Sahaj Nath

1st addition? are you talking about Pillars of Bliss? i still have that copy sitting on my shelf. seems like forever ago now. EDIT: JETSUN! i just went back and re-read your entire post. the quote that you used was a bit off the mark, but your further explanation was solid. my bad. i didn't read it the whole way through and stopped shortly after i saw an unfair quote. but i can see at the bottom that you are already responding, so maybe you'll see this retraction after the fact. but yeah, that was my mistake.

...and to think i almost didn't return to this thread. Easy, while i get where you're coming from, and i even SHARE your very same criticism applied to the many blind-spots of the oftentimes overly ACADEMIC (not overly intellectual; no such thing in my book) Ken Wilber, you REALLY don't know me well enough to jump into the deep end and challenge my credentials with respect to understanding the very REAL struggle of the "less privileged." but because you don't know me, and because my emotions are INCREDIBLY RAW right now, you may have to forgive my bite in this post. just know that i'm doing my best to give YOU the benefit of the doubt, and at the moment this post is therapeutic for me. most of my friends on this board know that i'm an African American former gang-member. i've actually LIVED the shit that you're talking about conceptually, and the amount of insult that i feel at your flippant assumptions about where I'M coming from is off the chart right now. but i get that the baggage here is mine, not yours. so just bare with me. this is how real it is for me. just last night, right after a meditation session with one of my higher level students, i got word that the son of two dear friends of mine was killed this past Saturday in a drive-by on very the block that i grew up on. a block that ME AND MY HOMEBOYS made infamous. no bullshit. here's my facebook page. check the time stamps. read the links. hell, you can even troll my F-List if you like. http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home#!/profile.php?id=535691087 and here's some quick & easy videos for those who might be allergic to too much reading: after the day that i've had, returning to the hood, questioning the youngsters, learning the TRUTH about what really happened and why, and after consoling the inconsolable, and being torn about whether i would ultimately SET an example or MAKE one, it's a little, no, it's a LOT surreal to return to this board and find your "analysis" on what you think i'm about. true, i've been influenced by Ken Wilber AND Spiral Dynamics. but if attacks ad hominem on Wilber's pedigree have led you to a wholesale rejection of his arguments, then i would suggest that you've thrown the Buddha out with the bathwater. here's how those ideas have impacted me on THIS day: i have homeboys in their mid-to-late-30's, who are ready to come out of retirement and avenge the wrong that has been done on our children. and i absolutely understand how they feel. i'm a former street soldier myself, and it's very easy to pick up a gun and pull the trigger with no remorse, just to know that the the families in the next neighborhood are feeling how WE have been made to feel. i get it. and i can't stop the homies from making that decision if they choose that. others just give it up to God and pray for the families that are most directly affected by the tragedy. they'll never pick up a gun again because "thou shalt not kill" is a rule they have learned to take seriously. plus, their latter-day "spiritual" perspectives leads them to believe that the killings occurred for a reason beyond our understanding, and we have no choice but to trust the wisdom of God if "HE" saw fit to bring these children home as angels. and still others are just thankful that it wasn't their children and that they made it out of the hood alive so their children have a better chance than we did growing up. but none of those perspectives characterize me. and i stand alone in my take on the situation. First, i'm intimately aware of how naked and powerless i feel to change the situation. so much so that violence is not an option, because i see too clearly how it would only serve to mask my feelings of insecurity. it's easier the hate than it is to grieve. i understand why many of my friends are in a state of hate right now, but i am unable to share it. my fidelity is always to the truth of the moment, no matter how uncomfortable or disagreeable. i don't need to easy answers of christianity to help me sleep at night; in fact, i would rather lie awake at night than allow myself to be soothed by a simple-minded belief structure. just doesn't work for me. but MORE IMPORTANTLY, i get something that the others don't seem to really grasp, and you can bet that i will be sharing it at the memorial. and that's that I am partially responsible for the death of those kids. we were the first generation of East Side Piru in Sacramento. there were no adults in our gang when i was coming up. when i was 13 the oldest guy in the hood was maybe 19. so our generation was essentially a generation of kids raising kids. i was proud of my colors when i was young. and i did a lot of shit to make other places FEAR my neighborhood. that's what's called "puttin' in work" for the hood. and i did that. i put in work. i helped build the image that my friends' children later aspired to. and in this moment of grief, i cannot help but to hold myself accountable for that. while it's true that i was a child in search of direction and meaning at the time, it doesn't change the role i played in creating the conditions that now exist in the neighborhood i come from. this weekend i will be dressed in black, burgundy, and red. i will stand up to speak to all of the attendees of the memorial service. i will through up the sign of our neighborhood, a neighborhood that i will always love. and i will openly apologize to my friends for the role that i played in the death of their son. and hopefully i will be skillful enough to make some people think. i don't think that i could illustrate the original argument i was setting forth any more clearly than this. don't play me small, bro. you don't know me like that.

