Jetsun

On a serious note it is a dangerous mistake to think that these times are somehow different that we are now more humane or evolved, there are a number of psychological studies which show that most average people will do things like administer extreme electric shocks to people if they are commanded to by an authority figure, much of the psychology around the issue of authority is quite disturbing and there have been numerous studies to show that when average people are placed in positions of authority they can very quickly become sadists, sometimes it only takes a few days or less. Also much of that period is to do with the psychology of scapegoating, of projecting all that is undesirable onto someone else, which is something I see every day in schools, in workplaces, in families, with groups of friends and expecially in the media. You see now how the west scapegoats Muslims while many Islamic nations demonise and scapegoat the west. I also see it in myself sometimes how I feel so much better about myself and less anxiety when the problem is in someone else and not me. So until you become your own master immune from the pressures of all authority, own all your projections and become immune from hypnotic influence I don't see how you can be confident that you wouldn't become the equivalent of a Nazi if a similar situation arose again.

That moustache is the one thing Hitler still owns even though he is long dead, nobody can wear that moustache now (except perhaps Robert Mugabe) so it's time to reclaim it back as a legitimate style choice, the final thing to be liberated from Nazi control, whose with me? anyone?

The truth is that whatever you repress and suppress you actually keep, so it's a sort of sick joke of the universe that if you really want to get rid of something that you repress it by the action of trying to get rid of it you actually keep it and it intensifies. So if you want to stay an angry person repress your anger and if you want to remain a sexually obsessed person repress your sexuality. I guess it's a hard lesson for the ego to show that it can't dictate reality.

I think Reich was right about so much, the old psychoanalysts may not have the answers for everything but they all agree on the basic point that complete repression of your needs drives you insane. They were most probably not aware of sublimation methods though, but what methods really work? Gurdjieff talks in his book 'Beelzebubs Tales to His Grandson' about visiting many monks in monasteries who were practising complete celibacy like Christian Trappist monks, but most of these monks had lost the knowledge of what to do to sublimate the sexual energy and he said the results were twofold; either the monks would become fat and blubbery like a pig, or they would become lean, thin and with a cruel psyche with a cold heart. It was verified over and over by him that if you don't sublimate sexual energy properly the energy starts to have a devolving effect on your being.

The greatest challenges and rewards come from working in life with other people so why would a true master isolate themself? One of the greatest Tibetan masters Atisha says that he studied under many teachers and mastered many aspects of the Dharma but he said all that paled in comparison to the teaching he got from the teacher Serlingpa who taught him how to work in life not in a retreat and what heart he had came from working with others in the world in this way. So maybe there is a master in your town or living down your street and maybe there is no need to travel to exotic places to try find a teacher.

Complete repression of your natural drives and needs is the root cause of neurosis and insanity

I agree the pain for some physical ailments only help you so far in alerting you to something which needs treatment or attention, but for many other ailments the origins of the pain can be psychological or spiritual even though it's showing up as a physical symptom so the pain serves to tell the psyche that this is an issue you can no longer keep ignoring or repressing and it is time to finally face upto what is at it's source. So on the basic level pain is an indicator that something needs your attention.

After all these years I thought they all meant a few inches below the navel not a few inches into the body, but having the dan tien on the level of the navel does make more sense as that is where the umbilical chord was so at one point in our lives that area must have been energetically open.

Does Li himself say that whatever energy you get from the Falun Qigong comes directly from him rather than just from the exercises on their own? or is that something you individually believe?

The problem with filling in the gaps is that it stops enquiry and in turn progress which is why many scientists are vehemently against intelligent design as it could have a regressive influence. Some scientists may go a bit too far in their opposition but given the history of how such regressive religious thinking has blocked progress I understand where they are coming from.

From the viewpoint of what has happened evolution can be regarded as fact, the evidence that organisms have evolved is so completely overwhelming that it can be regarded as fact , while how the actual process of evolution works in its precise details is still open to some debate, intelligent design believers like to fill the gaps in the science as evidence of god so they play the age old game of "god of gaps" but every year the gaps get smaller and smaller with each scientific advancement.

Inherently each scientist will have their own bias which is why the scientific method involves the peer review process to get through before their work gets published, perhaps you are suggesting that in general there is this tunnel vision towards evolution in all nearly all mainstream science but the fact is that the whole scientific process is designed to remove you and your own opinions from the equation and just deal with the evidence at hand. You can get bias in interpretation but Scientists love to disprove old theories as it makes them famous and rich so there is nothing rooted within the method which creates a bias towards evolutionary theory, so maybe you should examine your own bias and tunnel thinking around this issue. If you mean to suggest that people believe in science too much so it has become a sort of religion that is true with some people, but that is because the old religions have failed and people need a way to try to understand and make sense of the world so they turn to science to provide answers in some areas where it is not qualified to answer, so there is a sort of vacuum in many peoples lives but the answer isn't old religious thinking as that has failed and is no longer relevant for most people.

