TranquilTurmoil

Btw I feel like I gradually weaken ego/pride/conceit just through mindful cultivation… but I’m always (a bit too) eager for expedient means

Not familiar with that. Want to elaborate or point me to what you are talking about? I’m Assuming this is either yogic terminology of mind or abidhamma?

I prefer the word progress rather than attainments. I'm not so unhappy with my egoic ideations as much as I recognize them as inferior and an obstacle to accelerating progress. But I guess every hindrance and obstacle is an opportunity. I'm ashamed of my conceit! Jk lol but I think its something that ought to be purged as opposed to accepted. And I'm a big believer in accepting 99% of afflictions. I think pride is the 1% that ought to be branded and discarded

Gaining insight, cultivating inner strength and gentleness, becoming altruistic, letting go of personal desires and demands (whether willingly or unwillingly) and cultivating and applying patience and forbearance. While I went through my years of adversity I endured more out of fear and hope than virtue... But in retrospect I feel like it was intensive paramita practice. For that I am grateful. And I don't mean to present myself as some sort of transformed saint... But I like to express myself sincerely after years of reticence and yearning.

As for lucid dreaming: I was always fascinated by dreams and started keeping a dream journal in college and tried to will my way to lucid dreaming bc I wanted to escape the mundanity of the worldly world. I longed for anything transcendental. Once the nightmares started I lost my interest in dream analysis for a long time. After being coerced to take psychiatric medication + lack of sunlight+ exercise for years, combined with having a scientifically abnormal REM sleep pattern, I started dreaming A LOT. When I was discharged from the hospital after 34 long months and I started sleeping in a new environment (and started walking hours a day in my house) I just spontaneously started lucid dreaming every night. If I could undo the lucid dreaming part I would definitely consider it but to do so at this point seems like I would have to take a lot of unnatural and guided steps I don’t know how to take. So I’m planning on just taking the good with the bad as far as dreams are concerned for the time being. *Puts on Chuang Tzu colored glasses 🕶

As for the counter argument… I have to draw solely on personal experience: After I haphazardly and whole-heartedly hopped on my I Ching path, I very quickly and recklessly started taking self imposed devotional vows to accelerate my progress. I was already in a state of jadedness and semi-emotional shutdown from alienation and psychological traumas and existential crises in college. Now I had a minor healing honeymoon phase my first 2 months with the I Ching, but after that fate threw me into the fire and I had to fend for myself (if this requires further elaboration I ll get to it in an additional post). This consisted of vivid demonic nightmares after a panic attack that coincided with a crisis of faith, involuntary sacrifice of free will, solitary hermitude, you name it. “Shit hit the fan” to be blunt. This led to intensive applied effort for months to a little over a year that led to at times self righteous pride, incredible emotional anguish, and fortunately radical progress on the path of cultivation. All I did during this time was practice non-doing/just sitting, bear with verbal assaults from my family, deprive myself of sleep out of fear and misunderstanding and inner conflict and practice yielding and contemplation. I did my best to maintain inner clarity and apply the teachings and principles to every situation that I drunkenly or deludedly stumbled into. This led to little emotional growth and weak sense of well being for a long time but it was a profound opportunity to purge and transmute afflictions. Eventually that led to my heart opening so different paths to get to similar places I guess. Although it has not been a path of great happiness for me for the most part I do take refuge in cultivating a grateful spirit. So my real nitpicky answer is that if you have a master-disciple relationship with a trustworthy Oracle or Guru, it can be either optimal or beneficial to forego emotional health for spiritual growth… as long as you can regain sight of the importance of both eventually. A major caveat: while I was unhappy and suffering I still had the awareness to practice self-love and I tried to be my best and seemingly often only friend as I went through trials and tribulations I couldn’t have fathomed I would go through when I naively and courageously took on my path. That was important and counter balanced the lack of emotional/psychological healing I unintentionally spurned

Interesting! While I think your first paragraph is mostly on the money it could be partially and subtly countered, but I am more interested in what you say about dreams, dream work and my relation to it. For the past 3.5 years I have practiced unintentional lucid dreaming just about every night I can remember. The plus side to this is I can cultivate the heroic qualities of the bodhisattva path in my dreams. The flip side is that I was celibate for my 1st 6 years of the path and for the last two I have been practicing abstinence in my waking life (whilst falling for every female friend i regained at one point or another who showed me affection.) TMI but this leads me to often madly pursue base desires in my dreams. I also have dreams that are very mystical in nature whether it’s invisible but energetically tangible malicious entities trying to enter my subtle body to harm me or dreams with vivid and bizarre symbolism. I guess my point is I don’t know how to do dream work with this as I haven’t had “ teaching” dreams since the 1st year of my path for the most part and I have little know how to figure out what to make of or do with my wild and wacky dream landscape. All I know how to do is be a share bear, expose my shadow, shine the light of loving acceptance and forgiveness on it when I’m mindful and brave enough to do so and pray like hell to a theism I have never clarified when dark forces assault me. Other than that my dream themes use to be people attacking me (sometimes mobs of them), me losing my voice when I try to explain myself, and a hodge podge mosh mash of High School, College, and hospital years and so on and so forth

