thelerner

Bless you.

Great thread, we live better, when we work together. Amazon, love'em or hate'em, is an excellent resource for those isolating themselves. Toilet paper, they got it, though some out of stock, many types and sizes aren't, and the prices don't seem to be gauging. They have small bottles of hand disinfectant, gatorade.. a veritable one stop shop for damn near everything.. baby wipes to coffins. Literally coffins**!? I just ordered some zinc lozenges and garlic oil softgels from them. **They can over night them too. You can get one, stuff your loved one in. Then complain and send it back for a refund. That way you don't pay any funeral expenses.

Yeah you see that on flat earth sites. What they miss is they're measuring from a higher location, ie top of the mesa, instead of bottom, which distorts the calculation. They also ignore that on a flat earth they should be seeing the Eiffel Tower, the Sears Tower, ie tall building and mountains that are very very far away, because the earth is flat. From any mountain range you should see the famed ice wall keeping the water from going over the edge, but you don't. That part of reality escapes them. As does the ability to make an accurate map. On the other hand, God bless the innocent inquiring minds..

I was thinking along similar lines but with the teachings of Eckhardt Tolle and Barry Long, ie thought as enemy. In my opinion thats going too far, the aim should be the quiet mind and that conscious thinking is a good tool, bad master. My reading in modern behavioral psychology points to the problems of fighting thought with thought. Aiming for one thought (or nonthought) can trigger the exact opposite. The don't think of purple elephant paradox. The behaivoral stuff tries to train people to see the thought and realize its just a thought. One of the exercises is say to yourself 'I will not walk across the room' then walk across the room. Do that with things through the day, til you realize the inner thought 'don't mean nothing', you are free to follow or ignore them. That's not too different, imo, then the spacious mind that Steve points to in Dzogen.

that seems easy to me. Two things. Higher Education, particularly for woman. Unstigmatized access to birth control. Those two things have driven the birthrate in most of the first world under repopulation number. In the US, Russia, Europe, Japan, we need immigration to stay still. Some countries are bribing woman to get pregnant**. Affluence helps. China's one child policy helped it but was questionable ethically. And the fall out and unintended consequence are just being felt. Course right now there Orwellian camera surveillance/credit system is probably doing the same thing more subtly. Over population is a 2nd and 3rd world problem. A horrible one but as standards of living rise, birthrate lowers. Another pig in the pen is religion. Harder to crack but it can be done. Catholicism is inching forward on the subject and enough inches make for a new policy, especially when the majority is already ignoring the formal edicts. **on countries with low birthrates-https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-51118616 Creating a virus that mostly kills older people would not be worth an intelligent way plus it could kill its creators, there families and if found out you're a mass murderer and everything you've done or stood for is gonna be destroyed.

Well, it appears that the Year of the Rat starts off with a big plague. who'da guessed.

hmnn, I thought some dragons had a particular taste for virgins. sorry, couldn't help myself. more practical.. find a beautiful spot, in nature, away from people, meditate.. then ask yourself the question.

So.. Italian lock down for example, you can still leave the house, go shopping, visit friends, even go to verified needed work- as long as you don't have the virus. So its strict but imo not full on draconian..yet. Long term this will be economic disaster because so many people live paycheck to paycheck or a few weeks from it. With the genie out of the bottle my thinking is the lock down is to slow the rate of infection, with the hopes of more hospital beds available for the very sick, then if the contagion moved faster. But.. even slowed down, without a vaccine, it may end up part of our global reality, ie a severe, deadlier pneumonia and we'll learn to deal with it. The colleges my kids go to have extended spring break by 2 weeks and there's a scramble to get classes online. Much to my wife's chagrin a business meeting with 270, now 230 people was not called off and is meeting in Miami this Friday. <<actually what I wrote may not be correct. I read a report saying restaurants and stores were being closed.. Yet people gotta eat and get supplies. The situation may be changing or different areas in Italy have have different interpretations.>>

The original Kung Fu show from 1972 to 1975 was quite Daoist. Interestingly enough Bruce Lee was considered for the lead, but as I recall was told he looked too Chinese. But, his Bruces's son Brandon played the lead character's son in the movie version and in the not as well done TV series sequel, produced decades later.