Tolle is probably the most successful spiritual writer of recent times, some people even say he is now more influential in this area than people like the Dalai Lama and obviously has a real talent in writing and talking about this stuff, but do you think he has a strong permanent realisation of enlightenment? He teaches a sort of instant enlightenment but i'm not sure if I believe this is possible as all the patterns of thought and ego create grooves in your mind and energy which by default you follow unless you go through a long gradual process of letting go of those patterns and purifying. Buddhists have debated the concepts of instant enlightenment vs gradual enlightenment for hundreds of years but my understanding is that the gradual school of thought seemed to come out on top simply because of the amount of realised masters it produces. I have tried to see if I can see anything different about him from his videos but i'm not particularly impacted by them and i'm starting to wonder if he might just be a real smart guy well educated in this area of thought and not enlightened at all. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Deq_1lg9Dlo What do you guys think?

Damn doesn't work on my phone, hopefully I will be able to watch this later. I was thinking the other day about how this Dalai Lama will go down in history and I think he may end up being regarded as one of the greatest Tibetan Boddhisatva's for the way he has spread the Dharma worldwide during such a troubled time, I like to catch his teachings whenever possible.

Buddha saying "life is suffering" is a myth What he said was life is "lfe is Dukkha" which doesn't have an exact translation but it is more accurately translated as discomfort due to change, or things being off like the spokes not being aligned in a wheel, so the translation of suffering is perhaps too harsh or negative and doesn't convey the intention of the saying accurately.

I read his books a few years ago but I don't really consider him one of my teachers, I am just quite surprised at how much impact he has been having as I am a member of quite a few forums many of which have nothing to do with spirituality and lots of people are talking about him and seem to think he is the greatest teacher who ever lived. I heard he was on Oprah and in this list of the worlds most influential spiritual teachers they name him as number one http://www.watkinsbooks.com/review/watkins-spiritual-100-list I know it doesn't really mean anything I just find it interesting that he may be pretending he's enlightened and getting very rich in the process, when in reality he may just be repeating a few bits and bobs from some eastern spiritual books he has read. Although I guess he may be doing a good service by spreading certain ideas. The thing I find funny is that people read his book and then suddenly think that they can live in the now just by their own willpower, like reading the book is all they need to permanently live in the now, but as far as I know he hasn't led anyone else to enlightenment through his teachings.

Life doesn't always suck, just look at this dog he's having a good time

From what I understand you are less likely to ever get siddhis if you aim for them in your practice, because aiming for siddhis is an egotistical aim while to get them you need to shed your ego contractions so your fundamental aim is a blockage to your practice.

That's more or less what I mean but it might go a bit deeper, for example someone might have a foot fetish and masturbate over Britney Speares barefoot, but if you recapitulated that energy you would go on a shamanic journey down that energy line not to Britney rather you would go back to a time to when you are an infant looking at your mothers feet, so masturbating over that fantasy is strengthening that energy link not creating a new one to Britney. Or if you recapped a fetish for bondage or something it would most likely lead to a childhood event when you were made to feel powerless, basically in recap you see most of these patterns in your sexual energy are created in childhood and by masturbating over them you are charging existing energy links not creating new ones.

If you do shamanic recapitulation on your sexual energy you have living links to your previous sexual partners with energetic exchange still going on, but masturbation doesn't have such links and usually falls back to a pattern set up by your parents when you were growing up... so maybe masturbation feeds or steals from your parents energy

Sorry for the image but there are some women who probably get masturbated over by tens of thousands of men every single day, yet when you see them on tv etc they are hardly reduced in energy or spirit. I'm not sure I buy into that you can take away someones energy so easily.

You need to be careful with breathing methods, you are altering the instinctual brainstem level rhythms of your body by doing them which is why many people recommend pranayama being taught by a teacher

Yeah well I can't say with any certainty that for humans the world won't end like it did for the dinosaurs, but I see no reason to think that time may be soon so there is no particular reason to worry about it. If you look at some of the art which was produced around the time of the end of the second world war / cold war era then you can see at that time they had genuine concern that humanity was just going to tear itself apart and the world would end, then compare that to now and it is completely different, despite continued problems things look far more hopeful and bright especially when compared to previous centuries .