freeform

So another thing I've noticed is bright blue eyes in older, highly developed people... Not ordinary blue eyes, but bright blue - like they're wearing coloured contact lenses. I have come across this in a number of people - one of my teachers has piercingly blue eyes (although Caucasian heritage means it could just be genetics.) But I've also seen this in a Burmese monk-turned-alchemist that I met - he was in his 90's. Again - he's Burmese, dark skin, black hair and bright blue eyes. I also met a deaf Thai monk living in the forest (with lots of dogs!) - he also had a bright blue tinge to his eyes - I don't have any provenance on his level of development - although I'm still feeling the effects of hanging out with him for a couple of hours.

Here's one I came across in a temple in Laos - about 3 meters tall, and made a wonderful low tone.

Just a final note to clarify for you. There is no 'truth' - proving the subconscious exists is as silly as proving love exists. It's a case of pragmatism - there is that which you're aware of and there is that which you're not - there's that which you're conscious of, there's is that which is below your conscious awareness. This is a useful distinction - it's pragmatic... Numbers don't really exist, but they're useful distinctions which make many things possible. By identifying with conscious awareness and denying anything but, you're closing off to the universe and saying only the bits that get into my attention are there - everything else is not. You're identifying with whatever the torch light is illuminating, but missing the whole universe around it - including (perhaps most importantly) that there's a light beam in the first place. In a bullfight, from time to time the matador or his helpers will run behind a wooden barrier - this confuses the bull because for him the person simply vanishes... Young babies laugh when you hide your face and reveal it again - because in a similar way the person disappears for them in that moment - and the surprise of it makes them laugh. Yes I think it's silly for you to put yourself in that position - but I don't think its destructive because you're just saying words and getting stuck in your head - in reality you'll carry on behaving as if there is a subconscious and as if there is a face hidden behind someone's hands. So it's all just words. However you seem to want to grow and develop as a person - having a belief that limits you like this (even if it's a farce of a belief) will hold you back. And I've seen that LoA - as it's actually applied by everyone I've talked to is, in fact damaging - in that it not only stops development, but regresses you... It's kind of like seeing a friend join a fundamentalist religious group - but hey it's their choice. Good luck with it all!

Yes I'm afraid you missed my point, and missed out on seeing a new perspective. The analogy was about the darkness of the cave, and the beam of light being conscious awareness... Does anything exist outside of what the beam of light lands on? I'm afraid this conversation has reached it's limit. You seem to be asking people whether they believe the subconscious exists or not - or at least what we think about your idea of denying its existence... we're trying to show you examples of why you're limiting yourself and you're taking it as an opportunity to try to prove that you're right... It's a game that unfortunately has everyone lose.

Wonderfully put! And it may well end up being a 5 year project - but can only happen moment by moment, whisper by whisper

Imagine - for this thought experiment - that you were born in the cave... with a torch in your hand...

Ah yes - I completely get that. I've been travelling extensively recently - and I've joined friends who marvel at the sights and sounds and novelty. But for me all sights and sounds and smells seem novel - whether they're at home or in an ancient monastery in a burmese jungle. It's a tricky one. It's also tied into 'what do I do now?' When everything is the same - when all choices and roads seem to lead to presence why would i do anything other than nothing? So one thing I've been toying with is passion... not in the ordinary 'emotionally intense' sense - but passion for the sake of passion... hard to explain. But having passion dictate my choices in life and lead me is proving interesting. Immediately passion is having me do things I'm not comfortable with - like being the centre of attention in social situations... and it's an interesting thing as passion breeds more passion. Being pushed out of my comfort zone is having me experience new parts of myself. It somehow includes the fundamental idea that there's nothing to do, whilst having me spontaneously do things I'm not used to. It requires bravery - and at the moment it's still very early days, so sometimes I follow my passion but often I don't... At some point I imagine one could live 'spontaneously' in passion - maybe it's some approximation of Wu wei - which seems the only way one can live with a constant state of 'awakeness'.