I went through a phase of hunting down female singers re-doing popular rock melodies. Like Natalie Merchant singing Bowie's Space Oddity, Alanis Morissette singing Sting's King of Pain, Cheryl Crow singing Sweet Child of Mine, Fiona Apple doing the Beatles Across the Universe. These hits sung simply and acoustically are some of my favorite music to mellow down with. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSvvGEsZ4R4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0s4SvRkRNqo

<<add on breaking news. From Bloomberg Headlines. Trump says he's restricting travel from Europe for 30 days. & NBA suspends season after player tests positive for Covid-19. Steve copied a pretty sobering and informative article about the virus on another thread.

my favorite non American Pie I think Don McLean has a bit part in it too. My kids dig Weird Al and he does a great version of this in concert.

Great thought. I just made a thread to do just that. <sadly its already being spammed by rideforever, but hopefully he'll leave it alone and allow discussion to flow. >

rideforever, thanks. I understand your point, some of it is 'pop' new age'ism, but much of its not. Some of the points are worth considering and discussing. I guess this is to discuss what good, what's bad. As I wrote some of the ghost stuff is not in my sphere of thinking.

Here's the thread. Quoting from it will avoid thelerner said, and give credit to Dawg.

<NOTE The above are not my writings, they're from Dawg's 2013 thread. It should read Dawg said:. I should have found and quoted it directly instead of copy and pasted but I'm lazy.> Seems like a universal first step. My Aikido sensei used to say be in the state of nothing that is something. Don't be in the nothing that is nothing.. ie quiet peaceful but with a bright awareness, not dullness. Good stuff. I like the linking of anger to 'dislike' and greed to 'like'. I've also found the concept of trying to move desires into preferences helpful. This board is certainly a test of ones equanimity. The fighting and arguing with strangers, who most of the time you have no chance of changing there mind. Nothing wrong with arguing but it descending into name calling and nastiness way to quickly here. Bad form for a philosophy site. In honesty a condition I'm not above. Not bad, very spiritual, not sure I buy it though. I'm still modern enough to consider my being more physical then spiritual, but I'm working on it. And for spiritual advancement it probably the better paradigm.

I think it was. I just bumped it up and lumped together a few of his early posts and his last one. I like the middle writing the best.

bump. Interesting stuff. Apparently I read it 7 years ago, but don't remember it or Dawg. Thought I'd bump it up to give it a more thorough read. Sift it for any gems.

Being too negative probably keeps people from spiritual advancement. imo you need a positive mindset, something stronger then neutral because human nature tends toward the negative. So a little extra positivity is needed to keep paranoia and despair at bay as you travel the path. You don't get spiritual enlightenment until you have peace with yourself and can do the mundane things; jobs and relationships in peace. imo higher entities have better things to do then play games with humans. hmnn, working for the powers that be.. What are they paying? Most often whats taken as evil is the result of compromises needed to keep cities, states and governments running. Join the government at any level and you won't see evil as much as bureaucracy. There only so much money and every group wants different things.

Smash your microscope It's full speed ahead Future comes, Biden or not corrected Smash your microscope Future comes, Biden or not It's full speed ahead. difference between my clever and my idiocy is paper thin

My favorite practice involving withdrawing the senses is a Hermetic guided meditaiton by Rawn Clark called Center of Stillness, a guided hypnotic mp3 where you withdraw the traditional 5 senses plus 2 mind based ones- Emotional tone, and Mind Chatter. It also has you floating around space, seeing the web of life, your connection to other beings.. its challenging. http://abardoncompanion.de/CSM-Info.html

yup. not 100% sure what he's claiming, though I get the feeling its a bit negative to those who's sexuality doesn't conform to his ideals.. but hey, in this world there's room for that too. <<addon- sometimes we get good conversation from odd starts. If we let it roll, and look at things philosophically and don't go in for personal attacks. Which is happening way to fast on threads these days>>

idk, the OP talks about deviants. This is taking that on a slight curve. <<actually rallis was right. The OP seems to have wanted to discuss sealing the senses, but the line about Men and woman and men being deviants threw me. >>

every now and then we need to deviate from our norms. Try new things, gain new color, get out of ruts, think differently. Thats not to say be rude or disrespectful to others rather, but move away from the usual tic toc world and do things out of character. Also that great things, new things are most often created by deviants. As long as you're not hurting others or yourself, color outside the boundaries, every now and then.

You don't break new ground or start having lots of fun until someone deviates.. a bit. common is kind of boring.