goldisheavy

Ah, if it's not one-off, why don't you talk to whoever tells you "Om!" Ask them "how's your day?" or something innocuous like that to break the ice. Or if the guy tells you "Om!" you can reply with your own "Om!" right back. Play the game. Participate in the energy flow. Don't reject it. Make it your bitch.

Are you able to distinguish good-natured ribbing from ridicule? From what you describe it doesn't sound malicious. Sure, the person is not taking you seriously, but there is a difference between not being taken seriously and being ridiculed. Is it consistent? Sounds like a one-off thing. Just forget it if one-off is all it is.

It seems like my first reply may come off as a bit more anti-drug than I would like. So I want to say this to be clear. I think drugs are not inherently bad. I think that a wise person who doesn't have a dismissive or casual attitude toward the drugs, but who instead treats them with some basic and common-sense respect, and as a gateway into the sacred or the spiritual reality, such person can get very good results from drugs. The same person will understand that drugs are just but one door and not make taking drugs an exclusive activity, but would mix them with contemplation and meditation and so on. Like I said, the shamans of old had a very different attitude toward the mushrooms compared to many modern people. They didn't think of the magic mushrooms as something casual, like some candy or some way to merely have fun. And so I wouldn't criticize those guys. I can only criticize the cheap fun seekers and the casual, mundane, disinterested and ignorant consumers of today. I trust people here are wise enough and mature enough to know where they fit. If you think you treat drugs with flippancy and a dismissive ease, then you know you're a consumer without me having to tell you that. If not, then you know you're wise enough to benefit from the mushrooms or the modern derivatives like LSD. What really matters is not so much a substance as context and understanding. Food, coffee, exercise, everything we do alters our state of mind. Watching advertising on TV alters your state of mind. Just because drugs also alter it is neither here nor there. Context is everything. The context for commercial advertisement is such that watching those ads is more likely to turn you into a mindless zombie than enlighten you. But in the right context watching an ad can be an enlightening experience too. In my opinion, spiritual path is all about empowerment, and it's not so easy to feel empowered by something you consider to be external to you. If your power comes from something external, is it really yours? This is one thing that a mushroom or LSD user really needs to be honest (to one's own self, and not to me or anyone on this forum) about.

It's bad for a number of reasons, but there are positive aspects. It's bad because people who take drugs believe in substances, and having drugs produce a change in consciousness only reinforces an incorrect belief that substance is something ultimately real. It's also bad because it puts the spiritual experience into a bad context. Suppose the experience was positive and otherwise would be informative and enlightening. But because it was induced by drugs, it is easily dismissed as "Oh, it was just drugs." In other words, a drug provides the context of "less genuine" and "less authentic" since a drug is an external agent. So if you want to lift some weight and you drink something that allows you to lift that weight, you can't really be proud of lifting it, since it wasn't you who lifted the weight, it was the liquid. The bulk of the credit goes to the enabling liquid. That's why when you have, what would otherwise be a good experience, the wrong context disempowers, declaws, castrates that experience. Drugs are also bad if they become a dependency. If you begin to think that only through LSD can you experience such and such, or only through hash, and so on. If this becomes your thought, you are screwed. But drugs can have positive effects. Something that might otherwise require years of training can be accessed with a pill. And even though drugs provide a bad context for the experience, nonetheless sometimes the experience is able to overcome its own context and to challenge your worldview in a way you can't later dismiss by saying "oh, it was just drugs, let's forget it and move on." That's not a guarantee, but it's a possibility. So drugs do have some positive possibilities, but it's a craps shoot. But if there is a person who can neutralize the context of the drugs being a substance or an external agent, this downside can be mitigated and then drugs can be completely positive. So for example, if someone introduces LSD as your own mind's manifestation and as insubstantial, this will set a much better context -- but for most people who take LSD such a guide is unavailable. The shamans of olde thought of magic mushrooms as spirits, see, so their context was sacred. We think of the same mushrooms as substance, thus our context is junk. Plus, we think of drugs as consumers, as just another thing you consume, like a latte. That's a bad context. So I hope this helps. So drugs are not absolutely bad, they are simply bad for the absolute majority of people in our times.