In general yes... And I tend to ride out the dark nights easier - since I see it as a sign of progress - of stuff coming up for attention and transmutation. Similarly I've taken the same stance with the blissful days - something to work through. There's a difference between seeing a swimming pool and jumping in and getting wet (if you get what I mean...) Sometimes I have clear, simple, 'uncoloured' days - these are the times I appreciate most.

I think there's a big difference between the 'dark night' and what most consider as 'depression' although sometimes the borders are blurred. Depression is often characterised by what 9th mentioned - a dissociation from the present, being stuck in mental loops - thoughts and stories. There's often a disinterest in things because they seem to be separate and distant, and coloured by thoughts and by thoughts about thoughts... There's a sense of helplessness and a feeling of being victimised by everything. The 'dark night' is characterised by an (initial) experience of complete presence. A complete engagement in the moment and all the magic that that brings... and then... you start to see all the 'stuff' you're holding... You see all that's keeping you from staying in that state - and it's usually a mixture of mundane and awful things, you see in yourself the potential for the darkest aspects of humanity - you see how you've treated people and you see how people treat eachother. And it's a feeling of profound loneliness - and an inability to connect to mundane existence... to have small-talk with your neighbour... to congratulate your colleague on his new car... to celebrate someone's birthday. Because it all seems so trivial, so pointless. How did I get out of that? I'm not sure I did... it's more a case of degrees - sometimes it's there and strong and I feel alienated and sometimes not and I feel engaged with 'mundane' existence as well as the deep, profound existence. What I can say is that at times when I feel the 'bright day of the soul' (just made that up ) - there's a sense of lightness and a 'so what?' sort of attitude. Where you can connect with someone on a mundane level, and still see an interplay between you on a much deeper level. Connect with people. Treat things as entertainment. Be gentle to yourself - you can't meditate yourself out of this. Find that child-like wonder that does not discriminate between the shallow and the deep. Treat life as a constant experiment - the experiment is how can a limitless being experience the world in a very limited body? How can you dance between limitlessness and finiteness and be entertained by the dance - rather than constantly strive for some end-state scenario? It's a sense of 'and that, and that, and that'. - meaning that you don't leave anything out - you wear your sadness on the same sleeve as your sense of profound bliss. Bring the darkest and the lightest aspects of you into the moment. You know you're doing it correctly when the mundane starts to interweave with the magical - when your work colleague shares something deep with you - something she's unaccustomed to do. When fun coincidences show up... The other day I was talking about the night sky with someone I'd only just met - she told me that she'd never seen a shooting star - I said it's easy - just look up with wonder for long enough - we both looked up and within 30 seconds we saw a wonderful example of a shooting star. (Just be careful about reading anything into that sort of thing - remember to treat it lightly - as entertainment, not something profoundly meaningful)

It's rare to experience complete darkness... There's usually some light pollution, or some moonlight or an LED somewhere... But yesterday I entered a cave and it was completely dark. I found it somewhat frightening and somewhat exhilarating. I went in and did a few turns and had no idea where I was - which direction I was facing... When I switched on my torch ('flashlight' for most of you) - then I could see - but I could only see the parts that the light beam illuminated. I wonder - if I denied the existence of anything outside of the illuminated circle - would this empower me or disempower me? It would certainly make my world smaller. And that in itself would make life easier... If I saw a stalagmite that looked scary, I could just move the light beam and focus it somewhere else. Of course if I kept bumping into things unseen, or stepping into puddles or potholes it'd be a bit uncomfortable - but I could just ignore all that and keep my attention on whatever the beam of light is illuminating - then the brightness would help to distract me from my wet foot and my grazed forhead. Is this a world I'd like to live in? I wonder how long I could do that for...

Ahh interesting - sounds almost shamanic. I remember Max once brought out his huge Mongolian horse skin drum - my goodness that was powerful! I've never done anything with instruments, but I'm intrigued - can you share a little about your practices with these?

