing their anthem and their hair stands. In this fleeting moment all differences disappear and they share the joy of being one. This feeling of oneness challenged the very concept of “me”. What is “me” if there are no “others” at the other side? Friends and enemies, gods and demons, I felt one with them all. And this took me back to the letter of the Yidam practice: I am not fusing with the perfect woman, but fusing with God. This consciousness that seemed to be “me” and all at the same time fitted quite well with the concept of God of an atheist. This God was not an “other” imposing his/her will with a carrot in one hand and one stick in the other. This God was everything, including what I considered to be “me”, there are no barriers for God. And when everything is One, hierarchies are meaningless. And there I was, enjoying this wonderful feeling of Oneness, bathed in a bliss made of joy that was beyond joy, love beyond love, pleasure beyond pleasure, all this filling a boundless space. Could this possibly be Heaven? Might this be the meaning of “being in the lap of God”? Seemed like this, but I felt that something was still missing. Working with “energy” is a kind of meditation, in the sense that, even when there is a purpose and an action in order to attain the desired results, there are no thoughts. And without thoughts, the “operating system” that was downloaded in my mind in childhood and constantly updated with new experiences, is turned off. Like a newborn child, I was free from all the concepts and rules that were later instilled in me. But operating systems are downloaded upon a more basic, embedded code, to make everything run: the BIOS. After getting rid of the OS, it seemed that I was facing the basic rules embedded in the BIOS of every living, embodied being. One basic rule is that there is “you” and there are “others”, and the others might have ill intentions. Very useful if you face a tiger, or a cat if you are a mouse. Next rule has to do with space. You perceive reality from a central point, i.e. your body, so you know what is near and what is far, what is in and what is out, so you can build barriers that protect you from the Other, so you can know if you have to fly or fight. These are basic rules for survival. Next rule is somewhat contradictory with the other two, as it’s purpose is not the survival of an individual but reproduction, and it applies to organisms that must mix their DNA in order to reproduce: you belong to one half of your kin and must find another specimen of the other half and mix your DNA. Well, it seemed that these rules did not apply in this scenario, and it was hardly possible that they apply to a god. So this is it? Following this practice have I discovered that this inner “body” feels the same as the “body” of a god? Not quite. There is still a BIOS basic rule to hack, the very first one I guess: You are. And the “I” that I perceive may be a whole, boundless, all encompassing “I”, but still is an “I”. An “I” that “is”. This was the flaw I perceived in my Heaven. My heavenly experience did not withstand the test of Time. So how could a god perceive Time? Is there a before and an after for God? Is God subject to the flow of Time, whatever this may mean? Does the concept of “being” have any meaning in a reality beyond Time? Something beyond Time, “is” or “is not”? Perhaps “being” and “not being” are, again, two faces of the same coin, as male/female, in/out, one/all? Some scientists also wondered about the paradoxes of Time. Einstein once wrote: “People like us who believe in physics know that the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion”. Schroedinger may also have some clue about what being and not being might be: as long as the box remains closed, the cat inside “is” and “is not” at the same time. In order to keep both states entangled, the observer has to be removed from the equation. We’ll see… or not, as I feel that the observer might be the last remnant of what I still perceive as “I”. Sometimes I think I tarry, that I’m taking this more as a picnic than as a march, but I don’t mind lingering. I have no hurry, and the landscape is just so beautiful.

