Apech

I thought this article was interesting: Stonehenge burial ... because it shows that the ancient shamanism which is the origin of all the systems we study (IMO) was international.

Well ... maybe... Queen Scota scroll down to paragraph headed archeology.

Hi LZ21, This is an interesting thread but I just wanted to go back to the first question. Confidence means literally 'with faith' and faith is to do with energy or power (in the sense of ability to to things). So confidence means that you know you have the ability to adequately respond to the situation in which you find yourself. Adequate means that your actions meet the needs of the situation. Arrogance means something like over reaching (ad + rogare) in other words the belief in abilities goes beyond that which is actually possible. It denotes a sense of lack of respect for the situation and particularly other people who are involved. On a macro scale the invasion of Iraq was an arrogant act because the US and Britain did not respect Iraq as a country - hence the melt down after the initial fighting. Arrogance is a misplacing of power. Ego is just 'I' in Latin. It has gained a pejorative meaning through the misunderstanding of the Buddhist no-self and pop-psychology. We all have a self its just its nature that we debate. Anyway.... true confidence negates arrogance. You don't need arrogance. If you start from a position of low confidence and self esteem then you spend long periods feeling weak and inadequate. On occasion you might break through this and then there is a tendency to over compensate and feel a little too pleased with your self (until the next knock comes along). This is only natural and not a big deal unless your own self criticism causes you to overdo your own reaction to this and plummet deeper into low self esteem. Building real confidence is an iterative process. By this I mean it is a slow feedback process. We are all 'blessed' with a quantity of baggage, a jumble of thoughts, feeling and emotions which we accumulate in childhood (or before if you subscribe to rebirth). They operate as a kind of cloud which confuses our will and stops us acting as we would like. They are the reason that we think we should act one way and yet do something else, or have strange feelings in certain situations and say daft things we don't mean. They are essentially unassimilated experience, the loose ends of old stored emotional records. The way to deal with them is as a hunter or a warrior. That is to pick them off one by one by understanding their routines and then challenging and taking back the energy they lock up. So pick on small things that challenge you, face up to them, do whatever you need to to, then review it. Say to yourself now I've done it its no big deal and move on to the next bigger challenge. Step by step not all at once. Give yourself a timescale to do this over. Build a quiet confidence which has no arrogance in it. If you notice 'lack of care' creeping in you will know that there is something you haven't dealt with.

Ok I see what you mean. I had visions of being permanently on the toilet.

All the time?

Only before storms - I just wait.

reflected moment in the limpid pond frogs croak a fly, a curled tongue.

I am in two minds over this. A good teacher can probably show you how to avoid making big errors - and thus avoid some hardship. But for myself as a lone mystic I feel the only times I've really learned was when I was on my own, falling down and then picking myself up again. I've had teachers of course but never the sheltering kind - always - 'well here's a thing now go away and work it out for yourself' types - maybe I was lucky/unlucky or maybe it was just me being arrogant and refusing to be looked after. Anyway on the marketing thing ... in most cases I don't think people are being evil capitalist I just think it has become the done thing to sell your wares - otherwise you think you are a no-body... people just fall into doing that ... and when they come to designing the poster or website they try to make it as attractive as possible to the general public. Whereas the old time man on the hill would probably spit and throw stones at the public - just to see if they really meant it.

Year long gong ... has a nice ring to it. BTW they said the L5/Sacrum thing isn't that uncommon - didn't know about it till I had an X-ray for a back injury.

Hmm you mean I'm a hopeless case?

I have a friend ... well ok its me ... who has sciatica on left, old knee injury on right (martial arts) and fused L5/Sacrum (from birth). I have never managed full lotus ... what are my chances? Gave up trying years ago. But this thread has made me want to do it. What exercises should I start with (nothing complicated please). Thnx.

I don't think you are alone in this. My girlfriend's relationship with her mum is similar. She says she feels a duty towards her mum but that she doesn't like her (I think I've said enough). Someone once said to me that your mother is your doorway into the world. But like the automatic doors at an airport, while you might be grateful to the doors for opening you don't ask them which plane to get on. ?

