Zen Pig

Read Gurdjieff when i was a kid. liked him, but like most things, had to find my own way. doesn't hurt to read from the great thinkers, but in the end we all have to walk our own road.

Fart with gusto.

nothing new.

wow. heavy stuff. way over my pay grade. but my only question to all is, "how's that working for you"? just say'in.

Hexagram 56, the traveler. walking the unknown road to no where in particular. taking the trip, just to walk the unknown , not knowing road.

Got to chime in on this one. years ago, started to have movements of body during meditation. At the time, I only practiced soto zen meditation, and did not know about the whole kundalini kriya energy. My body would spontaneously slowly twist, sometimes doing a back bend that I could never accomplish in a non meditative form. It wasn't that I could not have stopped this movement, as I was just watching it unfold, but it was not beyond my control. After sitting, being a skeptic, I tried to reproduce the movements such as the back bend, and found that I could only get a third of the bending that I could do in meditation, (in fact, while It was happening during meditation, it occurred to me that I was going to be sore a shit after this, which I wasn't). My personal conclusion as to why I could do so much more in these states came in part from over 10 years of tai chi. When I was in this so called kriya state, my body moved without any internal resistance. In other words, when one tries this in a non meditative form, you can tell that while some muscles are moving the way you want, others are resisting this movement. So one of the reasons, my movement was so profound was that everything was working together in unison. As far as getting boners during sitting, had that happened a couple of time, but just stopped sitting at that point. This was an intuitive choice, no teacher or guru to discuss this with, but it felt that the chi energy was already at a place where additional sitting would be counter productive, and trying to force the chi back into the dantian using neigung exercises might be counter productive, and I was not experiences or knowledgeable enough to do that safely. When in doubt during meditation, stop and re-examine what is going on. sooner or later it works out. Meditation, for me, is not a race or a goal, or something to achieve, or as I like to say, "meditation moves in inches", so don't get in a hurry. (when I re-read this post, I found that at the end, "meditation moves in inches" was an unintended boner pun.. LOL.. the best puns are the ones you aren't trying to do) happy Monday

ahhh. dark night of the soul. yes. I have a story about my personal experience, but If I tell folks at an improper time, it will rune the surprise. Not saying that I have accomplished anything, or have transcended, or awakened or have become enlightened, because for one thing have no clue what any of that means, but sometimes, it is important to let someone work it out for themselves. hence the old time admonition, "just keep sitting"........ When I did tai chi, folks, including myself would come up and ask of my teacher, questions about internal power, chi, and other esoteric things. His answer was always. "Just keep doing Tai Chi"......... nof' said.

Interesting discussion. But in the end, we really have no idea what gravity is. We really do not know what inertia is. or for that matter, how a "wave" such as electromagnetic or gravitational can propagate through the vacuum of space, (in fact the word "wave" brings up a mental picture of a water wave, and we define other forces acting like this is in an almost complete vacuum ) Newtonian science is very good at predicting how two masses will interact, (GMm'/r^2) where G is the gravitational constant, (which is not really constant, but that is discussion might be for another time), M is the largest mass, and m' would be the smaller mass much like the moon is to earth, all divided by r^2 . This got men on the moon in 69, using slide rulers. but we still do not know what it IS. Much like consciousness. We know it when we see it, but could not tell you what it is. LOL. Little known fact Newton created the calculus and his the physics he was made famous for during some plague years, when he retired to a family farm to stay safe, worked it out on a little hand held kind of chalk board during his stay. This is an amazing accomplishment, but most folks are unaware that his main love, and what he spent the majority of his life work at was alchemy, and religious studies, but this information was pulled by the powers that be, so he did not seem "unscientific" as defined in our western materialist reductionist world view. Just a few years ago were his writings on alchemy published by Oxford university (http://www.newtonproject.ox.ac.uk/texts/newtons-works/alchemical), but after a couple of years, while they still have his original writings, the editor is trying to put a modern chemistry spin on his writings. have yet to read his religious papers...... humans are so freaking interesting.