um... did i miss something? Chris is no longer affiliated? could someone explain, or at least give me a link?

makes every bit as much sense as the first time around, only this time the LIMITS of your perspective are made even more glaring. plus, you're not responding to anything i've said. so before i bother, i'll wait for that response. it's not that i didn't get it; it's that i don't agree. and i think i was pretty clear as to why. if you don't want to actually dive into it, then that's fine. but you waited an entire day to finally respond to me, and it turns out to be non-responsive. i won't insult you by repeating everything i've stated in my previous post. i'll just say that your criticism of Ramacharaka is extremely, EXTREMELY narrow. far more narrow than the scope of the passage and the scope of "our" reception of it. kinda illustrates paradigm i laid out; my perspective includes and understands yours, but it also transcends those limits to include and understand more. if there were no such thing as developmental stages or human potential, and if our capacities were always static and unmoving (the way that your analysis assumes), then i would be supporting you in this thread. but you don't seem to understand/acknowledge the limits of your scope. you today vs your voices today, and nevermind how they got to where they are today from where they were at age 7. YOU'RE IGNORING THE FACT OF YOUR OWN DEVELOPMENT PROCESS AND THE ROLE THOSE VOICES PLAYED IN THAT DEVELOPMENT. i hope THIS makes more sense to you. and if not, i'm over it at this point. i know that i've been as clear as i need to be if you wish to genuinely engage what i've argued here. there are voices in my head that suggest it's absurd to piss & shit my pants as a grown man. should i do it anyway and call it liberation? cuz that's essentially your argument.

