Otis

Excellent!

avoiding complacent stagnant habituation in ones practice. To me, it seems as if measuring would have the opposite effect. If I think that I am advanced, than I am more likely to get complacent. More likely to be self-satisfied, to be "superior". If I think that I am not advanced, I am more likely to get despondent. Life constantly reveals to me that I have further to go. Every moment that I am still "me" is a reminder. So growth is always my #1 priority. If I don't want to fall into "stagnant habituation" then I need only view all my habit with skepticism, which I think I should do anyway. Self-definition is one of the greatest stumbling blocks I know, especially when it comes to my "spiritual progress".

Not at all. I think measuring "spiritual advancement" is a sure way of getting caught up in ego. I think any story I start telling myself about my advancement is just a trap.

In general, I think my strategy is kind of the opposite. When I am home and/or alone, I need fewer pretenses, and so can live more authentically. When I am dealing with others, I feel that I have to engage some of my delusion/projection about them, because otherwise, it's hard to interact. These projections include: make them feel special, show that I'm listening, etc. These strategies are one of my "islands of acceptable delusion".

What I don't understand is: what is the usefulness of "measuring our spiritual progress"?

Another nice thing about barefoot hiking: it's good practice for viewing pain in a different way. There is some small pain in just about every footstep, but it is almost always just a feedback, directing my feet to conform to the surface texture of the trail. The pain is gone in tenths of a second, and it doesn't insist on me stopping. At the end of the hike, my feet tend to be a bit raw (the down-hills, in particular, are more abrasive), but that sensitivity is soon gone, and I can easily do a 2 hour hike, on rough terrain, every other day, without thick calluses. Barefoot is, after all, what we were evolved to do.

There is no part of conceptual "knowledge" that is not just a subset of "opinion".

Great conversation, everyone. I very much like Stigweard's initial model, but I also think it needs to be tempered by Sean's caution. I think Marblehead's "100%" certainty (which I think Sean appropriately down-graded to 99.9%) works pretty well for typical "reality", but it is merely saying that "some delusion is okay. Some delusion is close enough to work". IOW, the "island of the known" may be better called: "the island of acceptable delusion". In particular, while exploring off the island (i.e. in the mystery), I may indeed have a sense of "knowingness" like Stig said. The real difficulty comes in translating that "knowingness" into a concept; that's when I have transgressed into delusion. That delusion may also be "close enough to work". But IME, the more concrete I try to make a squishy realization, the further off I am from the reality. For example: learning to ride a bike. I get on the bike, wobble around, and have to put my foot down. It is an experience in the unknown, and I derive some "knowingness" from it. But if I try to take that experience and derive "knowledge" from that "knowingness", then it's unlikely to help me ride that bike any better. Riding a bike comes from a "knowingness" that is not reducible to concepts or "knowledge". Instead of coming up with concepts, I do better to just keep practicing, and trusting that my body is learning something that my ego (my conceptual mind) cannot. And, IME, most of life is the same way. Our egos are addicted to conceptualizing experience (instead of accepting it as "mystery"), and that is why they are so subject to delusion. Caveat to above: of course there are concepts that are useful to learning to ride a bike, like "take up the kick-stand first", or "face forward". However, "a little knowledge is dangerous" because beginners tend to learn the concepts first and, enamored with their knowledge, mistake them for the reality. Any kind of real mastery happens in the unknown.

I don't really know anything about "grounding", but I've been hiking barefoot for a few years, and I highly recommend it. Besides just the joy of getting my feet in the dirt, I love how no two foot-falls are ever the same. My terrain is rocky with lots of steep climbs and small foot-holds, so each step is a moment of balance, in which all my weight is taken by a small portion of one foot. This means that all of the muscles of the foot, ankle and calf are used, so nothing is neglected. I think one of the major problems in civilization is that our bodies only get challenged in specific and repeated ways, so the rest of our capacity diminishes with disuse. With shoes, I had allowed my feet to get to the point of hooves, without much internal intelligence or ability to adjust to new environments. Without shoes, I am forced to slow down and listen my way over the trail, and that has woken up a great deal of new communication with the muscles and nerves of my lower limbs. This has also had the ancillary effect of easing a great deal of lower back spasm, which is otherwise exacerbated by sitting down and other forms of mis/disuse.