Hi everybody I’ve been snooping in this site since June 2015 but this is only my third post, so maybe I am the kind of newcomer you are trying to help. I joined the daobums in order to be allowed to read as much as possible. I was (and still I am) looking for answers concerning something that could be called “energy flows” which I experienced quite spontaneously some years ago, without any previous indoctrination. I started looking for answers in Hindu/yogic sites, as they had more visibility. Later on I found Taoist sites, which in my opinion give a more detailed description of what I feel. I wonder if building the perfect spiritual forum is feasible at all. I’ve seen sites with very strong moderation, keeping heretics at bay, so everybody is happy as far as anybody questions any dogma. Of course I prefer being able to see very different opinions, as here at the daobums. The problem is the myriad of traditions, theories, schools and lineages, which seem to be speaking about the same stuff, but competing against the others, so which one to choose? It seems to me that making a choice involves embracing some kind of “religion” in the sense that I have to surrender to a master/priest who, in exchange for money or obedience, and with some luck, will tell me in a couple of decades what to do. This is an act of blind faith that makes me feel very uncomfortable. The most basic question I have is, once you feel these energies flowing inside/outside you, what to do with them? Some traditions/schools recommend specific circuits (i.e. MCO); some speak only about the ascension of these energies from perineum to crown; other recommend “hoarding” this energy and are quite wary of leaking one single drop, still some other see them as a mere distraction from the real objective. All of them usually warn against the heavy consequences of guiding these energies the wrong way. Last, but not at all least, firing and intensifying these energies require a very special “mental attitude” or whatever we may call it, which seems to be the goal of meditation exercises. On the other hand, seeing that so many people are claiming that their totally disparate systems are the right ones is a good thing. It makes me think that, after all, the right choice may be just letting the energy guide me so I will eventually find my way. In this quest, exchanging opinions, experiences and insights with (undogmatic) fellows could be a great help. But I still haven’t found a good thread about energy management issues, especially if you are using sex as a tool. Maybe this adds an extra blockage, as speaking about sex and gender identity could stir very strong cultural taboos. I have thousands of doubts/questions, but before starting I would like to know your opinion on this: is this exchange of experiences possible? Is it worth? Is there a common area where anybody could speak about common experiences without being biased by specific traditions/schools/lineages? I greatly appreciate your patience for reading so far and your comments. Thank you! Juan

Hi. I stumbled upon this old thread, and I would like contributing with my two cents on this subject, which perplexed me for a time, explaining my current view of chakras and dantiens, that partially overlaps with these concepts, but is based on my own experience only. IMHO, chakras and dantiens are descriptions of the same system, but at different levels of detail. To complicate things, when I read about chakras, the descriptions often mix two different levels of detail. As I perceive them, chakras are not single points, but constellations of eight peripheral points, with a ninth point in the middle. So the basic elements, IME, are these peripheral points, that appear in line and connected vertically along the spine, in the front, and also along two lateral lines and four extra vertical lines in between. Horizontal lines connect these groups of 8 + 1 points, or nodes, at different horizontal levels, that roughly correlate with the levels where the chakras are supposed to be. These nodes work cooperatively, so firing a node helps and boosts the firing of neighbor nodes. By firing I mean inducing a feeling very similar to the familiar orgasm in ordinary life. And like ordinary orgasms, they are not something just imagined, these feelings are very real. When eight peripheral nodes are fired, they induce a strong and different feeling in the central node. The exception (up to certain point) are the nodes located at the root and crown, which seem to fire spontaneously, but I later discovered that their “brightness” hides the activity of other nodes in its close vicinity. So these constellations of 8+1 nodes would fit in the scheme of chakras, that would make the second level of detail. Only that I perceive not seven, but nine chakras, which correlate with the usual picture but with two “manipuras”, one below the navel and the other at the level of the diaphragm, and another extra chakra between vishuddi and ajna, with its central node just behind the soft palate. When adjacent levels, or chakras, work together, they induce a general feeling of periphery vs. core, so the end feeling is that of a “radiant” periphery and an “absorbing” core. Feeling propagates in the periphery as fire in a forest, while feelings in the core seem to coalesce as bubbles in old lava lamps. This would make the third level of detail, with a clear distinction between “LDT” from root to diaphragm; “MDT” from diaphragm to neck, and “UDT” from neck to crown. These areas, when activated, have to do with what could be called “emotional feelings” i.e. Lust, Love and Joy, and things become more complicated. This would be the third level of detail, but eventually the three DTs merge into one single core and one single periphery. This is just the description of what I perceive inside, but of course is not a prescription of what others might experience. Cheers

Thanks, johndoe, this brings the conversation back to the point I wanted to stress. First, I admit that I could very well label this “presence” as an external divinity helping me. I have even “seen” her eyes! And she is helping me a lot, if help consists in raising my previous experience to totally new realms. But it could also be ‘my’ divinity. I mean, an external divinity is someone alien to me, with his/her own agenda. But ‘my’ divinity is always there, her reaction seems to depend on my intention only. She goes as far as I want to go - or rather, as far as these ‘energies’ take us. And when we fuse, I no longer know if I am the male or the female, if I am “me” or “her”. Internal or external, who cares? What counts is this dilution of my perception of being male or female, even of my own individuality.

