sean

Jana Dixon is great. We keep in touch on the Integral Naked forum where she is active. She also invented the Cardio-Muscular-Release Technique that I've gotten a lot out of and I pasted the pitfalls on the path in an earlier post. Sean

Ian, it sounds like you are going down a very very specific style of path ... reminds me of the Catholicism in which I was raised, particularly St. John of the Cross who I admire. I sincerely hope it's working for you. And also from my vantage point I can't help but suggest that you seem a bit entranced by what appear to be almost morbid and anti-natural aspects of your perceptions of the path. The perceptions themselves are accurate as a perspective, but is this perspective held with other equally valid perspectives? IMHO enlightenment can be seen to be a very natural process. Like the unfolding of a flower. There is pain. There is loss. And there is also great pleasure and great beauty. We do the best we can to cultivate, watering and giving nutrient to our soil, pulling out weeds, transplating ourselves to more appropriate environments. We learn from teachers wiser than us, but ultimately it's all a very ordinary, very natural process we would eventually discover without exposure to formal, human dharma. The teaching is reflected in and through all of nature. It's not a club we can join if we are austere enough, it's a club we already intimately are and can't get out of. My question is, are you entangling a personal tendency toward melancholy into a projection of what you objectively believe an enlightened path must be for yourself and everyone else? What happened to just be happy? Is that only your animal nature speaking? Arf! ArfArfArf! Sincerely, Sean

I read his Tantra book. Gleaned a few nuggets. And I like his writing style, it raises my energy for the path to read him so I'll continue just buying everything he puts out. In e-book format they are what, $6 or something. But if you have the big AYP book, that's all you will need to see if you dig his approach. Secrets of Wilder is a cool one you can read while you are plowing through AYP though. Sean

cloud recluse, I've had that one on my list for awhile but I think I will pick it up next. Thanks for the review. Ian, I think you are saying what I said better ... your distinction between attraction and desire is similar to the distinction between pain and suffering, right? Attraction and pain arise and it's how the human being responds to them that makes the difference. In an awakened being I imagine it like cat is saying ... thoughts, pain, attraction arise and pass like clouds in a sky of Self. But here my nondualistic tendencies encourage me to push things even more. I would take this all further and say that even in an awakened mind sometimes thoughts come that don't seem to pass like clouds. They entangle the mind. And sometimes also attractions arise that don't just dissolve right away. They burn longer as passion and desire. And yet all these phenomenon too also arise within the field of Self. Self is so absolutely free, it can enter into bondage and remain untouched. Sean

IMO awakening is not so much about a reduction or modification of desire itself, but a new relationship with desire. Desire is a spontaneous arc of energy that flows between two polarities of it's own accord. It's a natural event, like water running down a cliff. It's not good or bad, it just is. Saying an enlightened master has no desire is like saying hitting him with a metal baseball bat across the head won't hurt. It will. The distinction is wether the master creates suffering from these sensations, or is just empty with them. Perhaps an awakened relationship with desire, and the chosen cultivation path that led to it, can alter desire itself as well. But how we think and feel about desire, how we relate with desire, wether we set ourselves up in resistance to it, fight it, succumb to it, ignore it, repress it, just allow it ... IMO this is the key transformation that occurs in awakening, not the manipulations of nature. So IMO someone can be enlightened and still have powerful desires arise. They can still be in a position to need to choose how to respond to powerful desires. The change is that there is an ever present recognition that the desire is not the Self and the desire is no threat to Self. Ultimately nothing to lose, nothing to gain. Sean

