Jetsun

That may be the case for a tree, but you wouldn't have grown up to be a healthy human being without the compassion of your caregivers as a child, as shown by Romanian orphans who aren't picked up and touched as babies scientists have shown their brains don't develop properly. Compassion is as fundamental for a humans proper growth and functioning as food and water.

I have started to understand the value of the Tibetan Buddhist Ngondro foundations http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ng%C3%B6ndro , the basics of reflection on precious human birth, impermanence, Bodhicitta and the inevitability of death I think are very important to maintain motivation to keep practising. I think aiming to understand and integrate yourself before you try to change anything is fundamental too, so you need a self compassion to ensure you are not doing your practice out of a wish to change yourself due to rejection of the parts of yourself you don't like.

I would expect Kunlun was originally taught as part of a wider system within an appropriate community which had preliminary teachings to prepare the ground before doing the exercise, for example in Tibetan Buddhism you are meant to master the basic teachings and meditation absorbtion states before doing the powerful Tantric exercises otherwise "both guru and disciple will fall over the precipice of spiritual disaster like two oxen yoked together" (Milarepa talking about preparation for the 6 Yogas of Naropa). But for whatever reason neither Jenny Lamb or Max seem to think any sort of basic preparation is necessary for Kunlun, rather they add even more powerful exercises on afterwards. I don't know if this is necessary because we have such great blockages now we need the more powerful techniques straight away or whether it is just irresponsible.

I don't know why it may be different but in the Gelug school at least in the beginning they say your eyes should look down toward the tip of your nose loosely. Because your eyes influence the nature of your consciousness so much if you make your eyes loose it helps to make your mind loose, not forced open or forced close

I guess its down to personal preference and the type of meditation you are doing as I have seen different masters say different things but many Tibetans say having your eyes half closed signals your body to relax more than having them open, but is less likely to make you tired/fall asleep than having them closed. So for beginners half closed then when you get better close them fully, although with my own meditation I close them fully because it involves some visualisation.

Many religions say that you shouldn't make any images of God, I think the most important aspect of this teaching which many don't understand is that you shouldn't make any mental images of God. All the definitions and negative deductions may just be attempts to make mental images which don't help you as it is a concept which can only be understood through the heart and not the mind. It's just a thought.

Isn't the saying "where the mind goes the qi follows" or something like that, so visualising say a healing light on an injured body part may help the flow of qi there.

I think most religious teachings have become corrupted so almost all of them became tools of control and power rather than tools of freedom, so most do the exact opposite of what they were aimed to do they enslave people instead of setting them free. People teaching the real deal authentic teaching are very rare and usually operate in secret because throughout history they have been persecuted. But in the modern world religion isn't the main tool of warmongers any more, it is the media and propaganda.

I don't think more pie guy is being unreasonable, all that marketing stuff around Kunlun is ridiculous and I would imagine it has put off many serious students who could have benefitted from it.

If monks and religious people are marching off to war it means that they didn't have authentic teachings to begin with which should lead to real growth in their being, if they had authentic teachings it would free then from their internal authorities and tyrants so they would no longer by hypnotized and submissive to external authorities, so they couldn't be manipulated to go against their nature.

The book I mentioned is more about the life experiences of an guy who studied Shamanism in Peru so there isn't that much practical info just some crazy experiences. If you want more practical info Sacred Hoop magazine is quite good http://www.sacredhoop.org which has articles from all sorts of traditions, you can get some free sample issues on their site and the guy who makes it has podcasts for free on Itunes. A classic beginner book is "The Way of the Shaman" http://www.amazon.com/The-Way-Shaman-Michael-Harner/dp/0062503731/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1334768519&sr=8-1 even though it looks like it is pandering to people who have no clue about this stuff it is pretty decent and has a number of good working techniques in it. A strange book about Bee Shamanism in the UK is "The Shamanic Way of the Bee" http://www.amazon.com/The-Shamanic-Way-Bee-Practices/dp/1594771197/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1334768589&sr=1-1 I found it pretty interesting.

The people in the video say they belong to a Gnostic church which does meditation and practices like dream observation and they say it comes from Gnostic sources, but I have read most of the nag hammidi and most of the recently found gospels and I don't recall any of these teachings being explained, not in any sort of detailed way anyway. I think there are some sources of genuine Christianity available but they are mostly found in some parts of the Greek and Russian Orthodox churches, for example the monestaries of Mount Athos were able to resist Vatican influence and their form of Christianity is much more inwardly focused and has many teachings on meditatation and mantra.

If you want to read an insane book about Ayahuasca Shamanism read "Ayahuasca in my blood" by Peter Gorman, although some parts may be hard to believe for some.

