goldisheavy

Well, it's just a manner of speaking. I wouldn't go so far as to insist that your soul actually left, lol. But it seems I got my message across. You seem to get what I am talking about. So that's what matters. Thing is, you must have found the world either awful or boring to leave it in the first place. So can you fool yourself into thinking the world is really good or really interesting? Probably not. Trickery only goes so far. It may be possible to reconsider certain things and to then change one's opinion genuinely, but that's not trivial. There is no generic process for it because your reasons for disliking the world are individual and specific to you, and so to turn that around it would need to be honest in a way that speaks to you and that is specific to your views. A bunch of sappy "happy happy joy joy" bullshit will not make you like the world. If you've deparated to such an extent that you experience fog, it's probably because something very non-trivial is going on, so it would be silly to expect a trivial intervention to fix it all back up how it was. What I would suggest for you is not so much trying to return to how you used to be, but find a new way to have clarity and well-being that honors the new you, together with your sensibilities. Go forward. Don't try to return or go backward. I'll tell you what I know of grounding. You can try it and see if it helps. Basically I know two ways how to ground. One is symbolic and one is let's say contemplative. So the symbolic method is to use the meanings or connotations of certain perceptions to your advantage. Try putting your attention at or below foot level for a time, and do this as a kind of meditation. I prefer sinking my attention say 100 meters into the Earth toward the center of the Earth, basically deep below the ground. But just moving your attention any significant amount downward can have a grounding effect. This is especially helpful if you tend to be in your head a lot or up in the clouds and you deliberately want to reverse that airy feel. Another similar method is visualizing velvety blackness, and then resting in it, but in your case it may not help much, because blackness subdues excitation, which is grounding, but probably not the kind that you need, since being overly excited is probably not your problem. If you feel dullness (this is different from fogginess), low excitation, then you can try visualizing brilliant white and resting in that. A contemplative way of grounding is to understand what "ground" means and then to use that understanding to your advantage. "Ground" means "conventionality." So increase your participation in convention. Convention is anything physical or social. So going to the gym, watching movies with friends, going out to dinner with friends, playing sports, gardening or farming, reading a newspaper, and similar can ground you in a conventional sense. Another way you can become more conventionalized is if your sleep pattern is weird, make it normal again. Wake up in the morning. Sleep at night. Open your windows in the day. Let the sun and the air in. Take a cold shower in the morning. Go for a jog. This kind of stuff will conventionalize you. If your sleep pattern is already normal then this advice doesn't apply to you. But a lot of people who have departed convention will also have strange sleep patterns. But whether or not these things can help you strongly depends on the state of your soul. If your soul is seriously wanting to depart for what appear like very weighty and non-trivial internal reasons, then doing the above with the hopes of grounding will just feel phony to you and it won't work. So you can try some of the suggestons that seem like they might help, and if you feel phony, then you will know what's up. Or they might just work. Maybe you really don't care either way. That's a path of not giving a fuck. It's not an official path, but it's a path. If you seriously don't care, can something force you to care? Can you force yourself to care? I tell you what though. Regardless of whether you're in the world or out of it, regardless of whether things seem foggy or clear, you can always love yourself. So maybe you should start there. Try loving yourself as you are. Are you trying to "ground" yourself just to fit in, or is it a very genuine personal desire for you? Are you trying to match how other people feel? As in, how do you arrive at an idea of how you should feel? Maybe how you are feeling right now is exactly how you should be feeling right now? I'm not saying you should feel as you do. I am just saying, consider it as a possibility and don't automatically assume you need be like everyone else. Try to look into yourself and figure out how you feel about everything. What do you enjoy most in life? I don't mean on Earth. I mean what do you enjoy most in life, period, at all? What do you like about yourself the best? Well, tell me what you like the most in life. Tell me what you like about yourself. Tell me what interests and intrigues you. Tell me what bores you and why. Tell me things you dislike and why. Tell me something about your dreams. Basically just tell me that which you think the world should know about you. Don't think of me as a person. Think of me as a representative of the universe. If you want to say something to the universe, what would you say?

