Jetsun

Hi, Tyler it should be set up now, if there are any problems please let us know

Why do you think this is the truth? I have no pre life memory so it could be, but why are you so convinced? This isn't what most other people who have such memories say and most other spiritual systems say.

There are some interesting videos on Batgap, I quite like the Karen Richards one, she was just a normal person who had never even read a spiritual book or done any meditation in her life but had a personal health crisis which woke her up. The whole terminology of awakening is quite new relatively speaking, the basic awakening is awakening to who you really are, which although can be temporarily forgotten when old conditioning is triggered the basis from where your sense of "I" is relating from has fundamentally shifted. But after that happens you still have to deal with all of your conditioning from thousands of life times which still operates on many levels your system, so even if awakening happens there might not be any obvious difference in you on the outside. Then the rest of your life you spend embodying it and bringing that awake space to all of those thoughts and areas within your body which aren't integrated in it, perhaps there is some point where there is nothing left to integrate and that is enlightenment, I don't know. For example one of my teachers said to me that someone like Jeff Foster has had basic awakening but he is yet to fully integrate it into his body, which will come with time and persistence. Adyashanti says the real deep awakening is only when the awake space is brought below the pit of survival rage which is deep in the gut and someone could be awake on the level of mind and even heart before that happens. A year a two ago I probably wouldn't believe all of this awakening stuff as it isn't the traditional way most paths talk about it, but having met a few awakened people in person over the last year myself I now know that it is true and that is the way it is going for many people as Batgap can testify. From meeting those people and having experiences I now even believe in Ekhart Tolle's concept of the "New Earth" how awakening is spreading across the globe and humanity is beginning to flower like a ripe crop, it is just the next stage of evolution or ripening of humanity.

Yeah they are likely to have completely different results, mantras can also be empowered, I didn't quite believe this myself but I had a mantra which I experimented with for a while, then I was initiated in the lineage of the mantra and it was empowered by the lineage and the difference before and after in terms of power and effectiveness is like night and day.

I have been looking through my books and can't find the quote unfortunately, it could be that I misunderstood him. But another way of looking at it (borrowing an analogy from Adyashanti) is that if you are in a prison and you make the prison really nice and get a load of nice furnishings and decorations you can make a semi comfortable life in there and convince yourself and hypnotise yourself into believing that being there isn't too bad; whereas if your prison is uncomfortable, disturbing and generally unbearable you are more likely to look with a much greater urgency to try to find a way out.

Nobody is ever awakened hehe But I like Dawgs approach to try to investigate the nature of reality with full commitment and sincerity , kudos, I am told that is what it takes to see through the clouds

Zen master Hakuin says something along those lines,that you should be wary of removing too much of a persons suffering as it can fuel the awakening. I guess it depends on where that understanding comes from and where the person is at, if the whole world thought like that from their own level then I expect the world would be in a right mess. Amma says that although a persons has to work through their own karma that doesn't mean that we can't support each other through that process , which is why she does so much humanitarian work, and says one of the reasons why India is a mess in certain regards is because so many people in the past have held the attitude that a persons suffering is their lot so there is nothing to be done.

Ken you talk about Tummo and regard it as legitimate and it even has its own section on your forum, yet Tummo is a part of the 6 Yogas of Naropa it isn't something separate in itself, and the 6 Yogas of Naropa is a part of the wider path of some Tibetan Buddhist lineages, all of which begins with basic Buddhist meditation techniques and ngondro preliminary practices such as cultivating merit and compassion, which many people on here practice, Kosta Danos even said on his interview here that there is value in the basic Buddhist meditation methods and the 6 Yogas can bring you everything Mo Pai can. As a comparison you could say that those people here who are doing the basic practices and preliminaries (of which there are dozens of people) are on the lower levels of that path, but the main difference is that their path isn't closed to Westerners, there is the possibility to advance to the higher level practices which isn't possible with Mo Pai, so who is it really on the path to nowhere? those on the path which is open or those on the path which is closed.

Very interesting vid, I don't know exactly whats going on but whenever I have done any rhythmic chanting like that the breathing involved is usually going right down to the sexual centre which can be very powerful for stimulating energy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAUoa9pmokA

If you want to read something which really challenges whether such stories can ever be taken literally or not read "Blazing Splendor - The memoirs of Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche". In it there are all sorts of stories such as people taking zombies for a walk, having a conversation with embodied evil spirits and all sorts of miracles and the author makes it clear that he is talking literally and isn't meant as an allegory for anything, and he is regarded as one of the most respected masters of recent times. It can challenge your perception of what "reality" really is, in the sense that reality is often just what group consciousness believe is possible, which can shift quite easily.

Words of My Perfect Teacher is meant to be one of the classic Tibetan texts in that it contains a large proportion of the basis of the Tibetan teachings collected together in one place. I don't remember many fantastical teachings in it myself, although it is a while since I read it, and thought it was quite practical in many ways, there is the section on Chod though which has offerings of your own body to spirits and beings but that is done on the mind or spirit level not on the physical. Also when I read it I found there was a certain transmission in it, in that when I read the first page I felt a swell of compassion that it almost brought me to tears, perhaps that was just coincidence, but it has been regarded as an important text by many dedicated practitioners that there might be an energy built up behind it if not a direct transmission from Patrul Rinpoche.

Gurdjieff pretty much predicted what would happen to his lineage after he died and even described the laws by which these things become degraded. It is still quite remarkable how in just one generation these things can get so skewed, which is a sort of wakeup and warning in itself about all lineages in all paths. But I do think some genuine lineage survived, mostly those organised by M De Salzmann. I used to know someone who was part of one and he was very integrated and balanced in his body and a had a great deal of presence and not at all "all head", yet I can see how easily people can become like that, which was basically what happened to Ouspensky, he took the work into his head and it never made it fully into his body which is reflected in his books.