This suggests some kind of evolution. Animals are animals, we humans are one step above animals, as we are able to think. But still one step above, gods abide. And we should strive to climb this step, leaving our human-animal “level” behind. Meditation seems to be a good vehicle for that, but if I understood it well, this means stopping the thinking process, leaving any thought and any idea behind. But thinking is what makes us human! With all senses turned inwards, just feeling the signals of your body, without interference of thoughts that pretend explaining them, what makes this consciousness different from animal consciousness? In other words: is this A->B->C progression real? Can we really jump from B to C leaving A and B behind? Could the second step be only an illusion and we are, we have always been, at step A? What happens then to C?

OK, thanks for your advice.

But I cannot see through the veil.

What’s the difference? I mean, the answer depends on how we define matter, or, specially, what do we understand as immaterial world. I checked Collins, and it says the following: adjective: immaterial 1. unimportant under the circumstances; irrelevant. 2. PHILOSOPHY spiritual, rather than physical. "we have immaterial souls" If we stick to the 2nd definition, my guess is that the immaterial world can very well be an artifact built by our material minds, so the material world is first (and, quite probably, the only one). But without further agreement on the terms, my answer can only be the same as Marblehead’s.

IMO that’s the game, yes. There have always been people writing these books - politicians, religious leaders. From the dawn of Humanity. When you get enough people having the desired version of a story you gain a lot of power. Cambridge Analytica knows a lot about this. Let me tell you a bit about my experience. I came here via “tantric sex” with a physical partner, and I despised visualization techniques, seeing them merely as a kind of substitute of the real thing. Even on my own, I was focused only in the “energy” feelings, not leaving thoughts to guide or interpret what these feelings were. Some day, about one year ago, due to a series of circumstances, I gave visualization a try. The technique I tried consisted in fusing with a god, so for obvious reasons I replaced god by “perfect partner”. And, to my surprise, this worked extremely well. With a physical partner there is a strong feeling of fusion, but skin still marks the frontier between “me” and “other”. Making “sex” with this imaginary woman took me to a new place. We fused in lust at the LDT, we fused in love at the MDT, we fused in joy at the UDT. I never had these feelings, with such intensity, with a physical partner. Was this imaginary woman a divine being lending a hand? According to the results, I could say yes. I we see this process as an accelerated clearing of obstructions, definitely yes. But the woman was just my own creation! And - this is to me the most significant, I hope I am able to express it correctly - this ideal being was inside me, not outside. It was made of the same stuff as this other mental construct called “me”. There was no “someone”. So, IMO, mind constructs (gods, ideal partners) can be useful to raise these feelings to new heights. But once the feeling is in place, mind constructs are (to me) more a hassle than a benefit.

Absolutely. I even think that speaking about local or collective mind is irrelevant, we must simply get rid of mind constructs. And gods are (mostly collective) mind constructs, don’t they? But OK, let’s imagine they are real. Would they lend a hand? If this was possible, what would then be the merit? As I see it now, gods may be a powerful visualization object for people with deep religious beliefs, and this can be helpful, but only up to a certain point. So I will continue gladly with my “practice”, leaving gods outside of the equation, but now with a bit more confidence.

Thanks, silent thunder. I deeply resonate with your words (bold is mine)

Pffff... let’s see... Mind is indeed a very slippery term. I would say that mind is the set of rules that we use to define reality. I also think that all minds are local, encapsulated inside the skull, and this “mind space” could very well be an illusion. A lot has come inside us through the senses from our birth to distinguish a deeply rooted dogma from a universal/shared truth. Only we, each one of us, using our local mind, is responsible for the consequences of accepting any truth without verifying it. Starting from “…do you exist as an independent being”, I would say that this perception is being challenged, yes. Everything seems to flow towards Oneness, the boundaries dilute. To me, the rabbit hole is the omega point where all converges into One. Kind of singularity point, where you jump from zero to infinite. Sounds poetic, a bit hollow maybe, but all we have is only words...

Thank you all for our contribution. Now I think I have a clearer picture. Sorry I about derailed the conversation from the very beginning with my human-animal meme. This is really the gist of my question. So, could a right conclusion be that gods, as anyting else existing in the realms of mind - your social character, your gender, your individuality, must be left at the door? Or, is there room for them to pass through the rabbit hole?

Well, thanks for your explanations. I will reflect upon this.