you've been hanging out with too many PostModern New Age types. look, ramacharaka is a fossil who didn't get everything right, but he didn't have to. he got enough right. for certain he got enough right to change MY life! i read Science Of Breath back in the early 90's. i found it among my grandfather's old books, and it really was the beginning of my path to becoming the adept that i am today. but more specifically, you ARE correct in the sense that EVERYTHING. MUST. GO! and if the goal is enlightenment, our value judgments and preferences don't really factor in. but THAT'S ONLY TRUE IN ENLIGHTENMENT. you're DEAD WRONG if you think there is no hierarchy of consciousness that can be discerned. pure self-centeredness is inferior to parental deference, parental deference is inferior to consideration of cultural authorities, which is inferior to considering one's social group, which again is inferior to considering one's entire race, or sex, or religion, which is inferior to considering one's sense of responsibility to one's country, which is inferior to one's sense of responsibility to humanity, which is inferior to considering one's responsibility to all life on the entire planet. it makes sense to rank shit. superior stages both understand AND include the perspectives of the ones beneath, but they also TRANSCEND to include and understand more. inferior stages DON'T understand & include the perspectives of the ones above them. not very difficult to grasp, right? so then why are so many people so quick call it all arbitrary? this the type of judgment is what allows us the possibility of producing the greatest amount of good for the greatest number of people. folks have the right to exist at ANY consciousness level, but not every level is fit for leadership. CLEARLY. so the notion that it's arbitrary is intuitively suspect. but more importantly, it's empirically disproved. the motives and values which most influenced your behavior at age 7 are NOT the same as the motives and values you hold today. there's nothing wrong with acknowledging that. in fact, it's kind of important that you do. see, the problem with YOUR type of thinking (at least from where i'm standing) is that it allows adults with the cognitive maturity of children to believe that they have the SAME access to the highest levels of development as folks who are both mature AND gifted. and those who understand this can make a KILLING off of those who don't. and yes, i could CERTAINLY use some people on this board as an example. but i won't. as a (once open-door) teacher i have met my fair share of students who were so limited that they couldn't grasp the idea that they might have peaked. students who had neither the comprehension nor the inclination to grow beyond their consciousness level. so "leveling" the playing field by calling everything an arbitrary "function" is kind of bogus, even when you include the more nuanced examples as you did with your explanation of what "mis-matured" means to you. most people would simply call those "pathologies," btw. i guess that's my main point. that, and you ARE obscuring the matter with semantics in a LOT of what you have written here, although you may not realize it. i'll end now because i could write FOREVER on this topic. but yours is a more dangerous blind spot than the one you're attempting to address. namely, because yours allows for arrested development to go unchallenged, which is the main culprit of so much delusion in cultivation communities. so yeah, let's do this. i'm open for cross-examination.

i've wanted to meet you in-person ever since you first showed up around here. oh well. it'll have to happen at some point, that's for sure. maybe i can meet you for coffee at the end of the retreat or something? i'll be driving in from Sacramento. i just like to drive. *shrugs* so if you live 30 minutes away i could swing that, if you have any availability. and Vortex, your points are all well-taken. much love to you too, brother.

I KNOW, RIGHT? well, i certainly don't blame you for feeling the way you do. but i know of no other tradition that has mapped the nuances of the spiritual landscape as accurately as can be found in buddhism. not to mention the FLEXIBILITY of so many different traditions, approaches, lineages, ALL of which can lead you to the same enlightenment. like my boy Bankei, who took the zen route at a time in Japan when enlightenment had died out and all that was left were religious scholars. he was one of the masters of his time who did it from scratch, and he wiped his ass with most of the formalities. a true heretic. i LOVED that he rejected the Koan system on the same grounds that i do! i never thought i'd find that anywhere. but at the end of the day, enlightenment is in the territory, not the map. the map is just a tool of confirmation so i know that others have discovered the same things i have discovered. then i just keep right on doing it my own way, with confidence that i can complete the path without being bound to a particular tradition. no worries. i won't be recommending any readings or anything. if you are happy with your life just as it is, then fuck anyone who tries to tell you differently. there is no evolutionary imperative that requires you to follow anything but what YOU decide.

i get it, but it's also at least in-part what i take issue with. max was all about bliss during the seminars. bliss was the goal. happy feelings. not awareness. so yeah, you can watch TV and get all that cool phenomena going on, but that doesn't interest me. i don't doubt how your practice has progressed. i just wasn't a fan of the teacher is all. but i don't really have any hard feelings about Max anymore. i know it's hard to tell when this type of thing comes up, but it's true. but what i won't allow to happen on my watch is for the practitioners of Kunlun to re-write the history of what took place. it's great that the school has changed and that things are more together, but let's not pretend that the past was anything other than what it was. there has been a learning curve, and there's no shame in that. but let's not pretend otherwise. of course, vortex, this isn't directed at you. just in general. Sifu Jenny's way speaks to me. people looking for max's way should go to max. that was my original point to taodancing, anyway.

