Jetsun

So what is all the fuss about Shugden then if Tibetan spirits are of no concern to them, you criticise Westerns for being in touch with spirit guides when Tibetans are obsessed with them, every school and area has its own spirit protector.

There is a history of people being given Dharma teachings through spirits. The Dalai Lama used a spirit guide to avoid the Chinese invading armies when he escaped Tibet and the government in exile consults oracles regularly to help formulate policy. So its ok for someone like Dudjom Lingpa to teach from spirit instruction but if a Westerner writes a book like "A Course in Miracles" its somehow not as authentic? You should read a course in miracles if you think that all Western spirits are somehow evil or trickster, it is a really remarkable "New Age" channeled book in many ways and has helped many people

The Tibetans use spirit guides for their practices and for channelling etc, so its ok for them but if Westerners do it from their traditions they are evil trickster spirits? just sounds like hypocricy to me

You can't stop thinking for longer than a few micro seconds, which is helpful if you can do it but there is the stillness of the self always present within and around all your thoughts, so it doesn't matter if you still the mind or not if you can recognise its always there.

I'm not dancing, I have met a healer who uses "magical" energy which is of a power most people here couldn't fathom, it has really opened my eyes to a world most would consider only exists in the most vivid imaginations, yet there are healings on a different level then curing sickness and disease. But I wouldn't say the healer is one of the most powerful people in the world because the energy they use isn't theirs, they are a conduit. I don't think the most powerful person is the one with the strongest mind as the mind is just a tool, there are those who go beyond the mind to something much larger and more powerful than regular human thought. But power comes in many forms, in terms of Qi power the stories I have been reading about Yan Xin sound very impressive, in terms of holy power there are beings like Amma, Mother Meera and the Dalai Lama who are working with the power of compassion to try save mankind and in terms of raw political and military power the aren't many single individuals more powerful than Vladimir Putin.

With some healers if they bring their clients to be at peace with whatever is happening to them then that is healing, even if they die.

Meditation can be just the practice of trying to become what you already are, which is just foolishness as you already are what you are looking for. I have heard Zen masters say all spiritual practice is designed to fail, it is practised controlled folly, so you do all you can to try to get somewhere but in the end it leads to failure where you let go and rest in your own being where you realize you are what you are looking for and wake up. So Buddhahood won't be reached through meditation, except when meditation fails to bring you to Buddhahood. .

Tenzin Palmo http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenzin_Palmo went off and spent 12 years in a cave in the mountains, 3 of those in strict retreat. The way it is done is through sponsorship so essential food is brought to you so you can spend your time in practice, even then it is risky because snow cut off her food for sometimes weeks at a time. Through a Buddhist lineage you can do such retreats with sponsorship but generally you need many years intense preparation and study beyond what would be PhD level in the west as well as empowerments and initiations otherwise your mind may not cope and you may get overwhelmed by what comes up. All of that hostility in your mind may eat you up without it.

We live in a global world now so a more global inclusive spirituality is to be expected, the time of competition between traditions is over and most of the genuine major spiritual workers are working on a global scale now in a non secular way. Even the Dalai Lama says secularism is a load of bullshit and is writing books in a non secular way. The new age is more inclusive and embracing of all of the worlds traditions and celebrates the feminine in a way most of the previously patriachical movements didn't, so it is a movement appropriate for our age. It's not all about the law of attraction, there are a great deal of healing modalities coming out of it which is one of its main focuses which work with the body and mind in ways that western medicine and psychology wont understand for a long time. Sure its full of con artists and deluded fools but that's pretty much like everything else. One thing though is that we haven't even defined what new age is yet.

Yeah, according to many different Shamanistic paths we create these cords with all those we become close to which get strengthened by thinking or recollecting those people, but those we have sex with they are more strongly attached. According to Abelar it can take 7 years for the cords to detach without work on them which is why in most Shamanistic paths they have cord cutting ceremonies and techniques, many of the Huna methods work using these cords which they call Aka cords and in Native American paths they use an Eagles wing to cut them (which were illegal to own in the US until very recently so those in power probably knew about their power when they banned them). A lady named Phyllis Crystal created a means you can do this on your own if you feel the need which I have used myself a fair bit.

Taishar Abelar who was a student of Carlos Castaneda said that when you have sex you create a cord with one another where things can be changed energetically, but if it isn't renewed with multiple encounters it will drop off over time

So this is the guy Chunyi Lin spoke about who did that huge healing on him. Are all 9 steps of the Qigong contained within the youtube recording and the book or just one step? the recording is titled 9 steps but the book only indicates it is only 1 I just did the youtube meditation Drew posted and got a lot of reaction from it, seems like a big loss to humanity if this guy is being prevented from teaching his Qigong Here is someone elses experience of his healing power http://www.qigongtherapy.com/march.html

OK So if this is true in your body this is also true in your environment and in other bodies all constantly interacting with each other, so where do "you" and any "others" start and stop, where are the boundaries? it is all just one big organism interacting together is it not? all boundaries only exist in the imagination

No you have certain meditation experiences, to conclude all else you wrote is true from those experiences requires assumptions which might not be correct

That is all well and good, but what can you point to now in yourself which is you? what within you can you right now identify as yourself? There is nothing Yet you want to try to get this thing you can't find off the cycle of rebirth

If you are brutally honest you don't know any of this as fact.

