dwai

It is so easy and yet so hard to do. Let the monkey mind be...it will settle down on its own. Sometimes people might need a taste...which can be done by sharing presence with someone who rests in the natural state. It’s like entering a zone where awareness can be but mind cannot move. Some folks here can help with it if people are having trouble abiding in the now.

Becoming aware of these does not entail "enlightenment", imho -- The ephemeral nature of the dualistic world, that everything is essentially an object in one's own consciousness, attachment to positions leads one to bounce between pleasure and pain the resistance to the situations that changes the nature of our interaction with objects (reduce pleasure and/or cause pain) brings forth leads to suffering. The big question after this should become "who is it that feels the discontent?" If one is truly established in the validity of the aforementioned points and many more such insights, one should not essentially seek "contentment". If one is seeking contentment, one is holding a position vis-a-vis "contentment is preferable over discontent". With further inquiry into the nature of the "who is it" leads one to realize why one is driven to seek meaning in one's life. Also, who is it that is seeking said meaning? They all lead to one and only one outcome when followed through with sincerity. Wasn't it Chuang Tzu who said "Happiness is the absence of striving for happiness"?

You are that already. Stop trying to get or trying to be. Just be...

Barmy army

Tao is Pure Awareness, so yes it is not a thing

Yeah back when I used to drive in India, it felt just like just a stream flowing into a river

The manifest reality as we know it, is a result of mental stories that are unfolding all the time. There are many parallel storylines and plots happening, some in sequence, others in parallel. The common thread is of course "me" or "I". There is a difference between knowing that the story is a story and I am playing many parts in it and being a character in the story. One is from the position of freedom, the other is from the position of bondage. The stories constitute "life". Knowing that there are only stories, and yet playing the part is "living". Being part of the stories is "dying".

Was riding the train downtown yesterday morning and was thinking about my master and meditating and suddenly fell into the “in between state” (between sleep and waking) and started having a conversation with someone (can’t remember what he looked like). He said — “this, the I AM, the root of your consciousness and being in the manifest world is nothing but love itself. We don’t feel love towards one another but we all share the one love! There is only that...pure awareness...and it is nothing but love.”

Word!

What I meant is that love is our very being. We don’t have to try. It is so. All that is preventing us from that, are our mental patterns and habits. Transcend the mind-mud and we are like lotuses in full bloom...

Qi flow to the legs is harder than the upper body due to constant pressure on the legs/lower torso (gravity). To open the legs, just do standing post...http://taichibasics.com/zhan-zhuang-pole-standing-different-qi-gong-meditation/ Just don't do too deep stance. Just sufficient to have slight bend to the knee and feet shoulder width apart with toes pointing straight ahead (not splayed out). Suspend the crown, etc etc...

Every good bird does fly...fat ones fly on the ground...