Thanks for your comments Just watching wildlife documentaries we see that we share exactly the same drivers, survival and reproduction, even with the humblest animal. And when it comes to social animals the similarities are amazing: kings and heirs, treason and punishment… I have even seen a gang of dolphins passing a pufferfish along, apparently some kind of ball game, but the pufferfish was really used as a joint, not as a ball. Do these behaviors prove that animals think? Maybe, if we define “thinking” more precisely. But what about culture? Survival, mating and social rules/rituals passed from one generation to the next is culture, and animals do that. So I am more of the opinion that even having a set of rules, a “culture”, does not make the difference. It’s the kind of culture what counts. This takes me to my main question. It is not about the difference between animals and humans, which doesn’t seem so big (even between gods and humans, thanks Mudfoot). We share the same opinion on that. But my main question is: What is the role of gods in this business? Animals may think and even display specific cultures, but don’t seem to have gods. Only humans, or rather, specific human cultures have gods. And more often than not I see the concepts of gods, of “divine beings” slipped here and there in meditation literature as if they were awaiting us at the other side of the rabbit hole. For a human/animal living in an atheistic culture this is a bit unnerving. Am I missing something? Or, perhaps, what other cultures call “divine” is merely the sight of our real nature?

Thanks a lot for this, Jeff. I could not understand it at that moment but now I think I have a clearer picture. My entry door to all this stuff was sex, so this was the “form” I automatically gave to all energy flows, wherever they arose. Not a visual form, but rather a “label” for the feeling. This has changed a bit, and I would like commenting my attempts, blockages and experiences in this process. As an important part of my “energy practices” is sex (tantric, perhaps, but for sure physical sex with a real woman), I tended to see with disdain any attempt of creating mental imagery around this process. What for? I had the real woman and the most incredible sex, so why imagining instead of just experiencing? And when sex became bi-directional, and I felt penetrated and filled with this energy, just as women surely feel, what kind of mental imagery should I attach to these feelings? So I just focused on the feeling, even when I was on my own, never trying to wrap any visual form around it. This was a blockage. But the main blockage came from my visceral hate against religions. This is surely due to the fact that I received my religious conditioning to serve the purposes, and in the midst, of a fascist dictatorship. So the concept of “God” and “praying” they poured on the child I was at that time was so poisonous and rude that I simply can’t conceive myself praying and worshipping any god, much less these Hindu- Tibetan gods with all their elaborated imagery. From this perspective, Yidam practices seemed absolutely out of my reach. Anyway, I googled Yidam and read some stuff I found here and there. And I marked this idea: “the main principle is understanding that your own essence and the god’s (or guru’s) essence are indivisible.” This seemed to be a good attitude to start exploring: seeing not a god in front of me, separated from me, but sharing his/her essence with my “own”. How should I dress this god? Quite naturally a feminine image was formed, for I wanted to fuse, sexually fuse, with this deity, instead of putting it on a pedestal to worship her. And this worked extremely well. The yin and yang feelings I had in physical sex came with extreme intensity. I penetrated and was penetrated at the same time, and visualization became difficult. I could see her in front of me if I focused on my yang, explosive feeling, but the simultaneous yin, implosive feeling made me also see her inside, while I was outside. Anyway, the concepts of me, she, inside and outside become doubtful and quite surely irrelevant. As I feel/visualize myself fused with this deity or whatever it is, my (our) feet and toes seem to grow, collecting millions of energy streams from far away, that converge through my (our) soles (or the place where soles usually are), go up my-our legs, slam the perineum up, and finally hit in the middle of my-our belly, with overwhelming feelings. Sex is still the best form I can allocate to these feelings, but this is much more than sex. It feels as a force of Nature; it feels as Life itself. But these are just words. So I felt connected, fused with this deity, from the diaphragm down. What about the heart, that seemed to be the next level? Love is usually attached to this place, and the feelings there generated, so I tried with this concept. Soon I discovered that not any love fits. Definitely not the tamed, worn, comfortable love (but still love) that settles in a couple after many years. No, this has to be the wild, innocent, unconditional love that we had once felt. And I collected all the feelings of loving and being loved from my memories, and focused on these pure feelings only, forgetting about the specific lovers that raised these feelings, and voilà. An orgasm of love traversed our chests, I felt her love pouring and exploding into my heart and my heart sending my love back to her. If I see her as a goddess, this is surely pray. And so we fused, the same as we already were from the diaphragm down, and I could visualize her in front of me, or me in front of her, but this was again difficult and irrelevant. Everything happened in a single body, be it within or without my physical boundaries. And the flavor was definitely different from sex, and I could readily attach the label of Love to it, but, again, I feel that this thing that we perceive and label as Love is just part of a much more general and pervasive force of Nature. I spent some weeks in this situation, fused with my lover deity from the heart down, but still we were a monster with two heads. I was puzzled. The concept of sex was quite good for wrapping the feelings of our fusion from the diaphragm down; the concept of love fitted quite well with the feelings at the heart (even when, in both cases, the labels seemed extremely small to cover these immense feelings). But, what kind of worldly feeling could be attached to the fusion of our heads? Mutual understanding? This has a lot to do with sharing mindsets, and mindsets seem to be totally out of place here. Then what? The answer came suddenly, from the eyes of this deity that I could see/imagine in front of me. Only her eyes I could see, and in a magic moment I saw there a spark of JOY that immediately turned on a tsunami that penetrated through my eyes and filled my head with an immense orgasm of joy, an explosion of pure, absolute joy, as I never experienced before. And her joy was my joy, and again we shared a yin-yang orgasm, but now in my/our head, with an incredible intensity, and this time with the definite flavor of JOY. This was my missing ingredient. And that’s all I have to say at the moment. I don’t know what all this means, but I feel I have reached a different and wonderful place, following your hints. My gratitude to you all.