Taoists study nature and you are a microcosm of nature, so study yourself starting off with the fundamental examination of the thing which is trying to do the studying, where is it, what are its characteristics? They say the truth sets you free so just look for what is true and be really sincere about what you know and don't know then you will align with nature and the natural way of things, otherwise the mind will just be adding onto reality its own interpretation of what it thinks reality should look like. Do you know who or what you are?, and if you don't it might be a good place to start otherwise you could be doing all the energy manipulation exercises from a place not authentically aligned with what is needed for your natural being. If you don't know who you are how do you know what is the right exercise or meditation or method to do? people do exercises all the time from an egoic place without realising it, all they are doing is strengthening delusion while believing that they are doing the opposite. Most the vedanta and Zen and those guys are saying exactly the same thing and it is very simple,so simple that most people miss it, which is that all of your thoughts, feelings and beliefs arise in something and it is worth examining whatever it is that all that stuff is arising in. Your identity is usually fixed on the content that is arising and ignoring what it is arising in, yet the only constant in your life is that which all the content is arising in as the content always changes, so why is the content more you than what it arises from?. The unborn awareness is right here all the time, in the stillness which is always present, in the gaps. You want to end the cycle of rebirth without having found out for sure what you are, maybe it isn't even you that wants to do that, maybe it is a belief which you have mistaken for yourself which is actually working against whats really best for you.

I understand where you are coming from and I wish you luck on your path too, but I want to try to make the point that if your fundamental identity has shifted out from your individual separate consciousness into non-dual that means that you are now identified with the all, therefore you will not die when your body and mind dies as your identity is identified with all awareness , you are all that exists so how can you really die?. Which is why some teachers say before you try to manipulate your energy and do all that stuff you should try find out who or what you really are, what is the one who is doing all the exercises and trying to do all they can to break the cycle of liberation? It's probably something you have heard a hundred times and I didn't really take the investigation that seriously myself until recently when I had an experience which shifted my perspective on all this stuff.

I didn't think we were particularly arguing, but I am completely positive I am not talking about a soporific opiate similar to religious beliefs, I am talking about realising the consciousness which is beyond beliefs altogether which is perfectly at peace with whatever happens. This is what most genuine Buddhist paths are pointing at and also what new age teachers like Byron Katie are directing people towards

No you don't understand its the opposite of an opiate, it is the letting go of all the identity you have with the beliefs which the mind creates around what happens in your life, so you are facing up to your life directly without the beliefs of the mind trying to alter life to something better.

No it doesn't do that, rather you make peace with reality, you stop fighting it and wishing it was different and thus you gain peace and flow. Yes your body will still die and there might be pain, yet there wont be all the extra stuff that most people add on to the situation like "I don't deserve this" "I wish I could live longer" "I still have so much i need to do" etc etc. They say that those who completely accept their death it can be quite beautiful, which is the same with most of life, it is the resistance and drag our minds put onto our experiences by believing it should be different than what it is which causes the majority of our suffering. So you start saying yes to life instead of no. If there was a comet coming to the earth and you completely accept your fate then there is no real problem, you are facing the journey of your death with eyes open without resistance, but if instead you spend your time cursing god or crying about the unfairness of it all then your mind has added a whole load of more unnecessary suffering onto your inevitable fate because of the assumption that the mind thinks it knows what should be, that it knows better than god.

Realisation involving the issue of the fundamental identity of who you are can help you cut out all the extra suffering we cause ourselves and others by misperceiving who we are. It is a fundamental shift of the ground of your being away from your own beliefs of reality into a direct perception. Non-dual realisation solves most of the important questions we have such as death, birth, truth, purpose of life, the majority of fears and insecurities which we dwell on most of the day.

Speak to them, be open to them and see what they show you and how you feel and trust your own personal experience and intuition. See if they can bring others to the same realisations which they have had. If you are waiting for a scientist to authorise your experience then you might be waiting your entire life while what you really need for growth is constantly passing right under your nose.

I'm not talking about nuggets of wisdom and philosophy, i'm talking about teachers who have real realisations and awakenings into non-duality and healers who would blow your mind. If you have a preconceived belief that they don't exist and absolutely nothing comes from anything which approaches a new age approach then you are unlikely to come across them and would probably dismiss them out of hand without even giving them a chance in order to affirm that your beliefs are correct. I'm not saying there isn't a lot of useless bullshit out there, most of it probably is, but unless you have an open beginners mind you are only likely to find what you have already decided exists.

I would be careful what you dismiss out of preconceived prejudice, keep an open mind and you can find some diamonds within the dirt. That is my experience with the new age anyway. Who knows what is going to emerge out of the emptiness and how the most relevant teaching for our time is going to express itself? The constant changing nature of the world means that many of the old paths can very easily become degraded archaic relics.