goldisheavy

Mind is very powerful, and people would be wise to remember this. Just because something is powerful does not mean it can't be mind. In Buddhism there is a practice called Chod. Chod is when you offer your body to the demons. So you let the demons eat your body. The purpose of this practice is to cut through the attachment to the body and to one's own self-idea (what we call ego, but ego is not a good word now, since it became loaded). Think what this means. Basically, to protect yourself means to perpetuate this illusion of a limited identity. But another opportunity is to allow whatever forces are there to act without interference. And if they want to eat you, let them and you can turn it into an offering. Obviously this is very hard core. No wimpy people need apply. Now, if you are not ready for this, my second suggestion is to simply allow this incident to pass. To do so, first simply forget it. Which is to say, occupy yourself with something pertinent and wholesome so that there is no time to dwell on this. However, if the memory is heavy, it is hard to "just forget it". In that case you need to brighten up the memory. How to brighten up the memory? Very easy. First you recall what happened to you in vivid detail, and then get creative with it. Add funny music to it. See it from different angles. Play it in slow motion. Add tap dancers to it. Basically just have fun with it. Put your memory into a picture frame, or make it look like a CNN report. By constantly playing with the memory like this you will change its meaning. The memory will then become a toy, an ornament, and a play thing for you and it will lose its power over your mind. You will still remember it, but it will be a bright memory now. Now that you have brightened it up, let it go.... let it flow... And to let it go means it's perfectly OK if you remember it, that's OK...then you move on again. It just means you don't dwell on it more than necessary it doesn't mean you must strain yourself to avoid it. Bright memories are safe anyway, so there is no harm if they come up, but since they are not all that instructive after a while, it's OK to move onto more interesting topics. This allowing yourself to move to another topic is the process of healing. So, if you are really hard core, I suggest you take the first advice, and if you don't want that kind of challenge right now, and you have better things to do, then I suggest the second advice. Either way -- there is no problem, because at your core you are immortal and cannot be either harmed or improved by anything anyway. Appearances are ornamental -- not substantial. Good luck. PS: Every obstacle is a blessing.

I think you hit the nail on the head. This is pragmatic stuff, meaning, people used strategies most often that had to do with their environment. If people lived in an environment where cold was much more of a threat than heat, their practice have reflected that. Tummo comes from the mountains of Tibet, where it is cold. I think there are a couple of other factors as well. First of all, warmth is associated with life. Living bodies are warm, dead ones are cold. Secondly, warmth is seen as positive and cold is seen as merely absence of warmth. That's the mental construct that most people use (although you can view it in reverse... you can view cold as a presence and heat as absence of cold, as the default state, but who thinks like that? I only know about this possibility through the study of cognizance and not because I have actual examples of this). Positive manifestations tend to be easier. For example, it's easier to move in a certain way than to not move at all. It's easier to imagine something than to imagine nothing. However, that is just a malleable bias. It may be perfectly OK to leave that bias alone, because tinkering with it might be a little too weird/jarring for the mindset. However, it can also be interesting to tinker with that bias, like to reverse it for a time, just to observe what happens and to learn from the observation -- but only if you don't have much fear and don't have a lot to lose in this world. Just some thoughts.

So you want to be warm? Have you tried to actually warm up using the mind? Next time you get cold hands outside, without moving your hands (that would be cheating), use the mind like this -- visualize warmth engulfing you within and without. You can do it with or without the flame symbolism. There are many ways. One way is to imagine that the weather is warm, this completely changes the cold at a very fundamental level. You can actually change the weather that way sometimes. A shallower level is to continue believing that it's cold outside, but to imagine the warmth streaming from within you. How effective this will be is going to depend on how strongly your mind is affected by the physicalist doctrine. If you'd done a lot of contemplation and have weakened your physicalist beliefs, it should be easier than if you still believe in physicalism. If you continue to practice you will notice that with time it becomes easier to settle into the warmth concentration and the warmth becomes less inhibited, as you permit yourself to feel it more and more. To make it complete, feel the softness in yourself. Feel the life. The juiciness of life. Soft hands. Soft relaxed body. Warm. Easy. Transcendent. Happily content for no good reason. Beyond life and death. Timeless. These are all friends. If you invite them into your mind, they help you. Good luck. Look within!