I recall that when I practiced Buddhism the teaching was that every sentient being has been at one time your mother and that you can practice loving kindness and gratefulness by thinking on this and treating everyone as your mother. Having a wicked sense of humor I used to think maybe I should phone them all on their birthday and visit them at Christmas ... but that's me. Also everyone I know has quite a fraught relationship with their mother (particularly women ... its a love/hate thing). Maybe this is because we get so much from our mothers that its hard to be an individual without rebelling a little (or a lot). I have wood/wind element as being about growth + spring while metal is autumnal so they are opposites (in a way). Metal takes up the shape into which it is formed while wood wants to grow freely into a new form ... so maybe we have a kind of tension here.

Yes keep going.

Yea, its not the money exchange that bothers me. I would happily pay for something that works. Its the way in which the marketing distorts the teachings. You're right that only a few people are interested. But if I were to want to make money I would have to say "better luck, better sex, better life, better health" and all with not too much work and suffering. Just to boost sales. All of which is possible except my experience is that long periods of hard work and some pain and suffering are involved. Also real spirituality is something much deeper and profound than lightbulbs in your head. Anyway I don't want to sound too jaded its probably just as it should be, the Tao works in mysterious ways.

Hi Scotty, Could you explain this? I was also thinking of the recapitulation technique - the list of all the people you ever met and your energy exchange with them ... I never thought about my mother ... I suppose I met her first and met her the longest.

Seth, Thanks for sharing this. Did the experience die down naturally or did you deliberately impede it. How did you feel then? Is your alien mate still around?

I think that when the ideas of kundalini came to the west they were seen as some distant inaccessible strange thing which yogis did (old man on hill). In recent years people have realised that it is possible for us westerners to do. I read that paper by Samella (not sure if I got that name right... too lazy to look it up) who said kundalini syndrome had only just started to occur in west ... what he should have said its only just been recognized in the west. So now suddenly we think we can do it and it seems like the thing to do. People are attracted to it ... it gets a money making edge to it ... we get marketing. Marketing distorts it because when people pay they expect results - so the whole thing gets dumbed down and ... I've depressed myself now! Maybe I'm just too jaded.

They did have gold mines in Nubia and the Eastern desert but there is a quote (can't remember who) who said they had more gold than dust. The time line is impossible to verify because we don't really know the date of the flood and even the age of Egypt is disputed e.g. some people think the sphinx is about 10,000 BC ... not the sphinx as we know it today but the sacred hill which forms its body ... Don't know about the sons of God I only study Egypt not the bible.

Hi Mel, Yes Egypt is fascinating and they knew a lot. Alchemy came down through Egypt, that's turning base metal into gold and turning your consciousness into enlightened consciousness ... (outer and inner alchemy). So where did they get that knowledge from? I think the idea that our ancestors were kind of ignorant savages is completely wrong. The people who lived in pre-history held great wisdom ... maybe not in a form we would understand. I think this is where all the old civilizations and their religions start from ... Egypt, Mesopotamia, China and so on ... they took this ancient knowledge and expressed it each in their own way through their specific cultures. Egyptian dynastic culture starts from around 3000 BC and the very first Nile settlements were around 6000 BC ... I think the flood is sometimes thought to be around 10,000 BC so that gives the relative times. Some people dispute these dates so I am just giving the currently accepted ones. John

Ok could be possibly. I don't know and the problem with all this is that there are no diagrams or any real explanation. All the information comes from a few papyri which are themselves fragmentary copies of a complete book which has not survived from antiquity. Scholars from the first centuries AD say the Egyptians had such a book or books and there were doctors (swnw) from the earliest times. Still interested to hear from anyone on comparison with meridians.

Yes ultimately - but on a practical level we are still subject to the tidal flow of energy (for want of a better word). Of course if we are tuned in enough we will just dance with this energy rather than getting submerged. Certainly don't get many Buddhas and Messiahs ... and yes most people seem to be very engrossed in the world at the moment.

Ultimately yes, but I think it is fairly well attested that things like the incidence of the common cold and flu rise in the period of 2 weeks either side of the equinoxs (equinoxi?) and solstices - this is because there is a phase shift in natures energy at this time.

let the inside out... but not in my living room just cleaned the carpet.