Otis

Nice, y'all! Here's the Ninja training video Nick and I created (I'm in green).

It's a good reminder, because I don't enjoy when others assume the superior position, and yet I still have those impulses, myself.

Good distinction.

The fact that you're paying attention to it is a great start!

It's a pretty funny posture, two people trying to teach each other, both seeing the other one as asleep. Makes you question the agenda of "waking someone up", when they're trying to do it to you.

"Atta boy, you're becoming more aware" Really, it's a great thing! Focusing on the pulse of blood in a vein is one of the quickest meditations I know, for arriving at nonduality. Enjoy!

My first important shift in relationship with my belly, was to stop sucking it in. I already had a bad back, and I just made it worse, by holding a bunch of tension in my lumbar region. Plus, I had no intelligent understanding of the stomach muscles, because I was just using them for aesthetic purposes, not to find balance within my body. Stomach muscles are almost unique, as powerful movement muscles with almost no bones to use as leverage. All the muscles of the legs, arms, back, neck and head are based on various forms of leverage, using bones (or tendons, attached to bones) as their counter-balance. But most of the stomach muscles are just attached to each other, and need to relate in very subtle and supple ways, in order to keep the whole skeletal-muscular system in balance. Unfortunately, I have a long way to go, waking up my belly muscles' fine control and feedback. I've had some recent insight into those muscles, and I'm pretty sure I would never have gotten that new awareness, if I hadn't stopped sucking my gut in, first.

Hi John, My path has been very different than yours, and I can't suggest what you may need. I do want to say that I've also experienced growth as a very cyclical thing. I have periods of great movement forward in certain areas of my life, and then the other areas that have not yet grown, suddenly start acting up and demanding my attention. I move forward again, only to find new things that I hadn't known to look at. Also, I don't think that any one state is where it's at, honestly. I think freedom means being able to be present over the entire range of being human, through all emotions, in all forms of consciousness.

Thanks, Stan.

I don't know. If I happen to meet one, I'll be sure to kill him!

This is so awesome!

By any chance, has this friend watched a lot of Mooji videos? Cuz Mooji does that a lot: "who are you"? The only thing is: it makes sense from Mooji, because he gets it. Does this person "get it"? If this person is taking the tack I'm thinking of, they may be trying to "wake you up".

It was a very nice lunch today. Great to meet you, Keith, as well as Barb and Scott! Steve, I really wish you could've joined us. That would've been awesome! (We all mentioned how much we appreciate your posts).

Fantastic responses, everyone! I wanted to re-post this one, because I think it's worthy of another look:

Excellent reflections, Hagar! And I am in agreement. I can keep trying to escape pain, but I won't always be able to. When faced with inescapable suffering, it will be good that I have practiced enduring and being peaceful, even in the pain. Edit: and I don't think that there's anything wrong with your use of "I", because it's precisely honest use of language, nothing more. It is exactly you that you're describing; what other pronoun would make sense?

Great share, Hagar, thanks! And I'm glad that your son is fine. I have used that exact phrase "acid in my veins" to describe my experience of self-loathing, after making a big mistake. After the experience, I began to wonder if this was what life felt like, without any dopamine or serotonin in my system, to cool the pain. I wondered: "is this what the Buddha meant by: life is suffering"? At some fundamental level, does existence have this much pain activation going on, all the time, even literally in the veins? That experience, to me, felt like rejection of what is. It was my intense regret that caused my body to react like that. I remembered how awful regret used to feel, when I was a teenager, lying awake in bed, ruing every little mistake I had made that day. That's one of my fears about being a motorcycle rider, the possibility of lying in bed injured, full of aching regret. Last year at Burning Man, I had an experience that tested my ability not to fall into that hell. My buddy and I were befriended by two under-cover police, who solicited substance from us. My friend is clean-living, but I had a pot brownie, that I shared with them (that's what you do at Burning Man; you share). Suddenly we were beset by uniformed officers, cuffed and separated from each other. I felt so bad for my friend getting caught up in that with me (although I was sure he'd be let go, for lack of a crime), and I also felt bad for myself, not wanting to spend the next several hours in cuffs, in the back of a cruiser, as it drove the long ride to Reno. It was in that cruiser, after about an hour in cuffs, that I felt the panic wanting to enter me, and so I committed myself to loving the situation, to seeing it as an adventure. Thankfully, a couple minutes later, an officer let me out of the cruiser, and gave me a ticket, instead of taking me in. I was relieved that I didn't have to test my center, by taking that long ride, but I was also glad, in a way, to have had that experience. I know that this was not the last time I will be faced with that intensity of rejection of life's conditions, and hopefully that little bit of practice, in the back of the cruiser, will serve me in the future.