Spotless, may I ask the reason why you meditate? As in, what are you trying to accomplish, if anything, by meditation? I think that if you were to receive a genuinely helpful answer, the people answering would need to know this first. I regard meditation as mind training. As such it's similar to any training in that it is fitted to a purpose. So sprinters train and crosstrain in ways different from long distance runners. And a weight lifter trains in a way that's different from a gymnast and they achieve different, even if somewhat similar results. Your training regimen needs to be tuned to your expectations. So what do you expect out of your meditation?

Yea, I am not a fan of deception myself. I didn't realize someone was deceived. Due to my present circumstances I don't come here looking for romantic love, so the chances of me being deceived in a relevant way are low, luckily for me. In any case, someone with character flaws can still make good contributions sometimes. One of my ex-best buddies is someone I consider a jackass and we haven't spoken to each other for a decade or more now, and I have no plans to start, but I'll be lying if I say I've learned nothing good from my jackass ex-friend. I wouldn't be who I am today without my friend's help in the past, even though now we don't even shit on the same acre of land.

Reading about the doctrine here it looks like I find plenty I disagree with. I am myself anti-Confucian in many ways, although I do not regard the world as inherently unworthy of attachment or love. I also think our own world is pretty worthless, however, and is not worth attaching to or loving (getting involved with, sentimentally). I can agree with this. I can agree up to "has no source or Creator", but after that, I disagree with everything because it's too materialistic for my liking. Too rigid.

This wouldn't be too surprising considering I love Laozi and Zhuangzi, both, and I was influenced by both. But I am not consciously or knowingly following Xuanxue. I mean I had to look it up just now in order to learn what it is. It sounds interesting, I'm reading about it now.

This is rough. It sounds like you have absolutely no clue. So getting a clue is probably more important than any physical exercise at this point. Try to read into many paths that sound like they might appeal to you. Determine why do they appeal to you? For example, if you want to be a good fighter, maybe drop the standing pole meditation, and take up Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu or kickboxing instead. If you want spiritual evolution, maybe standing pole meditation is a good idea, keep it. If you want psychic power, then you should take a two-pronged approach: 1) spiritual evolution, which means broadening your understanding through various means and 2) concentration practice, which means basically exercising psychic power. Also, if you are a heavily physicalistic person, do not be shocked when you can't exercise any psychic power. If you come from a physicalist background, focus on your spiritual evolution above all and see if you can leave physicalism behind first. Once you line up like say 3 paths that sound like they might appeal to you and you know why, then study 1 of those or maximum 2, in great depth. So first go a little wide to get your bearings. Once you know what's up, go deep instead of wide. Equally as important as traditions is avoiding dogmatism. This may be hard to believe, but just because something is ancient doesn't mean it's right, and just because something works doesn't mean it's the only thing that works. So just because tylenol works for pain relief, for example, it doesn't mean advil also doesn't work, get my point? So don't get overly hung up on traditions. Avoid dogmatism. Respecting tradition and being dogmatic about it are two very different attitudes that give two very different results.

sunchild, What you describe sounds like on some level you no longer care about this phenomenal world, you know, the world you can see and touch. It's not that your soul is missing, but your soul basically left this realm to some extent. Things here probably bore you, and your appreciation for whatever you experience here migtht be pretentious rather than genuine. Does this ring any bells? If I am correct, you're starting to experience the natural ambiguity of phenomena. Since phenomena are not obliged to appear clearly delineated, it may seem like "fog" because in the fog everything is less distinct and less obvious. When appearances do not interest you, then the distinctions between appearances become less interesting. This makes things more indistinct, more ambiguous. It's a necessary stage on some paths, depending on the path. It's hard to say a lot more without knowing you personally.