Ralis, do you mind giving an example of this in practice? I rarely, if ever, come up with double binds. Usually my problems are like this, simplified: "If I don't go to work, I will have more trouble or hassle surviving. But if I go to work, I will suffer insults to my humanity." It's not exactly a double bind. Here I have a condition to exist in this realm. If I don't want to exist in this realm, this entire problem just vanishes altogether. But let's say I want to be a human among humans in this world. So I have to choose how to hassle myself. I either hassle myself working for others, and endure their constant insults, and the insult of being in a subservient position. Or I have to hassle myself learning survivalist skills to live in nature. Or I have to hassle myself learning how to run my own business. But either way, as long as I insist on being inside a human realm, a human among humans, I have chosen a hassle. The only way to really end this, is to give up humanity entirely. That doesn't mean running away from it per se, but it means to give humanity no heed. To ignore it. To give it no weight. That means you stop being a human. Remember when Buddha was asked if he was a human, he said, in so many words, "no." He was asked a series of questions, "Are you this?" Like "Are you a god?" No. "Are you a ghost?" No. "Are you a spirit?" No. "Are you a sage?" No. And so on. "What are you?" "I am awake." Buddha means awake (by the way, in the Russian language the verb "budhit'" means "to wake someone up"). Now, I don't want to promote Buddhism (I consider it to be an erring ideology that has some good/useful bits in it), but this was a convenient example for this particular discussion. When you pick for yourself something that is inherently self-contradictory, you will have problems. The first step to ending it is to become aware of it. Then you've got options. You can end it at an inner level by learning to tolerate contradictions and stopping to wish to end contradictions. Or you can end it at an outer level by giving no heed to contradictions, thus disempowering them. Because contradictions are visionary, just like all of existence, with enough wisdom, it is possible to make them disappear with your intent. That's part of what magic is. So, if you have a cup of bitter beer, you can learn to like it, or you can learn to change how it actually tastes by magic. These are the no-hassle options. The third option requires hassle, and that means, to transform beer according to hassle-steps. Hassle-steps are the steps that we believe the world requires from us. For example, the first step might be to boil the beer, and then collect the vapor. Or the first step may be to find some fruit and juice them (to get ready to mix the juice with beer). Or the first step may be to get more water (to get ready to dilute the beer). These steps are hassle, and the reason we would think of those steps is because we deeply believe that the world is structured. Our natural state is unstructured. Our intent is unstructured. In our dreams, when we are not hassled -- we want it, and so it is. There are no steps. This condition of not having steps to go through, is what we conceive to be hassle-free. I want to fly, and I fly. I want something to appear, and it appears. This is the natural state. I mean natural in the sense that it's very comfortable (contrast with "His body was curled up in an unnatural position and his breath jagged" meaning uncomfortable). So in this sense, when we say people are unnatural, we don't mean people don't appear, we mean people do things that are unnecessarily bothersome uncomfortable, like scratching your ear with your toes when a hand will do. So when our naturally, comfortably unstructured intent encounters structure, it begins to suffer. Structure is an imposition. Structure is OK short-term. For example, a game is a structured activity. A game is fun short-term. But imagine if you were locked into a game and couldn't get out? Then all the fun of the game would be gone, and it would be pure hell, because any but the shortest living structure is felt as hell. Structures are limits on freedom. So understanding the situation is the most important thing. Then you need immense courage to make a decision about it. If you want an outer transformation, you have to be nothing less then fearless, and beyond the human condition in a very profound way.

Just because you're unable to see someone, doesn't mean that person is gone from within their own point of reference. If I simply depart from you in some City and turn the corner, you can't see me anymore, but am I dead? It's possible that I move to another country and as a result of life, change completely how I look. Then I come back and you cannot recognize me. Am I dead? To you I am dead. To me, I am alive. That's the meaning of alternative frames of reference. Well, the body isn't moving. That's what you mean. That's not much proof. For example, a person who is sleeping might not be moving, or a person who is clinically dead and is in process of being resuscitated might not be moving either, that doesn't mean they are dead from their own frame of reference. People who have been clinically dead have reported having experiences upon being successfully jump-started back to "life". Where is your proof of tomorrow? You can't prove that tomorrow exists, and yet I bet you believe there is a tomorrow in store for you.