Once again, you are stating the problem with knowledge in general, and acting as if it is the sole problem of science. Beliefs are the problem; science is (thus far) the best solution at clarifying which beliefs make sense, and which don't. There may indeed be some people who are religiously attached to science, but I think they are the tiny minority. IME, most people don't know, care about, or understand science, and take very little of it as truth, except in a very general sense. Most people, however, are religiously attached to their own beliefs, and for them, "common sense" is just what they already believe, nothing more. It's up to each of us (you included) not to be one of them.

To Immortal4Life: I have given clear, logical, non-fallacious responses in several of your earlier threads, but you have never responded to any of them. That doesn't suggest someone who is interesting in holding a conversation, but a troll, who is interested in stirring up stuff. If you really want to be constructive, Immortal4Life, then say something constructive. Give your actual viewpoint, rather than just spending all your time trying to tear down science. Present your own theory. Give us an alternative to evaluate. No matter what the subject, you can find something wrong with it, if you dig hard enough. I bet one could make a devastating critique of Mother Theresa, if one were so inclined. But unless you can actually do better, then the critique is just a lashing out.

LOL! But that's what your embedded video is all about! The speaker keeps saying that the problem with evolution is that it doesn't match with "common sense". But that means nothing more than: "I don't get it". There's no deeper argument there. Quantum physics doesn't match with common sense, either. Nor does immunology, astrophysics, material science, chemistry, computer science, you name it. If we stuck with "common sense", we would still believe that the earth is flat and in the center of the universe. So should we ignore all the experimental evidence that all these things work, and say instead: "since it's not immediately obvious to me, than it must not be so"?

What usually arises spontaneously for me, is shifting my weight from foot to foot. I am pretty sure that if your body has introduced the movement, it is doing so for a good reason. Trust its wisdom.

Even when the two hemispheres are not in unity, I think we can still take advantage of both modes of consciousness. We just need to do them in the proper order. Just like breathing, we can exhale (surrender perspective, in order to allow creativity), and then inhale (fill back up again, so we can tease apart the epiphany that arose during exhalation). Just like a Tao Bums post, we write from a place of listening to our own subtle senses, our own intuition, and then edit, by marshaling the critical thinking skills (and the social consciousness "how will this be read?" skills).

I think that the evolutionary purpose of having two brain hemispheres is to create binocularity of thought. Just like two eyes create a more-complete 3-dimensional view of the world, so too, two brains create a richer, deeper, more nuanced perspective. At its most sublime, the two functions work together as one, just as the two eyes act together to create our 3D simulacrum of the world. However, I think we've been taught to keep these two functions separate, to see them as opposed. For the first 18+ years of life, education is focused on creating the "box" that we are later asked to "think outside of". IMO, education isn't that good at teaching either critical thinking, nor creativity. Instead, early education mostly teaches beliefs, consensus reality. And that is the danger, when we start mistaking our beliefs for critical thinking. Especially in politics, an awful lot of foolishness is passed off as "common sense", which just means "it sounds good". IME, there is no gap between sound logic, and the core of what Taoism and/or Buddhism teaches. Sound logic doesn't force dualities to be in contradiction; that's merely an error of "common sense".

That's a great sign, Scott; hopefully that awareness will expedite your healing. Glad you're recovering well, and are off the pain meds.

I'm curious. What do you want all that energy for?

My opinion: a siddhi is basically just a sense that is built into the human DNA. We should all have them but, apparently as of the creation of the ego, as a species, we have lost touch with the subtle senses. Some are able to wake up that sense (or were born with them awake), and so they seem supernatural. But the truth is: they are just more natural than the rest of us. Our conditioning is too loud, and keeps us from recognizing what is available to us, all the time... If I start to recognize how restricted my beliefs have made reality, if I really choose to surrender beliefs, then I will start experiencing stimuli from beyond those beliefs. That stimuli comes in incoherent, at first, because I haven't learned to make sense of it, but with patience, a coherent new sense emerges, that may not fit into my previous world-view. So, yes, I think a siddhi is probably a sign of some awakening, particularly of the humbling of the exalted status of my other senses. If I am willing to stop always favoring vision (and secondarily, hearing) above all else, then I will learn a great deal about how much I am able to sense. If I stop favoring meaning, then I will recognize how much awareness is coming in, that has no inherent meaning for "me", at all. What is IME critical, is never to think of the siddhi as "mine". For I am just an ego, and have no such access to those senses. Those senses belong to whatever organs generate them, and I have to respect them, just as I bear the potentially valuable sense of self-awareness. As the ego, I am merely witness to the siddhis, and impede them the least, when I do not bother trying to be the controller or translator. Senses like clairvoyance, like telepathy, IMO can never belong in the realm of "knowledge", because knowledge is only a tool of the ego. We cannot tell the future, because the story teller is always ego. We can only live our way, with preternatural ease, into the future, and somehow not be surprised by the serendipity that got us there. These other senses, if they exist at all, belong to other parts of the brain, and can only be accessed, by being humble with them, by not trying to control them.

