Jetsun

Not for me, I did breath work for a while but found it too contrived, Gurdjieff pointed out how trying to manipulate the breath can cause all sorts of health problems and organ weaknesses and had to treat many people who suffered in this way. He says you need to really study and know yourself first because by manipulating the breath you are changing the tempo and function of the primary survival mechanisms in your body, so you really need to know if it is what you need and how to do it before you change such a primary function.

"At birth you were One, then you made two. What will you do" "When you see He who's unborn from a womb, prostrate and worship, for He's your father" "I'll show you what no eye has seen,no ear has heard, no hand has touched, and what has not yet risen in men's hearts" "Make the two into One and the inner as the outer and the outer as the inner, the above as below, the male and female into a single One." "My soul was afflicted for mankind, for they are blind at heart and do not see. Empty they entered this world, empty they will leave!" - The Gospel of Thomas I think Jesus here is talking about non-duality and the unborn awareness, the awareness you had before you were born which the Zen Koan asks you to find. The Buddhist teachings are usually a lot clearer yet the Christian ones have a poetic quality, I heard one Buddhist teacher say that the most poetic and moving poem on emptiness he ever read was The Dark Night of the Soul by St John of the Cross. The genuine Christian path is hard to find but it is there if you look, for example someone like St Theresa of Avilla mapped out the path of moving upwards through the chakras to union, yet she uses Christian terminology and language of her time and talks about the seven mansions rather than chakras.

What's the difference between oneness and non duality? my personal experience has shown me that we are one, in quite a shocking way we are all the same being, yet we are also all unique in the way that every snowflake is unique.

Why?

About the sleep part, ego can use sleep as a defence mechanism, I have experienced it many times in meditation, something the ego doesn't like is coming to the surface or some realisation is about to occur and suddenly you feel incredibly sleepy that you simply can't continue and you need to take a break or have a nap. Don't fall for it's tricks! on the other hand sometimes you are just tired and need sleep, but I wouldn't want anyone to miss an enlightenment experience because of it.

For most humble is a form of egotism, look at me I'm soooo humble aren't I wonderful

Depends on whether the question remains cerebral and in the conceptual or whether you recognize what it is poining to which cannot be conceptualized.

It doesn't have to be that complicated, it can be realized just by asking questions like "where is my mind", "what does everything arise in", then relaxing there. Even a layman with no religious or spiritual training could get there just by being continually radically honest, sure its probably a lot faster with a knowledgeable lama i'll give you that, but the natural state is not owned by some tradition or set of lamas.

That is an assumption, I have had pointing out instructions from a few different lineages not Dzogchen and they all point to the same thing, the main reason people miss it is because it is so simple rather than because it is difficult or hard to discover. I'm sure the extremists and those who think Dzogchen is spiritually superior will now tell me that my instructions are not the real thing or somehow lesser, I have heard it all before.

Ok, to study the text and to study the concept of Buddhahood without meditation are two different things. Maybe he has a point but I am like Tibetan Ice and have had enough of him aggressively shitting on anyone who mentions anything that resembles Buddhism on this site, he is like the Buddhist Taliban

If its your natural state anyone can realize it at any time, you have no idea if they have realized it beyond the intellectual.

Its bullshit that you need initiation to discuss the concept of Buddhahood without meditation, your natural state is your natural state, it isn't owned by Dzogchen or anyone else, anyone could realise it at any time because it isn't something given to you it is something which is always present. Extremists like Alwayson like to turn it into something exclusive to try feel special and superior but the clue is in its name, it is your natural state, it is ubiquitous to everyone.

One of the main problems is that the party in power all come from the repressive antiquated public school system which still indoctrinates their pupils into thinking that they are all superior Christian soldiers. So Cameron probably sees this legislation as a way to try to get the country to see things the way he sees them, not just with sexual matters but all beliefs and ideas which stray too far from his own traditional confined world view need to be reigned in. Yet 95% of the country have a different background to him and think nothing like him. Him and his whole party are like a relic from 100 years ago.

I don't have the details of the policy I'm not sure if it is public yet, the issue has been raised by the Open Rights group who have been talking to ISP providers about what the ISP's are going to be expected to filter.

Here is the Huffington Posts article on it,http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/3670771 (sorry on mobile) apparently the Digital Rights group has flagged it up. Change.org who are one of the main rights protest sites in the UK consider it a serious problem and have an official petition http://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/uk-prime-minister-david-cameron-stop-the-unnecessary-censor-of-esoteric-websites-and-web-forums sign if you don't want an Orwellian state please.