Has anyone practised Gnosticism or know of anyone who have developed through practising it? I wonder if the full teachings are still alive today, or whether people are just filling in the blanks with what they would like to be there.

That may be what is required, Ghandi for example harnessed all his anger and rage and channelled it into his political activities. Yet I would have thought the more Buddhist approach would be to sit and root out these issues, because by expressing them and channelling their energy you give them life and existence and you make them real, thus continuing the samsaric cycle; but by observing them and withdrawing your identity from them you take out their source of energy and lifeforce, so they lose power. It seems like there is a contradiction between the two approaches.

Perhaps we have to realise that there is no way out of our issues to finally let go and be open to help from the outside, then maybe something else can happen. On the other hand in meditation I can sometimes view my issues and in that state because I am aware they are not who I am and they are impermanent and if they are impermanent they are no longer "problems" because by nature they will pass if I stop interfering with them, so really there are no problems and there is nothing to worry about. I haven't been able to keep this awareness in my daily life though. But when it comes to dealing with your most entrenched issues and grooves which are usually formed during the first few years of your life I have found through my own experience that very very few people really know what they are talking about. Every year "spiritual" people get outed for the neurotic behaviour ranging from womanising to peodophila so I wouldn't assume people who can master spiritually advanced states know how to deal with this stuff.

I think the quality of the attention needs to be completely open and non judgemental without preconceptions or expectations, so you need an empty cup or beginners mind, then from that space if any action needs to be taken it will be spontaneous and appropriate. I don't know if this is what Vmarco is saying, often the need to fix another persons problems comes from a persons own discomfort or fear at witnessing anothers suffering rather than just being open to it, or the need to fix can come from the egotistical desire to have power over those around you.

"To give attention is the simplest and purest act of love" - RA Jodjana

Muted If you study the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan Buddhist teachings such as Lojong at depth it is clear why he often teaches the importance of relative limited compassion, because within those teachings there are many meditations which involve invoking the love your mother has for you and extending it as well as evoking limited compassion and extending it to all beings equally. Essentially those teachings are meditations on limited compassion in order to realise the truth of unlimited, which is why the Dalai Lama says in his autobiography that the most important compassion he ever received was the limited compassion of his mother because that allowed him to realise the truth of unlimited compassion in emptiness, so if you understand the way this teaching works relative compassion is fundamental because it is the root or building block which allows further realisations of unlimited heart. There are other methods of course to realise emptiness and big compassion which are equally valid , it can be done through the mind or body, but the Tibetan way is through the heart and through the means of limited compassion.

That was my first thought

:lol:

I have had similar experience with Stillness Movement and another member here reported their body screaming for them to stop doing Gift of the Tao, it's impossible to really diagnose but from my own experience there could be a few things going on. One possible issue I have observed in myself is that if you do powerful energetics and part of you resists the process then it creates an inner conflict which can lead to negative emotions and stress. Using psychological terms here it's worth trying to find out what the part that is resisting wants before doing more practice, perhaps there are neglected and repressed emotions and parts of yourself which need to be heard and embraced or they will sabotage your practice. Anther possibility is that the practice is just bringing up what is inside of you, you say you are not an angry person but the practice is bringing up anger, so the ego aspect here is your self image of not being an angry person, maybe you are infact an angry person but you bury your anger instead of expressing it and the practice is bringing this out so it is showing you the truth but your self image doesn't like it. The other option is that you are simply trying to do too much too fast, two hours sounds like too much for a beginner, maybe if you do things gradually with patience you wont overstress your system. Bruce Frantzis says never go over 70% of your capability and for beginners i'd stick to even less especially if you are having issues, try doing it for 20 mins or so instead.

One of the main practises of Tibetan Buddhism is the practice of giving and taking, the aspiring Bodhisattva trains so he can reach a state where he wishes to take the suffering of others into himself and gives all his merit away to others freely, he energetically takes on other people's problems and gives away all personal benefits , some monks have been said to have reached a level where they can even take on another person's karma so they reach a fundamental state of openness towards others no matter what they bring. How does this practice reconcile with the approach often found in Taoism and healing where you aim to keep and store your own energy, there is said to be a risk when opening to others of taking on their sick Qi which then makes you sick yourself, you have to not give away your own Qi just to anyone and you often need to put up screens to others so they can't take your hard earned energy. How do you reconcile these two approaches to cultivation which appear to contradict ?

My understanding is that we do all this stuff like meditation in order to stop doing things we are already doing, so it is training in doing nothing or unlearning, so if you can do nothing already then you don't need any of it. They say meditation begins when you stop doing it. The Buddha apparently gained enlightenment when he stopped doing all that stuff and let go, but he did a lot of practices before hand which may have helped bring into consciousness what he needed to let go of. If you are not fully aware you are doing something you can't stop doing it.