Jetsun

Meditation opens you up and brings down your barriers so for some people this brings disturbing psychological material into your conscious mind which can unbalance you and lead to breakdowns. The problem in my view isn't so much people not getting proper instruction it is because most teachers and people in general don't really know how to properly deal with such issues or understand them very well. The meditation texts and instructions from thousands of years ago will most probably not be of great help because they were not meant for the people of our era who have different blockages and issues than the people back then. If a teacher genuinely understands the blockages of the people he is with then he wouldn't give them an exercise which would unbalance them too much and would work towards things gradually, but such teachers are rare, for example Gurdjieff realised that most Westerners are very cut off from their bodies so he would prescribe them hard physical work and certain physical postures instead of meditation to ground people in their bodies and to bring their sense of identify out of their head first before they work on energy sensitivities.

It's not clear to me what is going on because if he is just teaching adults Yoga then surely he can have sex with as many people as he likes. If he is being a guru in the guruyoga tantric tradition like you get in Tibet then it is wrong to do so because in that relationship you are meant to act more like a parent, but it sounds like this wasn't the case.

Has anyone here practised the Six Yogas of Naropa for any length of time and can report about it's benefits?

I think it is about feeling connected with the earthly realm we are living in, with many mind forms of meditation it is easy for your mind to wander off and go somewhere else which is ungrounding because your consciousness is not rooted in your body, so then at the end of the meditation you can feel oversensitive and less able to deal with the world. But with body and moving practices like Tai Chi you are bringing your consciousness into your body which brings your mind into the realm we are in so you will end up feeling more connected with the world after your session so more grounded.

One theory from ancient wisdom is that humanity is the essential conduit between earthly energies and heavenly energies and the universe needs us and requires us to cultivate in order for it to function and grow properly. I have heard said that the human race is the "nerve endings" of the planet and unless enough people cultivate to become more open and sensitive to receive and transmit these energies then the universe may become lifeless, so we exist to serve this higher purpose. I don't know this for a fact, but I do intuit a purpose of some sort.

Worrying about your problems causes more problems true but also on the other side ignoring them or worse repressing them causes worse problems because it forces them into the darkness of your unconscious, so what is your solution?

So are you saying the best way to chop wood and carry water is to follow your own path? Sounds just like common sense to me.

I think the problem of over talking and discussing concepts rather than actually practising is a big issue, just see how many hundreds of thousands of Dharma books have been published and it is obvious that for many people it remains too cerebral and intellectual. I have been reading some books about Tantra by Lama Yeshe where he talks about this and he says it is common in Tibet too, he says that some of the old masters would sometimes send some of their students for Dharma lessons to illiterate beggars who had a better grasp of the Dharma than some of the monks who could write whole books on the subject, because the ideas had not fertilised their hearts yet and had not turned their ideas into actual practice.

Sounds like some sort of anxiety issue to me. I think it is somewhat "normal" to have a difference between the two sides of your body, my left side is a lot more contracted and blocked than my right for example which changes the blood flow and heat etc, the majority of us are either born with or develop weaknesses and imbalances in our system, then hopefully the spiritual work we do helps to correct them or helps us to learn to live with them.

We are fortunate to have the Dalai Lama putting out so many teachings on so many different levels. I enjoyed the "How to see yourself as you really are" book it is a really good explanation of impermanence and emptiness, some of the others are more casual but the humour and compassion always shine through, but if you don't want to buy anything there is plenty of material available on his website for free and on YouTube there are a few channels which have hundreds of hours of his teachings on both very advanced and simple subjects. Ideally though if you have the opportunity it is good to meet a Tibetan monk in person to really get a taste of what Bodhicitta really means and it's power, for me that brought the teaching alive and gave me confidence in it's potential far more than any book ever could.

It is possible to talk to atheists about Buddhism in purely scientific terms without any reference to obscure spirituality, you can talk about the logical process of examining the mind and examining your sense of self and there is loads of scientific evidence now showing the benefits of meditation on enhancing certain parts of your brain to do with positive emotions and reduced stress response and improved health. If you want to challenge their sense of what is possible with the mind show them a video of something like Tummo meditation, the ones with Wim Hof are quite good.