I thought this was a great movie and I enjoyed it. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3791007322683758535#

There is no relation to physicalism here. Physicalism is belief that the ultimate nature of everything is physical. However, let's say the ultimate nature of everything is psychological instead of physical, like in dreams. Do you think characters in my dreams can accurately gauge my state of mind? Absolutely not, unless that's part of the dream, which is very rare (in my case, it's so rare that it hasn't happened yet). How about the other way around? The same is also true the other way around. I don't know the state of anyone's mind in my dreams. Nor do I need to. I just need to know my own state, and that's more than enough. There is nothing else to know. Ego is nothing. Don't obsess on it too much. One thing I found was that I could leave myself behind, but not my family. Attachment to this world, as we know it, goes far beyond our personal ego. People waste so much time bashing the ego and considering it. Ego doesn't matter at all. It's neither here nor there. It doesn't help or harm anything for the most part. Ego has no role to play in spirituality, not a positive role and not a negative role either. The only important thing about ego is during mundane day to day life when you want to be accepted and respected, and when you feel someone else is seemingly too self-assured, you consider that to be egoism, since it may cause you to doubt yourself. If other people are not sure of themselves and stammer and stutter, that makes you feel good, because you feel confident next to someone who isn't confident at all. So when someone is assertive and opinionated, we feel threatened. In other words, seeing big egos in other people is an indication of having a fragile and a big ego oneself, and it's also an indication that you are busy with social jockeying. Spirituality, on the other hand, is not about social jockeying, and thus the sizes of egos just do not matter on the path. This is why, for example, ego is not mentioned even once in Chuang Tzu or Tao Te Ching or any other important document. The people who talk most about egos are modern people who are jockeying for a social position and not the ancient masters. And in Buddhism, any comparison of oneself and others, be it in favor of oneself, or in favor of the other, or neutral, all are frowned upon and all are called "conceit." So, for example, someone who thinks of oneself as lesser than others, is conceited in Buddhist understanding. So any comparison of oneself and others is conceit. This means any discussion of ego size, which necessarily must involve a comparison of some sort, is conceit from the Buddhist POV. So I don't know any tradition that really bashes the ego.

Man don't long to look at boobs throughout the day either, unless we're talking about a horny teenager or a 20 year old. Men like a lot more things in life than just boobs, and all those other things we like compete for our attention together with the boobs.

If this is true, I should live for thousands of years.

I think spirituality is quite distinct from religion. Having a spiritual experience is not the basis for religion. It's the basis for spirituality. The basis for religion is always a religious doctrine and a certain degree of mindlessness, because if you are mindful and are able to think critically, there is no way you would fail to discern many logical holes in pretty much any doctrine. I see. So you know what Bill believes and you're not taking him at his word.

Stare at some dicks? And if that's hard to do, try staring at male butts. It's all give and take. If you, on the whole, enjoy the men as much as they enjoy you, you are even and there is no stealing.

That's not exactly true. Like I said, that one laughing priest in Vatican is certainly not something Bill was planning on and he certainly doesn't "help" Bill in any way. He has a point though -- religion has a lot of stuff in it that we normally wouldn't believe if it wasn't called "religion." So for example, we don't believe in Jack and the Beanstalk account; we "know" it's a fairy tale. But more or less the same thing in the Bible, and suddenly a lot of us are willing to believe that. That's crazy because we're not applying the same standard of judgment across the board here when we do stuff like that. He also brought up another great point that a lot of things people claim to be special and unique about their religion are copies/plagiarism from the previous ones: like the virgin birth, the 25th of December birth, baptism in the river, and so on. So if a virgin birth is a common claim for a religious leader to make, suddenly you realize that your own leader is not as special as you might have thought otherwise. What about the tendency of religious people to believe that they will go to heaven, and everyone from other religions will go to hell? That's not something extremist. That's a very common belief. It's also a poisonous belief that tears at the fabric of society. Imagine going through your life believing your coworkers and people that you constantly interact with will all go to hell? It certainly colors your interactions. Another thing is, imagine believing that this world is less important than the world to come. Do you think that kind of belief has no implication in day to day life? It sure does. And that too was Bill's point. I think you really need to watch the move again, and carefully this time.

Exactly. I can be wrong -- it wouldn't be the first time, if I am. However, as I understand it, most serious Christians are of the opinion that there is nothing that's "chaff" in the Bible. I am pretty sure the "separate wheat from the chaff" is a Hindu sentiment. Maybe those exact words are English-ized. Maybe in India the same sentiment is expressed by a slightly different idiomatic saying. That's possible too. In my experience, the Hindus are vastly less dogmatic than Christians (or Muslims, or Jews). Hindus tend to question more. I've even heard of atheist Hindus. It seems strange, but such a beast supposedly exists in India too. So Hinduism seems very flexible in what it allows. Compare this with, say, Christianity, where an atheist Christian is an impossibility.

It's someone who can make decisions, like "OK, it's time to get a cup of coffee, but I've also wanted to go for a jog... OK, let's jog first and get coffee later." A person makes decisions like that. I gave a trivial decision there as an example, but decisions don't have to be trivial. So I think Christians are inclined to believe that God makes decisions, while Daoists are more inclined to believe that Dao is a reality that can't possibly be captured/described by one decision-making personality.

