Sahaj Nath

YES. it seems to be a stabilized condition. it's been nearly 5 months now. the intensity of bliss and disidentification with the body-mind varies a bit with my attention, but the general state is constant. still hoping some folks will chime in with their experiences and views on bliss vs Bliss.

hm... well, the thing is... there IS a 'me' that is experiencing and understanding all of these things; it's just that the 'me' isn't limited to the body-mind. in terms of awakening, i think the current unfolding belongs to the realm of savikalpa as opposed to nirvikalpa. identity isn't dissolved into nothingness, but rather infinitely expanded. it's pretty awesome, actually. but the absence of a self-consciousness, as is indicative of nirvikalpa samadhi, has not been realized yet. i don't know if i'll get there in this lifetime, but i guess we'll see. not sure if i get your meaning, but 'what we already are' has no real bearing on the need to bring certain things to light. i still have this relative life to live, and all the so-called limitations that come with that. i still feel alone in the relative world and feel a natural inclination to either find others that see & experience what i do (and more), or TRAIN others to see & experience what i do (and more). i don't think this has kept me from being able to relax into the essence itself. it's not all or nothing. mixed feelings about this. i think scripture would agree with you, but i don't feel any inclination whatsoever to even attempt to get rid of the "me who is experiencing." if it needs to dissolve, then i trust that it will as a result of staying true to my path. as it is, my spiritual practice is probably 60% natural flow, 30% devotion & longing, and 20% everything else. that's right. i give 110% thanks for the great post.

a piece i wrote back in '07 in the 'Contributed Articles' section. flows pretty well with the OP's intent, methinks.

i think i just might turn out for this. i'll definitely keep it in mind for the coming months. might even be willing to workshop a little, exchange some teachings/practices. if i do attend, i promise to play nice.

i think Castaneda is a fraud. and i think his books had a tremendous impact on a lot of people's lives and inspired them to ultimately become the serious cultivators that they are today, and because of that, they will always give him far more credit than he deserves. he stole from anthropologists and pulled some pieces almost verbatim from their texts. his teachings were far from mainstream, but they were available through the works of people like Alexandra David-Neel, Joseph J. Weed, Rudolf Steiner, Aliester Crowley, and many others. (i'm not saying that he stole from each one of these people; i'm saying that these peoples' works were available at the time that castaneda wrote his books, and they offer the same principles.) the specifics that made his teachings unique were most likely fabrications, and the principles that gave those teachings any merit were stolen from elsewhere. the only known and undisputed teacher of carlos castaneda is Howard Lee. Howard Lee is legit, although i don't know about the stuff he's teaching these days. http://thetaobums.com/topic/21417-top-5-20112012/?p=306080 Castaneda did try to convince Lee to call his cultivation teachings "qigong sorcery," "taoist sorcery," or "chinese sorcery." he was prepared to focus on Lee as the master of masters in his writings so long as Lee would acknowledge Castaneda as his most gifted student. and from there, they would travel the western world teaching their system. but Lee didn't sign on. this was from a conversation with some of his long-time students. at the time i didn't even know who Castaneda was, but they were expressing their disdain for american new age "nonsense," and providing me with context for why Lee didn't think much of my reiki training. that's all i got.

Juliank and C T, Right on! no need to repeat what the two of you have already articulated. personally, i really like how easy and uncomplicated my external life is, given the complexity and weightiness of my inner world. been single for 7 years now. i really love doing whatever the hell i want whenever i want without having to check in with anyone. on a whim i can go to the mountains or river, or just unplug and be on private retreat right here in my own home. in my last serious relationship, i had to stop spending nights along the river because she couldn't understand it and believed that i must be seeing some other woman. even thinking about it right now makes my stomach tense up a little bit. even on my laziest days, i spend more time in cultivation than most folks who work a full-time job. the freedom is priceless. and quite honestly, i've never experienced a high in a relationship that could compete with the joy of deep spiritual communion. my goal has never been bliss, but if ever i am in need of that comfort, the divine is easily accessible. hermits and monastics are not living miserable lives. but so many people who are in relationships are unhappy or unsatisfied to great extents. some folks truly belong in family life, but many people just don't know what else to do. they're lost, and family life is just their port in the storm. "The reason normal people got wives and kids and hobbies, whatever, that's because they don't got that one thing that hits them that hard and that true. I got music; you got this. The thing you think about all the time, the thing that keeps you south of normal. Yeah, makes us great, makes us the best. All we miss out on is everything else." --House: Season 1. "DNR"

