sean

Hey, did you ever figure this out? Let me know if you need help setting up your blog, sorry for the slow response. Also, I can create a subforum for you in the Personal Practice Discussion. That is the way most members have been sharing their personal stuff lately. Lemme know.

Played around with it a little more. Added a blurb about how we have a tendency toward the eclectic and discussion of all paths is welcome.

No, not at all. I just kind of whipped that together to give a general feel of things for newcomers. Definitely let me know if you think of anything to revise or add.

Wow Cameron, how FOX News of you.

I know of this: My Observations and Opinions on Dental Regeneration and Healing With Natural Healing Modalities by Vinny Pinto. Also there was a whole thread back in January: tooth regeneration, it's official Sean

Nice new avatar man. I've been dealing with various pressures in the lower chakras for awhile now. Particularly around the perineum and also in the deep center of my belly. To release them I meditate, allow my mind to go into emptiness and then travel into the center of the pressure. Invariably all kinds of unpleasant emotions, thoughts, memories, etc. are wrapped around these tensions, sometimes so intense I've had to stop my meditation and take a walk. At other times I will just become continually distracted from my intent with pointless but alluring daydreams that just "coincidentally" keep arising whenever I get near these chakras. Actually, these are useful defense mechanisms helping to prevent you from biting off more than you can chew. I've found the most effective way to get through the tensions, is just keeping free of desire, staying with emptiness. No thing can stop nothing. Then my experience of the center. Inside the center of these tensions is an almost imperceptibly tiny droplet of light. Trunk will tell you all about this. When you connect with the light, the tension opens up, sometimes slowly sometimes all at once, usually somewhere in between. Sean

I bet most of us are having more fun in our lives than you are there, grumpy.

I woke up this morning to seeing that hundreds of spam messages were sent out by dozens of fake members of Tao Bums last night. First I turned off the ability to send pms and emails until full membership (after Lobby post). Then, half asleep, in an attempt to mass prune fake members, I accidentally deleted every member that had joined since February, 2007. Total of 337 members. Pretty bad. So I had to restore an older database from last night, meaning any posts made today were lost. I am looking into ways that I can import all the posts made in the difference between last night and today but it's possible I won't be able to figure it out. Really sorry about my mistake. Sean

In this thread, I propose that we take a moment to write three nice things about someone or something in our recent past that we initially thought, felt and/or acted negatively towards. The format is: Brief, factual, journalist style description of the original challenge Three things that you appreciate and/or are grateful for about that situation That's it. Anything less that 100% positivity is getting moved. I am putting the smack down on my own little positivity thread! In an often cynical world let's create a positive thread that shows how easy it is to change our vibration. About anything or anyone on any scale of negativity. A job that you wanted but didn't get, crappy service at your local post office, death in the family, long winded disagreements with fellow Tao Bums *cough cough*. Recent threads involving the latter actually inspired this post. In that spirit I'll go first and do this exercise on two people I had recent tiffs with here. darebak: Issue: Differing views on some stuff 1) You seem like a kind person that makes an effort to refrain from insulting others 2) I respect how passionate you seem about finding and studying authentic Taoism in it's original cultural context. 3) I imagine you are probably a fun Dad and you obviously love your kid, making him your avatar and whatnot. SeanD - Issue: Differing views on some stuff 1) I think it's pretty amazing how dedicated you are to your chosen teachers and path. You seem like you could be a very loyal person for someone to have as a friend, once they have earned your respect and trust. 2) I also respect how passionate you seem about finding and studying an authentic path. 3) Even though we often come at spirituality from apparently very different angles, I do appreciate your emphasis on important virtues along the path such as commitment and dedication. Alright, my turn is over. Now it's your turn. Get to work! Don't make me beat the positivity out of you bitches! And hey, if this goes over well, next we will get in a circle holding hands and sing Kumbaya. Sean

Yeah, I think it's great here. Anything related to cultivation, health, self-help, evolution, consciousness, meditation, religion, mysticism, magick, even cool science, etc. Nutrition fits fine. One of the longest running threads in Taoist Discussion, not sure if you were part of that, was on choosing a deodorant. That might be pushing it. The only things I really move to Off Topic these days are overtly political threads I perceive as lacking a spiritual context and off topic humor stuff, like funny Youtube videos. Sean

Will do. I just wing it these days because I've lost the ability to distinguish between what is Taoist discussion and what is not. Nice to "see" you active here btw. I think we both took off for April.

last.fm is also pretty cool fyi.

Matthew, Happy Birthday!