What you are interested in is healing. You should contemplate the nature of disease. What does it mean to have a disease? What does it mean to heal? The method will then become apparent to you naturally. But if you don't understand the principles behind the disease, you have to shop around for a method, and it's easy to get something suboptimal or an outright swindle. Of course if you take responsibility, you can also make a mistake, but you can learn from your own mistakes if you take responsibility for them, but if you do not take responsibility for the actions of others, and you are impacted by the mistakes of others, you cannot learn from those mistakes directly. I started a thread called "healing". Have you read it? It might give you some ideas. I've also been meaning to post some good youtube videos of someone who I think has great insight into the principles of healing. Meanwhile you need a quick fix. Quick fix: during comfortable sitting, or walking or laying down...breathe naturally and gently, relaxing, using your stomach and not so much your chest. Then feel kindness engulf you. Feel softness in your being. Feel it coursing in your cells, including your lungs. Kindness, softness, calmness. See it and feel it and know it with all your senses and all your being. And you do so calmly and easily. Effortlessly. No strain. No worry. No concern about life and death. That's the frame of mind. Visualize a symbol of perfect health (you can make your own! make it deeply meaningful). You can for example recall your younger years as a symbol of perfect health. Or use any other symbol, either abstract or concrete. This symbol is a powerful and playful ornament of health. Gently and calmly allow this symbol to dissolve into your being, including your lungs. Feel the resulting sensation. Rest in it for a while. You can think as is natural. There is no need to constrain yourself in any way, just to relax and be natural. Know yourself as the one who is always healthy regardless of appearances. Rest in this knowing. These are some "exercises" you can do right away, but actually this way of using the mind is a life style and not just some "exercise".

Mike, I hope you don't take offense. Let me try to explain. You put so much effort and so much of your life into what you do, so when you hear from someone something to the effect of "what you did was not necessary to do", your first gut reaction is to become offended. Of course. You've invested so much of your heart into this thing and someone seems to say "this thing is crap". That's offensive, right? But don't be in a hurry to be offended! Here's why not to be offended. Spiritual development is not something mundane, and so it doesn't follow a mundane pattern. The pattern of expert-worship, of externalizing authenticity and authority is something mundane. It's hard to make a straight jump from a thoroughly mundane being to a thorough celestial being. So there are shades in between. Mundanity is not just "mundane" and that's that. It comes in shades. In other words, there is a mundane-supra-mundane continuum and there are all kinds of shades along that continuum. You have to recognize at some point, but maybe not now, that at SOME point along that continuum both the authority and authenticity are reabsorbed, re-internalized back into your fundamental being. So you shouldn't criticize those who want to stand on their own two feet, because without that step there is no spiritual development just like there is no spiritual development without seeking a master. Do you see what I mean? Both steps are needed, and not always in the same life. You have no idea what kind of lives that guy had in the past. Maybe he already held 100000 lineages and this life is his first life where he stands on his own two feet. Maybe not, but you don't know, and simply out of respect of you not knowing, you should reserve judgment and refrain from being offended. People who stand on their own two feet can be of two kinds. They are either very powerful individuals who are very wise and who know exactly what they are doing. Or they are just naive and hopelessly deluded idiots. However, you don't know. So because you don't know, and you cannot know this since you yourself have a teacher, that means you externalize your authority and authenticity, so you are not fit to judge certain classes of behaviors and statements. In particular you cannot properly judge independent behavior yet since you've never experienced full independence. So for all you know this guy could be an idiot, but he also could be a sage. Hard to say. Sages don't have a particular look or aura or whatever. They don't always come with beautiful skin and full head of hair. They can be bald or they might have no eyesight. They don't have a particular shape (unlike what Hindus believe, lol). So what you are doing is valid, but you feel your validity is threatened so you take offense. Of course you feel that way because you don't have your validation processes fully internalized yet, so even though you don't respect Matt the same as you do your teacher, still, he's an external factor, and external is where your authenticity is, so yea, it's a threat. But you should try to understand the dynamics of this process and get some perspective. Reserve judgment and realize you don't have to be offended. If the guy is a fool he'll destroy himself and you should feel compassion for him. And if he's a sage, he will benefit himself and many others, and you should be delighted. Either way there is no cause for offense. Ultimate intent is always flawless, so what you are doing is flawless. You have a teacher now? That's flawless FOR YOU. It's not the end all be all of all flawlessness because flawlessness comes in infinite variety.

