Jetsun

I'm guessing this opinion isn't going to be very popular here but for me that film was a really good representation of the perfect ego dream or the image which the ego strives to make reality, as the ego wants us to be the perfect superhuman who is good looking, incredibly sophisticated and intelligent, very charismatic and popular with the ladies who always says the right thing at the right time and not the loser stuck in a rut like the character is at the beginning and it presents the possibility that it is actually possible to attain this image. So it is no surprise that people love this film as it taps into all the egos desires and gives it hope that they can be fulfilled and happiness can be obtained by such self improvement. If the film strengthens the belief that such perfection is possible and obtainable then I'm not sure it's very helpful spiritually, for me spirituality is about self acceptance and integration not self improvement. That's my 2c anyway.

Many people try and save the world and just make it worse, people like Christian missionaries and even people like George Bush and Tony Blair believed they were out to save the world. But I do find it strange why some masters refuse to actively try to improve the lot of humanity, I was reading recently about a highly realised Tibetan Buddhist Nun who many people begged for her teaching but she only taught formally on a couple of occasions saying that it wasn't necessary for her to teach any more, apparently even the Buddha himself didn't want to teach and had to be pursuaded, which makes me wonder why many of them are reluctant to try to help as many people as they possibly can whether they worry about doing more harm than good I don't know.

Mantra is doing, while real meditation is non-doing

When I say power I don't mean that there is some sort holy or demonic force behind it, rather I mean that many of the scriptures are intentionally written to tap into some of your deepest longings and emotions and the archetypal forces of your mind and this can only be done by someone who really knows and understands who they are, not by the average man. I agree it is crazy though just how much influence it has had, just thinking how it has inspired people to do insane things like go on missionary missions to deep jungle areas where they are just as likely to get killed as they are to convert someone makes my mind boggle why people would do such things.

It is confusing and fragmented and the further you study into things like internal alchemy etc the more confusing it becomes. I'd say what makes it unique is it's approach to health and longevity, plus the archetypal image of a Taoist always seems to be laughing and having more fun than most of the other religious figures which I think represents it's general approach.

Ok just so you are aware this is the general discussion forum not the Taoism part and I am not a Christian, I have only been to Church once in my life and I already said I don't agree with the Christian view of the Bible but it seems obvious to me that it is a book written in a different way with different power than your average book, which is why it has the power to make so many people do so many terrible and amazing things in their lives. There are many other books written with the same intent as the Bible from different religious backgrounds and cultures but they are written by conscious individuals not your general authors who put most of the books in the bookstores each year.

They will need to understand the mechanics of projection and how to skilfully deal with it as many people will look to them as substitute parents. The search for a perfect teacher is part of this I think as people begin life thinking their parents are perfect then they get hurt and confused when their parents behave imperfectly, then to try to heal that wound some people go and search for a perfect teacher who they inevitably discover to be imperfect in the end.

Could you really write scripture as powerful as the Bible? many people have tried and nearly all of them fail, the Gospels are written from a higher knowledge than your average author can understand. I don't believe in the general Christian view of things rather I agree with the Fourth Way perspective that scripture like the Gospels are written by the "conscious circle of humanity" as means to draw people towered esoteric knowledge and teachings, so I doubt the average person could write anything of that power without initiation and long training in spiritual disciplines.

I wouldn't do any energy stuff at all if I were you, it seems like it's all motivated by anxiety so it probably isn't helping, Tummo is high level Tantra so I wouldn't do that if you are unstable unless it has been prescribed to you by a master. The human body can heal itself from anything so recovery is possible.

And what do your insults say about you? I have not been to Tibet but to compare Shugden to the Jews of Nazi Germany is absurd and ridiculous, all the Dalai Lama said was that particular deity may be harmful, his intentions may well be completely compassionate, he hasn't rounded them up and put them in ghettos.

Good point, you have to keep in mind that most Buddhist practice was created for a people during a more simple era when people did a lot of manual work and farming so they were more naturally grounded in their bodies already so going to directly work with the mind is not so much a big issue, but for us in our modern age the mind is valued so highly and nearly all our education and work is mind based so we become top heavy with our identity and dissociated with our bodies, so the natural sequence for most of us is to go down and integrate the body before we work with the mind. One thing Bruce Frantzis said which I liked is that he says that many of Taoist techniques are very appropriate for us modern Westerners because many of them were created for Imperial China which was quite an emotionally repressed time in history so there will be similarities in the blockages back then to now (at least here in the UK which is still quite emotionally repressed) so the techniques used to bring balance to the people of that era are relevant today.