Back to this. The problem with this philosophy for me is that my genuine path of lonely cultivation has often been mundane and lacking joy. Maybe if I truly strive to embody the poem that lack will be less. But its hard to embrace restlessness, dissatisfaction, boredom. That's my negative Nancy analysis. The flip side of this is I am here now! And as Liu YiMing says hopefully "After bitterness, Sweetness." And I can be grateful to my Higher Power for that. PS if anyone can clarify what my higher power is or can lead me how to figure it out for myself it would cure my curiosity. But I assume that's a topic for another time!

After some introspection, I think this thread while fulfilling and healing had a bit of self deception to it. I sought in it what I was asking to rid myself of.... And maybe I'm doing it again with this and most of my posts. I'm not sure if there's anything to be done other than striving towards honesty, humility, and the sincerity that leads to genuine discernment. I guess that why I'm seeking friendship and mutual listening and sharing this time around rather than advice (for the most part). Its tricky to find the right balance btwn creative expression and not acting out or pursuing impulses that are tainted by ego. If I/we could do that I guess we'd already be immortals and buddhas

Thanks friend 🤗

Music has been my true refuge over the past year, supplemented by reconnecting with my best friend. I think your last paragraph is the powerful profound solution for me… the one that is the hardest to accept, understand, and have faith in. I loathe gradual progress and the inaction and Nonaction that is required to truly cultivate and grow. I wish I could will my way to healing… especially since I ve felt intensely powerless for so long. But after walking through the indiscernible dharma mist we find ourselves bathed in it eventually. A different Theravada monk from the same monastery told me this in response to me venting about all the austerities i/the Yi Jing put me through over the years : Patience is the highest austerity. After becoming intimately familiar with patience and forbearance over the years I recognizing how it is simultaneously indispensable and unappealing

It’s not so much that I suffer from resisting my pain/suffering, and more that I spent so long suffering in silence. Now I finally have some freedom to seek outlets to unload so to speak. I actually make light of my traumas to the point where I’m super jaded in many ways. I recognize the wisdom of what you are suggesting me towards but sometimes I find people need to be validated in a spirit of “I ve been there too.” Rather than counseled into diminishing their resistance. At least that’s what I think I’m seeking. Hopefully that will help my resistance fall away naturally 🙏🏼

It’s taken me 8 years to surrender to my past and while I still carry baggage with me I’m trying to allow and encourage myself to let go. I have high self esteem for better or worse but am finally realizing the futility and deluded nature of regrets. This helps me remind myself I’m intrinsically worthy as we all are and ought not seek validation. Of course this a process

I definitely appreciate the feedback! I would need to heal and strengthen my physical body before I could take up any form of standing meditation just so you know. I used to do hatha yoga when I was in good physical shape but then it aggravated my neck. However I can do seared meditation in a chair still and visualization can be very helpful. i am curious though if tai chi or qigong would be a good foundation for me to add. FYI my bones severely deteriorated over the last 7 years and I am recovering my health now in ways that have been both rapid and gradual. Thanks for sharing friend.

I know little about martial arts, don’t know any martial artists but am more familiar with insecurity and have been accused of being deluded for years. I think if we are skillful then insecurity, delusion, and realization can dance together. We have to be mindful of the extent of our insecurity and delusion, how it influences us and work with it and on it. I think that’s a form of subtle awareness or “realization” (though obviously not a major transcendental realization) and is quite helpful. A main enemy of realization and cultivation is believing we are realized and cultivated and the self-righteousness and pride that accompanies such an attitude. Which I’m sure many of us have gone through or are going through🙏🏼

