Seth Ananda

Jack of diamonds. Apparently I should be hanging out with mitt! Where is all this money I am supposed to have? http://www.destinycards.org/cards/jack-of-diamonds/ http://www.worldhealing.net/freereading/jackdiam.html

Oh and here in Aus, we just had winter solstice, and its absolutely freezing! Enjoy the heat!

Hi niveQ Do you have any attraction to a particular deity or tradition? Every culture and tradition has rituals, but they will work better if you have some kind of connection to them. Just doing a ritual dry, like reading it from a book, rarely does anything {of value} for people... While you are deciding if there is a tradition you wish to work with, you could make up some ceremonies to do with your partner. Just use your intuition to put it together, and maybe make a set of offerings, like water, milk and honey, candles, scent or anything you can think of.... to the energy you wish to connect to. This can be a very beautiful process. I do these kind of things with my daughter fairly often. We tie bundles of leaves together, weaving some prayers into them, and then offer them to Spirit or Mother Earth, much the way the Qero do their Despatcho ceremonies. When our prayers are for Love and healing, and for a desire for deeper connection, Spirits response often leaves us giddy and luminous, and filled with Love. These kind of rituals work on developing a reciprocal relationship with the force in question. That means you 'give' which opens up the lines of communication. You then keep giving {for its own sake} and eventually the force will respond and its energy will come rushing back. The more time you spend doing this the greater you will get to know that energy, and after a while you may find it will come on its own to meet you which means you are passing into actual friendship with it.

they are good critiques, and this makes some good points as well: http://killingthebuddha.com/mag/exegesis/only-a-god-can-save-us/

Drew can you stop drewifying my thread with your usual inability to communicate. I am not interested in your Drewterpritation of a bunch of schollars who have no idea of what you are talking about. Kingsley is a bit of a dick at times. I think he was taught about Plato in a certain way at school, and came to believe it was what Plato is about, which is invariably incorrect. Then he went on to champion the typical 'I am the only one who knows what was really going on' stance that so many hyper egg heads are fond of. Plato tends to gets taught as one of the founding fathers of Reason and logic and his mysticism {which is straight out of Egypt ~ a Greek synchrotisation of Egyptian thought} is seen as being just some secondary superstition that could not be helped due to the times he was alive in. Thats just wrong. Plato was a straight up mystic teaching the return path to the One. As is also taught in Hermetics and Kabbalah, and other systems who's thought is rooted in Egypt. As for flaunting his qualifications, well big deal. There are dozens of similarly qualified egg heads out there who have differing opinions to him.

I really just want to find a simple book on maths or geometry that show the Mystical relationship from a Neoplatonist or Pythagorean perspective and that starts simply. I have read a beginners guide to constructing the universe, and i cant stand ouspensky, although I did read several of his books back in the day.

I totaly agree with this. I have read all of kingsleys books, some several times, and listened to interviews and read articles. He is totally mistaken about Plato, who {despite what Kingsley believes} is teaching pure Mysticism, well, pure at least with some politics on the side... Neoplatonism again is pure mysticism and a continuation of the great chain of Egyptian teachings. Plotinus who founded it did his training in Alexandria. ​To say Plotinus is a faker is probably one of the stupidest statements of the century. He is a Mystic mega genius!

I love Kundalini. Took a long time to integrate and seen many blow outs but wow, what a force. I guess that for me, once it all started I was happy to ride out all the bizzar sensations, and took the difficult parts as a chance to surrender deeper. Most of my clients with 'K freak out' on the other hand are constantly resisting the process, freaking out further any time a new set of symptoms manifest, and wishing they could go back to how they were before K. That is untill they get it in their heads that there is no going back, and that they may as well try to ride the process, and let it show them just how amazing life can be... OM Shakti!

Thats great! The Upanishads are beautiful texts. I have only recently been gaining an appreciation for them and their sophisticated view. All my past reading has been limited to some Tantras, KS texts and the Yoga Sutras. He crosses over death through knowledge ~would 'knowing' be a better word translation? I don't think it means conceptual knowledge? As for the balance between becoming free attachment's and still enjoying the divine play, that is something I have been struggling with lol. I realised recently how some of my late teen reading of new age texts distorted my reading/hearing of KS texts... The World is God teachings out weighed the become free of attachments teachings and in many ways caused me to cultivate attachments... well, glad I see that now...

I really like this quote. I keep thinking about it... It collides a little with the modern pluralistic views that there are many realities, because no, there is only one reality or truth in form, which is the consciousness that knows form, and thus recognises itself as free from form. Very cool.