To read this post or not? Well, everything you end up doing is the culmination of something larger and out of your control. Everything you say is channeled and not your own. Freedom is empty. A character in a film can appear to have volition, until it is remembered that there is an author and a script. A thermostat can be said to control the temperature of a room, until it is remembered that it is a hand that turns the dial. Similarly, it can seem like decisions are your own; within an innocent daydream that there was ever a fixed locus of identity and control. Who am I? Who are you? So regularly and so deeply is it assumed there is a discrete I and a separate you somewhere(!) at the deepest foundation of our experience. Must be hiding. And so we seek. Yet this "central experiencer" can never be identified distinctly from that which is happening. This is it folks. Sean

LOL. You crack me up dude.

Hey xeno, the only other question I saw of yours was whether a guy you linked to who mummified himself was an example of divine intervention. I have no idea.

Dude, where have you been? Love, Your Internet geek pal who knows about everything the day it's launched

Within the context of the "no choice" framework I am playing with here, I would say that the appearance of choice can be enjoyed regardless if it is absolute or not. In the same way that you can play a game and even get very passionate about it and enjoy it thoroughly, even though you know the rules are made up and have no real universal validity. Yes, I think this is so much closer to what I am reaching for here! When I say empty I don't mean it in a materialist sense; lacking abundance, an empty wallet, etc. I mean interdependently co-arising with and in and as Tao, already and always. Empty is a word that has an indescribable, blissful feeling to me, from my experiences in meditation. It has a brightness to it. It's the dark light in the void, and also the light within manifestation. Another way of wording what you wrote, that "emptiness itself is empty", is that emptiness is form. no? Another way of saying that you never had a choice is, you chose everything. This is all of your creation. That is the framework of the Law of Attraction. I think these views are two sides of the same coin. Thank you for your thoughts. Sean PS- xeno, nice to hear from you. To get the direct link to a post, just click on the link to the far right of an individual post, e.g., "Post #33", and it will pop up and give you the URL. Then just paste that into your post and that should do it.

I am a big fan of Ramana Maharshi, yes. This is who you mean, right? I think Maharishi the way you spelled it, with the extra "i", is the way the Transcendental Meditation guru from the 70's spelled his name. I don't know much about him at all. Adyashanti is a strange one. His birth name is Steven Gray and he was actually a student within a pretty standard Zen lineage for 14 years when he claims to have become enlightened. His two primary teachers were Arvis Joen Justi, a student of Taizan Maezumi and private woman whom little is know about, and Jakusho Kwong-roshi. Post-enlightenment he stumbled across various Advaitic teachings such as those of Ramana Maharshi and Nisargadatta Maharaj. He felt they captured the essence of enlightenment more clearly than anything he had ever read before and I believe their works began to influence his discourse with his very small, informal group of meditation students. At a certain point I think this newly influenced style began attracting a following of people more familiar with the Advaitic tradition than with Buddhism, and so his eclecticism in this vein increased. I'm guessing this is why he eventually took on the Sanskrit name Adyashanti, though I'm not sure the exact story behind that. I consider Adyashanti and Aziz Kristof among the most mature Western Advaitic teachers alive today. Probably because of their background with Zen and consistent meditation practices. Pratityasamutpada has many variations in translation; I like dependent arising, or dependent co-arising but yeah, most people refer to this as the doctrine of (inter)dependent origination. Yes, but this is where I see things getting very tricky. The problem here is, from a Buddhist perspective, everything is always changing. No thing can be isolated and pinpointed because, metaphorically speaking, the very finger that tries to point a thing out, is itself in flux and not a static, discrete thing. It is also co-arising dependently. So the concept that a human being, whether it be their brain, their body, their mind or their soul, can have a certain kind of realization that is something and does not change is logically impossible within a Buddhist cosmology. Enlightenment can not be the maintenance of a fixed state, be that a fixed state of thought or emotion. From all accounts, enlightened beings still have fluctuations of emotions, new thoughts, new experiences, new memories. On the biologial level alone the human body is constantly regenerating cells, it's said within less than a decade there is not a single cell in your body that is the same. In subtle realms I imagine change happens even faster, without the denser forms of matter slowing the process of change down. Beings such as so-called Immortals I see as living archetypes, but even they are not exempt from interdependent origination and emptiness of self. Everything that manifests, changes. All that exists changes. Everything that is born, suffers, ages and dies. Only nothing does not change. The materialist stops here. Because nothing does not exist, can not be measured, what is the point? It is only us lunatic, nondual contemplatives that trudge on. With a sense that even nothing/something must be One. Well, we know that nothing is not something we can ever imagine. Anything we imagine is something. So maybe this nothing is much more than the absence of things (!) It is in this sense that I say the only kind of realization that can be eternal, is no realization. A realization that is never born. It just always was, always is, always shall be. This is where the humility, the nothing-specialness and the humor of all highly realized teachers that I am drawn to arises. The highest enlightenment is nothing. It's not an event. It's not an experience. It's not something missing in the so-called unenlightened. I hope this makes sense, I am re-reading my words here and seeing ways I could elaborate and even contradict myself. This is all slippery ground and I don't consider myself a scholar either. I think my essential point is that I see this "recognition that is always present" not as a straightforward goal to take for granted, but as a koan of the highest order. There is a strange paradox I see here too but I am getting sleepy and confused. I will say that one of the points Adyashanti teaches is that it's unnecessary to remove the sense of of self, only to see through the conviction that it is separate. Honestly, I have no real clue. Hagar, just caught your post before hitting Add Reply. Nice thoughts. It's funny because I think I have this reputation here for being intellectual but I don't consider myself a cerebral person at all. Probably just how I come across in text. In person I am much more emotional and intuitive. I feel all of what I write here very kinesthetically, sometimes very deeply, so in my experience this kind of inquiry is all intimately related to my physical cultivation. Re: the guy who quit heroin cold turkey after 20 years, I would say that is a good a case as any for divine intervention if you are familiar with biochemistry of chronic heroin addiction and how it essentially shuts down the volitional centers of the brain, making it just about impossible to pull yourself out of the addiction. Re: Your statement that if free will is only contextual, it doesn't exist is compatible with my point which is that free will is not absolute. Again, I absolutely do not consider what I am proposing relativistic or nihilistic. Or depressing for that matter. In fact, I find it very freeing and I am expressing intuitions that occur from my cultivation. Perhaps ironically, I'll also share that I am more active in practices like "the law of attraction" nowadays than ever. LOA presents what seems to be an entirely different and fundamentally incompatible cosmology. Yet somehow, being the integral nutjob I am, I fit it all into my worldview without a sense of contradiction, something I am acutely sensitive of. Sean