One of my current favs: Phoebe Bridgers - I know the end

For me I think it stems from childhood/teenage/20s wounds and traumas rather than judging myself or others or both. I fear abandonment because I have been abandoned or have had to abandon everything and everyone I ever loved at different junctures of my life. I also have dealt with deep sense of shame due to being bullied, having ocd, and a toxic relationship a decade ago (which was my life’s only serious romantic relationship so far) that revolved around being severely humiliated over sexual performance issues. That doesn’t even get me started on the utter humiliation of my 3 years in a psych ward. Now I’m in a much better place and the clouds have parted and the sun is rising. I got my college best friend back in the past year among other gigantic resolutions of conflict that have been 8 years in the making. But I have to still unpack all of this skillfully. I hope there aren’t too many strict Theravedin monks patrolling the forum ! Jk 💙 I guess unraveling defense mechanisms and old karma takes acceptance, time, and perseverance. If the I Ching has taught me anything (which it has taught me quite a bit) it’s to cherish those qualities even if I have to be browbeaten and shocked into persisting in them 🙏🏼

My zen center seems to fill the theraputic, healing modality I was looking for to an extent… but they only meet once a week. I’m hoping a few good bums can be a good support either regularly or on and off to help me shed my trauma informed armor I wear. I’d say we are off to a good start on that front… and I can tell there is little separation between The Tao and the bums as I can’t distinguish which one is more elusive! if the time comes again for either intense or applied effort in methods either esoteric or deceptively simple I ll be happy to be encouraged and led in such a direction. But I think I need to be able to cry more easily before I can proceed to attain the rainbow body or what have you. And it was a huge disappointment after pursuing the local Theravada monastery for months during COVID to get a 20 minute meeting where I was told to seek elsewhere , we have boundaries. But such is the plight of us straw dogs 🐶! thanks creation and St. Silent Thunder! Hope to be in touch 🙏🏼

“A pilgrimage can’t compare to a good laugh, and a good laugh can’t compare to simply letting yourself go. Once you’re at peace, letting yourself go and leaving change behind, then you enter the Solitary Mystery of Heaven.” -Zhaungzi 💙 “And when even your Sensei doesn’t understand you… it’s time to find a professional, a shaman, or a Pro Shaman” -His Irreverence the 2nd Imitation of Zhaungzi / TT 😇

Well to encourage some discussion and support I think maybe it would be good to share a poem I recently posted to Instagram which won the much coveted “like” from my brother and a fellow monastery exile/veteran from 8 years ago (and no one else): Asylum refugee Far from my homeland The promised land is not what was promised to me One of my only true friends Just made his pilgrimage back to the motherland To get his medication adjusted Because he thought it would be a good idea To buy into the delusion of freedom If you can’t tell by now I’m utterly disillusioned With empty promises and harsh truths I chased the projections of phantoms From my past life In a quest for absolution and redemption When really I should have sought to ascend To the clarity That I was always worthy of forgiveness It wasn’t my fault my group couldn’t understand Me and what I was going through And I hope this makes me whole Because I think I’m through Looking for fulfillment and healing In the ancient abysses and sharp edges Of my old friendships I’m willing to make exceptions for the people who want me to But i can count on the rest To not want me to count on them. So hopefully this gives you some insight and groundwork to help you guys be there for me because as of a couple days ago I felt like I related to this Old Fellow a little too much for my taste: (upload is failing me again but it was A heartbroken Lao Tzu riding his bull into the Mountains) 🙏🏼

Hello fellow bums! I've been a follower of the I Ching and Taoist way for 7 years and am finally seeking a fellow I Chinger for counsel and catharsis. I reached out to @Taomeow but I can only send 2 msgs a day for some reason so I'm not sure if that is up in the air. Nonetheless I 'll be happy to talk to any who inquire! -Elliot

I feel like I ve done all my can on my own after 8 years of intensive practice, and I know I haven’t come close to completing my spiritual development. I use to beg the I Ching to let me seek a master and after wishing for 8 years I think the time is finally right. I could go into further details and explanations later in the day if your interested I just wanted to make sure I responded to you. btw Creation was nice enough to respond to me too and offer his recommendations. hope this gives you a little insight into my situation.

Hey! I’m looking for direction for my practice and path from someone whose wisdom and experience I can trust (quality over quantity). I posted in the general yesterday the thread about seeking a teacher and I didn’t get much of the type of feedback I was looking for. I think I’m looking more for a mentor than a sangha or brief consultation at this point, so if you think you can be a good connection or can direct me to who you think would be it would be much appreciated. 🙏🏼 ps: hoping to actually talk or video chat more so than msg but I will take what I can get

Ye bums! You are letting me down! I implore my fellow I Chingers to throw your coins and cast your stalks and see if it would be beneficial for us to talk/unite. I just consulted the Yi again now to see if I should beg you guys for assistance and got hexagram 27 changing lines 1,4,,5,6 into hexagram 45 (gathering together). I hope someone seriously takes me up on my request this time. I will be very grateful. -Elliot