Maddie

As long as they are better than that bitch Becky's lol

That's my tramp stamp ...... jk

yea its a little weird, but I'm in a weird mood today lol

Luke...... you are wonderful lol 🩷🤗 Don't ever stop being you <3

I think back to when I was Christian and though I didn't think of myself as a Christian mystic at the time, I do now. I wouldn't just tell God a list of things I wanted but I would sit there and get really quiet and still and "listen". I would take what Jesus said about non-violence seriously while most of the other people in the church were cheering the invasion of Iraq. Ultimately I think the thing that led to me no longer being a Christian was Christian mysticism.

Yeah I've heard/know of people going totally nuts starting with those upper body meditations without the proper foundational work.

^ the Abrahamic discussion going about how I thought it would *I think the reason that Abrahamic religious discussion becomes so much more contentious is because the Abrahamic traditions tend to be more exclusive.

I think an important thing to realize is that the word meditation is very ambiguous and can mean many different things. The word in the Pali is Jhana which translated in to Chinese is Chan when translated into Japanese is Zen. Jhana meant deep levels of concentrative absorption usually achieved while focusing on the breath (Anapanasati). Jhana was translated into English as meditation which in English has a different connotation related more to contemplation as in "I meditated upon the meaning of the passage I read". With all of that being said, basically anything can be a meditation, including what you described in your post (third eye meditation is defiantly a thing). The question to ask oneself then is what am I wanting to accomplish by doing this and why.

That's deep lol

*realistic version: I wake up in the morning before work from a dream where Elmo was my best friend and he was confessing to me the truth about his eating disorder. I spend the next seven minutes hitting the snooze button while googling the dream interpretation. While doing so I see an ad for some new leggings on sale at Target and hate the model for having a perfect body and knowing damn well I'll never look like her in those leggings. By this time I totally forgotten about my dream interpretation project and get up to go look in the bathroom mirror at my legs from the side to see if I could rock those leggings. Well in the midst of that I think my profile looks a little bit like Miley Cyrus which causes "flowers" to pop into my head. I pop my head out into the living room and tell Alexa to play Flowers by Miley Cyrus while trying to imitate the little dance she does in the video and when it gets to the part where she's working out I remember I need to make breakfast and stop goofing off so I actually have time to do Pilates before work myself. While making some tea and toast as I'm getting ready for work I contemplate the irony of having to work so hard to pay bills just because my parents had sex and now here I am. By this time I finished my breakfast and it's time to unroll my mat and begin some light yoga for a warm-up. This morning I happened to remember to light some incense and bow before the Buddha before beginning and now I'm feeling pretty spiritual and then I check out my legs on the mat and wonder if I could rock those leggings from Target after all. In the middle of my pilates workout that I'm doing from YouTube I start to think maybe I should just start my own YouTube channel because this looks way easier than what I'm doing for a living. Then I finish my pilates workout and I lay there on my mat staring at the ceiling and then it suddenly pops into my head that the comeback that I had to that bitch Becky in high school was pretty badass and I wonder what she's doing for a living now and I reassure myself that she has three kids lots of stretch marks and probably has a fat ass. That I remember I'm on my mat and I'm supposed to be acting spiritual so I lay there and close my eyes and focus on my breathing for about 5 seconds before I realize it's time to actually start getting ready for work.

I don't know. All I do know is the instructions said a little below and a little behind the navel and then when I did the breathing I felt all of the tingling and what not in the womb area.

I don't think its a correlation that I have ever contemplated to be honest. I guess my default assumption is its irrelevant.

Not sure if I understand your argument?

Well one modern nation that did remain polytheistic to this day is India if you want a reference point.

When being kind to people its important to remember we are also people. ;-)

They typically do seem subtle, except Zhunti mantra, Zhunti mantra is never subtle lol.

It does seem to have many problematic elements.

It was more reading about them than reading them, but I have read about the desert fathers, St. Thomas of the cross, Mister Eckhart, ect. It was more like after seeing people seemingly get some deep stuff out of Christianity I would look through the bible and see what I could find for myself and that was typically disappointing.

Several times after reading about Christian mystics I have tried to be gracious with Christianity and see what cultivation gems there might be within it. It was like looking for water in a desert in my opinion. Every now and then you might find a puddle here and there but that's about it. Just based on my experience.

That is really interesting because in spite of what the text books say I always seem to feel it in the "womb" area.

The irony is that the "pagan" philosophers of ancient Greece and Rome considered the early Christians simpletons lol.

It would be more accurate to say Arabs and Hebrews were polytheistic since Muslim and Jewish are monotheistic religions, while the former are ethnic groups.

I think this is a common misconception about karma that it's made or kept somewhere outside of ourselves but according to the Buddha it's made and kept within our own minds.

Maybe so but every standardized textbook I've ever read and every professor I've ever had always places it at Ren 6 and you wouldn't pass your exams if you said otherwise.

From an acupuncture point of view it lies at Ren 6 which is a little below the navel.