Jetsun

That Malachi guy is a bit dramatic lol All Jesus said was be still

It's severely declined in South Korea too. Apparently many Koreans have turned Christian as they associate their newly found wealth and prosperity with Christianity due to the American influence. I think China is the place where it will flourish again eventually though. The Tibetans in exile are already planning for it. It already has the worlds largest Buddhist population.

Looks good, I will go check it out in person. I didn't think the Tibetans were into Yoga much though, I guess it is Kum Nye.

Well as a teenage boy you are so consumed by hormones that it is impossible to think of anything except sex, which is probably important for the continuation of the human race, so doing anything spiritual is difficult. I don't think you have to get to 50 to have a change in focus though, by your 30s hopefully sex isn't so obsessive.

Mingur Rinpoche is a famous Lama and successful author who one day decided to just walk off from his life and go on a three year wandering retreat not telling anyone where he was going http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2011/sep/22/mingyur-rinpoche-buddhist This is him before he went Then this week he was spotted by someone who took some pics He looks completely different to me

Mingur Rinpoche has emerged after his 4 year retreat wandering in the Himalayas and living in caves Apparently the first year was difficult due to health issues but after that it was "one of the best periods of my life"

The killing doesn't make sense to me, they say they didn't release pics or anything out of respect, but why the hell would they suddenly start caring about respect about their number one enemy after they have dropped thousands of bombs on Muslim countries . Then they release a book list of all the books which were supposedly found in his residence, which reads like a completely made up list of what a person with a very poor imagination would imagine a terrorist would read. I'm not even a conspiracy theorist at all, but I dont believe it.

They also want to ban the highest forms of encryption, which basically means the only encryption which actually works.

I think it is meant to help the two sides of the brain communicate which counters the response of trauma which stimulates one side of the brain more than the other. The theory behind EMDR will explain it in more detail which is a specialist treatment for PTSD.

In my experience the mind projects all sorts of stuff onto the emptiness, usually negatively, ranging from it being boring and not of interest to it being dangerous and annihilatory. But experientally that void or space is completely allowing and in complete non resistance, which constitutes the basic quality of love, it is also aware and brimming with unlimited potential. It is also the place of your more fundamental identity as it is the only place of consistency. But it can only be known by diving in and becoming it, it can't really be witnessed at a distance and we can only really know ourselves as it by letting go of all that which we believe ourselves to be. So we trade all that we cherish for what our minds perceive as nothing, which on the surface doesn't appear to be a good deal.

Transmission in Christianity is repeatedly referred to as a descent, a descent of the dove, descent of holy spirit, of love down from above into the heart. There are all sorts of other transmissions of light, of compassion, but the unique characteristic of the Christian transmission is the descent aspect.

Think Max might have stolen that idea

http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/alcohol-and-heart-disease/ "More than 100 prospective studies show an inverse association between moderate drinking and risk of heart attack, ischemic (clot-caused) stroke, peripheral vascular disease, sudden cardiac death, and death from all cardiovascular causes. (1) The effect is fairly consistent, corresponding to a 25 percent to 40 percent reduction in risk." A 25-40% reduction is pretty significant, although while moderate drinking is good for the heart apparently it increases the risk of bowel cancer, so it's benefits have to be taken into consideration with the whole effect.

I would say it is very difficult to find a teacher or Guru anywhere and at any time who didn't have some people attacking or trying to discredit them. To some degree it is the nature of the business, in that the teacher may bring up all the latent tendencies and repressed issues of the student, but if the student is unable or unwilling to face those issues inevitably they will be projected back onto the teacher, who is now the devil incarnate. Many people go to spirituality and to teachers with loaded expectations of what they expect to get out of it, many go to try to get away from their suffering rather than to confront it, so when the reality hits home it is easy to turn on the teacher and blame them for not given them what they believed they were due.