One theory is that circumcision helps to reduce masturbation in teenage boys, so it helps preserve jing which aids cultivation.

The conditioning is incredibly deep on both society and family levels to deny and dissociate from various emotional experiences and the main gist of healing in my opinion is to bring back into acceptance and awareness emotional content which you have spent your entire life regarding as unacceptable and not wanted. In my own journey I have had to try to embrace my vulnerable emotions and I soon realised that the vast majority of people I have met don't have the maturity to deal with it, for example there have been times when I openly express things like despair and sadness and everyone around me immediately do all they can to try to get it to go away, they think they are helping but in reality it is more of the same of trying to push something away which is deemed as scary and not wanted, so is infact a form of aggression, even though it is innocent and not intended that is what it is. Even when people say things like "think of all the starving children in Africa" as a means of comparison to your problems it is just another way to try to deny your genuine emotional experience to try to make it go away. Emotional maturity is actually quite rare I find even in most of our world leaders and people in high positions of responsibility,as far as I can tell most of the world is in a state of stunted emotional growth..

I always liked the classic Hindu analogy of a human being like a chariot, how the body is the cart while the emotions are the horse. Without the horse you won't get very far. When Gurdjieff talks using this analogy he says the driver is always sleeping and doesn't know where he is going while the reigns and chains between the driver, horse and cart are weak and degraded. So the first thing to do is improve the reigns with the horse, not degrade them further or even pretend they don't exist or pretend you don't need the horse at all.

I'm not sure that is a uniform Zen approach to force people to sit through pain, it is one approach to try to illuminate a particular affliction many people suffer from yet I wouldn't say it is crucial and for many could be a hindrance. Not all Zen teachers operate that way. In many circles Zen is as corrupted and lacking in wisdom as most Christian churches and there is a lot if imitation of wisdom rather than genuine wisdom, then periodically a new genuine master appears and tells all the other hundreds of masters out there that what they are teaching is just a pile of shit. So there is a periodic renewal of what is real Zen, which is how it is kept alive. So unless you have been instructed to do such a practice by a master you trust I would trust your own intuition over what is said in a book.

That is something I have wondered myself, I agree Hinduism is far from perfect but it is generally a bit more open minded and relaxed around other faiths and there is a great deal of openness and respect towards the divine aspect of life, so it is probably more fertile soil in that respect. Perhaps the fact that a lot of the country are vegetarians comes in to it. One of my teachers says the reason is because of the energy of the land, the Himalayas and mountains like Arunachala are places where the divine energy comes through the earth far more strongly, similarly how there are energy centres in the body there are energy centres in the planet, so the people are products of the land. But in the modern world of air travel and dissemination of teachings you don't have to go to India or anywhere else, plenty of masters travel to the USA and many live there. My advice would be to go see Amma when she goes on her next tour to the USA, she won't throw you out and I doubt you will find any more powerful than her if you searched India for your entire life. Ram Das has also said that now Mahari-Ji is now dead it is far easier for anyone to get Darshan from him, as he is no longer bound by time and space you can do it from home.

You raise a great deal of different points in one post, but Neem Karoli Baba was thought not just to be a master but an Avatar, in that he knew exactly what is of benefit for each student who went to him. Being thrown out may be exactly what the person needed at that time, rather than indulging the students sleeping consciousness his reaction may give him a shock to help wake them up. If you want a more shocking example of unconventional wisdom Ram Dass a few years ago had a severe stroke, he survived but since had many problems such as learning to talk properly again and function properly, but if you ask him he says his Guru Mahara-ji stroked him, he believes that his guru gave him the stroke as it was of most benefit to him for his spiritual awakening.

Why would they bother using the dark web? Nothing they were doing was illegal. Magus of Java was released in the year 2000 but TOR wasnt even invented until 2002 and not commercially available or popular until quite a few years after that

I hope you enjoy your break and please come back once you have had some time off

If this is a teaching or a lecture without any sort of discussion it might be more appropriate in your ppf

I don't think that is the basic premise here. It looks to me that the source of your pain and the pain in the persons legs are different and both of your highs are different. I don't think the issue is about overcoming pain, it is about recognising that which isn't in separation which is what the master was talking about, the release of pain is just a symptom of that recognition because the large proportion of our psychosomatic tensions are bound around maintaining the sense of separate self.

Its not that complicated, if you are disruptive, trolling or post insults which are direct or indirect then you will probably get banned. If "standing up for the real Mo Pai" crosses these lines you will get banned. Most decisions are only taken when there is a majority in the mod team to approve it and all of the mod team practice different methods from different schools with different masters, so there is no conspiracy against any particular approach or school. If you read the interview with Kosta Danos on this site he is far more accommodating to other systems than many of those who in the past here who have talked about Mo Pai, he says there is value in the Buddhist mind meditation methods and says the Yogas of Naropa will take you as far as Mo Pai, I consider it unlikely that if you talk about Mo Pai in this spirit that you will get banned.

I'm not sure why you feel the need to prove that you are not someone before you have even posted on the site? But as long as you aren't another missionary come to spread the gospel that Mo Pai is the only possible way and all us New Age ignoramuses are completely lost unless we convert to doing exactly as the Magus of Java bible says then you will get on just fine.

I don't think it happens much any more, I expect these days if a master did that they might get a lawsuit or get punched back, yet some of the great traditional teachers such as Master Lin Chi says that some of the greatest teachings he received was being hit by his masters stick.