So... i guess it's just me then. i attended one of his first seminars back in either '97 or '98. at the time my body was still shorted out from the transmission i received from Howard Lee the year prior. i could no longer perceive or project energy from any place except my hands. everything else was shut down, burnt out, and i thought it was permanent. my mother heard about him on some conspiracy theory radio talk show, and she brought it to my attention. back then i knew very little about anything, and i didn't know the difference between new age fluff and authentic spiritual teachings. lucky me, i guess, because that seminar turned everything around for me. back then he didn't have a big program as he does now. he even said that what he had to offer didn't take more than an hour to transfer to everyone, but he made it two-day program because people wouldn't really value it otherwise. so he told a lot of stories that were just filling time, and he had us practice on each other. most of the women there seemed to be crushing on him, but i got the distinct feeling that he wasn't into women. truth be told, had he come out about his sexuality, he would not have attracted nearly as many students. it's a shame, really. but then again, i don't know definitively what his orientation is, i just remember all the awkwardness in the seminar from clingy women, and how he seemed to light up more around the fellas. anywho, the lessons were pretty much bogus. everything of value could have been said in 20 minutes, yet the seminar ran for 2 days. and there was a lot of new agey belief stuff that didn't help one way or another. but the energy itself was legit. it was a much more gentle energy than what i had been working with, so a part of me felt like it was a step down, but pains and fevers and the feeling that my entire body was short-circuited... all that was healed by the time i went home. my relationship to the energy was very different. i didn't feel like i had the ability to boss it around like i had prior to master lee. but i was able to feel the presence of trees and people again. i was able to perceive beyond myself without the need to use my hands again. all in all, it was very good for me. basically, anything you can say about his new agey-ness is probably true, and had i discovered him today, i never would have looked twice. but meeting him helped me in a pretty big way, so i remain grateful that he's out there doing what he's doing. oh, i should probably add that it was only after receiving the reconnection that i started to have people twitching, shaking, and moving spontaneously when i worked on them.

you should have asked me for clarification. admittedly, my post could have been interpreted a number of ways, but you didn't give me nearly enough credit with your interpretation. it's all good, though. my point is not to highlight the phenomenon being displayed, because what is being displayed is NOT an expression of the fully matured, unobstructed kundalini. the point is that the phenomenon that is displayed is arising out of non-doing. when the spiritual practitioner is fully mature and K is fully expressed without obstruction, the physical phenomenon will manifest as the natural flow of life, and right action will arise effortlessly of its own accord. however, such action will STILL be arising out of a state of non-doing, and not some list of behavior patterns that can be determined beforehand. there's no assumption of control of outcome, yet what comes out is backed by the momentum of nature itself. what i'm suggesting is that wu wei is more a condition than it is an idea. what you have expressed so far is wu wei as merely an idea, alongsinde different acts and contrivances that you've decided can be rationalized under that idea. that's not any wu wei that i'm familiar with.

i think true wu-wei, when it's fully matured and unobstructed looks closer to THIS than anything you seem to be imagining.

i think you might be missing the point. on one level you are correct that meditation & spiritual practice are not akin to some kind of fantasy vacation, but on the other hand, the imagery does function as an apt metaphor of the vastness, beauty, peace, and clarity of the meditative mind. i don't think it's so wrong to associate meditation practice in this way, especially if it gets more people to explore it.

um... the Buddha's method, i guess. we start with breathing at the feet and work our way up to the top of the head, and then maintain a full-body awareness, feeling the body expand and contract as if itwere a sponge afloat in a sea of energy.