Well said. What you are describing is a condition that empowers someone who has externalized authority and authenticity, which is most people. Almost everyone, look around, what do they do when they are unsure? They consult others. Sometimes even ANY other person is better than oneself. Other times experts are sought after. If your car breaks, do you go to any random stranger? Do you do it yourself? Most likely not. You go to an expert. And how do you know the expert is not just some bullshitter? Well, if it's a car mechanic, it helps if they are dressed professionally, or if not, then they should be covered in grease. Then you watch how they make eye contact. Do they seem honest? Then the fact that they can afford to work in a big garage...so you are thinking, a fake couldn't last in a garage, right? So you look for buildings. You might look for certifications. How do you know those certifications mean anything? Well you don't know shit, but you hear others talk about them. You saw it on some web site. Then you saw something about it in a newspaper then your friend said something. So now you want a certified mechanic. This kind of behavior is normal for most humans (mortals). People need context around the figure of authority in order to believe it. They can't believe it if it has no context. For example, if some random dude says something profound, you say, "oh that's clever" but no big deal. If someone sits on a glorious throne, surrounded by the pictures of the lineage masters, worshiped by the thousands and says EXACTLY the same thing, you go WOW!!! ZING!!! Spirits are flying... energy is zapping, miracles are happening, you name it. Why? It has to do with the beliefs. You simply can't conceive of having this power internally. You just can't hack it. Can't accept that YOU can be like 1000 ascended masters combined. It simply is not an option for you, that's what you believe. You believe you have to train. Etc. All that is contextualized too, so you can't just start believing you don't have to train, because the belief in the need for training comes from other beliefs which are supported by yet more other beliefs.... It's a network of beliefs. It's not just one belief in isolation that's blocking your power. It's the structure of the entire belief network that structures, constrains your expression (power). So, on one hand, it's good to connect with the lineage, because you already believe lineages work when you go to a doctor, or when you get an "established" mechanic to fix your car, etc. It goes ALONG with your current belief structure. However, a truly strong spiritual person will look beyond this. Instead of going along with the belief structure, this person will examine it and find that this structure, if followed, will NEVER dissolve, and will always yield misery. And further, the kind of power you get from it is always limited, because of the context. It is conditioned. In other words, if you trained and got power, as soon as you stop training, the power is gone. Or if you connect with the lineage to get the power, if the lineage no longer wants you, you lose it again. And there are many examples of cast outs. For example look at Gelugpas and Kadampas. If I remember correctly they were one lineage, but later they split and now there is a bitter feud, and as a result the power of both lineages have declined. Dalai Lama was supposedly even assaulted by the "evil" spirit from the "evil" New Kadampa tradition, etc.. and the "mighty" Dalai Lama was afraid, and that's why he wanted everyone to pray for the attacks to stop and to condemn the New Kadampa tradition and so on. The important thing to learn from this is that lineages are not good sources of power. Just like the university is not a good source of learning. Why not? Because what universities teach gets updated every year. So when you get your diploma, it begins to lose value as soon as you stop attending the university. But if you stay at the university and don't leave, you never get to actually apply your learning. So you always deal with limitations. These secret power clubs always limit you. Once you assume the throne of a lineage, you are not high and mighty. You now have a job to uphold the stupid lineage. It's a JOB! You know, all of you need to reach Zhuangzi (or Chuang Tzu). All of