not really sure what you're attempting to clarify here. i made a post responding directly to you, but you're responding to a more general comment i made in communication with joeblast. i get that TV is not a requirement for kunlun. not really sure why that needed to be clarified. but then you're just RE-ITERATING what i've already commented on as being a painfully misguided notion about zen (and vipassana, for that matter). i explained a little bit why i believe that, i mentioned the concept of Samu as BEING zen practice, and as Samu being a step toward LIFE being zen practice. that's NOT just sitting for hours being gloomy. i'm happy to discuss the matter further, but at least respond to what i've already written, cause you're kind of skipping right past my points and just repeating yourself.

dmattwads is right, you'd be surprised at how personal we get around here. so whatever you're comfortable with totally fine. maybe a week or so ago there was a conversation started by a newcomer asking about the importance of visualization. i thought i'd leave you the link so you can read it and take from it what you will. http://www.thetaobums.com/index.php?/topic/17272-is-visualization-important/

about meditation: what exactly do you mean by "suits" you? if you're looking for a practice that doesn't eventually bore you or make you more anxious, then you've probably misunderstood the purpose and the process of meditation. you say you've tried lots. well what have you tried, and what was the problem with them? i highlight this because this tends to be a major issue among beginners, so much so that they stay beginners for years until they figure it out, IF they figure it out. facing ones own neuroses is not a comfortable task, but that's exactly the work that is required to achieve the overall contentment you're looking for. too many beginners feel themselves getting anxious and think something must be wrong. well yeah, something is wrong, and that's why you need to meditate, in order to face it, accept it, and release it, or, more accurately, allow it to release itself. with time, everything spontaneously arises and ultimately self-liberates. i'm a huge fan of vipassana meditation because it's very easy to find good information on it, and there are lots of groups that practice it. tons of books and videos. if you wanna feel a little more taoist in your practice, check out Relaxing Into Your Being by BK Frantzis.

totally. as i've said many times, i pride myself in being a heretic. i am not a buddhist, but there is just TOO MUCH yummy goodness to be found within buddhism to write off the entire thing. that's all. i look to buddhism for CONFIRMATION moreso than INFORMATION. but my path belongs to ME and no one else. besides, according to the confirmations i've taken from buddhism, i seem to be doing just fine.

um... Kate? yeah... um. i would just like to restate that Vajrahridaya is NOT representative of the whole of buddhism. please don't write off the entire tradition. please?

fiveelementtao, very valuable comments and suggestions. you certainly saved me a lot of time and energy. i'm glad i waited a day to respond. you put it better than i probably would have. 2 things: i would expect a master of vajra yoga to not have to wear a jacket and gloves in the snow. when i cultivate outdoors, my energy keeps me plenty warm, even in the snow. gtummo should be a given if you're advanced in the thunder path. and i know for a fact that Santiago teaches it. so what gives? also, no one who has put in the years of work to achieve real mastery in qigong or yoga would place those credentials equally alongside the title of reiki master, which isn't earned through hard work, but can be acquired in a couple of weekend seminars (or even online these days). just doesn't match up. makes the whole set-up come across as new agey and suspect. i've no doubt that you have skills if you studied with Santi and Susan. but for realz. you wanna dial it back a bit. 5et is right on the mark.

yeah, that's Sifu Jenny's take, which isn't in dispute in any way. like i said, maybe this is another area where things have changed in max's camp, but watching television during practice certainly wasn't thrown out as a joke a couple of years ago. it was almost held up as proof of the system's superiority because you didn't have to do all that boring, serious stuff. i'll bet Yoda remembers, if he's still around. Cameron, who used to be very active on the board prior to kunlun, stated that Max specifically recommended Ren & Stimpy while doing practice because it would stimulate your childlike laughter and connect you to the bliss. i'm sure there's still some posts lying around that haven't been erased. (Cameron had a thing about erasing his posts.) here's one: but there were a few people here who practiced in front of the TV, on Max's recommendation. things might be a little different now, but it wasn't meant as a joke when it was happening. you were around in those days, so i know you know what i'm talking about.