My title for this, is the only way that I can broach this subject. After all the Tao, is both dark, light at the same time , so to speak.. On a human level, we all have a dark traveler and a light traveler as part of who we are at the same time. My experience or intuitive knowing of this comes from my own personal experience, nothing I have read, no guru, so I can be full of shit which is also fine. Let me explain with a real life metaphor. Back in the early 70's I had a friend who, after being discharged form the military, took a job at the Federal building, working in the basement doing remote viewing and telekinesis research. He taught me how to make a sort of pin wheel balanced on a pin that was used for experiments on action at a distance or what was called telekinesis. Much later, I built this simple device for our family, and still have it on one of our book shelves. We all walk by it from time to time and make it spin, or not. Being a skeptic, I know the many debunking explanations of how someone might make this pin wheel spin. the heat off ones hand making air currents, our breath, and many more. So having done my due diligence, such as not putting my hand less than two feet from the pin wheel, blocking my breath, making sure no windows are open, etc, I can say that something is going on. Have no idea what it is, but it is very different. Now comes the metaphor. If I intend the pin wheel to move, it will, but slowly. I can make it go clockwise, or counter clockwise, but slowly. This is me seeking power for power, I have to be careful of this, as for me, this leads down the dark path. I am only doing this to feel and build my own power. The flip side of this, was the time I made a great breakfast for our family on the weekend. i love to cook and make good food. My family loved what i made , and that was a very loving happy energy. not something I did for Myself, but what I did for my family. For some reason, at that instant, I walked up to the pin wheel, and just stuck my hand out, about two feet away, and the wheel stated to spin like crazy. faster than it ever did, (if you are thinking that i just finished cooking, and my hands were hot, and thus the air currents made the wheel spin faster, that is bull shit, as i washed my hands in cold water, with soap as most cooks do)....... My point of this whole story is that if we just do something to make us "immortal, eternal, powerful, happy, etc" we might get some results as intent is intent, but if we do something for others, for those we love, this is the strongest magic, power, energy. something to ponder on. happy Friday.

OK, bar jokes it is. A horse walks into a bar, and the bartender says, "What's with the long face".........

well, thanks.......

Thanks for all the info, just found Charles Luk book "Taoist Yoga" in PDF and down loaded. So far read a few pages, and while, many of the references hits it on the head for me, so to speak, from my personal experience, and can be very helpful, I am still unsure of some ethereal aspects of Taoist Yoga, much like many kinds of spiritual paths, it , at times seems to be a kind of self centered attempt to gain something for ones self at the experience of living a full life, of giving to others without regard to what i can receive in return. Much like the passages of not ejaculating in order to store the vital energy for ones self so he can obtain eternal life. Not having a family, spending your life trying to slip under the wire of the mortal coil. From many viewpoints, including my own, (and I do some neigung meditation as part of my daily sitting, so not trying to bash all of this stuff), It could be equated in the western world as dark magic, as in, magic/power/energy one uses for there own personal advances, and not for the benefit of others, but then again, maybe the subtle things are lost in translation.

Oh, no we are back to discussing "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin", like the scholars did in the middle ages. Not trying to throw stones in my glass house, because I went through the whole thing myself. I found that I ended up chasing my own tail. I saw that all I could do is sit, and let go, and really look. drop all ideas, drop all the desire to tell someone, "what is true, real, right, and what is wrong".. I found that I had to really focus on the path in front of me, and not get side tracked into talking it to death, or changing someone else's mind, but that is just my experience, what the hell do i know, ?(mostly I don't know shit),,, hell, maybe it can all be talked out. who knows? I suppose it might work....... and maybe..... Marlin Monroe will knock on my door in a few seconds and want to give me a back rub? LOL

Just my two cents, from only my experience which might be very different from others experience. . the idea of subconsciousness and consciousness, are only words. words are just pointers, to what cannot be explained or divided. I am starting to see the value of both the thinking mind, the subconsciousness mind, the body, and everything else. It seems that, at least for me, the issue was always the idea of the separation of what was and is never separate. my thoughts, my emotions, my body, the snow I am sitting in, the birds in the trees singing, is all undivided in its totality. Not suggesting that "nothing is real" or that everything but consciousness is illusion. Rather, I am suggesting, that for me, nothing is separate from what we call consciousness, nothing is left out. I have sit in the forest for years. sometimes a forest worker will walk by with a chain saw. most of them will see me sitting and say , "hay, sorry to interrupt, but got to use the chain saw for just over there, and the noise might bother you"...... I just thank them, and say, "no problem," because the chain saw, the deer walking by, the wind, is all a part of my sitting. So when I use to have negative thoughts come up, I just let them do what they needed to do. did not push them down, or try to change them. they just seemed to loose there impact or power, once I did not try to either fix, or resist or obsess on them. sorry for the long rant. got to stop having my afternoon coffee. LOL

Thanks Fa Xin. From my experience , I don't know what illusion is, but ego is not as real as we think it is, but it sure is a prescient little bitch. In fact the largest ego's I have ever encountered to date were spiritual teachers who said that they had no ego.

Marblehead no one want's to hear you sing....... LOL. (my whole family does music and sings, but I can't carry a tune in a bucket)

welcome to DB. Interesting take. I only meditate, so not so much into reading publications, and do not have a teacher, but in my journey, I have come across my deep hidden roots during sitting, and found that when I just brought them out into the open, then these dark feelings, thoughts, seem to loose there power when brought out into the open, and not hidden away. but that is just my personal experience, would not attempt to tell folks what or how to look deeply into there being, what ever way works for one, might not work for another. We all have a dark side, or as my old Pa use to put it, " we all pee in the shower from time to time" . LOL. - We just open up, to what ever we are, not stuffing it, not rationalizing it, and not feeding it. don't know if this dark side ever completely goes away as humans, but much like the ego, (and i have never seen anyone who has done away with his/her ego), It just becomes something we recognize , but does not have the power over us, we once thought it might have.