you. There is a chapter there about the Emperors trying to abdicate their throne to the sages. Every single time the sages decline. There is a reason for that. There is a great lesson in that. Learn that lesson. Understand it. Deeply. In your heart. Why do the greatest sages always decline the symbolic power spots? That's right, because their power is symbolic, and symbols have power only due to mind. But a sage controls his own mind and can withdraw power from any, ANY symbol, and give it to any other symbol. For example a sage can stand next to the highest lineage holder from any Daoist tradition and remove all his power. Then this guy cannot do any magic. It's very simple. In fact, if you read stories about Buddhas you will read about this. Other powerful beings lost their powers in the presence of Buddha. Why? Because Buddha understands the true scope of intent. Buddha's intent is infinite and Buddha doesn't have a limited identity. So there is no contravening power in the presence of a Buddha. The same is true for any sage, because basically "Buddha" is just a word. We are talking about highly realized beings. No highly realized being ever got there from a lineage. They all either stood on their own two feet from the getgo, or they started with some lineage, but later became independent. The key is to get the PRINCIPLE. If you understand how power works, you no longer need to get more and more lessons or more and more training. Lessons and training stop. That's the path of "no more learning". But you will never understand the cause for the cessation of learning if you don't learn ON YOUR OWN. If you keep uncritically swallowing what you hear through your ears, it doesn't matter where you go. If you go in the world or if you go to a secret lineage, you will be cheated no matter what. What will cheat you is your own uncritical mind. Do you see? In other words, if you say, "I don't believe in this expert, I will find a better expert" the pattern of expert-reliance is not broken. So just because you snob all the worldly experts and seek all the spiritual ones, you are still ensnared in a larger pattern of externalization of authority and authenticity. Authority is power. Authenticity is validity. So if you externalize authority it means you get your power from someone else, from some organization, from some club, from lineage, from a university, from Deity, from spirits, from Coke can. And if you externalize authenticity it means when you get an experience, you do not take it as real until it is verified and validated externally. So you see a vision and see your master and master says "This is not real", and you say, "yes sir". Or the master says, "This is real, keep practicing!" "YES SIR!" This is a pattern of externalizing authenticity. A sage is someone who reverses both of these patterns. Put them on its head. Authority is reabsorbed. Authenticity is reabsorbed. After this you can still have friends and companions, but you can't have masters anymore. You will be your own master. And it doesn't mean you'll never make a mistake, but it means no one can fix your mistakes for you anymore. You will be in charge of your experiential domain. You will declare what is valid and what is not valid without consulting with anyone. You will perform actions without asking permission. That's what it means to be with internalizes authenticity and authority. In this condition, one feels no threat, because one's power source is internal and one's validity is also internal. Feeling no threat, there is no fear. Without fear there is no need to attack anyone or anything. Life becomes playful and NO ONE can abuse you, ever. Not even nature. Even natural phenomena begin to take orders from you. You can send hunger away with a glance from your eye. That's what lorldly power is like. It's not small, like sending a ray from your hand. It's when you can put the sun in your back pocket. And it is attainable, but you can't get this from a lineage, because the lineage is a context of servitude and dependence. There is no lineage that is a context of independence because independence means acting with the knowledge that the context is empty of substance. So the contexts are stripped from their power. I hope this helps at least some of you, but I am certain I went over many heads here.