I see this is an old problem, but I still find it sometimes. Can't logout, whether I'm using Firefox or Chrome.

Your answers give me a ton of things to ruminate; it will take me some time to ponder each one in due depth. With the additional problem that, as your answers shed some light here and there, my perspective changes a bit, and this change of perspective brings new meaning to words that I found meaningless before, and some of my previous questions seem not so meaningful after all. I feel that the basic question for me right now is not so much “what to do” but “where I am”. But more and more I perceive that the most important question is “who/what I am”. Knowing where I am and then what to do according to my specific situation may, I think, help me find an answer to this last, disturbing question, which is mentioned in the last posts and I feel afraid to face. Starting from the beginning, your posts helped me see my situation from a different perspective, and gave me some suggestions on what was wrong and how should I proceed. First of all, my attitude. Due to my confusion, I was seeing all the time ”energy” and meditation as contradictory elements. Everybody seemed to say “forget energy and focus on meditation only”. But instead of following this advice, as sitting in lotus position and focusing on my breath seemed to lead nowhere, I just “played with the energy”, heedless of the danger. It was a bit odd seeing some correlation here and there between my experiences and some descriptions, but as I didn’t follow any rule, my only possible approach to the whole issue was with a mostly ludic, curious attitude. This changes a lot if I understand (or want to understand) that I’m not so much off-track. That, after all, maybe I was meditating, or close to meditating, all the time. First hint came from Pilgrim, who I quoted in my last post, and confirmation came from awaken: Thanks a lot, awaken. I’ve never seen any light, so I assume I am somewhere in the second stage. Could you recommend something to read, or give some advice, on how to proceed when in this stage? Then there is my focus. Up to now I have understood the process as an endless “purification”, that I perceived as a growing “bliss” at every node and connection. Once you find the way the first time, the rest is relatively easy, and eventually you gain perception of an “energetic” grid covering your whole body. And the “bliss” at every node and connection always grows and grows, so this process seems having no end. But now I see that this approach focuses too much in the detailed structure of my perception, neglecting the overall, diffuse flow I could also feel. I have to experiment with this other approach, but I think I can already see the difference. Integrating my whole perception in a single, more diffused flow the mind is quieter, not pursuing details anymore. And it also kinda “blurs the borders” between in and out, so it could be a better approach to other techniques, as maybe “visualization”, a concept that also intrigues me and I don’t understand very much. For example, I do resonate with this: I think I dimly perceive the meaning, but I’m not prepared to ask specific questions; maybe later. There is also a paused conversation concerning chakras that I would like to continue. I would also like developing ladynguma’s comments, i.e. what is in and what is out in this context, as my change of approach seems to go in the opposite way, from an excessively “inward” to a kind of “outward” aiming. Maybe in and out are just two faces of the same coin… But I think it may be better commenting these posts first, as they point to what surely are the end results of the “quiet mind”: These issues seem to be at the end, or near the end of this process, so I am not sure it’s a good idea mixing in the same discussion the grand end result with the tiny specific procedures that, I suspect, are to be used for a time and abandoned when they are not useful anymore. On the other hand, my questions/doubts on “energy” issues, however subjective, have (I think) a much more experiential fundament. But when I go to this sort of issues, which IMO have more to do with conscience/perception than with “physical” experiences, it is difficult to know where experience ends and conjecture begins. This of course makes the conversation difficult, or at least slippery. But it may be worth speaking a bit about that. Each one / each tradition has different explanations, but the process has to be the same for everyone. Awaken says that lead/energy controls mercury/mind, and this fits much better in my experience than the Buddhist explanation of “purification” in terms of dissolving Karma. For sure Karma is dissolved (or something happens that may be labeled with these words), but this seems to me a consequence and not a cause of this “purification”. I can’t explain my experience saying: “now this or that thought, feeling, preference, memory, is cleared, and that’s why I feel now this stronger current, this obstruction between i.e. sacrum and ming-men removed.” I simply don’t perceive any correlation. I now perceive the whole process (same as Daoist practices moving energy along specific routes like the MCO) as just a sort of training in order to perceive this “energy” (lead) in your whole body. I don’t feel like connecting with gods or goddesses; my perception is that I’m just connecting with my own body (that, BTW, happens to be masculine and feminine at the same time) and the conscience that abides in it. The more and more this “energy” boils (or simmers; thanks Pilgrim) the more Karma, that I perceive as mental obstructions, is removed. IME, “lead controls mercury” and not the other way around. But surely our explanations/interpretations of the mechanism are not as important as the consequences. What is the result? Energy quiets the mind, or quiet mind boosts energy, or both at the same time, but IMO the only important thing is: when the mind is quiet the components of a presumed identity keep changing little by little. And this is quite disturbing. It is like removing one by one the columns of the building that was “you” to discover that they were not supporting anything. And wonder what will be left at the end of the process, quite surely nothing. But nothing is nothing. Not even benevolent gods, as gods are also our own invention. So you stay there, watching as everything dissolves, and there is no choice. Thoughts come and go, and when they go you just bath in bliss, and everything is fine, everything is good. But when they come, they come with a strange flavor of sadness and loneliness. The good thing is that this same process makes you less prone to get involved in thoughts; I watch them with more curiosity than fear, but I can’t avoid feeling that I am contemplating my own death. What I considered to be “me” is just an old garment that this new, strange “me” is wearing now, and will be discarded and forgotten. This “me” abiding in a place where good and evil, love and hate are just two faces of the same coin. Where no one of our ideas will work, as ideas are the basic ingredient of the mind, and we have to leave our mind at the door. How can benevolent gods be found there? My feeling is that, if we cross to the other side, we will find only Nature. And Nature is cruel, at least according to our current concept of cruelty. I would like to hear your opinion on this, especially from awaken, who seems to have a different mindset. Sorry that this is a very subjective issue, and this conversation should intend to be practical and not philosophical. But it may be good talking about the consequences at the same time as we scrutinize systems and procedures. Cheers, juan

