liminal_luke

Hi RiverSnake, Your question is still being batted around by the mod team but, speaking just for myself, I´ll say that I´m uncomfortable with the idea of energy readings or healings being offered to individual Bums for money. Which isn´t to say that your services aren´t valuable or that you don´t deserve compensation for the work you do. What I´d want to avoid is the appearance of the forum being used for business purposes. To me, part of the beauty of this place is that it stands apart from the incessent barrage of advertisement that´s impossible to get away from on the web and in everyday life. I love that people ask for and give advice and offer opinions here simply out of goodwill, rather than to make money.

I´m not sure human beings really possess anything in the end. Artists work to become conduits of the artistic impulse, but what comes through does not belong to them or anyone else. Art is that which cannot be possessed. It stands apart, inviolate, independent, transcendent, much like spirit itself.

The subject of spirituality may be vast but our posts about it need not be. I like your brief summation, two sentences that take no more than a few seconds to read but perhaps lifetimes -- in my case, anyway -- to put into practice. I´ll start by working on not "clinging to positions." This might take awhile.

Spirituality begins where narcissism leaves off. It starts with the shocking realization that other people exist. Our individual lives are exceedingly small against the backdrop of the universe -- wow! Snuggle up to this impossible smallness until it flips and you´re suddenly big. Between big and small, self and other, important and so very insignificant, there´s a place that we might call spiritual. You can find it in Tibet or in the church down the street or in your own heart. It is pretty much like every other place, or so I think, anyway.

Lust is part of our makeup and I wouldn´t be in a hurry to wipe it out. It´s like hunger. Millions of people have issues with food -- I know I do -- but the answer isn´t to eliminate hunger. Millions of people also have problems with sex -- I take the fifth -- but the answer isn´t to eliminate lust.

This hasn´t been my experience with real life Buddhism, though it´s very much my experience reading Buddhists posts on the board. Years ago I attended several vipassana retreats. Yes, we had dharma talks but the practice, my gosh, that was some of the most intense practice I´ve done in my life. Perhaps I was just lucky? ........................................................................................... In regard to mindfulness: I was told that the aim of meditation is not psychotherapeutic. It can certainly make people aware of knots in the body-mind, which is always helpful from a mental health perspective, but the intention is not to eliminate our everyday craziness.

In Mantak Chia´s fusion stuff (I know, horrors!) there´s some work that involves cultivating the virtues of the organ spirits, which includes kindness and compassion. Still, I don´t think there´s an emphasis on compassion in Taoism like you´d get in Metta practice for example. That said, I do think Taoist practice develops kindness and compassion, among other virtues, because that´s who we are. I believe our deepest nature is to be loving beings. For the most part, Taoism takes a backdoor approach to this kind of cultivation: less talk, more gathering chi and clearing channels. That´s OK. When the chi is gathered and the channels are clear, kindness will blossom.

ilumairen, Over the years, I´ve had occasion to read a great many of your posts and the word "bridled" has never come to mind. That, I think, is a good thing.

So far we´ve said that lust is base, unbridled, and rooted in the ego. It´s all true. Furthermore, lusty urges often get in the way of spiritual aspirations. I think it´s important to think about lust and relate to it in a way that´s consonant with our values and supportive of our goals. For this reason, I´d be cautious about the forgoing descriptors of lust -- even if they´re accurate. The downside to saying that lust is base and unbridled and egoic is that many of us have negative associations with those words: they´re indication of badness, if not outright evil. This is a trap. What we don´t want to do is build up a heavy negative charge around the topic of lust. We don´t want to orient ourselves so that we´re spending a lot (or even a little) of our energy trying to get away from lust. Why? Because to do so would enslave us to the very thing we´re attempting to flee.

Tim Ferris recently sent out this quote from Jiddu Krishnamurti to his email list. It gave me a felt sense of what it might mean to "simply be." "If you pass through the meadows with their thousand flowers of every color imaginable, from bright red to yellow and purple, and their bright green grass washed clean by last night´s rain, rich and verdant -- again without a single movement of the machinery of thought -- then you will know what love is. To look at the blue sky, the high full-blown clouds, the green hills with their clean lines against the sky, the rich grass and the fading flower -- to look without a word of yesterday; then, when the mind is completely quiet, silent, undisturbed by any thought, when the observer is completely absent -- then there is unity. Not that you are united with the flower, or with the cloud, or with those sweeping hills; rather there is a feeling of complete non-being in which the division between you and another ceases. The woman carrying those provisions which she bought at the market, the big black Alsatian dog, the two children playing with the ball -- if you can look at these without a word, without a measure, without any association, then the quarrel between you and another ceases. This state, without the word, without thought, is the expanse of the mind that has no boundaries, no frontiers within which the I and the not-I can exist. Don´t think this is imagination, or some flight of fancy, or some desired mystical experience; it is not. It is as actual as the bee on that flower or the little girl on her bicycle or the man going up a ladder to paint the house -- the whole conflict of the mind in it´s separation has come to an end. You look without the look of the observer, you look without the value of the word and the measurement of yesterday. The look of love is different from the look of thought. The one leads in a direction where thought cannot follow, and the other leads to separation, conflict, and sorrow. From this sorrow, you cannot go to the other. The distance between the two is made by thought, and thought cannot by any stride reach the other. As you walk back by the little farmhouses, the meadows, and the railway line, you will see that yesterday has come to an end: life begins where thought ends." Jiddu Krishnamurti (This piece seems resolutely anit-thought, although perhaps that´s my misunderstanding. Personally, I´m not convinced that the state Jiddu Krishnamurti points to and thought are entirely incompatible. We could debate. Nevertheless, this writing transported me.)