What happened to humanity? A long time ago humanity was divided into tribes, who often used to fight each other and kill each other. Then along came religion which was initially used to control the masses to try to stop them killing each other, but it ended up dividing humanity into larger tribes. Then along came capitalism, especially after WW2 the leading capitalists lead by the work of Edward Bernays realised they could use Nazi indoctrination techniques combined with Freudian psychology theory in areas such as advertising to trick humanity into believing their primal drives could be fulfilled through consumption, which makes people docile and easily controlled, which is the situation we have now.

No doubt it is a complicated area, the evidence for and against alcohol is by no means clear. Abuse of alcohol is the real issue, like abuse of most things. If you go to many countries like Spain or Italy having a glass of wine with food is pretty normal and common at all times of the day, even given to children and it doesn't destroy their society or lead to mass health problems. It was only a few years ago the French Police were being given wine for lunch. But here in the UK alcohol is a public health and social issue.

Well it can't be too bad if many of the healthiest and long living people on the planet drink it (red wine that is), reducing things like heart disease

In world wide studies of communities with the greatest health and longevity many of those studied had moderate alcohol consumption as part of their diet, usually red wine.

Ah I see you already answered my question. Sorry. I have done both meditation retreats and healing retreats and courses. Meditation retreats are hard, you are forced to face yourself, your karma all alone , Adyashanti says when he first started doing retreats his personal mantra was always "never again, never again, never again" and on one of his retreats he completely gave up and left, yet he says that was one of his best ever retreats and continued to go back. Personally on my first meditation retreat I had very difficult moments , but the Vipassana sounds particularly intense and difficult especially on the physical level, I wouldn't do it like that personally. The healing courses I have done have been very nurturing and have helped clear things out which has made doing the meditation retreats much easier. If you want to get such nurturing I recommend going to see Amma http://amma.org/meeting-amma/north-america , you are unlikely to find any better nurturing anywhere than there. Also for healing I recommend seeing a Vortex healing therapist or do a course in it. Since doing these things myself I have found the meditation retreats far easier and less overwhelming.

What were you hoping to get out of it? Edit on post below

I would just read and work with whatever makes sense to you, if something makes no sense forget about it for a while. In this realm it isn't like other disciplines that the harder you work at it the more likely you are to get it, it is more like the opposite. In my experience there are texts I read which seem completely incomprehensible, but years later they start to become clear, or after particular experiences they become clear. Or there are some texts which you read meditatively, so you ponder on their meaning for some time without trying to intellectually grasp at it.

I would say that non believing is a pretty important part of being a spiritual person, I'm doing my best to root out my beliefs every day.

Historically in war a defeat often meant sexual humiliation for both men and women, you even see it now when politicians talk about bombing another nation they often they get off on the power, quite literally. With a lot of murderers and serial killers there is often a sexual element and motivation behind their actions. In terms of chakras it revolves around second chakra issues, sexuality is mixed up with issues of power and control. Developmental psychology also says a lot about this in terms of how we develop our sense of power or get frustrated in the process in our relationship with our parents. But believing this as a theory isn't particularly important, it is more useful to see in our own experience what kind of pleasure we take when we indulge in such things. The OP said that she willingly chose the anger, she would only do that if she was getting something out of it, I am not saying it was necessarily sexual pleasure but we get angry at someone and dominate them it can make us feel powerful and in control and the deeper shadow side is that people often get off on feeling powerful over others. Its obviously not something we like to see in ourselves because we believe we are "good" people

Others have mentioned shadow work, but to take that to the next level to really bring consciousness to it requires seeing the pleasure we get out of things like anger, rage, domination, the pleasure we get out of destroying or humiliating others, even sexual pleasure.

The Chinese president is visiting the UK at the moment and there is a lot of discussion around whether we should adopt a more Chinese model for education and Chinese work ethic. What I found interesting is that the Chinese Ambassador said that both nations can learn off each other as the Chinese obviously work harder, but the UK has far more creativity, which is reflected in things like patents for inventions, fashion, music and cultural exports. A lot of Chinese goods are copies and rip offs of others ideas and creativity. So I wouldn't say its as clear cut as Westerners being completely scientific and formulaic.