Hi Noahsfor. I'm sorry that this is such a painful phase of your journey right now, but it does sound like some good is going to come of it. I cannot tell you what is real, because that is beyond my possible knowledge. But I will share what I experience, and hope it provides some relief. First: "there is no self". I don't take this quite so literally. Something is here, but it is not what I have thought it was. The self that I experienced is not who I am. So in order to find out what this something is, I need to humble what I have previously thought that "I" was. This is most obvious, when we talk about self-definition. I have some ideas about who I am. They are not what's real, of course, they are merely a cobbling together of some external data, flavored by my wishes and fears. When I am in a bad mood, my fears dominate my self-image, when in an optimistic mood, it is my wishes. But neither is true. There is a body, but it is not what I see in the mirror, which is colored by my shame and pride. It is not the idea I have about my body (too fat, too skinny, whatever). It is not what other people tell me my body is. It is not even what I experience when I close my eyes, and "listen" with my touch/kinesthesia senses (although that's getting closer). All of these things have been by shaped my experiences, by my wishes and fears. Secondly: "there are no other selves". Indeed, all the people that I have ever experienced in my life, have been creations of my own mind. That does not mean, however, that other people do not actually exist. They just do not exist (as I do not) in the form that I imagine them. When another person is before me, I do not experience them directly. What I experience, is an image in my brain, that my visual cortex has put together. That image, of course, is highly conditioned by my emotions about that person. I see beauty in people I love, and ugliness in those I hate. When someone else talks, my mind puts their words together, to form a meaning that is significant to me. So, even though the actual person is using words, I always come to my own conclusions, as to what they mean. I hear attack when I'm feeling vulnerable; I hear foolishness when they disagree with me. Consider your girlfriend. If you say that you know her very well, then to some degree you are speaking of delusion. Yes, you have been exposed to her behavior for awhile, and thus, may be able to predict some of her responses. But the "knowledge" itself is merely a mental model of her (and it will change according to your mood, just as does your self-image). At times, you will be surprised by her, because the actual person is deeper and more complex than our models will ever account for. Just as sometimes, you will be surprised by yourself, because your self-model is also simplistic and incomplete. This does not mean, however, that you cannot love her. It just means that you cannot "know" her. You have to choose to love the mystery, the "not-knowing", since your brain can never fully encompass "who she is". This is what faith is: loving, even though there is no way of knowing. The same can be said about all aspects of life. You can never truly know anything, because all you have are mental models. All mental models are just extrapolations, just "the best I have to work with". They are never "what actually is". But you can still love life, if you choose to accept "not knowing". You can love other people, if you can still allow them to be mysteries. You can love yourself, without having to decide who you are. So yes, I understand how awful it seems, to look at everything that you have thought you've known, and realize: none of this is so! It is all illusion. Indeed it is! But the old path, of ignoring the person, but loving the illusion, that was no good. That's actually violence to the other person. If I think "my girlfriend is sweet and kind to me", then it feels like a betrayal when she is not. However, if I say "I love my girlfriend, whoever she is", then I leave her the freedom to exist, beyond my definitions. Now that you know the person is an illusion, you can love for the sake of loving. When you "know", you exclude. For example, if you "know" there is one God, then all other possible explanations must be excluded. But if you open yourself to not knowing, then possibility remains wide open, and growth becomes readily available.

No doubt, I don't feel ready to live in the world without my beliefs and habits. The trick, for me, is to remind myself that they are not "what's real", but merely "what's worked thus far". To see them as a game, nothing more. I do feel the need to slowly wean myself from beliefs. I have various practices in which I am able to temporarily get out of the way, but they are still just a portion of my life, not the entire flow. What those practice reveal, however, is that it is entirely possible to function beyond my previous experience, without the meddling of "I". It reveals also, that whatever it is that emerges when I'm out of the way, possesses insight, awareness, efficiency and clarity that I have never been privy to. The major function that I see now for "me" is to remind my system: "Hey, the bill is due" or "I'm already full, and yet still eating" or "I've lost my awareness of the moment, while distracted by stray thoughts". Because I have acted as the "grown-up" for so long, I/my ego is still the part that has the most practical knowledge, and is the most used to being in charge. So rather than trying to kill myself off, I'm merely trying to downgrade my role: from tyrant to manager, and when possible, to student.