Hey I did Yigong and Kunlun and they are pretty similar. I don't practice sitting very often as I much prefer shaking while standing. The main thing is that over long durations it creates a huge energy. It can be a descent of energy, or Kundalini energy, or both. But Its huge. you need to have something to do with all that energy over the next few days, or you may burst at the seams... That no Kundalini thing max blabs on about in regards to Kunlun makes no sense to me whatsoever...

I would be careful with statements like this. Many people here have based their conclusions on personal experience, but that does not mean that you or they have in any way fully unveiled truth or come to the 'correct' conclusion in relationship to said personal experience. Really? what about traditions that see the divine as entirely inactive, sort of like being without mind, vs traditions that see the divine as having volition and intelligence? Not to mention the many subtle differences that can be found... Why? {or who's rule is that?} and how do you know that it isn't? Say 'unconscious' has been incorrectly named, and is not actually the opposite of consciousness. If consciousness was the screen everything happens on, could it be that 'unconsciousness' is really just a temporary experience of a 'lack of sensory and cognitive processes', mixed in with all the other experiences that are normally 'full of stuff' and thus normally called 'conscious'? Or what about dreams? Can you say with absolute certainty that you can remember every dream you ever had? Do you recollect a dream ever slipping from memory as you wake? How do you know that in an experience of 'unconsciousness' you are not perfectly awake and aware but just in such a grand or 'other' scale that your waking mind simply can not contain it and thus in memory gives you a 'blank'...? You sound so sure of yourself here... How do you know? And consider the fact that in these experiences, people generally describe the fact that they have stopped thinking, at least with conceptual reasoning and linguistic phrases... Mind thinking about mind... lol Why does a stone have to think? Could it exist as it exists, and we exist as we exist, in a way that is bigger than your narrow range of rules allow? Is there room for possibilities outside of your current conceptions? Does it? What about the possibility that it creates only a seeming separation? Is there a way ignorance could exist within awareness and not distort it? Your conclusions are too rigid, with too many unexamined assumptions hidden within them...

lol, its not too hard. I usually aim for round 3 hours, but every now and then that is just not enough, and I line up the appropriate amount of music on my ipod to carry me through. I like my music to cycle through various moods and atmospheres. As for effort, I follow myself on principle, so as I get puffed out, I am naturally slowing down to more subtle tremors and quivering more than furious shaking which obviously couldn't be sustained... It works really well.

or try 3 to 5 hours Sorry back on thread. Nice achievement Hydrogen

I keep my Ancestor shrine, make offerings, put on plays with my daughter for them {she loves it for some reason} and play music for them. It has become a very rewarding and interesting experience. Keeping the shrine brings up a lot of questions about the afterlife, the nature of the soul, rebirth and so on... It has also been refining my appreciation of my life and existence, and fostering a deeper desire to live with dignity and honour as a representation of those who went before me. I feel that it helps develop ones sensitivity to the spirits, as I have started having more surprise encounters than I used to. I used to be able to make contact with a spirit via some effort, but random or uncalled experiences with spirits were very rare. I highly encourage this practice.

I always found it to be quite good for my organs, sort of like a massage. I would leave class feeling very energised and my digestive system seemed to improve from receiving the regular beating...

Some would say that only an adept has free will, as it is not a quality that one is born with and must be developed. Mundane people simply follow their compulsions {made up of thoughts, beliefs, feelings and desires}, and whichever compulsion is the strongest in a given moment is the one that wins out in the so called 'decision making' factor. This is why people are considered barely human, or 'cattle like' or herd beings in many teachings. They do not govern themselves, they just mindlessly follow the heard towards whatever they are told will give them pleasure, and away from whatever will be uncomfortable. And say a glimmering of free thought emerges, then one may start looking for ones dose of comfort in more unusual ideologies, or start to see some 'normal' things as a source of suffering... Just because one made it to the Taobums doesnt mean it was free will that got one here... You could also say that the compulsions in the people here have become slanted towards a 'spiritual' or 'philosophical' perspective in their search for pleasure and freedom from discomfort...

Joseph Smith was a conman. The history of Mormonism's creation is so dodgy it goes past even being funny. Southpark has done the best take on the subject I have seen. http://vimeo.com/13150374 Just because he peddled a few 'occult' ideas in with his 'I am a higher authority than Jesus, give me your women' ideology doesn't mean there is anything of value in it...