Virtue has multiple meanings. The main meaning is, it is that, which makes a person maximally effective. So for example, wisdom is a virtue, as it makes a wise person more effective than a foolish one. Patience, or a state beyond anticipation, is a virtue because people with calm minds are more effective. And so on. On a social plane, whatever gives most happiness to most people is what's most effective. So if one person is very happy, but the exact same reason that one person is happy is also the reason another 100 hundred people are sad, that's not very effective for society as a whole, and it wouldn't be a social virtue. Social virtue is that which leads as many people as possible to happiness, and this requires contentment. If someone in the community has an insatiable desire, that person will cause trouble for everyone in the community. So having an insatiable desire for anything, and especially for social status or material possession, is a vice (the opposite of virtue).

I think Bill sometimes tried to get a little under some people's skin, but not all the time. Most of the time he just asked good and honest questions and let people speak for themselves. He asked some questions that I am sure a lot of people want to ask too, but just can't work up the courage to ask.

For the most part I don't have a special routine and thus I can't recommend one either. One exception is if I am severely sick, I will do a healing visualization before going to sleep. If I am not sick, there is nothing in particular that I will do or avoid doing. I might meditate or contemplate, or maybe just allow myself to drift off to sleep. Earlier, when I needed to test certain things inside lucid dreams, I would briefly focus on my intention to be lucid inside my dreams before going to sleep. I don't do that now, since by now I have already realized, through testing and experimentation, there is no substantial difference between dreaming and waking. Once I got that point, I didn't see any further need for lucid dreaming. My dreams tend to be fun whether I am lucid or not, so I don't need to explicitly control them.

I agree. I was also surprised by one priest at the Vatican... he seemed so level-headed and chilled out. He was laughing and having a good time and he was killing all the sacred cows left and right too, which was cool and unexpected. I do get the impression that religious people, for the most part, are somewhat crazy.

I don't think he ruined anything. Don't overestimate Vajrahridaya's importance and you'll be OK. If you think what Vajrahridaya types here is terribly important, then of course it makes sense to imagine that he has the power to ruin something here. To get back to the topic, I think that the experience of mystery is important, but it has a different context in Daoism and in Christianity. And while some people are quick to throw that out the window, I think context is everything. A Christian in an apophatic prayer has a different context. While this Christian is trying to shut that context out and to challenge it by negating it or by ignoring it, nonetheless, that context has force and adds a certain flavor to everything. The same is true of the Daoist, who has his or her own baggage/context to deal with. When you bring up the idea of God in mind, like in a centering prayer, you bring up your understanding of that idea, which includes every last bit of context. So yes, context is important at every stage of the process. For one thing, I think Christians and Daoists will not agree on whether the supreme being is personal or impersonal. I think Daoists will probably lean toward impersonal and Christians will lean toward personal.

It's not all the same thing. First, we should distinguish mystical traditions from non-mystical. Most religious people, from followers/parishioners to the high priests, are utterly non-mystical. Not only that, but they fear the mystical and have at times reacted most violently to it. Thus, it's not uncommon among Christians to hear words of hate directed toward Gnostic Christians or to any mystical Christian. It's not uncommon among Muslims to hear words of hate directed toward Sufis. In fact, many Sufis have been murdered by none other than pious Muslims. Mystics share some common ground. For one thing, they all share an acknowledgment of the indescribable. However, they are not all identical. For example, if you ever look at the energy channels in the body, as they are described in Kabbalah, and then compare that to the same from Hindu traditions, and again to what we hear of the nagual traditions, very different pictures emerge. It is greatly dishonest to insist it's all the same. It's not. And if you don't believe me, follow it up and see for yourself. Don't take my word for it. Non-mystics are concerned with one thing -- preservation of status quo. Period. They hate anything that's transformative: critical thinking, deep reason, mysticism, imagination, creativity. This is why all such elements are frowned upon, or outright banned. For example, many Muslims ban things like celebrations and music. Many ban women from attending schools or exercising independence. And Christians these days are not as bad as Muslims, but they do the same thing not by outright bans, but by collectively frowning upon certain activities, and by threatening excommunication, which for some people seems like a big deal, and thus presents a workable threat. Non-mystics tend to live for the next life. Anything that will improve this life they fear and disdain. Mystics want to experience the glories and mysteries now and not later. So I would say, some similarities exist among mystics of many traditions. Also similarities exist among non-mystics of many traditions. Everything is neither the same, nor completely different, and there is a lot of useless dogma and bullshit in most (or in every) tradition that's blocking true understanding. As some Hindu Guru I don't recall said, "You've got to separate the wheat from the chaff." Traditions have a lot of shit intermingled with gold. Use your own head.

