Jetsun

This is a wonderful documentary by the renowned Indian film maker Sekhar Kapoor about Amma and compassion. There are very few documentaries about her with this much good footage, but if you want to see one of the great living saints take a watch in HD I recommend. Those who are sensitive try tune into the energy when she speaks

Yeah thats it. Strange it was removed, it was on an hour ago

I would say Jesus and Buddha are different, it is like Buddha represents the stillness and Jesus the dynamism

So your parents live in your house? I don't know if you really want more advice but if you do I recommend trying the work of Byron Katie, it will sweep away all the beliefs that are holding you back. Very simple technique, free and easy to learn and will stop your argument with reality if done with consistency.

The impression I get, (mostly from TV mind) is that this issue is far worse in the USA than anywhere else, I could be wrong though. I know a few people who have been to prison in the UK and they said they never felt any threat of rape.

Ok they haven't formed the mental concept or created the word for their experience yet, but that doesn't mean that their experience of "love" which is registered as sensation in the body is somehow not real, of course it is real! it has measurable effects on the babies body, wellbeing and development, it just hasn't been named or reduced down into a mental concept yet.

Hehe Karl you really need to get out of your head some time. So you are saying that young children who haven't yet fully formed a sense of "I" can't experience love? you have this all so backward.

In the context I was speaking from it is clear that love is foundational to our being before we have any concept of "I" or of deserving love, this is shown in the study of orphans in that those who receive very little love and attention as babies don't produce fully formed brains and have compromised nervous systems. We do need love like a flower needs water. There is an unconditional love from the universe also, I expect you will discover that some time soon.

It's been proven that man needs love and affection for the proper growth of our brain and nervous system and has a direct impact on the health of our immune system. We basically need it to survive and thrive. This essence of love is clearly more fundamental than violence, although violence is part of mans nature too, just not as foundational as love.

I agree I think it is pretty much inevitable with everyone to some degree, it is the nature of the mind to try to dominate any new view and you always bring your existing bias and proclivities with you. Almost as soon as you have any kind of realisation or experience out of the ordinary the mind immediately starts working at assimilating it under its domain, which is a continual process which only becomes subtler the further you go along. You do have extremes though of people who have pretty much completely spiritualised their ego, which is a very difficult place to shift people out of and egotism in the extreme, I consider a good proportion of the spiritual teachers out there to be in this state, usually characterised by a lack of genuine humility.

I would say this is pretty common. The fact is that it is hard being a human being, especially in relation to others, most of us spend most of our time trying to get out of ourselves in one means or another. One of the paths I am involved with focuses more on waking up through your issues rather than around them, but to do so you get a lot of help to move through your most difficult, painful and traumatic stuff, otherwise I don't know if I would ever be willing to do it, and even with help there is an enormous amount I am sure I am still avoiding. There are some core karmic issues which have been building up over lifetimes waiting to be met and embraced, but over lifetimes they build up so much energy that they can be too overwhelming to even contemplate facing, so we may need help clearing that stuff out until it becomes manageable. But to move into the absolute first isn't a bad thing, Adyashanti often talks about the inevitable rebound as the absolute comes back to earth to reclaim and redeem all that remains in a sense of separation from within your humanness. That rebound is inevitable so going that way about things isn't bad.

I do it using tools I obtained in a healing modality I learned called Vortex healing, I could do it for you one night if you like as an experiment

Those who are thinking about getting into Gurdjieff I recommend reading the books by Red Hawk on this, especially his book on 'Self Observation', also he is one of the greatest living poets so his poetry is worth a go. He uses fourth way type interrupts in his poetry If you want to see what real honesty is look no further than the dog. The dog doesn’t give a damn for looking good but will hunch the leg of the Queen’s mother if it feels like it. The dog doesn’t care what the hell you think, it will lick its balls in the presence of the Pope if that is what it has a mind to do. The dog does not stand on position, power, wealth or fame of any kind. He will bite the rump of the Emperor if he tries to pick up the dog’s food; the dog will lift its leg on the whitewall tire of the Prime Minister’s limousine or shit on the Dalai Lama’s prayer rug because he is a dog and that is what dogs do and in some secret uncorrupted part of the self we admire this honesty in dogs, because we see it is absent in ourselves and we know that such honesty comes with a terrible price in this world. - Red Hawk. from Wreckage With A Beating Heart

Adyashanti is giving away his book The Way of Liberation on his website which he says is a stripped down practical guide to liberation, it is only about 70 pages and sums up most of what he teaches http://www.adyashanti.org/wayofliberation/ I have read it and found it pretty useful so thought I would share, I don't know how long it's going to be free for.