@C T Appealingly written up too. I think I´m going to check out some of those recipes on ohmyfoodrecipes.

Why? Are you considering taking the course? (Just kidding. I know you´re not. The answer is that I´ve been practicing some but not as much as I´d like. The moniker "Bum" is more apropo for me than most. )

Another heads-up for those that might be interested in learning the Yi Jin Jing from Robert Peng: his next online YJJ workshop begins February 13. Recommended. https://www.robertpeng.com/yi-jin-jing-14-weeks-of-bodymind-transformation

This thread has got me thinking about my own path. Although I´ve learned many things with many teachers I haven´t been one to formally dedicate myself to a particular school or lineage. At the risk of sounding unserious, I´ll admit to a tendency towards independent sampling. Does something inside me resist structure? Interestingly, I´ve also been self-employed for most of my adult life, perhaps for the same reasons. There´s something difficult -- yet potentially worthwhile -- about entering into hierarchical relationships whether they be student/teacher or employee/boss. I suspect my resistance is related to a previous hierarchical relationship that proved challenging, that of son/father. Other people doubtless have different challenges. While the path of learning may have defined steps, each of us brings are own aptitudes and deficits to the school of life. I think there´s something to be said for mixing it up. Those, like me, who find committing to structured learning environments challenging, might experiment with formal spiritual education. Those who gravitate towards formal training might open to the fact that the universe is larger than any method and life itself the master guru. Or not.

While reading here on the Bums, I often remind myself that I don´t know a person´s context. Some people may be older or younger than I imagine. Many don´t speak English as a first language. Our posts are filtered through cultural contexts, most of which are at least somewhat foreign to me. I try to keep in mind all that I don´t know about a person as I read their posts. Even so, I gotta say -- crafting meticulously thoughtful and inward-looking prose while killing venomous snakes? Now that´s a new one.

I don´t think there´s a conflict between systemized learning and the organic fruition of that learning. It´s rote repitition -- scales, to use freeform´s pianistic metaphor -- that allows for artistry. Technical, mechanistic practice blossoms into something which is seemingly beyond technique. Lang Lang plays that Chopin prelude in a way that is uniquely his own, a triumph of musical creativity, but he couldn´t have done it without first having practiced the same ole scales that everyone else practices in the same ole way. Beginners tend to be alike in their errors, masters distinct in their perfection.

Hi @Sketch, Does the Life on Land books have enough practical information to practice some Continuum moves from? Any experiences you´d care to relate? Continuum is something that´s been on my list for some years now though I´ve yet to take the, umm, plunge.

Is Merit really like a thing that can be saved or used up? To my mind, merit is not a plum...though I was reminded of this poem by William Carlos Williams. This is Just to Say I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox and which you were probably saving for breakfast Forgive me they were delicious so sweet and so cold -- William Carlos Williams

Regular gay clubgoers will be familiar with the type: the solitary balding superspreader senior who feels no shame (and good on him!) dancing by himself in a bar full of twentysomethings. Lets vaccinnate these gentleman first.

Hi @Giles, You are welcome to request your own Personal Practice Discussion area that you can use to discuss whatever you like, including, of course, teaching instructions for internal alchemy. Just click on Forum and Tech Support and then put a request in under the Personal Practice Discussion Thread Request thread.

Karma works in mysterious ways. I shy away from the idea that having money signifies good karma or not having money bad karma. Having money, in my experience, has little to do with deservingness. Some people who have it arguably don´t deserve it, while others who don´t have it do. Some seem to have exactly the right amount. Fortunately perhaps, nobody has put me in charge of divvying out the pie.

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Earning money is half the equation; the other half is going to Costco.

For me, one of the most difficult aspects of the pandemic is social distancing. The public health messages about staying away from people outside our "households" may be protective of our physical health, but they come at a cost to our mental health. (Assuming, for the moment that physical and mental health are separate animals, a dubious proposition.) I´m feeling the strain. So I´m wondering what innovative strategies my fellow Bums have used to strengthen interpersonal connections this last year, both with household members and loved ones farther afield. The common thing seems to be videochatting. Does this work for you? I haven´t been much of a Zoomer myself. One of my pals says that it counterproductively highlights the fact that people aren´t actually together, kind of a so-close-and-yet-so-far kinda thing. What have you been doing to nurture relationships lately? How have you sustained the sense of social interconnectedness so essential to wellbeing?

@zerostao I think enjoying a pot of coffee and snowfall sounds like a wonderful way of feeling connected -- with or without the company of actual other people. I´m reminded of a podcast I listened to awhile back with Zapchen founder Julie Henderson. When asked about lonliness or the desire to be around others, she mentioned petting her cat and leaning up against a tree. The nonhuman natural world can be a potent source of connectedness. As far as social distancing and all that goes, well, I really don´t know. People have such varied opinions about the advisability and effectiveness of social distancing and masks. I´m not one to dig into the scientific literature myself so I don´t have a scientifically informed opinion. But I don´t think that there´s such a thing as public health without taking into account our human need to be social. Lonliness can kill as surely (if not as quickly) as any virus.