Jetsun

Buddhism may be a tonic for overall suffering but for PTSD things aren't straightforward. There were studies done on Tibetan Buddhist Monks who were suffering from PTSD and it turned out that many meditators had bad symptoms and increasing frequency of flashbacks, the meditation they were practising was reducing the minds capability to regulate their experience and making it worse. So it is a complicated issue, some forms of Buddhist meditation can make PTSD worse, although some forms which are more grounding may help. http://www.wbur.org/npr/102373662/ptsd-treatment-for-monks

How do you do that?

The most important thing is probably staying clear of drugs, as they open you up in a variety of ways and some will create hooks into your energy system. Which also includes avoiding the master spirit plants and "allies" as Don Juan might call them. Salt baths might help.

Its usually about relationship, so you only maintain relationship with such things if some part of your being believes it is getting something it needs. So basically if you work through your issues then there is nothing for anything to stick to, otherwise even if you get rid of it and banish it you will probably get it back in some form eventually .

Whether one can function in non-dualism comes down to whether it is possible for a person to function outside the realm of the intellect mind or thought. The mind itself will say that isn't possible because to admit otherwise is to create cracks in its dictatorship over your reality, which is pretty much the default position of the vast majority of humanity, because they live primarily in their minds it is assumed that it isn't possible to live in any other way. But if you go beyond the mind then you have what Nisargadatta Maharaj calls "direct experiencing" where there is no separation between the experience and the experiencer, I believe people like Nisargadatta spent the majority of their awake lives in that place and would talk to people and interact from that place, there may be times when old conditioning took over and times where the dualistic mind is needed to take over but overall I believe those people who are considered "awake" are like the reverse of most people in that their default position is non-duality and occasionally lapse into being controlled by dualistic thinking. While for most of us it is the other way around in that we are "dreaming" or in other word living in our dualistic minds and occasionally get a glimpse of the real reality which is non-dual. To "awaken" is to make a permanent shift out dualistic thinking to some extent, if it were only a temporary thing then it couldn't be accurately compared to waking up out of a dream. In my opinion to have samadhi experiences isn't the same as waking up, it is just a means to put a crack in the vase.

Isn't the majority of the US debt owned by US banks? (I understand the Chinese own some but not the majority) if that is true I don't see how they could let the country fall, if it really came down to it they could cancel the debt. It is more an issue of erosion of democracy by a transfer of power to those banks I think.

That is similar to something I have heard Amma (Mata Amritandamayi) say who is a native of Kerala. She says that in the past the Indian non-dual philosophies have led to a lot of neglect and indifference to regular normal life in India, which is one reason (probably including many others) why in some areas India is in a mess, so she does a lot of work building schools and hospitals and cleaning up the streets as well as doing silent meditation and spiritual practice to try to bring a bit more balance

The turnaround at the end is also useful I find, so the original statement can be turned around to the self, to the other, and to the opposite.

Perhaps your anger was rational towards your teacher It's a tricky area because for example psychotherapists often go through periods of stiff resistance and defensiveness from their clients until breakthroughs and healing occur, so if the person backed out when it became uncomfortable the healing may never occur, but then where is the line when it becomes abusive. For the person going through it it can be hard to see where that line is so there needs to be some sort of intuitive trust with the person who is going through it with you that underneath there is love. Energy work doesn't necessarily have to elicit such responses though, with the person I work with at the moment she goes very deep into my energy and most intimate issues without provoking any anger or hostility, which is probably down to the energy she works with being so pure and full of heart. I have been there with others though where my defensive reactions have kicked in when they try do energy work with me.

Germans do the best Lager and football and generally organising stuff to work The Dutch have a good lifestyle (at least in Amsterdam) where people are relaxed and not uptight about a lot of things and generally fit and healthy (bike everywhere) care about the environment Italians are good at being expressive with their emotions The Irish are good at saying how shit everything is

The simple principle the work of Byron Katie points out is that for for just about every thought you believe to be true, upon investigation the complete opposite is also equally true. It is a very simple process to try if anyone doesn't agree with what I am saying. I don't know exactly what the path of jhana yoga takes, but I assume it points to that which is beyond the intellect even if that is where it starts.

I think the world would be a much saner place if everyone did the work of Byron Katie for a while, even just a few weeks. I'm not saying it would lead to mass enlightenment or even much spiritual unfoldment, but it is a very fast way to show someone how easily we are all deluded by our own beliefs and thoughts and shows to some extent the incapacity of thought to investigate truth.

If you keep deconstructing things and seeing through the pointlessness of it all in the end you will have no place left to go except to wake up, so keep going, don't stop in the middle of the difficult bit.

