liminal_luke

May I suggest ... spark plug.

Perhaps it´s just different stages of the practice, but my experience was different. I found myself opening and feeling like I was more myself than ever before. Like I was picking myself up and putting pieces back in place that had been lost long ago. I felt more in my body, less scattered. It felt like coming home.

Hi Michael, I´m just about as out-of-the-loop as it gets, having gone into chat exactly once. It´s a rare occasion when people are up to sexual shananigans -- with each other or strictly on the astral planes -- and I don´t know about it. Not sure how I could of missed this one. (If indeed, this has anything to do with anything, which, I´m realizing as I edit, it may not.) What I can say with some confidence, even without having met you in person, is that you want the best for this board and are rightly concerned for the wellbeing of us Bums generally. I know that your actions as a moderator reflected those values of care and stewardship... that you did what you thought was right. If there´s a hard and fast rule about moderation rotation, well, so be it. But if any part of this rotation decision has to do with a conflict among moderators and staff, now that´s something else. Seems to me like an odd way to say Thank You. In any case, none of this takes away from the good work you´ve done for so long. Moderation, as everyone knows, is tough. If you´re not making unpopular decisions, you´re probably not doing it right. Thanks for bringing your unique persepective and expertise to the job. This place is all the better for it. Liminal

thinking not the same as lying in a cornfield looking at the sky

Personally, I didn´t get much past the title. If Sionnach really wants to discuss Marxism in the off topic area (without the anti-semetic overtunes), couldn´t he just start a new thread about Marxism? Easey peasey.

A few years back someone (I think it was Trunk) brought up the difference between resting your mind on the lower dan tien, and actually switching your center of consciousness so that it´s actually emanating from the dan tien itself. An important distinction, I think.

Murderers come in all ethnicities and racial persuasions. But my hatemongering radar goes up when I read thread titles like this one. Learning history is one thing, fanning prejudice another. I´m not going to report this thread but I think it´s skirting a line. Whenever someone names a minority group and tells us that we "mustn´t forget" something negative about that group...well, you´ve got to wonder about motivation. Here are some other potential threads I´d find similarly questionable. We mustn´t forget that... Asians are bad drivers. Blacks are gangsters and thieves. Arabs are terrorists. And so on. Some stereotypes really are best forgotten.

Hi Orion, I´d hit it with everything you got. Sounds like this situation is really bothering you and you need some sort of hopeful change, some relief, soon. Nothing about internal work implies that we need to sit and stew in a situation that isn´t working for us. And, likewise, no external change will render inner growth redundant or unnecessary. There may be times when a person naturally gravitates toward one or another approach, but I´d get out of the either/or mindset. Do both. You know how it feels to be a kid standing on a rocky outcropping on the riverbank, deciding whether or not to step off that ledge and fall into the icy cold water below? The dance of fear and hesitation as you considered whether or not to take that leap into the unknown. And then you jump... (PS. Please make sure the river isn´t running too fast, the rocky ledge not too high. I´m not advocating recklessness. Just a gentle jump that will land you somewhere new. It might be someplace better or worse. Either way, know that you are strong enough to make your way.)

Or do they?

Brian recently posted a story about reassuring a fast-food worker that she was going to be OK just before she suffered some sort of health collapse in the back of the restaurant. What does this story say about spiritual practice and our experience of time? Most of us perceive time in the same linear way, one second following another in strict, boring order. Seconds do not generally cut in front of each other in line. I don´t speak from personal experience, but my sense is that practice changes all that, that there´s a stage of spiritual development where time goes all funny. Time can slow down, speed up, stand still. Time can hop around in ways that defy conventional understanding. You know that bumper sticker: It´s never too late to have a happy childhood. Call me nutty, but I believe it´s literally true.

Here´s the thing, Papayaapple. All those people talking about our inherent spotless enlightened nature and how it has been there all along? They didn´t just wake up one morning with that realization. Ask them how much they practiced before that understanding came. Ask Spotless. Ask Silent Thunder. A person has to practice a hell of a lot before that kind of knowing sinks all the way in. (Even if the sinking, when it comes, seems to happen suddenly.)

Beautiful! What particularly strikes me is the order. So many times I think people try to jump to transcendence before adequately addressing the "soveignty over one´s own energy" part. Then again, others struggle so mightily to establish a firm boundary between themselves and others that they are loathe to let it go even when the time has come -- it can feel like going backwards I think intimacy is like this too. Most of us start out neurotically fused with other people, and have to do lots of work just figuring out where we start and our loved ones begin. Eventually we figure out how to be ourselves and let other people be themselves too. Healthy boundaries. And just as soon as we learn how to make those boundaries the next spiritual step is to let them dissolve. Such a sublime paradox.