Hi Bums! I have been planning to write a review for a while of my experience of 'No self' [so far], so here goes. Back a bit Xabir posted his Ruthless Truth post, and I got Interested. I was already very familiar with the teachings around No self, thanks to the epic postings and debates with Vaj, Xabir and CowTao here at the Bums. [thanks by the way] But the Idea was purely intellectual for me. I thought what the heck, I'll give RT a shot. It took a long time to get accepted as a member but when I did, I entered straight into dialogue, and did my best to just follow their prompts, and look at the nature [if present] of Self. It circled round and round a bit, I think because I cooperated and didn't try to argue or debate them, it didn't descend [much] into name calling, as It often can over there. I had done quite a bit of the Mahamudra style of meditation, where you question "who is thinking, seeing..." as thinking or seeing itself is actually happening, and in meditation could easily see that when you look to see - who is thinking, there is no one actually there - but this never really carried over into daily life. Anyway, someone suggested shifting focus, and lying in bed one night, contemplating the days discussions I suddenly 'saw' as clear as day that I have never seen the slightest evidence for this 'alleged self' and there is quite clearly - No self! Never has been, never will be. Now this realisation has had quite an impact on me. Before I get to that, I will give you a little history. I grew up in an intensely abusive religious cult. I had been diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder and possible Bipolar disorder, both of which I managed myself over the years with meditation, mindfulness practices and healing modalities. I worked on everything I was able to, but I knew that 'underneath' I had stuff I could not reach. Now at the moment I am studying Transpersonal Counselling. A few months before my realisation, I stepped into class [a dream module] one morning, and the teacher asked who had a dream. I put my hand up, so she chose me to demo the process we were learning. I shared a quite innocent sounding dream and we began the process, when she suddenly backed out, saying she was caught between being a teacher and a therapist, and that we had hit serious developmental flags, and could not continue publicly. I thought 'how strange' as I felt fine and did not know what what she was worried about. She kept checking in with me during the day, but I was fine, till going home. I started to feel very heavy and dense. I wrote it off as fatigue, and went to bed. That night I woke up thinking I was having a heart attack. I held my pulse and it was fine, so no heart attack. I was having a serious panic attack. I barely made it to school the next day, and the teacher ran up and said "are you alright?" She had thought more about my dream when she got home, and then got really worried. She organised counsellors for me, and I finally got to start plumbing the depths in a way that I had never been able to do before. Unfortunately It was going well but very slowly, but my panic attacks were getting worse and more and more overwhelming. Till I was forced to take medication. That was an extremely hard decision because I have refused medication my whole life. But this shit was real deep and utterly terrifying to my core. Any way they put me on a light dose of Diazapam which is a valium based medication. It took enough of the edge off things to be able to still work on my problems. Caffine, and driving would still trigger strong panic, as well as physical fatigue, and when doing these things I would have to increase my dose... Back to realisation Land. After realising No self I had a very strange next day. All the things that make up Seth were still there, but they were no longer 'held together' by a false story or a set of Ideas with a false claim to self hood. I didn't take my medication. Panic arose, but so did blissful spaciousness, and a sense freedom without boundaries... Everything that arose passed easily. The next day I really tested it. I drank a can of V and drove an hour and a half {which alone would have had me lying fetal and gasping for breath only two days earlier} and then spent the next 8 hours digging deep trenches for a friend. I was fine. Its been a month, [today i think] since I got it, and what an interesting time. I feel like I do not have to worry about the stuff inside me. It just comes up by it self and unravels or falls apart by it self. The Counselling course has me actively looking at stuff also, and that is good too. I have never been so relaxed and laid back. I also seem to be more of a Lady magnet as well. Mind you I can still loose my shit over stuff, but it passes much more quickly, and usually is far less Intense. I have been reading a book on Nagajuna's teachings, that CowTao recommended to me, called the Sun Of Wisdom. Deep thanks Cow, its amazing. Everything I read is just sliding Into place. It makes total sense as soon as I read it. I am not just understanding It mentally I am seeing it directly. These understandings are helping me understand Longchenpa who is also blowing me away. The world is simply empty appearance. All phenomena at any level is floating and dream like, empty in its nature. If it sounds like I am dissociated guess again. While I feel like I am becoming free from the Influence of the world, as its loosing its power over me, for I am seeing its ultimately unreal nature, and thus attachments are falling off me like flies, I feel more connected to the people I meet than ever. I have more Time for everyone I meet. And I feel a great sense of love or Compassion often just rising up for everyone. It's not some emotion I am generating, It's just naturally arising. So that's my story so far. I do not really care whether people think No self is just another belief system, for if it is, it is astonishing in the internal psychological revolution that it brings about. For me It's value speaks for itself. I Hope many people are Inspired to look for them selves... Great Blessings! OM Ah Hum! Seth Ananda.