Neimad, I can't wait to hang out with you dude. We are going to have such a blast have crazy debates into the dawn hours. I agree that it's great to have materials that inspire people at all different levels, geeks (which would include myself ), adolescents, wierdos, etc. There are probably infinite entry points onto the path and we could probably debate our whole lives over what kinds of subtle or not so subtle misunderstandings and imbalances the various entry points can leads to, etc. Really, every entry point probably has it's own dark night of the soul and on another level I think if you get down to it we really don't get to pick our entry point as much as it picks us anyway. The aspect of the warrior mindset I was kind of teasing in my post is not about the simple recognition that we are in prison, a matrix, samsara, ignorance, what have you ... it's in the obsession with this to the point that it becomes "your thing". You know how people have "their thing". Like there are people who are vegetarians and then there are people who being a vegetarian is "their thing". They have all the gear, hats, t-shirts, lot's of IE bookmarks. They talk about the suffering of animals completely out of context in mixed company. Oh God, and if you are on their friends mailing list watch out. That sort of stuff. Kind of annoying. Also kind of funny. And we probably need more people with convictions like this. It's a kind of yang energy. Wanting to shake up the world, change the world, save the world in some really drastic way. You can also go back and replace "world" with "self" and I think that might even be truer. How often is this wanting to fight / change / transcend the world/matrix/prison/illusion just a projection of things the person wants to change in themself? Anyway, I recognize that we all go through a lot of phases here and this is totally the place for that. Christ, how many phases I've gone through just since TTB started. Some phases are expressed louder than others and so might get some extra eye rolls ... Like Todd relayed, I think some (many?) of us (myself included) have gone through this "warrior" process of waking up to the intensity of the struggle we are up against. Your perspective is 100% true from your perspective. This is a war. We are in prison. And probably 99% of the world is asleep and doesn't give a shit and won't ever awaken in this lifetime. But I feel I've grown through this perspective into something (arguably) more mature. I see subtleties to this particular "warrior" fixation that, while you are saying "oh yeah, well I will leave that behind later", it doesn't usually work like that. I am not enlightened, so take this for what it's worth, but IMO it's not like you can just whip up this big new warrior identity and slash and burn your way to the very brink of the void and then go "shit, that was fucking cool as fuck! Ok, now I will take off this fake but highly useful warrior costume and jump into the void as the nothingness that I truly am". Maybe that works for some people (in movies and pop spirituality books written by people also not enlightened), but I think these days awakening is more organic than that. Fixations and wierd identity compulsions come and go. Some are strong and sweep us off our feet and have us ranting that we have found the latest greatest temporary identity that can take us to the edge of the abyss, but IMO it's all baloney. We are all just really ordinary people, suffering some moments, happy others, it all comes and goes and we have absolutely no fucking control of anything whatsoever. Enlightenment is an accident. The best we can do is engage in practices that make us accident prone. I think it's good to stay in touch with our fragile, ordinariness. But feel free to take this as a description of my own temporary identity I have built. We are all building selves. It's what humans do best. Always building selves. Just two more cents for the TTB sangha coffer. Sean

Todd, I really enjoyed your post. It put into words exactly what comes to my mind when I read quotes like Horsley's. I imagine this style is targeting, or at least attracting a primarily adolescent, or return-to-adolescent market. Not necessarily bad, just not my cup of tea these days. Shit happens. War included. Yet I fail to see how building an identity around resistance cultivates a nondual awakening. We are not in feudal Japan. This isn't Star Wars or The Matrix. People that I meet that are obsessed with war, villains, "the system", "the matrix", conspiracies of grandeur, vanquishing foes ... they either a) live with their parents, are geeks, c) get so wrapped up in this mindset they took it too far and end up attracting really really strange crap into their lives or d) all of the above. Sean

Found this cool practice the other day, google'ing for psoas release techniques. Via Massage exercise tools I promptly picked up a softball and tried this. Really interesting. I hit tension right away, deep in my belly. My muscles kind of spazzed back and forth trying to figure out what to do with the softball, relax completely or resist it. Layer after layer. Eventually the muscles more or less released completely and the ball pressed deep into me. At this point I konked out and woke up on my side kind of drooling. Sean

turbo, that's a good tip, I'll have to pick up a tennis ball now. Ian, a softball is bigger than a baseball, between 12 inches (30 cm) and 11 inches (28 cm). It's also rumored to be softer, but I've never found this to matter much when one hits you at 40mph in the face. The softball is coincidentally used for a game also called softball which is notoriously only played by women and sickly boys. Yoda, on your stomach. (Uh, that doesn't sound right. ) freeform, yeah, it's a nice site. I think I might pick up that Flextasy DVD on his site and some rollers while I'm at it. Sean