I'd say fear is a good sign you are on the right road, but in the Fourth Way system they emphasise the gradual approach because most people aren't ready to just dive into emptiness, Gurdjieff describes the effect on your essential essence of trying to do this like putting a new puppy into a deep pool of water and watching it desperately trying to stay afloat, so they prescribe the work of gradually removing your identification away from all that you are identified with which in turn leads to the natural growth of your essence so it is more capable of diving deeper without fear.

Maybe just feel your body as see what information it gives you, the mind always creates endless self sustaining loops which suck your life-force and confuse you, whereas the body is usually very clear and straightforward.

You wont see him on youtube setting fire to bits of paper at a distance or any tricks like that but what most people remark about when they meet him is his grounded humanity and his ability to make you feel like you are close friends straight away, which I think is some achievement to be that open and unguarded when meeting complete a complete stranger. It seems to me that in the Boddhisatva path he has obvious surface signs of development.

Are you sure you would recognise a master if you met one? The Dalai Lama has received tutorage by many of the highest regarded Tibetan masters since he was a young child and received more empowerments than most of us can dream of and meditates for three hours every day, that doesn't qualify him as a highly realised master but I would hope he would have picked up a thing or two.

I think there are a few regulars on this board who have practised it long term who may be able to give more information about it but the books and cd set on the Water Method are really good, the first book people tend to recommend is "Opening the Energy Gates of your body" but I prefer the books "Relaxing into your Being" and "Tao of Letting Go" for more detail on the sitting meditation rather than standing methods. There are quite a few instructors around too. I practised it for some months but came to conclusion that it is better suited to fiery people as I am more of a water person already.

Look at Bruce Frantzis Water Method, it sounds exactly like something which may help as it's all about moving the energy down and letting it go, I read one account of how this method was transformative for a fiery person so it could be helpful.

When I met the Dalai Lama everyone was bowing and such but i was a bit confused not knowing much about Buddhism at the time so I just stuck out my hand to shake his, he just shook it and then gave me a strong whack on my arm in a friendly way like you might do to your friend or brother, which I thought was pretty funny considering how formal everyone was being, perhaps it would have been taking things a bit far if I had whacked him back . But I read later that he prefers people to be more relaxed and more natural.

For me most of my resistance to accomplishing anything and my self sabotage comes from passive aggression, probably rooted in childhood patterns of trying to resist manipulation and control by other people, so I am still living through old outdated dynamics from my childhood unfortunately, I don;t know if this is relevant to you but it's what your first post reminded me of in myself. It's true we are capable of achieving amazing things but we have to deal with where we are at first.

I have been told that if you are doing what you should be doing then it is easy and effortless to a certain degree, and we are all heavily brainwashed and conditioned to be other than who we are especially if you have strong family forces, so maybe you have no motivation for all this stuff because it's not what you should be doing. This is what I've been told anyway I am yet to find my passion and what I should be doing myself.

I think they should expand this body contact test so they compare say scientists to manual labourers, young people to older people and rich western countries to poor eastern countries and see the results, I suspect that they would indicate that it is not just schizophrenics who need more body contact and body therapy but many of us who are not classified as sick probably do as well.

It's an indication of the low general level of wisdom of our society that the scientific community sees these results as remarkable, for me it's just common sense that if you have a distressed state of mind you will have less body contact, if your body is an emotionally conflicted warzone it's not a pleasant place to hang out 24 hours a day.

Some Taoists say that until you have made your body completely conscious and can do things like flex your kidneys and feel minutely the different parts of your liver then you aren't even a proper man yet alone a master.

What is the purpose of concentration training? Some meditation methods focus your awareness into a single point, while others stress that you need to expand your awareness not focus it, yet they are both supposedly after the same thing

Nice thread, for me I found myself in a state of imbalance mentally and energetically after a rough personal time so I thought I would try to "fix" myself and take responsibility for myself. So I started reading all the Western psychology I could find and looking into what the medical establishment suggested, but none of it really made much sense to me, taking psycho drugs from the doctor to block out the world made absolutely no sense at all while the Western psychological model seemed to be a lot of mental masturbation and barely addressed the body, so I started to look into more holistic methods which deal with the body and mind as one which led to Qigong experimentation, which then led to studying many of the different wisdom traditions searching for real genuine knowledge about the way things really work.