I say it over and over again, from my personal experience Falun is a Cult. I grew up in a cult, and the falun movement has the same narrow minded blinker wearing mentality as the worst of the cults out there. People like the thread opener will post stupid responses saying falun doesn't meet the cult definition, because they don't charge, when it actually meets dozens of cult specifications. Joining their 'Li is awesome' hive mind will turn you into a moron. Some cross between a Jehovas Witness, pseudo Buddhist, Taoist and Meister Eckhart. Yet not in a good way. There is no room to question the master, who is 'omniscient' and can never be wrong. Oh well, you may as well throw thinking out the window... Not matter how much something makes sense, it will always be wrong if Li says otherwise. They will try to separate you from friends and family who may be critical of falun, and it buys into that hideous cosmic saviour delusion. In other words if you want to abdicate all personal and moral responsibility, and never show a moment of free thought again, well Falun will be perfect for you He is also a nut bar who claims falun will teach people to fight the aliens that are going to invade. {doomsday ellements} Also, before {Americans} point the finger at China for torture, well 'ahem' 'cough' 'guantanamo bay!'...

In many Ancestor centred cultures, hungry or angry ghosts are seen as beings who were not honoured or elevated by their children or who did not receive the appropriate rites, and so did not join the ancestor line... Ancestor cults felt that we have a responsibility to our dead, and some have suggested that we 'add' something to them that they may have lost when they went through the division... Allowing them deeper intelligence and rationality than many ghosts normally exhibit, such as the confusion many ghosts display... their spirit has departed. Spirit of course being cognitive and rational awareness. Soul being memory and feeling based awareness, or dream logic.

i have seen texts describe both the hun and po as being capable of surviving death, or that the po slowly breaks down over time after death. But in terms of the way the words 'soul and spirit' are used, at least in western Alchemy, the Po is the soul, and hun is the spirit. The po or soul can become a wandering ghost, when separated from the spirit or hun, which just flies off to next life. Alchemy is learning how to fuse these two elements to enable a conscious survival of the death process, or the dissolution that happens some time after death.

Its tricky because in words, soul and spirit were the old duality making up who we are, untill the church decreed that they were really the same thing. So now when some people say soul, they are referring to spirit, or to the divine spark, or to soul in an old school context. When they say spirit, they are usually referring to the divine spark not just aware cognizance... In western alchemy, the spirit is like the elements of fire and air. It wants to lift off and float away. It is cognitive and momentarily aware, but only really 'half' a person. It is the part of us that reincarnates over and over again, with no memory of who it was before... The soul on the other hand was like the elements of earth and water. It's heavy, and can get bogged down with all those feelings and memories... You see remnants of this understanding in expressions like "that music {or person} has Soul!" ~ ie Feeling. The soul is most 'visable' through the body and viscera. The state of a persons soul is generally discernible by looking at their body. For instance a lack of confidence would have specific postural indicators, with out mentioning any more subtle reading techniques... The spirit on the other hand is comfortable staying up in the head, away from the nasty or heavy soul feelings, and the division can be seen readily in many people, between their head and the rest of their body. But who can blame the spirit? It hates suffering and loves pleasure. this is {or part of} the alchemical inner work. To heal the negative emotions to make the soul more comfortable for the spirit. To teach the spirit not to wander away into fantasy and distraction {being off in ones head} away from the body and the feelings of the soul. To practice morality which protects the soul from further negative emotions, and to cultivate virtue energies which feel amazing and thus attract the spirit. Most of the transformations of soul cant be done without spirit being present. Eventually the soul and spirit want to live with each other. This is when the first marriage or fusion can occur. this also means that separation wont happen after death, as the spirit is no longer trying to escape the soul. That means one has become very embodied, and smooth. These beings feel very different to a normal person. they still have problems and obstacles but the process them in a unique way One break down I have seen is like this: First marriage/fusion: Soul and Spirit. The two known halves of 'who you actually are, here on earth, join. Second marriage/fusion: The new person merges with their divine spark/higher self/... They now merge with the deeper intelligence. Third marriage/fusion: The triad Soul/Spirit/Spark merge with the whole.

In some of the teachings of the west, there are two kinds of Immortality. One is the kind everyone has ~ continuity of spirit, where the spirit separates from the soul {the part that has memory and personality} some time after death and continues its journey of transmigration through countless lives... Then there is the immortality of the Adept. Only attained by very few, it is where the soul and spirit fuse or marry through correct application of the inner teachings. It forms a new kind of being. One that does not slowly break up into its various components after death, but maintains its 'Identity' and memories and learning's, and can choose where it goes next, and gets there intact.

I certainly agree whole heartedly with this point. Its Amazing.