http://www.iep.utm.edu/z/zhuangzi.htm Check this out! I liked it and I was thinking some of you might also like it. I think it's a very well done, very careful analysis.

I really like this cultivation method.

I see your predicament. It's too bad. Anyway, I watched how your teacher moves and I know how wonderful he is. He has so much kindness and strength and wisdom. But I recognize this wonder because I myself am also wonderful like that. Hahaha... I know what he is doing. I don't need to understand the secret symbols because the root of all symbolism is within me. Are you like me? I am interested in hearing more from you personally, regardless of your teacher.

If imagination is unreal, how can it affect reality? If you imagine a bird and draw a picture of it and I hold a tangible picture, it's a real manifestation of your imagination, is it not? Therefore, imagination is a kind of reality. And reality is imagination, because what we recognize to be real is just that -- a recognition, a function of mind, the same as imagination.

One more note. I think this should be clear from what picnic said, but in case it's not clear... My visualization are not what healed me. It was the singleness and the purity of my intent that healed me. Visualization is an ornamental aid. Ornaments beautify life. They are fun. But if anyone mistakes the ornaments for that which is essential, they fall into a trap. That's the proper way to use visualization. If you forget visualization is an ornamental aid, and you take it as substantial and real, you fall into a trap, because you mistake that which has potency, which is intent, with that which is a helpless servant, which is an appearance, i.e. visualization.

The problem is that Kabbala was and still is (even with the Rabi Laitman) a secret club. So it was an asshole thing to do to use the symbolism of a secret society like that. He should have sealed his disciples with his intent or much better, much better, he should have spoken using every day language and down to earth metaphors.

He he heee!! You wily wabbit!! You know it! That's it. I had a similar experience with improving my vision. Let me tell you what happened, you might find it interesting. So I would relax my eyes and gaze around just enjoying my vision as is, without eye glasses. I would look at the trees, and my favorite, the shadows, especially when the wind moves the trees. My vision was getting clearer! Then one day I was waiting for my bowl of noodle in a little restaurant, and as I was waiting, I took off my glasses and just looked around. Suddenly I could see the floor so clearly. I could see the wood fibers! And this freaked the hell OUT OF ME. This couldn't be me. It couldn't be real. It was not possible. I quickly put my glasses on and forget all about healing my eyes for a long time. So you see what happened there?

I find Christ's message to be interesting and worthy of investigation. However I seriously don't like the manner in which he spoke. He failed to be direct. He failed to be simple. His use of allegories and metaphors was over the top. I like to use metaphors myself, but I try to set them up and to explain them. I don't just say one sentence with 10 metaphors embedded in it and say "he who has ears will hear". That's like saying, "AADFSDS!!!!SDFslkdfjsjjsj....!!!!SSDF -- this mysterious code is the root of life, he who has the mind will understand!" And you know what, if your mind is bright enough, you can deduce the meaning of life and enlightenment from it, you really CAN! BUT IS IT NECESSARY to talk like that? Is it compassionate? Is it kind? NO IT IS NOT. If you talk like that you are an asshole. If Jesus appeared in front of me I wouldn't hesitate to tell him he was a selfish asshole. His message was perfect in his mind but he didn't give a damn how approachable it was to others. Fact is, even if you chew things through, they are hard, never mind when you talk in riddles. Shame on Jesus. The riddly and twisted nature of books like Bible has resulted in much suffering. Buddhist Sutras, in comparison, are vastly more straightforward and down to earth in their exposition style. Not that I agree with everything Buddha said, but the way Buddha communicated was infinitely better to Christ. The way Chuang Tzu communicated was even better than Buddha, because Chuang Tzu had humor and Buddha was a humorless toad.