In Daoist practice, the brain is never thought of as a the organ of consciousness... It's thought of more as a filter... or like a step-down motor. The idea being that reality is at its fundamental level consciousness, and that physicality grows from that - the brain is stepping down and filtering the unfathomable scale of reality down to a manageable process - manageable for physical beings. Marblehead will have a field day with this! DB - what you were saying about choosing your responses to stimulus. This is at the base of your 'there's no subconscious' idea. But I put it to you that in actual fact you react to stimulus almost immediately, with no conscious awareness - and only after the fact do you start to think about it, and decide whether you like your reaction or not, whether you brush it under the carpet and pretend it didn't happen or you paint over it and make it look like a different reaction. What I'm basing this on is not simply a belief, but actual observation - I observe myself and others doing this constantly. If your attention is trained at noticing subtle signals in others and in yourself you can see all kinds of things happening outside of their awareness, or even your own standard awareness. One person gets called a fool and the immediate response is a smile - he interprets it as light teasing. Another person gets called a fool and the immediate response is hurt - with all the associated changes in the face and eyes that goes along with that... then maybe after a few milliseconds he laughs about it - as the conscious mind has had time to paint over it in some way or other (though unfortunately the real hurt is still there, and because it's been denied, it takes deeper root - in physiology and mentally) Now where do these automatic reactions come from?? What is it that has us react in a certain way before we even know it? That's what I call the subconscious (not some out of date Freudian bs). I know this seems disempowering - but whitewashing it and pretending it doesn't happen is even less empowering. What I suggest is simply noticing what happens with keen interest and curiosity. Not trying to 're program your subconscious' or whatever other forms of self abuse that many new agers suggest, but simply becoming aware of processes and completely allowing them to happen has the effect of unwinding them. It's like play. By play I mean when you screw a nut to a bolt really tight, it has no play - there's no wiggle room. If you unscrew it just a quarter of a turn, suddenly you have some play - a little space for movement and change. Becoming more aware of what is happening gives these stimulus-response patters some much needed play. And after a while - with constant attention, you really would start to unwind the whole stimulus response loop so that real creativity will begin to seep in.

Wonderful! Thank you

Shaking is great, it'll get stagnation moving, get blockages moving etc, but the biggest transformational effects come from spontaneous movement - autonomic movement some call it. Rather than shaking your body, you tune into a vibration already happening inside - tuning in, giving your attention to it feeds the flame so to speak. You tune in, and then surrender and allow it to move you. I feel it strongest in my core channel these days - all I need to do is move my awareness there and it's like a guitar string vibrating, humming - I just watch that and this vibration takes over my body. Although I tend to shake a lot less these days - there's a subtle almost imperceptible quivering all over my body and I tend to start making undulating movements. It changes constantly and many times I'll start to move in quite particular ways - someone once commented that I was doing Bagua movements (I didn't know that's what it was!) Another time when a teacher was transmitting, I suddenly started doing these steps and moves that seemed unusual - apparently I was doing movements from a form he'd been teaching another group just a few days prior (not a form I was familiar with at all). So the energy body picks up things way beyond our conscious awareness - it's best not to have any preconceived notions of how you may move each time. It may be worth looking into TRE (trauma release exercise - I think). The way they go about it is start off with stretches that kinda stress certain muscles which in turn start to shake, at first it's just muscles shaking from strain, but if you focus (diffusely) and surrender into it, your energy body recognises this as an opportunity, takes control and starts to move you - that's when you get the proper spontaneous movements from qi. Oh and treat this lightly - playfully - remember that spontaneity is fun, light, relaxed.

Do you mean mantras? Or toning? I have only ever practiced the gayatri mantra in the past... Back in the day I remember learning the organ sounds a la Chia... admittedly they did little for me, then recently I started making organ sounds (I assume) spontaneously... a lot of 'ha', 'shhh', 'ssss' sounds... That and singing, which has been a rather surprising one for me! When these come up from energy movement (rather than mental contrivances) the result is a whole world away from the Chia approach.