There are many workable ways of understanding it. Different ways of understanding have advantages and disadvantages relative to each personal situation. In general, the more abstract your understanding, the more powerful and advantegous it is from the ultimate point of view. But the drawback to this, is that thinking too abstractly seems too remote and too fantastical or improbable or too otherworldly to many people. Many people have very dense minds, and their minds absolutely demand substance, something they can feel or touch. So if you explain a powerful and abstract point of view to someone with a dense mind, they will reject it out of hand, since there is nothing "of this Earth" in it, so to speak. It's too airy/ethereal to them to accept and to productively work with. So asking metaphysical questions and then expecting one unified solid answer is not realistic because every person exists at a different level of being and we all have unique perspectives. Obviously we overlap enough to meet here, but this overlap doesn't tell you a whole lot about those areas where we do not overlap. Experience cannot be gathered. The mind isn't a bottle or a suitcase. However, experiences can be remembered, and then deeper than the experiences themselves, instincts can be engrained, which is a kind of memory that isn't tied to a specific experience, but is more a generalized template that determines how you are most likely to respond to the various situations. This template is durable, but it can change too. Sometimes it drifts with the times, and at other times people change their instinctual templates on purpose as part of their spiritual path (mind training). Besides memories there is something that can be called commitment. It is the manner in which you are willing to meet the world and yourself in the world (and conversely it's also a manner in which you are unwilling to do the same). What is considerered personal and what is considered natural arises from a mental matrix that is in truth neither personal nor natural (by nature here I take it you mean forests, rivers, clouds, skies, animals, and so on). So strictly speaking, nothing is natural in a way that's fixed and absolute. This is how some adepts can demonstrate powers that seem to bend nature. That's because nature doesn't belong to itself. And the person doesn't belong to the person. Instead both nature and person belong to the mind, and the mind apportions the powers to each. So from one perspective, asking about how natural energies compare to personal ones is nonsense, since they don't have a fixed state. From a different perspective, you need to evaluate this for yourself. Before you do that, you need some methodology too, so that your measurements remain consistent. For most people consistency of some sort is a prerequisite for trustworthiness. So because how the natural/personal energies are apportioned depends on your own perspective, you need to come to realize this for yourself if you want a non-abstract, concrete answer that is specific to your life. Of course you can get other people to help you, but whatever you end up doing, it's still you doing it. So if you are going around getting input from people, that's your idea of how to establish validity of information. That's one of the ways you might be apportionining personal and natural energies. By talking to other people and taking them seriously you give them more energy, and by extension, you give nature more energy too, because nature is nothing other than a common ground between people. So how you relate to nature will depend on how you relate to other people. They're already mixed. Any line you draw between the two will be arbitrary and imaginary. If you like. You can evolve in many ways. You've got options. But whatever you do, all phenomenal appearances occur in the mind. That's something that never changes. A subjective experience of a worm crawling through the Earth, and the subjective experience of a God, they all have this in common: mind. I'm not sure what you mean here, but if you mean your parents' energy, then it can be said as much as your parents give birth to you, you also give birth to your parents.

How is this relevant? I sincerely do not give the slightest of fucks about anyone's gender or sexual orientation. I judge comments on their merit and not on the gender or sexual orientation of the author.

I know.

Paul, Here's how we contribute to this forum in different ways. You taunt, goad, and titilate people in the hopes of attracting converts to your secret club. I am here to share everything I know openly in an atmosphere of lateral collaboration. There is no secret club to join. And I am claiming the same spiritual benefits as what you claim for your secret club, minus of course the feel of a club itself.

Actually that is precisely what it does. That's the full implication. Such as? Delusion is somewhat of a choice. Because post-delusion ongoingly sticking to delusion is not fully cognizant, the ongoing aspect of delusion is less of a choice, but the choice is never fully eliminated, only repressed in this case. And prior to delusion one has a cognizant and aware choice of entering into a state of delusion. This must be so because possibilities are never destroyed or created. All possibilities as arrays of possible cognitions exist primordially as all-potential, without increase or decrease. So prior to delusion and post-enlightenment, one can, if one wants, become an ordinary sentient being again.