What if being loud is your reality? Then if you try to quiet yourself, you are resisting reality, aren't you? Reality is inner as well as outer (I say it like that because you use this kind of language, otherwise I wouldn't necessarily be splitting it into inner and outer, unless of course I also wanted to use similar language for ornamental reasons). See, the problem is this. You conflate reality with shapes. You think quiet is a shape that's closer to reality, but in reality shapes have nothing to do with reality. All shapes are baseless upon the ultimate analysis. So being quiet is no more closer to reality than being loud. Listening is no more attentive than screaming with ear plugs in your ears. To understand this correctly you cannot avoid contemplation. There is simply NO WAY to understand it without directly challenging certain (core) beliefs within. Aren't you giving a too-narrow a definition to meditation and contemplation? That's the juicy stuff. Without this, where would the glory be? Who would care? This is the feast of the spirit. Enjoy it! Drink up. Obstacles are blessings. All is good in moderation, even a little bit of an extreme here and there, in moderation, is also good. All people have the capacity but not all people have the sincere aspiration necessary to activate the latent capacity. If your aspiration is sincere, have no doubt your capacity is equal to the utmost, to the unexcelled! And if anyone asks you about their capacity, you should reply to them exactly how I reply to you. In other words you should tell them their capacity is equal to the utmost, quickly and without hesitation. If you hesitate, it means you have doubts in your own capacity. There is no such thing as "objective" examination. Of course there is no such thing as subjective examination either, but if you insist on subjective-objective duality, then all perceptions are subjective by definition. Objectivity is an abstract quality that people (incorrectly) deduce using their intellects and playfully impute onto the "external" phenomena. The direct perception is never objective. See how confused you get? Don't use "karma"! Say "because their intent is in the way" and then you will know you are wrong. Intent is ONE element of your being that is NEVER in the way. Intent is that which SEEKS WAY. Intent is conditioned, that is to say, structured, by deeply seated beliefs. It's the beliefs that get in the way and never intent. Once you begin to aspire for enlightenment, for wisdom, your intent becomes your number one ally. If you cannot trust your intent, you cannot trust anything at all. It is by the grace of your own intent that baseless beliefs begin to unwind over time. I'm glad! I hope you remain your wild and wooly self! Good call! Good call!

Well said picnic. I would also add that what we call "placebo" is the real healing. And the symptom being medicated away is temporary condition, a non-healing. What we call placebo is a natural restoration. It's precisely that one thing that is genuine. It's the pill that is fake. The reason we get it all backward is due to physicalism that we hold to. Under a physicalist doctrine we only ascribe power to matter and to energy, but not to mind. That's why so many people are obsessed with manipulating energies, because they just can't believe the mind can directly affect appearances without the intermediary of "energy" (chi). But it can. The mind directly affects everything without any intermediaries. What it does transcends the idea of energy because the transformation are not limited in any way -- they are not limited by conservation of energy principles, for example. But to experience this in an authentic manner while still holding to our physicalist mindset would feel like insanity. That's why the mind has to be gradually softened up to accept more modes of experience so as to not shock it. All this is very important for healing the way I describe. Someone who believes the mind has no power is using the mind's power to cancel itself, and if they follow my suggestions while in the heart believing only the physical is real, then that person is being false, pretentious, and what they do won't work, because the intent is not a genuine one. So the spiritual path itself, is a long term healing. I should also add that I've used the following techniques to help heal: I have visualized an eagle eye dissolve into my eye and feeling it in my bones that my eye and vision are flawless. I have visualized kindness pouring into my eye. By "visualized" I mean using ALL senses and not just vision. The key is to not pretend to see something, but to open oneself to actually feel it for real. In the middle of a painful condition you can feel the core of healthy feeling if you open yourself to feeling health! You have to allow yourself to feel health in what superficially seems unhealthy. And finally, using all that attention on my eye resulted in a certain kind of lopsidedness. I felt my subtle energy was warped. More of "me" was in my left side of the head. This was a side-effect of increased attention to the left eye. This why it was so critically important to forget all about the disease and to forget all about the healing when the healing was almost complete. I had to dissolve away the after-effects of healing and finally completely forget it. Now when I say forget it, I mean I can still recall the event, but there is no anguish in it, and I am not obsessed with recalling it. I can recall it, and I will recall it gladly for the benefit of others, but I don't have to recall it for myself. I am over it. So maybe a better way to say is to purify the memory and to brighten the memory of the disease to make it into a blessing, and then to allow it to move freely through the mind, which is to say, when you want to pay attention to something else, you can... you can move on. You now don't have to be preoccupied with the memory of past pain. The forgetting is a key part of healing. Healing is about remember and forgetting, both.