If JoeBlasts sources are correct, Hillary is bumping off anybody with the wherewithal and inside information necessary to expose her evil ways. Maybe I´ve been binge watching too much House of Cards lately, but this sounds plausible to me. And Trump is...well, don´t even get me started. Mind altering substances have never been my thing, but maybe it´s no mystery that these postings recently turned to pot. This is a thread best read stoned.

Thanks, Marblehead.. I wanted to emphasize the part you wrote above -- so true! People always see so much more about us than we think they do. Or at least that´s my experience. Even online, different personalities really come through.

Do you mean the older we get the more vulnerable we become, or the harder it gets to be real with ourselves and others about our vulnerabilities? At fifty, I´m already feeling a certain kind of vulnerability that comes with increasing years. Health, in general, seems a more fragile thing. I´m beginning to believe, at long last, that I will die one day. New friends are a little harder to come by. At the same time I´m kind of just OK with everything. I accept myself now in a way I didn´t in my twenties. Our culture celebrates youth but have you ever noticed how bat-shit out-of-their-heads a lot of those twentysomethings are? (No offense, I hope; there are many, many exceptions.) You don´t have to look farther than this forum to see it. Look at all the young male whippersnappers all torn up about their sexuality, for example. Some of the older people on the forum have mental health issues as well (ahum), but they are less likely to express obvious anguish -- or even admit to having any difficulty whatsoever. In these cases, vulnerability has long been buried in the emotional landfill of personality. So anyway, I´m growing in self-acceptance as I age. Growing in self-acceptance at a snails pace, granted, but I accept that too. This forum is pretty darn humbling. You ever notice how many brillant people there are here? How many people who have put in serious work at their spiritual practices and really got somewhere? Looking around at the Mensa-level intellects and enlightened spirits (a few people qualify for both groups!), a guy might start feeling a little small. I´ve felt small before, but I´m more OK now, taking my place here. It´s like walking in a grove of mighty redwoods. I´m talking about self-acceptance because I think it´s key to allowing vulnerability. When I accept myself, I have the strength to let you see me. You might not like me after you do, but I know I´m going to be OK.

Unfortunately, lessdaomorebum, deletion doesn´t seem to be an option. You could, of course, simply choose to stop posting, but even that -- as you may have noticed -- is harder than it looks.

What a bummer.

It´s really hard, in my experience, to pick a spiritual practice and stick with it long-term, because practice, if it´s any good at all, gently nudges me up against my vulnerability. I hate that. Even breathing is a pain in the ass if I really let myself get into it.

If lesstaomorebum was on the fence about his participation here before now, reading this thread through should cinch the decision.

Hi 小梦想, Maybe you already said and I just missed it, but could you explain what this initial step is that is often (?) missing. I think that would be helpful, to me and perhaps others. Thanks!

I find my fellow Bums exasperating, fascinating, enlightening, erudite, and -- often -- annoying as hell. Come to think of it, that pretty much sums up my opinion of people in general. There´s no escape, my friend. No escape.

That depends. If you´re just bumming about on the Off Topic section of TheDaoBums being uncivilized and unreasonable is A-OK (though, even here, civility helps). Bantering around the dinner table with family and friends who know and love you? Make all the off-color comments you like. But this guy wants to be president. It´s a job that requires impulse control and maturity and uncommon common sense. Nobody likes to be heckled, but being heckled comes with campaigning for president. There are law enforcement officers and security personnel at rallies. These are people who have been trained to deal with protesters. They should be allowed to do their jobs. Trump said that if people "got rough" with hecklers, he would pay their legal fees. We can argue about whether or not this constitutes "inciting" violence. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that Trump offered to fund violence. Maybe he was joking. I don´t care. Either way, this is not a man I want as president of my country. Perhaps I shouldn´t be shocked anymore, but it always surprises me to discover that other people think differently than I do. Some people here on TB, people whose wisdom I otherwise respect, seem to like Trump -- and I just don´t know what to make of that. I think the appeal comes precisely because he isn´t civilized and doesn´t appear to care what impression he makes. There´s a downhome "this is who I am, take me or leave me" quality that strikes many as honest, refreshingly guileless, American. He comes out and says what so many of us secretly feel and would like to say, but don´t. And we admire him for it. Trump is kind of an asshole, but he´s an unrepettent one and that´s a quality we tend to like in our leaders. Take the comment he made to Celebrity Apprentice contestent Brande Roderick: must be a pretty picture, you dropping to your knees. Now, I don´t really fault Trump for that opinion. Lots of us have sexual fantasies that involve control and submission. Fantasy is fantasy. But, come on folks, that´s not the kind of thing you say publically when you want to be a world leader. It´s the kind of desire you share with your wife, confess to your therapist, blather on about with your unconditionally loving Bassett Hound. You got to wonder about someone who says it´s on TV Then again, people seem to love him for it, so maybe he´s smarter than I think.