Your path is Bhakti yoga, my dear. My target audience is any other slightly crazy Jnana yogis on the board. Also, regarding the dirt posted on Gangaji and Eli and on the state of neo-advaitic culture in the west, much more important than teachers having sex outside their marriages IMO, here are some worthwhile reads: The Dangers of Pseudo-advaita Neo-Advaita or Pseudo-Advaita and Real Advaita-Nonduality Sean

Link is broken Cam.

I hadn't read this before I made a recent post, but I think my thoughts in this thread are synchronistically relevant: You never had a choice.

I am just using words of course, so they are limited and ultimately silly. But let this view sink in for a minute if you care. Not as a new philosophical position or spiritual argument. Just for fun maybe. When you look into it, the idea that there is free will is contextual. Contextual doesn't mean wrong, it just means not absolute. That something is used as an excuse to avoid responsibility is not a logical argument against it. Almost anything that works as a way to avoid responsibility is used, including the truth. The fact is, there are processes occurring in your brain that collectively create the conviction of a consolidated, executive sense of self, typically behind your eyes, making creative decisions and enjoying or suffering their outcomes. This phenomenon of self-creation is part of evolution and does have relative value. But these processes are themselves without independent nature. In other words, they dependently arise. This is called pratityasamutpada in Buddhism, arguably the only distinct doctrine to come out of Buddhism that did not have precedent in earlier religions. This view considers the western mechanical model "A (me) is the cause of B (my actions)" as naive which is precisely what earned Buddhism the critique by early western thinkers as a fatalistic philosophy. The other side of the same coin is the doctrine of sunyata, or emptiness, and is what led Buddhism to be characterized as nihilstic. I mention this out of irony for you SeanD, as our resident Buddhist scholar consistently advocating we immerse ourselves in Eastern thinking, yet you mischaracterize my view as both fatalistic and nihilistic based on a commonly shallow and early western misunderstanding of Buddhist doctrine. Choice is an abstraction that is convenient and necessary and good and beautiful in context, as is a sense of self. Without these we would not be human. Yet truly, choices happen without a chooser. There is no thinker of your thoughts. There is no one who one day wakes up from this dream. One is already awake. An incredible story is being told by no one, to no one. Or by God to God. However you want to look at it. There is no mistake here. There is nothing wrong with illusion. All great art is a lie. Nature herself is the biggest liar (thanks Taomeow). Mastering this spectrum does get you laid more often (thank Yoda) and may result in superpowers if you want them (thanks SeanD). This great illusion of choice is part of an awesome creative game being played by God, our deepest Self, for no comprehensible reason. In other words, for Love. Sean