thelerner

I assume if you searched her posts you'd find she was sending curses left and right. Odds are they're a nasty ignorant person looking for attention. That kind of threat only comes from an insecure immature person. Studying a real art means discipline and maturity. In other words imo, you have nothing to worry about.

At the extremes most analogies break down, but in everyday life its good to stretch the mind. I'll do stretches of Life as Dream, ie see dreams as important signals of of synchronicity and life as more dreamlike..symbolic if you will. That being said it I don't assume the car heading towards me will vanish magically. Life as Dream is a hard metaphor to live with long term, for me. Similarly the concept of No good/No evil breaks down in extremes, we generally aren't living there. The world is more tic toc mundane and stretching our mind to be less judgemental, less desire is a welcome state. The movie Pleasantville had its hero describe the concept well, at the end of his 'enlightenment' journey to his mother who complains to him 'It's not supposed to be this way" and David replies back "It's not supposed to be anything. Hold still." (Funny checking on the quote I didn't remember the Hold Still part.) Big part of our struggle in life is that damnable 'It's not supposed to be this way'. While its good to call shit, shit, we over do it, and label, judge and compare too much, to our detriment. It's made us anxious, fearful and neurotic. To take a break from that mindset is imo a good thing and not easy. We can turn to Tao/zen/meditation/right thinking or Drugs/stuff/distraction. I generally flip a coin.

Since there's not that many grandmasters and monasteries around, it makes sense to learn from a book; create the discipline to establish a solid dedicated practice. Then when you have the time and resources, go for deeper training with a reputable teacher. Hopefully your practice and training will show. Funny thing is those within monasteries and under the grandmasters leave them to do long bouts of solitary practice. Maybe the Most Whole can also do well in civilian life as well as monastic. We probably grow a little stronger facing and overcoming the pressures and fears of everyday civilian life. Hopefully we make time enough for everything.

This is probably a naive question. Do people end up eating the fruit and food they put out on a shrine?

a blast from the past.

Letting go of past history, it's pretty brave to put up videos showing and sharing yourself doing your daily routine.

If you wanna start now, let me suggest a 3rd choice- http://thesecretofthegoldenflower.com/ I like it. Note that my browser Chrome called it an unsecured site. Not sure what that means but I've been there several times.

Problem I see is when a society over popularized this, it can lead to calling anyone different, that you don't like, has mental problems a witch, warlock, possessed.. as they could when bad luck, sickness and disease appear. Not saying it's not true but used without wisdom, knowledge and compassion it can lead to pretty dark things. How should we feel about psychics who's main gig is pointing out astral beings feeding on their new clients and the money charged to remove them?

Never understood the prevalence of mystical pictures with fractal imagery and figures full of eyes til I tried psilocybin mushrooms.

All depends on how high a bar you set for masterhood and enlightenment. If one has spent decades dedicated to their practice, living the path, are sincere, knowledgeable but have no siddhis or powers. Are they false? To me, no. I set a low bar for enlightenment. It can be psychological state where a person moves smoothly through the world without much ego. And/or a physical state where a person has achieved an inner orbit of esoteric energy that brings greater vitality and insight. Yet no outer powers. Others want demonstrations of powers and siddhis to prove masterhood. By those standards Mastership is quite rare and maybe laden with fraud.

When doing a lineage art, you follow the rules. Might be a teacher sick, busy or some other mundane reason, which could change. I've enjoyed the regular version of Pangu for its simplicity and feeling. Vortexes here, vortexes there, vortexes everywhere. I learned it from Michael Winn of Healing Tao before I knew anything about its history, thus not considered 100% accurate by the founder's lineage. Never knew there was an advanced version of it.

g_)*d(&*^! double post, yet perfect example.

I'm willing to give it away for free. Just have to remember where I left It.

Who indeed. Carlos Castaneda. <so famous, the spell checker corrected me, then corrected me again on the word spell checker> I read him when I was younger. Enjoyed his spiritual/adventure writings, great author for opening up the mind to the esoteric. Certainly nowhere near as bad as Osho but kinda belongs, imo, in a similar category.