When I say the mind is the ultimate abstraction, I mean that it is the least specific and most mysterious subject one can contemplate.

Apech, we could also say that a mindset is a way in which a mind can entrench or stabilize itself with regard to appearances. This should not be understood to always be bad. There are some very powerful and very useful manners of entrenching one's own mind. ("One's own mind" is just a manner of speaking.) We could say that alchemy is all about first understanding the mind, and then deliberately and cognizantly entrenching it in a way that produces a pure realm as a seemingly outward appearance, and wisdom, as a seemingly inner appearance. There are literally countless ways of speaking about this. Each way of speaking about the same thing illumines it from a slightly different direction. In the end, if you want to be a Lord, you will need to master all possible descriptions, and then transcend them all but without the false imagination that you've left the descriptions behind, as it were.

The mind is a capacity, and not a thing or a substance or some unique phenomenal experience. What kind of capacity? It's a capacity to know, to experience and to will. I split it into those 3 aspects to make it easier for people to relate, however, strictly speaking, the capacity is not something composed of parts. So willing is a necessary aspect of knowing, for example, and vice versa, knowing is a necessary aspect of willing. And the same holds for any relationships between knowing, experiencing and willing. So once we split the capacity up for the sake of discussion into 3 aspects, then viewing any pair out of those 3 as an interdependent pair is productive for contemplation. The mindset is different from the mind in that a mindset is a specific state the mind can be in. This is similar, but not literally identical to how ice, liquid and steam are all possible states of water, for example. However, the mind is not an observable the way water is, and yet many aspects of the mindset are observable with varying degrees of difficulty. The more insight one has, the more one can understand the intrincate way in which one's mind is engaging in some mindset. Another way to look at the mindset is that a mindset is like a worldview, or just a point of view. There are an infinity of possible worldviews some of which are mutually incompatible, and an infinity of points of views in the same way. These are all different ways of speaking about the same thing. A point of view is identical to an individual being. So because there are latently infinite points of view, there are latently infinite sentient beings. So the main distinction here is that the mind is not something optional, or something you have a choice about. At your core, behind your human/conventional commitments, you are a mind. We can make this distinction because just as you commit to being a human being, you can commit to being any sort of being, even some fantastical being we can't currently imagine. When I say "core" I speak abstractly. I don't mean to imply an actual physical center or some object you could examine in your field of awareness. By "core" I mean the state of your will when it's become maximally aware of optionality of commitments, and has chosen to relax. When this happens, all phenomena become ambiguous. And if you relax enduringly and ongoingly, this in itself can be understood as a special, extraordinary commitment. So mind is much more abstract than a mindset. One could say that the mind is the ultimate abstraction. The mind as a capacity is primordial and it has no conditions for beginning, enduring, or ending. Recognizing the primordial nature of the mind is the essential first step on an alchemical transmutation of ordinary experience into something extraordinary.

You're saying it as if you're informing me.

You're not in control of defining the scope of my knowledge. On the contrary, I can declare that your knowledge is null and void and I will get away with it if that's what I decide to do.

Paul, one more thing. Personally, I prefer cordial, friendly, and lateral relationships. This means the best relationship to my mind is friendship, and this is what I offer to you -- friendship -- the best relationship I know. However, if you absolutely insist that between you and me one of us is a Lord and one is a supplicant, what I call a vertical relationship, you must understand beyond any doubt whatsoever, that I am your Lord and you are my supplicant, unconditionally. It's not important what you think your accomplishments are, etc. It's not important what anyone else thinks of you, including your long list of "esteemed" teachers. I don't even consider such things. If you insist on someone being a Lord, congratulations, you've made me your Lord. I don't like supplicants much, but if you insist, I will accept you as a supplicant instead of as a friend. Your choice. And remember, that while I may enjoy our possible friendship, there is nothing I need from you, and there is absolutely nothing you can show me or teach me that I don't already know on some level, perhaps better than you can possibly imagine.