simply fly

Over the years here at Daobums, I've interacted with a lot of people. All good people (even those who have argued with me most vehemently, and I with them). I've had what many would call an "awakening", but it is really a non-event really as there's no separate entity who wakes up. It is just a shift of perspective. This doesn't really make me a "special" individual, rather it makes it clear to me that I am nobody...nothing. The "I" that lived in the material world just dropped it's hold on my attention. And then I realized that I was never not that which supposedly was "realized" in this so-called "Waking up". It was an apparent waking up, like one wakes up from a dream into waking state. Similarly, we seemingly wake up from a waking state into an "awakened" state. But really, all these states are that "awakened" state, just as all the masters and texts state. It is just that the states of "dream and waking" lose their hold...suddenly things fall into "perspective" -- that all the things that we apparently experience are just happenings and have no hold on us, the root of our consciousness is free, empty (of objective nature), non-spatial and atemporal (i.e. space and time don't have any meaning for it). Call it "Atma jnana", Self-realization or realizing the Emptiness of the Self. There are many many insights that arise from this, for the mind-body complex to navigate the complex and suffering-ridden world. Wisdom (Jnana) that arises by just staying with the presence, that is the root of our consciousness. In the Advaita Vedanta tradition, we say that "the knowledge of the Self or Atma Jnana" and the realization of Oneness (Atman is Brahman or Brahma Jnana) are two distinct phases. There is the non-realization of emptiness of mind-body (staying in the ever-present now) and there is the expansion of the Self to everything-ness. We are taught that the "oneness" is a matter of grace, and eventually we get there, when the time is right. @Jeff and I started interacting a while back (a few years maybe) and our perspectives didn't match wrt. what the "end-game" is. I couldn't understand how what he terms "residing in non-local mind" and "expansion of mind beyond non-local" was any different from just the mind just seeing more objects. What I failed to understand that time is that the expansion that Jeff was referring to, is outside the domain of the local mind. Do I know that now? Yes. How do I know? By taking the plunge (sic. dive) and actually trusting the process and the individuals (all kind, loving and wonderful people). I will try to explain how the non-local mind expansion differs from the local-mind experience. The Local mind is very powerful. But it's primary function is to bind a series of stimuli from the sensory apparatus into a "story"...one that the individual seemingly experiences. The story is the story of our lives, that we are "born into" -- with a body, an ego, a sense of individuality and one that experiences pains and pleasures, emotions, thoughts, is inspired to create wonderful things, is driven to do things - good or bad. In a single word, "samsara". Towards this, I'm going to construct sentences that will imply some sort of "special" doing, but as I have explained before, it is not really "doing" in the sense that the local-mind/body is "doing" something. So, kindly bear with me as I elaborate... When we get to the root of consciousness (the ever-present Nowness aka pure Awareness), we realize that all the happenings of samsara (life as we normally refer to it) happens on its own. It has no bearing on any kind of "doing". Until we get to the root of consciousness, there is doing and there is causality (karma). But after, it is just happenings. Like a few here have expressed before, the old habits and patterns start to lose steam and eventually just stop. If you come from a Hindu (or Buddhist) background like myself, you might have encountered a colorful multi-verse that we pass off as mythology (Westerners seem to study this sort of thing with mild amusement in the form of Greek Mythology). In this mythology are references to gods (devas) and goddesses (devis) aka deities, their realms, different realms (lokas), different rules for different worlds, etc. Most of us modern people scoff at these as over-active imaginations of our relatively primitive superstititous ancestors. I am happy to inform you that, such an idea is abjectly untrue. These beings, realms indeed do exist, and there exist "higher" planes. These are accessible when consciousness expands beyond the "local mind" level. There are many things to learn from these planes and our work in these planes inform us in the local-mind state. It is not the emptiness of Self, but an expansion that starts to encompass many things, including things beyond this mundane samsaric existence of the local mind-body. This is the expansion of the mind from local-mind to Universal mind, to get to the "all is one" knowing. How do I know that these states are beyond the "local-mind"? It is because as the mind/consciousness expands, each of these "planes" are accessible simultaneously, while being rooted in the ever-present now. I will halt my post here. I welcome your thoughts and comments. P.S. -- I'm not the person Jeff was referring to in the post about levels of conscious mind residing BTW.

Neither is to be rejected. The sun shines, the light spreads far beyond. The sun cannot deny it's radiance any more than it's "being". The radiance is part of the being and light and heat are it's manifestations. Similarly with Dao.

Well there is a subtle difference. Form is appearance. Formless is lack of appearance. Brahman is beyond form and formless. Lord Brahma we can say is the "I AM". Brahman is that from which "I AM" seems to appear.

Partial, Impartial, permanent, impermanent, personal, impersonal are all dualities that the mind thinks up. They too are appearances like the world itself is. The role of the mind is to divide and analyze... Aparoksha anubhuti is precisely that "knowing", which is beyond normal knowing.

Self doesn't wish for anything. To the Self there is no other

The Jains (aka Jainism) have an annual exercise where they ask people for forgiveness for any known or unknown offense. I think it is amazing and very powerful. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paryushana#Forgiveness_.28Uttam_Kshama.29_:_.E0.A4.89.E0.A4.A4.E0.A5.8D.E0.A4.A4.E0.A4.AE_.E0.A4.95.E0.A5.8D.E0.A4.B7.E0.A4.AE.E0.A4.BE

We need the rough and crude to make things sharp or smooth. Everything has its intrinsic value in the Dao

Agreed. Yet, to be able to see requires different things for different people. Not everyone is born equal in the relative form (karma determines) unfortunately. What (spiritual clearing) takes someone just a touch of a hand or a sound or a sight can take another years to ignite. That's why there are different strokes for different folks

Ok ... thanks for the advice

Quite often, before the cognizance of the nature of the mind is possible, it is needed to clear extraneous noise that clouds the mind. Without experiencing stillness, one cannot know the nature of the mind Certain traumas need to be cleared first, before the stillness can become apparent.

I don't think the analogy applies. I'd ask you -- do you have to stick around to let someone beat you with a stick? If you can leave but instead, choose to stick around and get beaten up, then I'd call it stupidity (or something else) And yes, the body does continue to feel pain. But one (who has unequivocally dropped the body-mind identification) can exist quite easily with the pain.

I wonder if people realize that what they find objectionable in "light work" could very well be their own projections. Stuff their minds have to let go of, in order to be free. If one feel upset/angry/sad/sexual attraction during a joint energy session (this happens in solo practice at home as well if one is doing a good energetic/spiritual practice), odds are that they are one's own issues that are becoming apparent. Instead of asking "who is doing this to me?" and looking for a source outside, perhaps one should ask "to whom is this happening? And Why is it happening?". Odds are there will be some things one will learn about one's own mental habits and issues (inner-demons masking as self-righteous indignance based on some moral or ethical framework). If we don't have buttons to push, there will be no one who can push the buttons (either knowingly or unknowingly).