I have heard of Qigong masters and healers fusing electronic devices through their natural energy so it may not be such an unnatural phenomena, one healer I met called Yap Soon Yeung advises his students to move away things like Laptops when they practice his qigong as when you practice you are manipulating energy which can influence your environment. In terms of moving out of your body at night there are trainings in certain traditions which teach you how to do this on purpose, which I have heard called many different things such as astral body, your double, your spirit body, the illusory body, others here will be better qualified to speak of such things though.

In terms of Shamanic "magic" occurrences of things like telepathy are common with Ayahuasca Shaman of the Amazon, also things like inhabiting the body of a bird or animal and journeying are common even with relative beginners. If you had asked me a few years ago if it was possible I would have said no, but now I am pretty much convinced that the people who talk about these things aren't lying or talking in metaphors.

I would expect animals are far easier to heal than humans with energy healing because they don't have the resistances and attachments than many of us humans have which can block healing.

Haha I like this one

This has been online since 2009 but I can't seem to find any English translation, which is strange

I agree a lot of it is like that, although there is some good music in that general area which is worth checking out which is more musical like the album 'Untrue' by Burial which is great, I love this song by SBTRKT too

When I first heard Dubstep that was when I thought I might be getting old as it just sounds like random noise to me, which is the kind if thing my parents used to say. Although I quite like the skrillex video on YouTube of the girl using superpowers to trap pedophiles, which is a bit contriversial, I can't link at the moment but I think the song is called "first of the year"

I think the genuine masters understand that it requires skillful means to transfer a teaching from one culture to another, just jumping in and trying to become Eastern most probably will result in confusion. George Gurdjieff said what is needed is to unite the energy of the West with the wisdom of the East and he tried to take a lot of Eastern wisdom and formulate it scientifically to appeal to the Western mind, as just trying to shoehorn in a tradition from a culturally different land would most probably would end in failure. Our minds are far more rational and scientific than when most of the wisdom traditions were created so it is more realistic to try to find teachers who have adapted the teaching to our minds rather than try to change our minds to the teaching, many Tibetan Lams's have realised this and now are writing books far more stripped down of cultural baggage and adapt their teachings to the more modern outlook, people like the Dalai Lama regularly quote scientific studies in their teachings these days for example. Lama Yeshe writes about the difference between Western and Eastern students in some of his books and says when he first came to teach in the West he found it very difficult as all the Western students would question and try to understand every little aspect of the teaching from the beginning, while his Eastern ones would take it all on faith and try to understand later after much practice, but he says that now he actually prefers his Western students outlook even though it causes him more stress as questioning everything and looking for proof rather than taking things on faith can be a healthier spiritual attitude.

Maybe mothers have a dan tien connection because of the umbilical connection with their children, while with fathers it is more heart.

What do you mean by this?

Let go of your lower self and see what comes in to fill the void

Yeah but I wouldn't say Buddhists lived under so much fear about the day of judgement, that's not my impression anyway, you can get yourself out of the Buddhist hell while in the more Protestant forms of Christianity they don't even have confession or absolution of sins as such so your life turns into a permant stress where your always being judged by a higher power every minute of the day, which is probably why alcohol was so popular to try find some escape.

Well you can't deny the fact that the Western powers came to dominate most of the world in terms of trade and military, the reasons why are contented but many historians say one of the reasons why the Industrial revolution took off in the West rather than a Buddhist or Shamanic culture was because of the influence of Christianity mainly the ideology of Protestantism type beliefs. The reasons being that some of the main ideas of that faith are that you only have one life and if you work really hard your whole life you willl be rewarded in heaven afterwards, which created an anxiety driven drive forward, then compare that to an Eastern ideology where you have many lives under the constricting laws of karma without the fear of eternal hell and it can help to explain some of how the world turned out like it did.

I have similar concerns about practising some Buddhist practices without taking refuge, some of the teachers I respect the most talk about how the refuge is the foundation of the entire path and some even say it is the most important aspect of the entire Buddhadharma once you fully understand what the three jewels really mean. So without them I feel that I may not give practice 100% commitment and without 100% i'm not sure how far it can take you. I don't think there is any disrespect involved it is just a matter of not getting the full deal out of it.