I think people are trying to affirm their independent existence, when you are right and others wrong you feel more firmly that you exist, whereas being wrong can be experienced as annhialatory to the ego.

It might be worth considering that the desire to escape from others is mostly a masculine yang approach to spirituality, the feminine approach is usually more relational with an embracing of all, like the mother's complete loving embrace. So the desire to be alone is not necessarily any better for you spiritually than the desire to be with and connect with others. Being 21 I think it is much healthier to be connecting with others than alone, it is a very healthy drive for someone of your age. A person doesn't stop being a divine being just because they don't see it in themselves or others, they never stop being what they are even if they don't recognize it and spend their time clubbing and drinking. It can help to find others with similar spiritual interests though, you help each other wake up.

That is excellent

Practice through effort, various capabilities, and so on are irrelevant to primordial nature. Practice through searching is the cause of exhausting oneself, adding labeling and examination to complication. Meditation within a framework is encagement once again. May miserable complication be cut off from the inside Within dharmata unspoiled by efforts of rejection or practice, may I enter the meaning of spontaneous being Though there is labeling of phenomena—a foundation to be understood, a path to be traversed, and a fruit to be obtained, in true self-nature these are like sequences in space. May I dwell spontaneously in the meaning of nondoing - From The Manjushri great perfection prayer So there you have the great contradiction, there is a path to be traversed and a fruit to be obtained yet it is all just like sequences in space, not relevant to your primordial nature

Its very difficult to define concisely, many would define it as a bunch of folks picking and choosing bits of spirituality from all over the world from both Eastern and Western traditions and combining it with things like crystal work, spirit chanelling, healing, working with angels. Then there are beliefs like the coming age of Aquarius and the return of the Goddess. Chanelling spirits is a part of it, the book "A course in miracles" is meant to be channeled from Jesus. Then there are others like Sandrah Romaine who channels a spirit called Orin. I understand that many equate it with bullshit, but I was amazed myself that when I actually red such chanelled books I thought they were often very good. The problem with people who dismiss it all is that a lot of the New Age thought derives from authentic knowledge and practice, so a lot of what they practice will be genuine and useful, the problem being its also mixed up with bullshit and con artists also. I have found through my own experience that some of the things which look like fiction can be the most powerful so I am more open minded these days to it all.

Its a different time with different conditions, who really knows what Hui Neng would say or what is really required for the modern person. Many people learn how to concentrate pretty well in school these days, the whole way we are conditioned and influenced is different now than when many of the Buddhist paths were formulated, you might be trying to apply an old formula to a fresh situation.

Its about the New Age in general The New Age isn't just about chanelling and law of attraction, its about a New Age for mankind

I never used to believe in the whole age of Aquarius new age coming time stuff but I have noticed that many teachers have talked about the changes they have seen in recent years. Ya Mu has mentioned it on this site how there is no difference with the sensitivity between males and females now with his students when there used to be 5-10 years ago, there has been an acceleration. Adyashanti describes how many more of his students are going through genuine awakenings now when it was rare 10 years ago and you can witness this for yourself if you listen to his podcasts and the quality and nature of the questions being asked him now compared to a few years ago. In other traditions people are saying the same thing, teachers from many different traditions are reporting increasing consciousness and awakenings, there are new non dual teachers and groups emerging all of the time and even the New York times and BBC are doing features on meditation these days and esoteric literature is in all the book shops. Teachers are doing initiations on a huge scale now, hundreds of thousands have had the Kalachakra initiation across the globe and other Tibetan initiations once only reserved for a small select group of people are being handed out, and hundreds of thousands have had darshan from teachers like Mother Meera and Amma as well as many others, and thousands travel each year to Southern America to be transformed by Ayahuasca that there are now hundreds of shamanic healing centres. All this work is going on on a scale never seen before in history and all this energy is being liberated while the internet with Skype and YouTube etc is exposing this knowledge and power to the masses like never before. Do you not think all this going on has an effect on the consciousness of the planet? People just need to open their eyes to what is going on around them and get involved.

What has been the result of them applying this to their spirits? Tibet has been destroyed and their protector spirits couldn't do anything to stop it. While many of the countries which have been subjected to Christian spirits and the spirit of Jesus prosper without any tantric oaths

So the Tibetans gets to pick and choose which spirits are good, but for some reason all of the ones the New Age guys use are evil or trickster, why? because some Tibetan said so.