um... i can't comment on the specific center with which you were involved, but you have got some painfully misguided notions about Zen practice. does it improve your health? ABSOLUTELY. it will provide you with a foundation of MENTAL HEALTH that you'd be hard-pressed to achieve outside of a meditation tradition. there IS NO contentment in daily life without it. and likewise, there is not commitment to healthy living without it. i'm not sure if this is your intent, but it would be a bit absurd to criticize meditation from not being a vigorous workout routine. meditation is the DISPOSITION THAT YOU BRING to your workout routine, and to life in general, and it maximizes benefit. surely you learned about Samu while at the center. that is how LIFE ITSELF becomes practice. i, for one, have no interest in chasing after dragon bodies or engaging in a new age tradition that encourages watching television during practice, rather than deepening one's faithfulness to the moment at hand.(kunlun people- if that recommendation is no longer being used, then i apologize.) the entire universe is this moment, and there is sufficient profundity in this moment such that treating spiritual development as a rat race for attributes misses the point entirely. if you're looking for what Max has to offer, then you should be with Max or one of his facilitators. personally, i'm allergic to the guy, which is why i'm so grateful to Sifu Jenny Lamb for coming out into the open and offering what she has. but if you expect to genuinely grow, Sifu Jenny doesn't let you opt out of meditation. only an agitated mind would even want to opt out. i've already saved my space for the 5-day retreat in May. and i will leave a review here, just as i did after meeting with Max, although this time, i'm pretty sure that my review will be positive.

are you playing it on your computer? if not, try that. the main menu should have 3 options: Play All, Chapters, and More Info. i imagine that the DVD's are all made from the same master file, so it would be really strange for your copy not to have the button. i purchased my copy literally minutes after she made it available, so i know i have one of the earliest copies. i don't know. *shrugs* if there really is a defect, i'm sure she will replace it. just make sure is all.

yeah, you probably have it as well on your copy, but that part of it is in text. there's a chart of the time of day and the corresponding organs, and there's pages of written information on the DVD. EDIT: the list of additional info is on the 2nd page after you hit the 'More Info' button. so if your main screen HAS a 'More Info' button, then chances are, you DO have all the extras. you just gotta read to the bottom and keep clicking.

FTW! i might have to add this to my signature. additionally, if you don't approach the practice with a zen or vipassana type quality of awareness and recognition, you're not going to get very far in the practice. you'll have some cool experiences, but you won't break through. Sifu Jenny says as much herself. if you're not bringing that quality of awareness to bare on the practice, then it is not Yi Gong.

hmm... just by the bed? limited to 5? Okay: Self-Liberation Through Seeing With Naked Awareness Xing Yi Nei Gong Quintessential Dzogchen Secret of The Vajra World. Bankei Zen EDIT: okay, i can't just leave it so incomplete without acknowledging my MAN-CRUSH on Jerry Alan Johnson. also: The Essence of Internal Martial Arts, Vols I & II by JAJ, and Chinese Medical Qigong Therapy Vol 5: An Energetic Approach to Oncology also by JAJ okay, i can rest now that i've outed myself again.

yeah, fair enough. i read your first post and thought it was a good one. then your second post kinda threw me into "parental guidance" mode. whatevs. it was fine. just ignore me.

yeah, but they've already cleared the garbage out of their head. these types of statements confuse folks who are still at the bottom of the mountain climbing up. once a person has cleared away the debris, my guess is that they wouldn't have to ask about visualization. people too often go off in the wrong direction by attributing unnecessary importance to this type of thing in the early stages of their development. one such person has even commented in this very thread, advising the original poster how important it is to visualize, EVEN THOUGH HE HIMSELF IS CURRENTLY AFFLICTED WITH SPIRITUAL PROBLEMS THAT HE DOESN'T YET UNDERSTAND. so for reasons of that nature, i don't find your parsing of the issue to be very helpful to a beginner. some get excited about what they might be able to achieve, and then they start looking for shortcuts and either derail their practice, or get into some real trouble.

+1 good stuff, both of you. no need for me to throw my loose change into the mix. just a nod.