This is my personal take. If the Titanic did not sink, we would not be here right now. If the Americans did not drop nuclear bombs on Japan, we would not be here right now. not us, not our families, not our loved ones. The same thing goes for the meteor that hit earth 65 million years ago , Hitler, Gandhi . every bad and good thing that happened, got you and me right here. right now. Not good not bad. If I did not think the things I did right now, life would be different. Me, you, and Earth, are so connected , along with everyone, everything else, that it is beyond description. So are we fucking up the world? yeah, we are. Should we try to make it better? sure. But we are not separate from the world. It is not Earth vs. humans. Once we get this, maybe we will all take a deep breath, calm down, and just live life. Life will always balance. Just not the way we think it should. When skating on thin ice, we may as well dance.

As far as lucid dreams go, that is kind of a long story. I did not intend to have lucid dreams, and at this time, i feel that most folks who have a daily long term meditation practice will have the same kind of lucid dreams. nothing special. Real and unreal are only thoughts, not good, not bad. What IS, this suchness, is beyond our logical understanding, from what I have seen so far. When we have dreams that are not lucid, we believe that we are living in the real world at that time, then we wake up and either laugh or cry because the dream is over. This life for me, is now much like a lucid dream. Or what I call a semi-lucid dream, where I play the story of the dream, until it starts to go a direction I do not wish it to go, then I either change it , or start over. For me, this so called real life is like this. I love it, I love playing the part, and do not see it as "unreal" or real. for me it is all one thing. hard to explain. One of the stories I tell about lucid dreams, is one I had a few months or years ago, (time is weird) , where I had the classic dream that i was naked in a room full of people. and like this common dream, I was the only one who knew I had no clothes on. So knowing it was a dream, i thought. "this is a very common archetype dream, that most folks have, so I am going to shake things up a bit:".......... So I stood there buck naked and started to yell at everyone, "Hay, Look at me, I am standing here completely naked"... everyone ignored me except one man, who started to laugh at me. I walked up to him and stuck my hand into his chest, and he dissolved into a kind of brown smoke. the very second I did that, I felt that I did something very wrong...... Now I knew that this was a dream, and I thought that i was playing, but the second I took that "life", I felt the same way I did when I had to take other lives in this "real" world. have not come to terms with this, but know it was something more than "just a dream".. so not real, not unreal. that is as close as i can get to explaining.

Great discussion all. My 2 and 1/8 cents from my experience, which is a work in progress, is that the idea, (yes, it is an idea), that mind, thoughts, the changing body, earth, is not the same as consciousness, in that one is "real" and the other is "illusion" , like many things is a good learning tool, kind of like training wheels on my bike. I am starting to see more and more that my journey, (hexagram 56, the traveler going down the unknown road without a destination, but to go, to just see the sights).. leads me right back to here where nothing is separate, nothing disconnected, thoughts are fine, the changing so called reality is fine. ego is fine. and for me it's about seamless integration of the whole sh-bang. lucid dreams have shown me that reality, like dreams are not real, and not unreal. I have little doubt that I will never come to the end of the road, but then again, what would be the fun in that. happy Friday

1. Love yourself. you can never love others if you don't love yourself 2. Gratitude 3. A sense of humor about everything

Having meditated for a while now, I have come to see one very simple thing that can get not only myself , but maybe others stuck. I would write a book on it, but if I did, this would be the whole book. "Don't over think meditation, its not about thinking, don't try to stop thinking, or try to do anything, just sit".......... wow. short book. think Oprah would have me on? LOL

yes. i agree. i do neigong meditation, among other things, and what the west calls " mindfulness meditation", what ever that is. but for me, it is about just being in this "suchness" which is a term i like because in the west does not bring up pre-conceived thoughts. it transcends our thinking mind, but that's all i got. might be off, or on, just walk the unknown road.

Thanks Steve for the comments. reviewing some of the other comments, I see that I might have used the wrong word. "negative" thoughts have different meanings for different folks. Now days , I really don't see any thought as good or bad, they are just thoughts, and are at the same time important, but not important like we think they are. kind of a zen paradox. Maybe I should have asked, "why doesn't humanity have more positive thoughts"? Like I said, these are all rhetorical questions. just something to chew on. all good replies folks. thanks.

yes, I would suppose that my life experience is very different from your own. but thanks for all the tips. cheers