I think these words are quite fit for a day like this. May this spirit stays alive not just today but every day. I feel this love in each contribution you do, so I should always tick the Thanks button. Due to this reason you see I don’t, but I thank and appreciate every contribution. From i.e. ZYD/Donald, who patiently weaved his memories to reconstruct and share the charming tale of Mojo with us, to the last visitor of this thread, sharing her visual perspective of chakras. Each post opens interesting ways to explore, and hope we are able to walk them all. Merry Xmas! juan

Thank you all for your helpful responses. Rough or kind; the important thing is the information and not the format. And most of the time, the most valuable answers are the ones that make me stepping back, reviewing my whole approach and recognizing the fragility of some of my previous assumptions. So thank you all again. This is an example of those valuable, challenging responses. In kind format, Pilgrim says this: Dogmatic is a nasty word and I apologize for introducing this term in the conversation. Obviously it conveys a negative opinion, and sometimes it is hard to define where the limits of this negative opinion are. Sorry if the concept spread further than I intended. Perceiving my quest as an attempt to stand out as the shining individual has been quite instructive to me, and I thank Pilgrim for sharing his perspective. I have to reflect upon my motivations, and that’s always an issue, but I can’t avoid feeling that the overall post may be summarized with the Three Conclusive Words: “Find a master”. And this would close all discussion. But at the beginning of the same post, I can read that the exchange of experiences is possible and worth. To me, this sounds somewhat contradictory with the “find a master” concept, so I have to figure out where one concept ends and the other begins in order to find an accepted, open arena for discussion. There are a number of issues open, but I will try testing these borders talking about the ideas/terms “quiet mind” and “energy”, which, I think, are common to all traditions and not as complex and controversial as “the nature of chakras” or “gender issues”. But still I perceive this apparent dichotomy as a kind of chicken and egg puzzle. IMHO it may depend on where one starts, and it seems that most people start their practices (yoga, qigong, whatever) without having a previous feeling of this thing called “energy”. I’ve seen physical procedures (asanas, bandhas, tai-chi forms etc.), which seem to be designed with the intention to awake, let’s say “by brute force” (as compared to other methods) this “energy”. So (I think, please confirm or reject) the practitioner feels nothing at the beginning, but will eventually perceive this “energy”. As I understand it, these practices run in parallel, at least in Yoga, with the so-called meditation practices. You focus on your breath, in a mantra, etc. in order to “quiet the mind”. And, IMO, there is a clear prevalence of the latter practice vs the former, as the standard, automatic response when someone speaks about what we could call “energy movements” is a wave of caveats saying that this is dangerous, as you have to “still the mind” previously. Close examples: So what to do when you already feel this “energy”, whether spontaneously or after some practice? When can you say OK, my mind is still and my channels are purified so I can handle this “energy” without being reckless? Is this a question to be answered by a master only? Is there nothing inside the practitioner to warn him if something exceeds some safety limits? But what specially intrigues me is the feeling of mutual feedback between “energy” and “quiet mind”. When I tried meditation focusing on my breath, I quickly discovered that, in order to quiet the mind, the “energy” was a far more effective attractor than breath. So what’s the problem if you just use this “energy” as meditation object? They seemed to be helping each other, as the more energy you feel the more silent is your mind and vice versa. I wish I had found at that time something like this (thanks again, Pilgrim): I cannot describe with better words what I have experienced these last years. The results, in terms of my experiences with “energy” were accounted in former posts. So what to do now? Do I have to stop and pass some kind of evaluation in order not to harm myself? Go back to just feeling the breath in my nose? Harmful or not, I still wonder about the meaning of this mutual feedback. It feels like “energy” and “mind”, or at least “monkey mind”, were antagonistic agents, so the more “energy” the less monkey mind, until eventually, mind (or one of the concepts behind the word “mind”) just disappears. Like some kind of distributed brain (thoughtless conscience) taking over the “standard” brain (cortex - thoughts). BTW “energy” somehow settles down, or maybe you just get used to it. This quote, again from Pilgrim, makes me resonate: I quite agree with (or perceive as right) the first and the last paragraphs. But the second worries me a little bit. So could “surges” of bliss happen beyond your control when stillness of mind is sufficient? IME, bliss grows at the expenses of thoughts and vice versa, so in order to stop bliss I had just to let some thought enter into my attention. Kinda safety mechanism. Please let me know your opinion on this, surely optimistic, theory.