Paul, a person can be bereft of wisdom in some sense, as is the case with a person considered foolish, but a person can never be bereft of the mind as a capacity to know, to experience and to will. That's the difference between wisdom and the mind. And the difference between the mind and the mindset is that a mindset is a specific state that a mind must undertake of many possible optional such states. Both types of differences are important for different reasons.

Your exact words were "uncommon siddhis" and the best translation for siddhi is "psychic power." You offered "accomplishment" as a translation, and I never accepted it because it's too wide in scope, too unspecific. Siddhi is pretty specific compared to accomplishment, I think, at least in the Buddhist context. http://dictionary.tamilcube.com/sanskrit-dictionary.aspx try putting in "accomplishment" and observe the broad choice of translations you can get. In any case, you also said your teachers had common siddhis, and I think we all know what that means. That's the rules of your club. I agree. You don't need anything. You mean you want sincerity. I am sincere all the time. Then you should already know why I am pestering you. Your question makes no sense no matter how you slice it. If it's a sincere request for information, you should already know. If it's your way to ask me to go away, you know you can't do that and you know why not.

The problem is that wisdom can be latent or actively recognized. The mind can never be latent or actively recognized because the mind is never an object of cognition as I define it. The mind is a capacity to know, to experience and to will. As such it is never an object of experience, because nothing in our experience can uniquely represent the capacities I speak of. So it's skillful to separate the mind from wisdom, but for completely different reasons. It's much more important to separate the mind from the mindset.

I don't read Wittgenstein. I'm using my own words here. And it's not a game, because the distinction between the mind and the mindset is crucial. I think most of the time Buddhists, and especially Dzogchenpas, talk about mind, they'd be better served talking about the mindset. It is the mindset that they're discussing and not the mind.

I strongly disagree with this statement. The states of knowing never enter into any extremes. That means the extreme of ignorance is only a suggestive appearance without any substance to it. That means all possible states of mind are latent, including the enlightened state of skillful and extraordinary recognition of what's happening in one's immediate experience. These various states of mind can be obscured by holding clumsy commitments, but they're not truly absent, and exist subtly and latently in the subconscious at all times, or timelessly, as primordial all-potential. When one correctly learns Dzogchen, it's less like learning a new skill, and more like remembering something you've always known, but have been choosing to ignore. It's like "duh, of course! how could I forget? hahah... silly me!"

I don't put any words in your mouth. You said the people on your list exhibited common and uncommon psychic powers, both. Maybe you want to go back on that. Maybe now you want to say that the people on your list exhibit mostly uncommon psychic powers and none of the "common" ones. Dzogchen has no rules. It can't. You're basically lying here. You're confusing the rules of your little club with Dzogchen. So if I teach you a method of cooking a potato, can I still say that cooking potatoes cannot be taught? If you answer yes, then how is Dzogchen unique in that it can't be taught when nothing at all can be taught (assuming you agree with my previous example)? If I put conditions on your life, am I liberating you? So if you say, you need to come here and get a transmittion from me before you can liberate yourself, aren't you putting conditions on people? As for being a little pest, to really understand what's happening to you here, you need to meet me first. Otherwise you'll be really confused and unhappy for a very long time.

The mind or the mindset? People always confuse the two. The mind is a tri-capacity to know, to experience and to will. I split those three for intuitive clarity, but really they are so intertwined as to be inseparable. There is no knowing without willing, no knowing without experience, no experience without knowing, no experience without willing and so on. Any connection, in any order, between any of the aspects of the tri-capacity is a valid one. By contrast the mindset is some specific and particular state that the mind can get into.