I was vegetarian when I was younger, later on in life I studied spirituality and came to realise that the process of life involves everything eating each other, in the end I will be eaten, so I now consider meat eating a natural part of the process of life. I am now more concerned about the level of human consciousness which treats poorly animals while they are alive, so try to eat meat from high welfare sources. From a spiritual perspective meat is grounding, Tibetans eat a lot of meat which helps to bring them down after doing many hours of intense spiritual practice which could leave them floating around outside of their bodies. I helped make the Dalai Lama and his entourage a nice beef stew when he came to the UK last year, they insisted on beef which is probably the most dense and grounding meat.

Astrally we go travelling in our dreams sometimes, you can tell when you are conscious enough as they are of a completely different order than regular emotional dreams, far more interesting but less rejuvinating. They are far more obvious if you get your astral body cleared before going to sleep.

I'm not sure the other options make things any safer. As a child we may have to put ourselves down and close up to survive, but as an adult such things usually makes things more difficult and makes the world scarier and more insane.

Its possible I guess, but personally I don't recall any dream where the essential sense of the central character (me) has changed to someone completely different. Have you had dreams like that?

In a dream there is a central character (you) to whom all this stuff is happening to, then you wake up from the dream in the morning and you realise it was all a creation of your mind but there is still this central character to whom all this stuff is happening to it just now exists in your waking hours. But if you wake up from your life "spiritually" then the difference is that there isn't this central character any more, it is realised as just more imagination. So I would say generally our lives are like dreams, in the sense that we are living in illusory mind created ideas of what we think we are, but reality isn't like a dream because when we realise reality we are no longer doing that, the central character of the story has vanished.

Samadhi can have different meanings depending on who you talk to. The sense of "I" can be very subtle, even if you transcend the limitations of the physical body and identify with the entire cosmos there can still remain a sense of "I", it has just stretched out over everything. If the "I" was completely gone then it wouldn't be a temporary experience.

Its in Nagarjuna's 'In Praise of Dharmadhatu' http://www.bodhicitta.net/In%20Praise%20of%20the%20Dharmadhatu.htm

Nirvikalpa samadhi is the highest form of personal experience, so you could stay it is the highest form of egoic experience. The value of it I guess depends on where it leads, if you were to get stuck and assume that that is it or go searching to continually recreate it then it hasn't been of great benefit, rather it was a hindrance. But another perspective such as that of Nagarjuna is that the absolute reality or Buddha nature is trapped inside of us like a lamp sitting in a vase (the vase representing the afflictions) and samadhi has the capacity to punch holes in the vase and if you continually punch holes in a vase in the end it will smash.

Everything is mixed up these days, many Eastern countries are becoming Americanised and at least in Europe it's increasingly multi-cultural. In London now native English people are a minority. But if you are talking about China there is a massive difference between the cities and countryside. The cities are completely screwed with pollution and toxic atmosphere both socially and environmentally, but go to old traditional villages and you can find villages where the people live happily to an old age in harmony with the environment. If you compare medicine, Eastern medicine promotes and maintains wellness whereas western medicine works with the consequences when the damage is done. But if I needed something functional done for health like heart surgery or organ transplant I would thank God for the existence of Western medicine.

It is the great mystery, how nothing can be something, how when you look deeply into anything you cant find it, yet you can't deny that something exists. The Heart Sutra probably puts this riddle in the most succinct terms that emptiness is form and form is emptiness. Emptiness is usually used to denote that things are empty of something rather than completely defining it, empty of identity and empty of inherent existence from its own power, so rather than non-existence things do exist but exist dependent on many causes and conditions, so things exist in a different way than the mind usually perceives things. There are different kinds of bliss though, one can get blissed out through meditation but it isn't necessarily the same bliss as the union of form and emptiness, rather it could be a body bliss which can be a hindrance to realisation. But shakti is one side of it, the deeper nature is the union of shiva and shakti, the unity of emptiness and compassion

From the perspective of non-duality there is just one process happening, one thing going on rather than all our independent separate lives. So from the intelligence or laws of the whole things can work out beyond the capacity of our localised and limited intellect to understand.