Today in a library's book store. They were selling for a buck, Osho's book of Zen. Looked inside, pop culture view but not bad. Fake and fallen.. these guys self destruct and hopefully don't take too many followers with them. that said.. due to some combo of psychology, conmanship and good writing they can produce some imo good insights**. Some baby but the bath waters poisonous. **Obviously controversial but I put CC into this category.

He was way out there. Interesting, strange, sincere, passionate, eccentric, obsessive, some practices had questionable morals (looking at you O's at a distance)..

As a dabbler over the years, here's what I've gotten out of it. One it's fascinating to read. It's combination of poetry, philosophy, practice and history (ie quotes) a great read. An underappreciated classic, bonus its also short. Also old, mysterious. Comparing and contrasting the different versions is like a treasure hunt. A damnable one since at times they can be pretty different. As a modern guy I look more for practices than philosophy. Even there, different translators seem to describe it differently, yet I see pieces of it in different energy arts. Anyhow, what I've gotten out of it is to practice (at times) with open eyes. Nothing radical there, half eye is common in Zen, and a few other traditions. But GF puts more explanation and emphasis on it. In that I see some parallels to Dzoghen. There's a gentle breath oriented circulation going on. I'm sure I've bastardized it but a gentle awareness- breathing in- head, heart, belly (comfortable hold), breath out- to heart, back to head. Feels good to me. Keeps my breath slow. Not really visualizing rather shifting my awareness of sensation. Has it done anything great for me? Don't know, maybe I'd be even worse without it. For me, it's a pleasant way to sit and drop my mind.

TT, aren't you arguing the book is useless for most people. It's pretty common in older traditions to have oral instructions that aren't written down. Doesn't make the books useless rather it insures people practice with lineage or high quality instructors to weed out undesirables. People with proper mindset can still 'get' the system but it makes it harder. As far as I know the GF hasn't been widespread with lineage schools. Which is too bad. It's language is flowery but its practice isn't that complicated. Seems like many Chinese meditation traditions use pieces of it. Too bad there's not a formal school that puts it front and center(as far as I know). If there was I bet it'd be more practiced and evolve into an easier tool.

I think yesterday's angels/demons become our modern day aliens. Archetypes evolving with time and culture.

Unless I'm woken up in the middle of them, I tend not to remember my dreams. I've worked on dream recall and lucidity with limited success. I'm not a natural whereas my sensei would serial dream- going back to the same dream world each night in a semi-lucid state. I think there's good dreams with solid messages and junk dreams that are more scramble of the unconscious. One time I attained lucidity because I was talking to an old friend, then realized he'd passed away, thus so I must be dreaming.

I don't mind fake masters, they're usually way more advanced than I am and can be good teachers. I don't like being ripped off though, so I'm more concerned with watching my wallet. I don't believe in flawless humans or putting anyone too high up on a pedestal. If someone's full of themselves I'll learn what I can, happy with one or two solid techniques and move on.

I agree with qin00b but have much sympathy for long time old school practitioners like Chidragon who dislike seeing terms and practices watered down changed to suit another culture. Formal class, tradition teacher, you watch your etiquette, be precise.. see and do. Maybe outside of class you can ask questions. With a modern synthesizer you ask questions, explore movements and metaphors etc. Both styles have benefits. With a traditional teacher you 'surrender' or have problems.

To me the benefit of the Idiots Way, or rather the Wise Idiots way is they live happily with uncertainty. Where smarter and cleverer people are 100% convinced of something, they are not. Not that they're skeptical, they have wiggle room, enough uncertainty to know things can be probable but not certain. Thus they avoid most 'isms or at least join but never die hard believers. I've seen very intelligent people get involved in cults and foolishness because their intelligence worked overtime to provide rationales. Especially when the hook is, only the smartest will understand this. Whereas the wise idiot lives with fewer thoughts and judgements. Very comfortable with- I don't know. addon> Think I'm halfway to becoming a wise Idiot.

Chicagoans have always been partial to Capone's advice- You can get more done with a smile and kind word than with a gun.. but it's best to use both.

I don't do ZZ regularly, but it is a world of lines. When I'm in one I'll watch my alignment, hit the position and stand still. For coffee, when I hand grind the beans I'll turn it into a kind of Pangu Meditation.. overhand right side, 26 grinds, left side, 26 grinds, middle 26 grinds. Probably the kind of bastardization that'd get me slapped upside the head in a respectable learning establishment.