i have to second Soaring Crane's recommendation of Healing Promise of Qi. it's an incredible book with theory, structure, and practice. lots of exercises to try out that are totally safe. also, spring forest qigong is really good and really simple. i think i might be in the minority around here because i don't practice small universe and i've never encouraged any of my students to practice it. i think it's easy to get unpleasant side-effects once you've got a strong flow of qi going. and i just don't find it necessary. if your practice is solid, the small universe will become apparent without any need to focus any effort on it. remember the advice of Harmonious Emptiness above. it's good advice. i personally think whole body breathing is a superior practice. plus, it's a whole lot safer and easier to get right.

easy. 1.) Healing Promise of Qi by Roger Jahnke. 2.) Qigong Empowerment by Shou-Yu Liang and Wn-Cheng Wu 3.) The Essence of Internal Martial Arts, Vols 1 & 2 by Jerry Alan Johnson as far as a single book that has it all... it really depends on what you're looking for and what you consider to be intermediate-to-advanced. i value principles over techniques, so a book like Qigong Empowerment isn't quite as good to me as Healing Promise of Qi is. Johnson's books have a good blend of both, but the info is martial oriented.

it really shook some things up for me. i still haven't fully touched ground yet. and i came so close to shutting myself off from it. here's my review that i'm posting to amazon: Completely absurd! and SO necessary! i have to admit, the first minute of this CD set made me think i had made a terrible mistake in purchasing it. i expected a professorial exploration of the history of the practice, and overview of the cultures that continue to use it. i figured there would be some good drumming tracks that i could use in some of my classes. imagine my shock when Keeney begins the audio session with the oratory style of a zealous, crazy Baptist minister, loud and in partial rhythm with drum play in the background! i thought the whole thing was ridiculous, and so i turned it off, angry that i had purchased this set. but then i decided to at least play one of the 6 discs all the way through. i'm so glad i decided to give it a second chance because quickly i realized that the absurdity was the very crucible of it's genius. in TCM it is taught that all illness in the body is a result of blocked energy flow, and through techniques such as qigong, tai chi, and acupuncture, a person can clear out those blockages and restore health. Keeney's approach, right from his crazy presentation, is taking this understanding to another level. we are a culture of ill souls, blocked and boxed in by our norms, assumptions, and definitions. we have lost the ability to be free, to be loud and expressive, to be crazy. and in losing that, we've lost our connection to the divine. we've lost our natural birthright of self-healing and spiritual evolution. gibberish and nonsensical expressiveness make us feel uncomfortable. letting go and being raw, even silly, makes us self-conscious. relinquishing our controls makes us scared. Keeney's radical performative style demanded that i let go of my walls and barriers that determined what form of knowledge was allowed to reach me. he didn't allow me to distance myself from his words as a scholar, examining his concepts in the 3rd person so i could file it away for later use if appropriate. he made me uneasy right from the start, and he challenged me to be daring, to let go, to shake and move and vocalize nonsense with intense feeling and expressiveness. he challenged me to set myself free. and i am immensely grateful. many people (probably mostly men like myself) will have the same initial reaction as i did. i say to you, give it another chance. This CD set isn't just talking about shaking medicine, it IS medicine! have the courage to receive it. i almost let it pass me by. now i think it may be the most important purchase i've made in years.

yes, cat, i did say something similar. my exact words were "first topic in a while that i was actually excited to open and read. " you seem to have interpreted that comment in a far uglier manner than i had ever intended. i was genuinely excited about the discussion topic and couldn't wait to see where it would go. i don't feel that way very often like i used to back in '07 and '08, and i said as much. sorry if that offended you. you also seem to saying (by implication) that i'm not a legitimate member of this community because i don't post regularly enough...? i could be wrong, but that's what it seems like you're implying here. i've been here for 5 years, and i believe that i have made meaningful contributions to the community in written substance, personal assistance, and even financial donation. so yeah, i still say i'm a legitimate member. and i'm quite sure there will be another period in which i am posting/commenting more, it's just not now. as for your questions: 1.) YES. that's exactly what i'm saying. and as an example my above post starts with the fact that i myself have shown my ass around here on more than one occasion. i say let the record reflect that fact. to me it's an issue of honesty and integrity. and one of the reasons i don't post as often is that i still have an intellectual tendency towards criticism and combativeness, and i'm trying to learn the lesson that tearing things/people down at every turn isn't always the best approach to get at the truth of something. i still really enjoy critical debates, but i also know that i have hurt people here when that wasn't at all my intention, so these days i prefer to shut up and read unless i have something to say that's more constructive than critical. but i am who i am, so i remain silent most days. 2.) when you say "personal correspondence," it sounds like you're talking about PM's. but YES, i do participate in discussions here. by READING them. by pointing out certain discussions to friends. by engaging some of our members through PM or on facebook or in-person. and yes, when i feel moved to, by contributing directly here in the forum. maybe i'm misreading the tone of your comment, but you seem a bit aggravated by my post. but i AM a member here, and i love what this board represents. being a member here has literally changed my life. and no one can quantify or qualify that in terms of my right to participate in rules discussions. it's all love. no hard feelings.

