Apech

Certain systems lay great importance on transmission and empowerment. For instance you can't really practice vajrayana without empowerment - and to study texts you need the 'lung' reading. This is how they work. But then you have to ask what is meant by 'work' and why the emphasis is there in the first place. This does not mean however that it is impossible without a transmission or teacher - just that you would have to do a different system and practice self empowerment or self-initiation (which is taught by some). Having a teacher and so on makes things easier - but to what end? Perhaps the result is not as impressive as with the self taught? If you accept that we exist in an infinite field of consciousness or energy then you have to accept that countless types of beings exist - some beyond the realms of our understanding (since the human perspective is necessarily narrow). Entities exist which can and have helped practitioners in different systems - but also there are myriad harmful entities and so on - so its not an area to be entered into lightly.

What kind of shangri-la do you live in? I have met two people in my life who I thought might be 'enlightened' and I am not sure about one and the other is only a kind of work in progress yet impressive kind. I have never met anyone in a meditation centre who is anywhere near basic realisation never mind enlightened. Perhaps we have divergent ideas about what this means - but your idea that is common 'almost everywhere' is bizarre. Sorry but this is my experience and I find your assertions unbelievable.

Mine. and if you want to be included it will cost you plenty.

yep

…and Juan actually found that funny the first thirteen times ….

exactly

You know what they say about people who reply to their own posts?

Yes it's time folks. 1. The Jing-Qi-Shen-Void vector is descriptive only and not a direction for travel. 2. Westerners should avoid meditating on mind because their natural inclination is to focus on body. All instructions like non-conceptual states, no thoughts and so on should be avoided. Focus on body first and let your thoughts take care of themselves. The body, correctly viewed is a portal to energy - so work should begin there and then progress to subtle body. Mind for Westerners is unimportant until later.

ok I never was any good at fishing.

How is Jeff these days?

Well of course.

In Ancient Egypt there was something called the 'Reversion of Offerings' - which meant that the food offerings made to the god in the daily temple ritual were then first offered to the priests, then to the hemu-ka (the officiants in the funerary rights), and then to the people at the temple entrance. Thus all the offerings were eaten by someone in a hierarchical order of god - priest - officiants - common folk. In fact much of the local economy of a locale would also operate much in this way - local temples acting as kind of resource centres.

Unpopular opinion: Kate Middleton is not dead.

My post above is what happened when I was 19. It was much later in my 40's that I discovered that what I had been doing accorded with the Mahamudra meditation approach. It was either good karma or a happy accident. If you are not familiar with Mahamudra I can recommend this book, which explains everything about how to do this. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Boundless-Wisdom-Mahamudra-Practice-Manual-ebook/dp/B07YVGT9X9?ref_=ast_author_dp&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.j5nHXepjdJFh0TqP-5jcAm-whLwvFNqpjehrSqJxLX7bvrYt5sCiuOYANJsJgCb5aCpHyJKzPrPMAGAJeWIm03peoIvoyVbKVuZyfYP19JlOxLVPFsjTRHCYK-V4zNtNGVbbsXTOYo0sNtMSNRnWwQPEI8FWjaCHjiyZDSxESPlgGkP3MLLBHPOdS_CKTkKns_6ya2ucsmYB487PENRtyB6dd9OEHR3RNw6OCdk8600.6BG6t6u8TnJcKHgzcFV87xMhlcQzMfSr7fC-mPZw788&dib_tag=AUTHOR

some kundalini is good and some is just chit .

The best beginning advice I got was almost accidental from a friend and not a teacher. I had been mediating for a few years and tried everything, mantras, visualisation, breath counting and so on - and I felt very frustrated that nothing happened. I was chatting to a friend who also meditated and told them what was (not) happening and they said 'why don't you stop all that and just look at your mind'. So I tried this with immediate effect, like a dam bursting my mind opened up to a profound experience.

Slightly flippant version. The longer version is this: I think you can raise K without a non-dual realisation. Awakening the energy coiled at the base of your spine has several results. One is access to additional 'mental' energy. Another is the flushing out of stored recorded material - emotional memories and trauma and so on - which is very difficult to deal with - so beware. Another is the energisation of the 'snake brain' - so that things are seen as pure appetival power dynamics - which can be shocking and revealing at the same time. So an awareness which is normally fuzzed over by societal and moral blankets is accessed. Another is potential sexual dysfunction - and/or loss/distortion of sexual desires. So it's a mixed bag really. In Buddhism the non-dual realisation is usually defined as either the union of luminosity and emptiness or the union of energy (prana) and mind (citta). Luminosity doesn't really mean seeing light but the awareness itself - the naturally occurring awareness which is self luminous. While emptiness can be seen as the basic nature of everything which is formless in itself but able to assume the infinite formal expression of everything. At rest it is the sky-like empty nature of mind itself. Like yin and yang in the taichi diagram awareness and emptiness are two sides of the 'same' coin - they are not the same as each other yet arise in mutual dependence. If you look at your mind - then you tend to see it as an object while you the subject are the observer. The basic nature of the object is emptiness because it has no fixed form. If it did have it would have a colour, shape, location and name like all the 10,000 things. But it doesn't, it is 'beyond' and behind them all but not fixed by any one of them. We then tend to identify with the luminous because we see ourselves as the observer. But as we become aware that we are not the egoically defined separate self we thought we were - this steps aside so to speak - we can realise 'Self' as the luminous (or just say that this is non-self i.e. not ego) - then the trick is to realise the 'not twoness' of the emptiness of the object mind and the self-luminous observer. This, I think is the non-dual realisation. Further, it is possible to 'see' this without fully entering it. So although you see this non-duality there still remains a sense of separate self. This is why the alchemical process is needed to transform the being into a functioning entity which is independent of the usual identification with collections of thoughts, feeling, body and so on. Beyond death and change in the normal sense this new being is immortal because it depends entirely on the luminous and the empty - which themselves are indestructible. You could say it is a being of Spirit and not of matter. The work for this is done with the subtle body. To do this would require the marshalling of all available energy since it is a rare and difficult task. So it would require the energy represented as K to complete the work. So while the first seeing of the non-dual might be accessible to people in which K is not activated (possibly) - the alchemical work is not complete and so it remains as a kind of vision without real substance. Some people mistake an emotional release and a feeling of unity or not really being there as the non-dual. This is a common thing to be avoided in my opinion. Strange though it may sound, I think the correct stance is to dedicate yourself to the alchemical work while knowing it is probably impossible or at least very, very difficult to achieve. To do this with all the energy and effort you can muster - but without urgency - but with faith that this is what we are supposed to be doing - and that doing it is noble. Just my rambling thoughts as ever

No or maybe yes.

Only in your imagination.

no no I’m a butch Tom cat 🐈

What is the nature of your emergency?

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Stilling the mind is preliminary for most things but it is generally over emphasized because most people don’t get past there.

true