Great to hear it, Matt. Peace!

My take on it is this: the issue is habit. Thought is not necessarily a problem and can be a great asset; habit-bound thought, however, is a problem. Whether our habits force us to take another drink, to think nice or bad thoughts about ourselves, lash out at suffering, or whatever, the habits are still programming, and we're acting like machines. It's the opposite of freedom. Habits, IMO, are designed by evolution to be training wheels, help get us started in life. At some point, if we want to really start riding, we have to take the training wheels off.

Good post, Everything. The state that you're describing is very familiar, and is what I refer to, when I use the word 'wu wei'. Like you wrote about the "scientific view", I think that the human brain is a cluster of functions, that has the potential for acting as a unitary, balanced consciousness. Most of the time, however, we mistake a small portion of our brain as "me", and act as if the other parts of my brain (including my emotions, my desires, my imagination) are somehow less "me". But I don't think there's any logical reason to believe that some parts are more "me" than others; they're all just bundles of neurons, inside the same head. The experience you describe is what I think of as the "unitary consciousness". This is when everything lines up, and the various parts of the brain work together as a seamless team. I think this is what Einstein was talking about with the 5%/95% usage of our brains. One of my favorite analogies is a puptent. When a puptent is working correctly, it is very efficient. Extremely light-weight materials balance each other out perfectly to create a robust and unified structure. However, if any tent pole or rope is out of place, then the tent slumps to one side, and works poorly, if at all. Likewise with my brain. If I insist on believing in the "me"-ness of the ego (language-speaking) clusters of neurons, then I will always be divorced from the other parts of my brain that usually don't speak English. I will see those other functions as somewhat alien, as being mischievous "tricksters" or even as enemies. But if I stop believing in "me", and start accepting the other parts, then the structure seems to come together on its own, without me making anything happen.

Thanks, Manitou!

Dear Adept, I wanted to respond about your epiphany about discarding knowledge and choosing a tantric route. I cannot know what's right for you, but IME, the tantric path is the only one that ultimately makes any sense, because it is based on the reality of who I actually am, rather than concepts about who I am supposed to be. It is my path that I need to follow, my connection to "God", to my full being. All tradition is just pointing towards this one thing, but it is only my path which will take me there (and yours which will take you). For any organism to find freedom, I think it eventually has to choose to trust itself and "burn the vehicle" (drop the traditional truths). Otherwise, the organism is always slave to a concept, and concepts only exist in the realm of the ego. Unfortunately, implicit in surrendering concepts is: heartbreak (or at least bruising), because the rest of the organism is not used to being trusted, and therefore may take years of bumping around, before it finds unity with itself (that's why it's good to start now). My ego, too, has to choose to give up defending itself, and that means becoming aware of unpleasant truths. That means giving up comforting illusions. It means allowing myself to be the fool. It means holding on to nothing, so it is easy to feel groundless, lost. I no longer have plans or goals; no life direction (that I know of) at all. Choosing to trust my path has alienated some others who wanted me to remain who I was. Short cuts no longer make sense, nor justifications, nor attainment, nor hierarchy. And there is a ton of pain along the route, because there is no longer the option to tune it out. But it's so good, too. It's so sweet to be authentic, to actually live the life that comes out of me, naturally. To stop trying to be anything other than what I am, to play no roles, to be as honest with myself as I possibly can be. To live as if suffering is not my enemy, but rather my ally toward growing and healing. It isn't about trying to be perfect. It's just about being utterly true to all of myself, my full being. Allowing myself to be enough, to be exactly what I need to be, to make growth the priority, instead of "getting it right". To see myself as equivalent to my life, and see my life as an experiment and an adventure. Best to you and your wife, otis