there have been times when i have shown my ass on this message board, yet i have never once deleted a post. and i never will. but sometimes i go back to a post after a day or so and with to correct grammar or structure to add more clarity to the post, and i would still like to be able to do that. for instance, i made a recent post quoting Mark Griffin, and i wrote verbatim as he spoke it, rather than editing for clarity in the written form. and it wasn't until i went back to make the corrections that i realized the editing feature had been changed. if there's a problem with abuse and people erasing posts, then i say do what you have to do to preserve the record of correspondences. i'll get over it. but ideally, as someone who never erases posts, i'd like the flexibility of making corrections. that's all.

"...Consciousness, dividing itself from itself, expressing itself unconsciously. And this has always been the question: What happened? How did it happen? Why did it happen? Meher Baba says it was the arising of a whim. I always found that [to be] a spectacular thing to say. Cause what is a whim? It's something that arose out of nowhere. Whims don't have a reason, they don't have a purpose. If it had an intent, then it wouldn't be a whim, it would be an intention. i think that's as close to an explanation that we're ever going to get." --Mark Griffin (from the "Bliss of the Guru" video) a brief synopsis of Meher Baba's notion of the Whim:

no. what i'm trying to suggest, however crudely, is that our actions and dramas are superficial, and perhaps only a few of them are inevitable. the play and movement of energy/consciousness can manifest itself in innumerable ways. the quality of violent dispersion of embodied lifeforce might be inevitable, but HOW it unfolds in our linear experience is NOT predetermined; it could express itself as the 3rd Reich, or as a science experiment gone awry. this can be considered on MANY levels. a person is living in a probability stream where he will die violently in one of two ways, and the probable events are set to manifest 4 years apart. a fatal car accident would produce different karmic waves than a fatal shooting, and the energetic (emotional/psychological) difference in impact between the two could create momentum in the flow of probability somewhere else, or could absorb probability from somewhere else. i'm also suggesting that there's no good or evil in the unfolding of cause and effect. and that the working of karma is very poorly understood by most. i don't know who Sam Harris is. you should post one of the videos.

first topic in a while that i was actually excited to open and read. to add a little complexity: our sense of separation is an illusion, as is our linear experience of time. these two components suggest a lot more creativity to the Grand Play of Consciousness, i.e., we have the flexibility to change our roles & alter our scenes as ego-individuals, and the Play still continues through different actors and/or scenes. it just might be the case that every person has multiple possible destinies with many possible death dates, and our egos sort of choose their own adventure within the over-arching Play. had Hitler made different choices, another actor, every bit as wrathful and apparently "misguided" would have risen to prominence and decimated a generation of people. or maybe instead those same energies would have been directed into some zealous scientists that would accidentally incinerate a quarter of the Earth, but 50 years later world poverty is eradicated and we're all bickering over a different host of dramas this is extremely crude, i admit. but to break it all down in detail would just take too damn long. i just think it's worth pondering.