I’ve seen some trouble arising and I took some days to reflect upon it and decide what to do. The main trouble I perceived was, of course, this post: With the likes of other DBs. My first reaction was preparing my farewell post and deleting my offensive content. The last thing I want is offending, much less insulting anyone. It was obvious that the attack/complaint was not addressed directly against me, but I saw myself perceived as “used” to be the aider and abettor. And this post opened the easy way out to walk away. But in the meantime some other posts arrived and changed my opinion. After reading them (thank you all), now I think is better trying to keep this thread up. New contributions are focusing and balancing the conversation, leading to the kind of talk I find more useful to clarify this outsider’s doubts. On top of that, although thinking that this may also clarify others’ doubts is surely excessive, still I can’t avoid some feeling of responsibility. But in order to continue the conversation I have to settle some problems first. This may require some kind of stepping back to see where we are. First problem is that I don’t want insulting anyone, whether actively or passively. Asking this kind of questions is not easy for me, but if I suspect they may raise these negative feelings, it becomes impossible. Second, the “complaining” posts showed that they were only the tip of an iceberg of older confrontations. I have neither the right nor the inclination to meddle in affairs that are not mine, but the arguments used in this confrontation are quite relevant to this thread. Last (and least, but I would also like closing this third issue): my silly digression. So this post is going to be difficult to write and surely too long to read. I apologize for that. This throws me back to the questions I asked when I started this thread: 1 - Is this exchange of experiences possible? Is it worth? 2 – Is there a common area where we can talk about this stuff in an objective way, in plain language, without dogmatisms and biasing due to each one’s origins? Point 1 is important. If the answer is no, then this new phase of the thread is worthless. We are all wasting our time, or even worse, letting freaky ideas settling into our mind. This is what I perceived in the following posts: The first post was liked by Jeff, who all the time was (and is) patiently answering my questions. Now I see even more value in Jeff’s patience, as he also thinks that this hardly will take me to an understanding. Thanks again Jeff. I absolutely agree with the second post, in what it says about expectations. But the words “join my method” point also to a different concern, as they convey the idea of someone “picking and trading quotes from various unrelated sources and different systems” and then “selling” his magic concoction as “his method”. If this is what thelerner meant, I fully share his concern. But IMO, what I am trying to do here is a different business. I don’t believe that I will arrive with this conversation to a magic concoction that will solve all my problems. And if I found it, I could never claim it is a “method”. What I am trying to do is just understanding techniques and procedures from various unrelated sources and different systems, seeing how they fit to my experience and, if I am able to find a “translation” between these fuzzy words and what I feel, I hope they may help me to know where I am and point to possible ways of progress. This is what is happening in my conversation with Jeff, and hope will continue and balance as new friends step in. It is quite obvious that I will never understand Jeff 100%; I think the posts show quite well where the limits of my comprehension are. But still we are opening a common area of understanding. Being able to include in this common area as many different viewpoints as possible would be the closest to what I pointed in my 2nd question. And a good opportunity for all to express their disagreement with specific and not blanket arguments. At least to let me know what is that they consider insulting so I can speak with the confidence not to be insulting anyone. Luckily enough, I can show an example of the kind of language that makes me resonate, a couple posts behind. Still with the scent that denotes his origins, and I like it, but far more comprehensible to me. Thanks Pilgrim for all your posts, I appreciate them very much. You speak the closest to a lingua franca that I’ve found yet. Hope this helps settling the first two issues I mentioned. I will continue trying to close my digression and going back to the main conversation. But this post is already too dense, so I will stop here. Thank you all for reading. Double thanks if you reached here!! juan