Anyone can get it straight from God. Another way to put it is this -- make your own mind your teacher. But this IS NOT EASY. Making your own mind the teacher is as hard as following a Guru. Harder. Guru says words you understand but to hear your own mind you have to do two things. One is you have to actively probe it via questions and experimental intentions, and you also have to listen without being overly active. The problem is that "listening" is not a passive mode. Listening is creative in the sense that your beliefs still condition your mind/being and still manifest, so you are not listening to what's "out there", but you are listening to your own belief. It's not objective. Change your belief and listen again and a different "thing" is "out there". You can die from this only if you push yourself too hard. If you enter into an experience that contradicts your mindset too severely, that's when you can die. When you understand this danger and how it works, it's relatively safe to explore on your own. In fact, it's the best way. Simple -- he didn't know it couldn't be parted. He intended to part it the same way you intend to scratch your head. How do you scratch your head? It's not a step by step process. You don't have to activate your chi to scratch your head. You just do it. The same with the red sea. What prevents it are the contradicting beliefs. That's the "doubting Thomas" effect. Anyway, Jesus was a bit of an idiot. He was in interesting guy, but he did much damage to humanity with the manner he communicated himself. He could have explained things much better and he could have made it explicit not to start any religions in his name, but he failed on both counts. There are many spiritual giants in the world who can start new religions, even right now. I hope they don't. If they do, I will oppose them, and I am also not too shabby myself. I always prevail, of that there is no doubt. So I ask people to share and to stop spreading fear and ignorance. What we need are good spiritual friends and not the secret clubs.

Vajrasattva, is it painful? It looks like you were in pain. And what is that stuff coming out of the body?

No harm! I was just asking. So you are doing this to further your wisdom, right? So if I understand correctly, what you want to observe are the principles of the art at work. In that case I think you are doing more than enough and your goals are way too high, IMO, because you can see the principles working much sooner than the time when you can do a 3 hour horse stance. Even a 30 min horse stance would be pretty tremendous. How many Westerners can do a 30 min horse stance? Anyway, it's not about the comparisons, it's about having a useful enough sample for experimentation, introspection, contemplation, meditation, manifestation, etc. Of course you don't have to stop, heck you can just keep going until you can stand all day in the horse stance, but that's another story. If you seek wisdom, then reaching some extreme number is not the goal of practice. My little story... one time I read about a martial artist explaining that to do a finger strike your fingers have to be softer than grass. I was thinking about that, is that true? In the book the guy could sink his whole hand into a dead animal carcass. I believe that completely. Besides I've seen a video of an old Shaolin monk puncturing a bag of sand with his finger, so I am pretty certain it's quite possible. (Not to mention that I believe everything is possible as a fundamental principle, but I mean, even from a mundane perspective it's easily possible). So I set out to find out the truth for myself. I hit a wall with my finger tips. First thing I notice is that my intent is in the wrist. That means from the wrist to the tips of my finger I am relying on bone and ligament strength to "hold up". So my hand is DEAD from the wrist to the finger tip, because my intent stops at the wrist. Do you understand what I mean? In other words, I was excluding my fingers from myself when striking, and this made them brittle. Another thing I noticed was that there was great fear! Before my finger even touched the wall, my hand tickled from fear and there was a mental impulse not to go through with the strike. So then, I put my intent into my finger tip. That means my whole hand up to the very tip has to be alive, it is myself. It's not just dead bone, it is life. So I am not relying on bone and ligament strength anymore, because I hit with the intent at the tip of my finger. My whole finger now both can be and has to be soft, because life is softness and rigidity is death. Now I slap the table as if I am playing a piano. My fingers are lose and it's not really a strike but a slap. There is no fear because it's a gentle slap. Then I gradually make these slaps more energetic. Not so much more forceful, but just more lively slaps. More vibrant slaps. And so on. I practiced this for a while. After about a month I could hit with finger tips so hard that it would easily leave a bruise and I myself couldn't believe what I could do. I could hit walls with great vigor (if not to say force) and no fear and no finger buckling or any bad side-effects. This was enough for me. I am not really a martial artist. I got the point. I got my little bit of wisdom. And that was the end of that experiment. I let the skill lapse and I don't care about it. Now I can't strike like that anymore, but I know how to get back "there" if I need it. So this is what it means to practice for wisdom. It's very different from practicing for self-defense, and yet different from practicing for health, and also yet again different from practicing for killing/offensive situations. I hope this helps. I never intended to dissuade you or anything like that. I just wanted to know your intention so I could provide a better response.