Great! It's not surprising that there is a part, which resists this change. The self gets its security from its certainty, so to surrender certainty is to lose (the sense of) security. For example, here on a discussion board, in which many people will agree that the ego needs to be dissolved, how many people will actually acknowledge that "I am the ego"? I don't see it very often, but no surprise, because who wants to dissolve themselves? We'd rather see the ego as this pesky thing to get rid of, and then "I" will be happy and complete. But I am the ego. I am the pesky thing. When I go, something else may be happy and complete, but it will not be me. I will just return to being a cog in the machine, a function of awareness. Of course there's great resistance to surrendering all knowledge, all beliefs, all pretense to being "right". Because they are addictions at the very core of the self. How do I "know" anything? By referencing this ground of unquestionable "of course" that began at infancy. But all "of course" is just delusion, which means there is nothing left to hold on to. If we take away "what I know", then it seems to endanger "who I am". Thankfully, "who I am" is an illusion, and so there is no danger. But the certainty must go, or I will always be addicted to being this "self".

Good point. My take on this, is that Yi is used to "rough in" our direction. Yi can get me into the ballpark, and help rise above the background noise, so my listening is in the right direction. It's like (my understanding of) the 8-fold path; not moral rules, but suggestions to help align ourselves for realization. IME, at some point, however, there is a gap, that intent cannot fully span. At that point, I need to "turn around backwards", that is, to stop trying to hit the mark, and instead trust that listening alone will guide me in. Qi then sweeps me up, and all intent is forgotten. But that doesn't mean, as you point out, that intent wasn't useful to get me there. IME, with practice, intent becomes less and less interesting, because it starts to feel false, even polluting. But intent at least gets me started, and pointing in the direction of growth. Intent has the danger of starting religious ritual and superstition, but if I don't mistake the intent for a magic spell or moral law, then I can see it just as a vehicle, that will never get me more than part-way there. At some point, IMO, I have to scuttle the boat, drop all my belongings, and swim naked to the other shore (or even surrender the idea of another shore). No baggage is allowed to come with me.

Likewise. And I find that the less I try to control the various parts of me, the more they tend to balance themselves, and so do not need my fixing.

Ah, we all know what a "mood" is, but really, what is it? Maybe a different mood really is a different sub-self. Do you ever find yourself about to grab that midnight snack, and one part of you says: "nah, I shouldn't" and another part of you says: "c'mon, I want it!"? That's another example of having multiple selves, active at the same time. They perceive the world differently, and they choose differently. IME, those different parts even use language differently. One part swears more, another part speaks in full sentences, etc. In the case of the inner judge, who is scolding whom? It is one inner self, upbraiding another. As I approach a stunt, I hear two parts of my brain arguing with each other, one encouraging me forward, one trying to talk me out of it. Isn't multiple sub-selves what we talk about, with the devil and angel on our shoulders? When I tell myself to count to ten to clear my anger, who is telling whom? How is it, that there is a calm "me" and an upset "me" at the same time? All the time, I hear a conversation in my brain, one voice asserting one thing, and another one contradicting it. Most of my decision-making process happens between (seemingly) multiple parties. I don't think that this schism is how we're supposed to live, but it certainly is how I experience my own brain.

Did she wear horns on her hat?

I agree with "Protean View" on the following: well-intentioned Westerners, mucking about in ecologies that are already internally sustainable, will probably do more harm than good. However, one missing element from the video: the fact that the West has already done much of the damage. Africa was not a poor continent, before Europeans introduced money and commerce, but it is now. Europe's legacy has been to first, turn Africa, South America, India, etc. into resource mines, to be extracted for the sake of Europe's well-off. The resources were plundered, and the indigenous people made into forced labor. Slowly, Europeans have retreated from their Imperialist tendencies, through some awakening of conscience, among other things. So their way of making up for their previous bigotry and piggishness was to give these cultures the "gift" of Europe-like civilization. So roads are paved, property is claimed, nations and government are formed, and economy becomes all-important. Previously, a man could feed his family on a combination of hunting on tribal lands, of some gardening right at his home, and some foraging. Now, a man has to be an active part of the larger economy, or his family will starve. So yes, the point of the video is valid, that we introduce unknowable consequences, when we interfere with someone else's culture. But I think it's also worth acknowledging, that the culture that we're interfering with, is often no longer a self-sustainable one. It is, instead, one that has been polluted and corrupted by European meddling, over the last several hundred years. If we could turn back time, and leave Africa unspoiled by undoing all the white and Arab meddling, then I think we would have a happier and healthier continent. But it may be too late to avoid corruption of the societies that were there; now, we need to make sure our influence has the least amount of negative consequences. But I do think that there is still a very good argument for trying to help.