OK, so I browsed a bit on journeyic and I found this post mewtwo: It's actually harder than that. If an ordinary person tries this, it won't work. Why not? Because imagination's power is limited by beliefs. Most people believe that the world, our bodies, and everything imaginable is physical in nature. As physical stuff, it doesn't change easily, and it changes only according to very inconvenient and unwieldy physical rules. So for example, to change a lighter element into gold is theoretically possible using nuclear fusion, but to do that would require equipment and private property worth billions of dollars due to the limitations of the physical laws. The hardest thing about magic is not really intent per se, but rather, understanding how beliefs condition the intent. To really transform one's body one literally has to let go of the whole world as we know it. And only then will imagination's scope be sufficient enough to create that kind of appearance. This is not going to be practical for most people. Most people have goals, hopes, desires and dreams for the physicality. They can't just let go of it. On a deep level, this very physicality is itself an act of magic and intent. In other words, we wanted to experience these kinds of limitations and here they are. So why would you stop wanting something that you wanted at first? It's possible, but it will require a significant change. If you wanted to eat ice cream all your life, why would one day you stop? It's unlikely. The likely thing is to continue the trend. So if you enjoyed ice cream in the past, you are likely to continue enjoying it in the future. If you've built up this appearance of physicality in the past and have enjoyed it, chances are, you still enjoy it, and will continue with it in the future. So most talk of magic remains purely theoretical. It's like an ice cream lover talking about a world without ice cream. It's purely theoretical. As soon as the discussion is over, you stop over for more fine ice cream and things are back to the usual.

Ah, I remember this guy. I don't agree with everything he says, but he does have one video I found very insightful. It was about healing and karma. In it he was essentially saying that you've worked hard to get your disease, and if the disease were just taken away superficially, without changing your state of mind at a deeper level, you'd likely re-manifest the illness again. So real healing means real change on the inside. I don't think it's true for every condition, but it's true for a lot of chronic conditions like asthma, skin rashes, allergy, and so on. It's definitely not true for a broken arm healing inside a cast. Anyway, I thought that video was pretty good. He actually explained it even better than my brief summary here. On the other hand, some of his videos, especially the ones where he talks about magic, are completely misguided (or just plain ignorant). He doesn't really understand magic because he is a physicalist, and so he can't honestly reconcile magic with the laws of physics, and thus, he is constantly grasping at straws and is looking at weird corner cases and so on. He's looking for some kind of gap in the laws of physics or a gap in how we see the world. In other words, magic for this guy, is a second-class citizen. It's not the primary activity of the world, but something that exists in the shadowy corners. I completely disagree with that. As for his ego? I don't think he has a big ego at all. I'm sure he has some ego, but he actually strikes me as a decent, albeit somewhat ignorant, guy. And by "decent" I don't mean he's up to my standard of "decent," because he is selling things that he has no business selling in my opinion. I mean "decent" in the more general sense, not my personal sense. As it stands, while I try to imagine he is just misguided, but in the back of my mind I can't get rid of a more cynical thought, saying that he's exploiting people for money. But even if you're a thief or an exploiter, it doesn't mean your ego is big. You can be a thief who doesn't think too much of oneself. At the same time, you can look like a humble monk who rarely opens one's mouth, and think a whole lot of yourself, and that's a huge ego, but you'd never know this, unless you could read the thoughts. So unless you can read minds, which I don't think anyone on this forum can, I'd reserve your judgment on the size of the ego. You don't know. How big or small the ego is, is a hidden quality. You can't reliably discern the size of the ego from outward behavior and appearances. You have to know more about someone's motivations, ideas, beliefs, and basically someone's inner state of mind, to judge the size of ego. Plus, having a small ego is not a good thing either, but this post is already too long.

My dog has had this state from birth.

Who is Wan? Where are all these newbies asking about siddhis? Send them over here. I want to see some of those questions. As for you, mewtwo, it's simple. You need to realize it's a marathon and not a sprint. Relax. Take it easy. Say your thing, but don't have too many expectations as far as the effects of your communication go. When you get tired, take a break. Take a nap, as a small break, or do some other activity for a week, as a bigger break. Recharge your batteries and come back to try again. Like I said, marathon and not a sprint. This cake is always here waiting for you, so don't try to eat it all at once. Take a bite, rest. Digest. Relax. Then take another bite. And so on. It's simple.