Of course only people living in a female body are able to gestate and breast. This biological fact imposes specific roles which can't be avoided. Gestating and breasting can, obviosly, be performed by women only. But this is where the list of roles imposed to women should end. On top of this, is not biology but societies which impose a series of additional ( and subordinate) roles to women. We have a wide scope, from Sweden to Saudi Arabia, of these additional, subordinate roles. So what kind of women are we speaking about? Whatever may be concluded from this conversation, to which women will apply? Housewives in Morocco? Childless cougars working at executive posts in Berlin? Are the latter less "feminine" than the former? My point is that whatever differences/handicaps a person may find when they try to get into the Way, they would arise from psychological, and not biological issues. How biology, and only biology, influences psychology, may be discussed. But the influences of each psychological trait (assertiveness, sweetness, whatever) should be independently analysed, as they may be found both in men and women. IMHO, blanket statemens allocating specific traits to a person, based on the mere fact of wearing a male or female body are quite irrelevant.

Just wrapping up...

This is surely a digression but I can’t’ resist commenting. I wrote a quick comment about the practical info I could extract from that quote. But some uneasiness lingered, and re-reading the quote I found the reason of my concern. Here is again the quote, I sliced it a little bit to analyze: The master replied: It is essential to practice a yidam deity because through that you will: attain siddhis, your obstacles will be removed, you will obtain powers, receive blessings, and give rise to realization. Since all these qualities result from practicing the yidam deity, then without the yidam deity you will just be an ordinary person. By practicing the yidam deity you attain the siddhis, so the yidam deity is essential. This is, essentially, a selling advertisement. It is obvious that the master don’t say anything (at least in this quote) about HOW this yidam deity practice is performed, but only details its (fantastic) results. Sorry but I can’t avoid the image of the hair-restoring seller, voicing the magical properties of his concoction, rising in my mind. But this seemingly hollow sales pitch is not what worries me, but its market objective. So the master is looking for people willing: attain siddhis, obtain powers, obstacles removed, receive blessings, and … realization. Last but not least, I would say. But probably seekers of realization will not be the largest market segment. And my question is: why is the master selling siddhis/powers in the first place and not just realization? I would bet that a large percentage of his potential customers will arrive demanding the former, but not the latter. Is this good? Is it good for anyone jumping into these practices with the goal of attaining some kind of power? To be used how? Is it good for the master receiving disciples who primarily want this objective? Selling powers will surely attract more potential customers than selling realization, so maybe this is the reason, but what to do with these disciples? Does the master expect that, once the disciples find the new toy and play with it, they discover that it is as irrelevant as anything else? Before harming themselves or harming others? Sorry about the digression. I have to work a little bit on the yidam/dakini issue, which I consider extremely important, if we can break through the veils. Will come back on this later today, I hope.