I'm not saying it can't be experienced, I am saying that it can't be experienced by an individual "I", if there is an "I" then there are two things going on therefore it is in duality. Of course when using words it is difficult to know exactly what people mean when talking about this but if someone says that their individuated separate I experienced non-duality then by definition I don't think that can really be the case. There are all sorts of profound unitive meditation states one can experience where the level of ego can be incredibly subtle, but I wouldn't call them non-duality because they are still being experienced by separate someone. I said the mind is likely to try repress such memories because the full implication of such a discovery means death to the separate ego, if non-duality is the underlying reality then the separate self can only exist as an illusion, which is a reality we are all denying and don't want to see. The mind has to work hard and deny and repress a lot to keep an illusion going, if light starts seeping through the cracks it has to work even harder.

In the ultimate sense there is no line. Yet I think there has to be some sort of sense of individual I to function, but that sense of I can be very different than what the majority of people call their I which is ultimately existing mostly in the realm of imagination.

One way of looking at man in the context of nature is that in nature seeds are sown in manure and flower at the right time under the right conditions, so maybe man flowers in the same way, our ego struggles represent us working through the manure and awakening the flowering. The mass awakenings happening now in our age is a crop coming to harvest and maturity. Who sewed the seeds is another question, maybe Jesus. Its a nice story anyway.

Its possible, the ego is likely to do its best to repress and deny such memories though.

By definition non-dual just means not two. Therefore non-duality can only appear when you are not, it isn't possible for "you" to be in non-duality because if you are there then there is two. So when people talk about themselves experiencing non-duality they can't be talking about non-duality in actuality.

I think it is impossible to be in the highest states of Samadhi and function, I have heard about people being in that state and not knowing where to put the food which is on their fork, should they feed their own mouth or someone elses? When Ammachi was a young girl she would spontaneously fall into such states for hours on end and it would often put her in danger as she could be anywhere doing anything and suddenly she was unified with the divine in total bliss unable to do anything and had to be taken care of by others. But I consider those states to be dissociated temporary states, its like the consciousness is in unity but left the body behind. The way I see it is that many people have basic non-dual awakenings these days, but even if that happens our entire physiology still holds conditioning which goes incredibly deep even to the genetic and cellular level, which can trigger us back into separation consciousness quite easily when life presents something which challenges us. So I think those people who have really liberated their entire body and all areas of their sub-consciousness with the non-dual awareness are very rare, but those who have are pretty much in complete surrender and flow at all times and function pretty much spontaneously to each moment from the place of non-duality. For example Ammachi now she is older is in the non-dual state 24 hours a day and manages to run a multi million pound charitable organisation as well as a thousand other things while being in complete flow and surrender, which is how she gets so much energy, whatever states of bliss come they are completely conscious and don't impede functioning. So I guess what I am saying it is about embodying that awareness.

Shunryu Suzuki said you need to retain just enough ego so that you don't walk out in front of a bus. But I don't know, I know one or two people who are in the non-dual state a lot of the time and at least one of them can teach and talk to people from there. It seems like if your realisation is very embodied and you are very much surrendered to life then every word, movement and action could be a spontaneous expression of that place.

Ultimately everyone wants to be fully capable in the world, but what many people report on the path of waking up is that they go through a stage where they are useless. It is just a passing phase, whether we think it is good or not isn't really that important because once you are in it that is your experience, there is no point telling yourself that it is wrong or that it shouldn't be happening as that will just prolong it and increase your suffering. It is caused by the realisation that you are not the person you thought you were your whole life, a shift in identity or rather a key element of your identity falling away. Like cheya says there is probably some rewiring going on as well as a lot of emotional and energetic reharmonisation. In the book "Awakening through the Veils" by Rick Weinman he talks about working with a Doctor who had a awakening out of who he thought he was and as a result he stayed in bed for six months because he realised that all his motivations to be a doctor arose from social and parental conditioning and the person who that was all tied to was seen through as illusory. If your whole world is turned upside down like that it is reasonable to think that it may take time to adjust.

I think there are different ways to have a benevolent presence in the world, if one just sits on a park bench and radiates peace and contentment they may have a more beneficial effect than a charity worker who feeds the poor while being full of conflict and anguish, it can be a matter of what you radiate and put out into the world. Many of the ways we are taught we "should" be in the world are based upon social conditioning often rooted in fear, often it is based upon us trying to win love like good boys and girls, to awaken may bring all the ways we are in the world into question, including what it really means to be loving and benevolent.

It is an awakening because you awaken out of your previous sense of self , that is what can cause the confusion because most of your previous motivations were tied into that sense of self which is now gone.

I'm not sure what you mean, its no completion its more like a beginning. I would describe it like a stage like when a caterpillar turns into a butterfly, a completely new world needs time adjusting to.

I was hearing a talk by Mukti recently who talked about this issue, she says that after her first significant awakening she went through a stage where doing small things was difficult. She worked as a receptionist where she had to do two things: collect the money and book a new appointment, but even that was difficult for a time and she had to write it down on post it notes on her desk and would occasionally have to phone up customers having forgotten. It is only a stage though, those faculties to navigate the world kick back in at some point. Another example is Eckhart Tolle who went through a stage where he sat on a park bench for a few years doing nothing.