a few thoughts. the fewer your wants/desires, the freer you are. the more risk & uncertainty you're willing to accept, the freer you are. the cheaper you can live, the greater your options. the creative mind can generate streams of income that minimize or even eliminates the need for employment (especially if you have the above points handled) i live in Northern Sacramento, but my day-to-day experience is not one of "life in the city." i am able to devote as much time as i like to my studies, explorations, and practices. i made a decision years ago about what matters most to me in life and what i can do without. getting clear on THAT is an important first step. i come across people all the time, some of whom frequent this site, who are in love with the "dream" of the spiritual life, but aren't really willing to risk their comforts. they want all the certainty, safety, and security that secular life promises them, and they don't want any of the burdensome trade-offs that come with acquiring those things. i put it all on the line. i walked away from from a top college. walked away from professional money. i essentially took a vow of poverty and embraced a radical uncertainty. but i was rich in what truly mattered to me, which is the free time to seek the divine and to explore the deep abyss of my own being (which wasn't always pretty). "time is NOT money. anything lost can be found again, EXCEPT for time wasted." i only worked enough to make rent and eat. rent was cheap and things didn't always go smoothly. yet my life became richer than it had ever been before because i knew what my priorities were, and i wasn't afraid of the uncertainty & insecurity of living a poor man's life. my only luxuries were my laptop (a hand-me-down gift) and my book addiction. spent my time reading, sitting, practicing forms, and mastering the principles upon which those forms were built. spent my time wandering in deep contemplation, and seeking the audience of different masters. today i don't work a wage job of any kind. i live in a 4-bedroom house that was given to me by one of my students. my living room is one big practice space, and i've got a huge back yard for practice and for gardening. i had NO IDEA things would work out this way. i sought my life of the spirit with a very sincere reckless abandon, knowing that this life isn't worth living if i don't seek the divine to the fullest. getting free of the bullshit is relatively easy. getting over ones own fear and neurosis is the hard part. perhaps it was the hardships of my youth that gave me the courage to do what i did to get where i am. i grew up very poor and was even homeless for a time as a child. so none of that really scared me as an adult, since i've already endured those things at a much more vulnerable stage in my life. the one part that was difficult was letting go of the worldly pursuits in academia. i had made it from nothing to the brass ring as an intellectual. i was being offered "advances" on books & critical essays, and i had the respect of professors, doctors, politicians, and lawyers. i almost traded GOD for the trappings of that world. maybe some people could have found a balance between the two worlds, but i could not. i'm a very intense person by nature, and such a compromise is incongruent with my very being. so i had to make a choice. and i made it. i was honestly, in my heart of hearts, willing to sacrifice everything to follow my Truth. ALL IN.

Pranotthana. hmm... in terms of my own personal experience, i think this concept of pranotthana can be applied to what most people experience during a Reiki attunement. it certainly fits what i experienced in the '90s via attunement to the first two levels of reiki. for some people who are ripe, and for those who find reiki teachers who are unusually strong, the final attunement, the master attunement, CAN trigger a full-on Kundalini awakening. but most often the process initiated is still this pranotthana. nonetheless i think this helps me to dileniate between reiki and shaktipat. had i known about kundalini back in the '90s, i would have sworn that my Master attunement awakened my kundalini. i would have been wrong, but the experience at the time was more profound than anything else i knew. when my kundalini was actually triggered, it hurt, scared me, and left me bed-ridden for a week. though the trigger was from a qigong master, my experience was NOTHING like the smoothe unfolding as guided by a true guru. what troubles me about the article is that a number of times it talks about the kundalini 'awakening and rising to the brain,' as if both happen at the same time. they don't. yet the author insists on glossing over this point and muddies the waters in doing so. also, i think it should also be acknowledged that not all shaktipat initiations are created equal. shaktipat has become so commonplace here now that its pollution and dilution is inevitable. i received shaktipat every week for a year from a man named Swami ********, and not once did it live up to my experience of reiki back in the '90s. yet, i received shaktipat from Mark Griffin, and it completely transformed my spiritual life after the very first initiation. so it needs to be stated that not all suposed shaktipat gurus are bringing the real juice. i really like that the article mentions that the attitude of the student towards the guru has a significant effect on the transmission. i wish it had developed that point further to shed light on the power of devotion in the guru-disciple relationship, and the fact that approaching a guru with the attitude of a critic or a tourist will most often limit and obstruct the transmission process.

for those of you who have not seen it yet, Sifu Jenny Lamb's COMPLETE 2011 lecture is now available on youtube.

what's up wit that? share with the rest of us!