Is that the Nur (sp?) practice that Max sometimes teaches?

I understand - I'm no materialist, but enjoy that perspective. Mind - indeed - is such a loaded term. I suggest 'nervous system' as a better alternative to brain. After all they have been finding brain cells in the gut - along with neurotransmitters and such. My ex girlfriend was prescribed antidepressants for colitis (kind of an autoimmune gut problem that they can't really put a finger on). Also organ memories (or is this too woo woo for your perspective?)

I know it makes more sense for a materialist - but even then 'brain' doesn't exactly describe the full breadth of what 'mind' means.

Does anyone work with the voice? Or make sounds or anything like that?

I apologise - he's living with his grandma not his parents. It's great that he's caring for her - it's an admirable thing to be doing, and I know how much hard work it can be. And it's great that she is able to support DB with a roof over his head, food in his mouth and no need to have a standard job. I think it's a disservice to be saying that he earned a 'mere' $200 for helping acquaintances - why devalue the exact sum that he wanted? Why put a negative spin on it? Doesn't that manifest dissatisfaction? You're seeing my posts in this thread as a disservice and an attack - whereas I'm offering them as a different perspective - something that helps to broaden ones awareness. If support means simply agreeing and pandering to everything one says then a forum is not the place to find it - better write a blog - a forum is a space where different perspectives come together. Sometimes the different perspective doesn't quite make it in, so one pokes and prods and finds holes in the current perspective just to get the mind a little more flexible - a little more capable of seeing a different way. Being offered a different perspective is like going with someone to a sunglass shop - try on a different pair and see how that fits. If there's no subconscious, then why on earth would you be hurt by seeing the world through different lenses?! Why on earth would you refuse to take off your current specs and cling to them like it somehow is part of your identity (especially if there's no subconscious!) DB happily called me 'a fool' for pursuing spiritual goals in a physical universe (actually that's not exactly correct) - I didn't find it offensive or get hurt by it. In fact I kind of enjoy some light teasing. Why would he (or rather weirdly - you - on his behalf) be hurt by me laying out the context around the matter - that he's middle aged, with no job and living with relatives. Do you see how this lifestyle could create a certain tint to one's 'sunglasses'/perspective? Anyway. DB - if you were hurt by my comments, I appologise - that was not my intention. Michael Steinback - well done for standing up for your friend, but I assure you I'm only attacking ideas/thoughts/perspectives, not people - defend perspectives if you must or maybe don't defend but discuss instead.

Interestingly I found myself doing prostrations spontaneously. Although they rarely look exactly like Trunk's animation. Sometimes I get 'stuck' to the floor, kneeling, forhead on the ground and hands in prayer position... I've been stuck like this for almost an hour a few times. My mind always complains when prostrations come up

I have been nice to DreamBliss. I devoted a lot of valuable time to discussions - which is the greatest resource one can share on a forum. I've not been offensive or anything - I do realise that I've insensitively pointed out the truth of the matter with no sugar to coat it and I realise that that's not something that's appreciated in LoA circles. I actually don't think there's anything inherently wrong with living with your parents and not working - but it's inappropriate to suggest that this lifestyle is made possible by LoA teachings rather than the kindness and hard work of his relatives.

Me too - unless the kids are actually middle aged and live with their parents, without a job, manifesting their 'abundance', but unable to manifest themselves out of being extremely tired and unfocused.