I hold both perspectives. Sean

I think your perspective, a very dichotomous one with a hard line in the sand between a pathetic present moment self and an imagined enlightened Self in the future, is certaintly one perspective. It appears to be helping to raise your motivation for your path. However I think this perspective, without temperament with other wisdom perspectives, is very unbalanced. It's also equally true that the present moment, which includes our self, is already completely, unimaginably Perfect in every possible way. And the only obstacle to an experience of this truth is actually the very fact that we think the lie that our self is pathetic and that we think the lie that this moment is flawed and that we think the lie that we are stuck in an terrible illusionary matrix and that someday in the imagined lie called the future we will find salvation. And from this perspective even this "fall" is Perfect. From this end of the paradox, the path out of the matrix is in dissolving the illusion that there is a path out of the matrix. Every step of the way is Perfect. Then you yourself the illusion the truth the way out are not separate. My suggestion is to hold both, and more, and no perspectives all at once. Also, particularly from a Taoist perspective, our incarnational form is intimately intimately bound up with our ancestry and our community. Inseparable really. Their qi is our qi. Leaving home, moving 10k miles away, saying you couldn't care less about your parents ... doesn't really matter. You can't escape them. You and the matrix are not separate. You will always carry aspects of your parents, your grandparents, your great grandparents patterns. It's funny, this very idea of an individual path distinct from one's family and community is completely foreign to Chinese Taoism, it was introducted by Indian Buddhists and was debated for centuries. So if you really want to transcend what I've heard you remark as the limited Buddhist views of your parents, you can start by embracing a more alchemical, nondual cosmology. Just my two humble cents as always, brother. Sean

Where do you want to go, neimad? What do you expect this destination you are seeking to have and what will it lack? Sean

What about attachment to neurotically giving up all attachment without any concern for others? In particular others that invested their life Qi into birthing us, loving us, raising us, working to feed us and give us shelter. Sean

The book isn't Cohen's mom being upset that he became free of his attachment to her. That would be a pretty silly thing to write a book about. The book is about Cohen's descent into narcissism and megalomania, from his mother's perspective. Sean

Cohen's come a long way. I was very wary of him for many years (you are aware that his own mother wrote a scathing biography of him, as well as an ex long time student) but I think he is doing good work with his magazine. I think it's good that he has calmed down on the overbearing guru trip. And I think it's good he has people like Ken Wilber in his life to help him articulate a coherent spiritual philosophy. Sean

Wow. Welcome Jack! Karen let me listen to an old workshop of yours last week. I was very touched by the way you weaved Buddhist and other Eastern wisdom into your approach. I was also impressed to hear that you were a serious student of Suzuki-Roshi and also Chogyam Trungpa. It's very nice to see a vertical dimension brought to NLP and hypnosis so elegantly. Would you say that your book Finding True Magic is the most accessible entry point to your work? Thanks, Sean

I love Kirtan. I remember the first time I experienced it ... in a big group of people chanting in a large Yoga studio with really great acoustics, it was so beautiful and powerful. Very blissful. I have a few mp3s I listen to from time to time as well. I want to to eventually joint a local Kirtan chanting group at some point ... really raises my bhakti.

Welcome green dog. It's your year. Sean

Did you pick up the Classic Sidneys? I can drop you and Lezlie off to get a nice pedicure to show off your pretty toes in them.

Wow. I didn't have the time this week to participate in this discussion more, but I just read through it and it turned into quite a powerful conversation. I'm walking away with a much more sophisticated understanding of this subject, thanks to everyone who contributed time to clarifying their views. Great stuff.

mYTHmAKER, thanks again for your encouragement to see Fong. He is a cool teacher and I wouldn't have found the motivation without it. Cam, if Adya class doesn't start until 1 we can totally make the 9:30am Sunday class with Fong. Your question made me ponder this. I'm not really sure. What do you think? Smile, I am also grateful for Chia's books. I never got hurt from them (never pushed them hard enough probably) and they helped shape my path a great deal. That is so cool we are taking a similar form of Taichi. thaddeus, thanks for the lineage details. Sean

What makes you say this Max? Curious.

LOL! That's Patton Oswalt, that guy is hilarious.