What do you mean "just" a shamanic tradition? Have you read Bon books? The Bon books I've read on Dzogchen were quite good! No, I will say excellent even. Shamans are not always stupid spirit chasers. There are different kinds of shamans. Don't forget that Taoism traces its own origins to shamanism as well, at least according to many scholars. In any case, when a shaman appears and starts to present questionable views, we should question them, but we shouldn't question the mere presence of something just based on its name. The main point is that it's not so much about the tradition. It's about the people. And there are some really great Bon teachers. In fact, I think Bon teachers I've read were more forthcoming and less secretive than the Buddhist ones, so to my mind, they are greater. The Bon Dzogchen books are more revealing in some ways than the Buddhist ones.

You need weapons? Are you going to a war? What benefits can be had in a war? Do you expect a physical conflict to occur soon?

Hundun, this is interesting. I have enjoyed reading your writing, even if I have no intention of buying any CD sets at this time. I like how you have expressed yourself. I don't know if you realize it or not, but your words are also medicine, and not just the "crazy" guy you've listened to on the CD.

I think analysis gets a bad reputation because most people assume, wrongly, that the outcome of analysis is a conclusion, or in other words, some kind of mental fixation. My view of analysis is entirely different from that. To me, holding conclusions is a result of not having an analytical quality of mind in the first place. Analysis is what dissolves conclusions when that analysis is sincere, questioning, probing. Analysis is not a process of rationalization. It's a process of investigation of the conceptual territory of mind, which surprisingly covers all the territory that ever appears. When a person repeatedly analyzes something that's fundamentally mystical, the result is not a false conclusion, but rather, the person gains confidence that there is no conclusion to be had, there is no fixation possible, and the more you analyze it, the more you see that's the case. From this point of view there is no such thing as over-analysis anymore as there is over-kindness or over-compassion. The culmination of analysis is wisdom and there is no over-wisdom. A person who enjoys genuine analysis is called a contemplative. It's a noble and virtuous quality. Analysis is naturally self-moderating. When you give attention to a difficult topic, such as the identity boundaries, and you realize there are no obvious boundaries, the mind naturally slows down and enters into a meditation. That's how real analysis works. It's not just blah blah blah... It's not a mundane thought stream. It's not thinking about which shoes are better or which hair style to get. It's giving your mind to the weightiest questions of your life. It's deeply meaningful. It's vastly more transformative than energy work because it changes what you believe reality is, and energy work doesn't change your beliefs about reality a great deal, if at all. Someone who pursues wisdom gains all the other benefits, even the same benefits as those gained from energy work as a side-effect. But if you only pursue energy work you don't gain wisdom as a side-effect because wisdom is a super-set of all abilities. It's the GRAND VIEW, and all else is just a small part of it. So the GRAND WAY is to practice the GRAND VIEW and to let all else fall into place as it may. To have a vast mind, to think vast thoughts, to have freedom of thought -- it is not easy. If the mind is conditioned by a constricting mindset, even mere presence of certain thoughts, just considering certain topics, is terrifying to the point of wobbly knees and loss of appetite. Never mind actually meditating on these aspects and never mind actualizing them into life.