Any 'solution' to the world's problems that suggests a return to an idealised, utopic existence from the past should be treated with a huge amount of skepticism! The world's most damaging regimes and their leaders were all very much supporters of 'the return' - Pol Pot, Mao, Hitler etc... please learn from history before embarking on ideas that (when given real power) result in horrifying atrocities. 1) We're not 'destroying the earth'. Climate change is what happens with our involvement or not: the earth has seen countless periods of mass extinctions, countless global warming and cooling periods - that's just what happens - but on a timescale that's hard to grasp for humans. We're not destroying the earth we're just destroying our own habitat. We're shitting where we eat and soon we'll be eating our own shit. (That wasn't meant to be a joke on humanure! ) 2) All the 'problems' (aka shitting where we eat) are directly linked with overpopulation. It's not a popular subject because in our Christianised minds - where life is valued above anything else - we'd be forced to confront the fact that there's simply no way out of these 'problems' without at least slowing population growth, but more realistically actually lowering total population. 3) Places with higher levels of education and greater quality of life have stable populations. Poorer countries with less education and less of the basic needs being met for most people have exploding population growth. There's something to be learned from this... 4) There have been many experiments conducted on artificially high-density living in rat populations. Many interesting parallels can be drawn in human populations. The rat populations in these high density environments would explode, this would go hand in hand with unusual behaviour changes for rats - such as sexual deviancy, the creation of hierarchical social structures - as in alpha-rat with his harem of female rats controlling an area of their environment - strange communal feeding behaviours, random violence and the creation of a sort of 'underclass' - highly stressed, physically weak rats that were picked on and forcibly isolated by the others. As the experiments progressed - after many generations of extreme growth, suddenly there would be a plateau where a generation of rats would completely lose their ability to socially interact with other rats - they would feed by themselves and have no real contact with anyone else (baring in mind that this is still in a very high population density). The population would very quickly completely die out because the rats would stop mating. John Calhoun - who started this research repeated the experiment many many times and the result would be the same each time. He did however start devising some solutions. One of them was adjusting the environment in such a way that forced the rats to cooperate (eg. The feeding machines would require two or more rats to cooperate by pressing separate buttons to get food out) - this created a change in the behaviours (less sexual deviancy, violence, social segregation/forced isolation etc) - but from what I remember, the populations still eventually died out... 5) My friend, who's a big fan of the Venus Project really hates it when I call the founder, Jaques Frescoe, 'the sweet old man who likes to make miniature models'. In reality that body of work has no workable solutions apart from an idealised end-state characterised by Jaques' cool little models. Many of the better ideas are actually based on Bucky Fuller's work. I do like the idea of a 'resource' economy - that taxes not work or ideas or human enterprise, but the use of finite resources. But putting this in action is another matter all together. Bucky had a few subversive ideas on how to slowly transition us to thinking of the world as an ecosystem (such as a super efficient world electric grid, that took advantage of fluctuations of power usage based on night and day across the globe). In conclusion - there is no one right way to 'solve' this - education, global consciousness, cooperation and natural systems seem to provide some helpful avenues of research and experimentation. Idealised end-states tend to result in catastrophic atrocities. Doing something productive even if on a tiny, individual scale is better than sitting around dreaming. For example I've been experimenting with improving soil in my garden and a few local areas by use of microbial action (fermenting food waste and using the resulting ferment in soil)... Also I've been planting a bush I discovered that has almost magical properties (improving soil, nitrogen fixing (from the air), bringing up minerals locked deep down where most roots don't get to and even producing super nutritious fruit that has all the makings of a 'superfood'). I know this won't change the world directly - but it's certainly better than building little models of futuristic cities.

Sounds similar to a method I was taught to 'find' the location of the LDT. Once you lower your gravity to the LDT level, you trace your awareness from the perineum upwards until you feel a subtle pull or push. I'm not sure to what end you'd be moving qi there as a practice, though. In general using your mind to directly move energy in the central channel is at best a waste of time and at worst a recipe for disaster imo - especially if you're limiting it to that small part of the channel. This is, of course based on my level of experience and development. I guess if you've cleared your channels and heart-mind, then it's fine - although in that case you'd probably be consulting the wisdom of your energy body, not the wisdom of an internet forum at that stage