Otis

Is it that simple? Isn't habit responsible for most of automatic behavior? In my view, ego is basically another way of saying habit, (particularly the habits of consciousness). It is that automaticity of habit, having my life lived for me, being subject to having my buttons pushed, that I am trying to wake up from. Yes to wu wei, of course, but I don't think all automaticity is indicative of wu wei.

Thanks! It's my brother, his father, who is really having a hard time with it.

Yes! Being bound within a school desk for several hours a day is a formula for breaking the will of a child, not for exciting them about learning. I consider now to be my re-education, my chance to learn again, this time through play, and I find it to be a much better teacher than duty ever was.

Amen to that!

This makes sense to me. I'm seeing this right now with a nephew of mine. His parents keep bailing him out of problems, without him having to face the consequences, and it's taking him down a dangerous path. Right now, he's on house arrest, for trying to run over someone he had a beef with. He narrowly avoided jail, and is grateful to his parents for paying the legal fees, but he still doesn't get it, that the world doesn't owe him everything. I don't see him learning that, until there's at least a hard jolt to his system, to wake him up. I love my nephew, and so I wish on him a wake up call soon, before he goes any deeper on a path of criminality.

Thanks, Aaron, for the good wishes. Yeah, the pronoun part of this discussion always gives me trouble, because the English language isn't built to handle the distinctions within my self. "My body" is a misnomer, because the body does not belong to me. Rather, I belong to it. "I" am just a function within the body. I am not a passenger, just a function.

True. I guess that seems futile to me, though. After all, I'm not talking a prescriptive for all, just part of my own path. If I truly am interested in cultivation, than any attempt to justify or self-deceive is purely counter-productive. Who am I fooling, after all?

Yes, that's a good way of putting it. I'm trying to be less and less the author of my life, because I have witnessed that when "I" get out of the way, that something a lot more powerful can emerge, and the path that it seems to be choosing for me is a lot more interesting and joyful than the one I was choosing for myself. Or another way of putting it: my body is my full self; it is all of me. But the "I" which thinks of itself as a self, is just one small function or structure (or emergence) in one organ (the brain) of my body. When "I" am present, but not controlling, then I find that my body moves on its own, chooses on its own, at a level of processing that "I" could never keep up with. So "I" recognize that "I" am only evolved for certain functions of consciousness (e.g. awareness), and that if I stick to those functions, then my greater self (body) has the opportunity to start over and create a new life for itself, with my support, but without my interference.

It sounds to me like you do practice it, with the charity work you mentioned. Every time you give, you're practicing compassion. I am also trying to learn to be more compassionate, to open my heart more fully. I do not have specific practices (in the formal ritual sense) to increase compassion, but I do see that life provides me with many opportunities to practice. I don't always step up when the chance arises, but I think that compassion for myself (in the form of acceptance of where I'm at) is indispensable to practicing compassion for others. How silly would it be for me to beat myself up, for missing a chance to help another! One form of practice I have (in every realm of life) is to watch my thoughts. There are certain kinds of thoughts that ring alarm bells, and suggest a skeptical attitude to my thinking. For example, any thought which makes me more important than someone else, any thought that blames another for my problems or bad feelings, any thought that justifies my actions or excuses my feelings. These thoughts are not automatically wrong, but they are suspect, since they are key tools that my ego uses to support itself. My judgments of others are the warning sign that I am indulging in ego-strengthening activity. If I condemn another without knowing much about them, for example, then it's a clear sign that I am resorting to shorthand emotional heuristics, rather than aware immersion in life. These practices may not sound like compassion, but IME, compassion shines through more brightly and naturally, when I'm not feeding or defending my ego. My job, I think, is to recognize what habits I have which get in the way of compassion, and surrender them, as best I can.

While I think it is admirable to learn about and to extend one's pain threshold, I do think that pain at the joints is something to be approached with much gentleness, and with zero macho-tude.

"When hungry, eat; when tired, sleep". In other words, our "natural" preferences are there to serve us, for our own protection. We are drawn towards fats and sugars precisely because they are good for us (great sources of energy). We hate the smells of rotting meat and our own feces, because they are poisons to us. Etc. The admonition against preference, IMO, is saying not to add or subtract anything from our "authentic" (i.e. "natural") preferences. But that raises the same question that has been brought up earlier in the thread: how do we discern between "authentic preference" and "ego preference"? In my own practice of unwinding preference, I believe very firmly in the maxim: "begin from where you are". In other words, I accept all of my preferences, as they are right now, including my tendencies toward excess. This may sound like hedonism, but I don't see how I can avoid going through this step first. If I am to learn to follow the path, then I need to learn to trust my own desire to lead me on the path. After all, desire (broadly speaking, which can include compassion) is the only thing which leads me; obligation, shame, duty, morality, etc. only chase me. Desire is my engine and my steering wheel. Even as I choose to accept my preferences/desires as they are right now, I also choose to be skeptical about them all. I do not know "better than" my desires, but I can recognize when a desire serves merely to trigger some pleasure, or to cover up some discomfort or restlessness. As I "grow wise to" the habits of desire that are there just to avoid pain or extend pleasure (chasing the dragon), then IME, those habits begin to weaken their grasp on my behavior. The other important part of my practice is to slow down the process of rewarding my desires. Allow myself to stay longer in the discomfort, restlessness or pain. When I choose to pay attention to pain, rather than cover it up with pleasure, I find that pain is also there to serve me, and that avoiding it is much more harmful than experiencing it. Paying attention to discomfort also wakes up the pleasure within the pain, in the forms of "the delicious stretch" or "the adventure". The more that I find my joy arising from the full spectrum of experience, the less addicted I am to the pursuit of pleasure.

This was from a much earlier post, but raises an important question that I think is worth discussing. How do each of you practice becoming more compassionate, in moment-to-moment living?

Marblehead, I appreciate that you are playing devil's advocate on this one; keeps the dialectic lively. So I promise: I am not telling you how you should live your life, but just responding to the argument that you're advocating. In your example about the person who "spent all the money on dope", you say you don't "have empathy for that type of person. They have created their own problems. It was their choice." I know I've made many choices in my life, that didn't turn out well. I've even started down avenues of criminality, when I was much younger. Will I justify those choices? Of course not. Nor regret them. The only thing that makes sense to me is to be compassionate about my earlier self, realize that I was ignorant, searching, being clumsy, and thereby learn from those choices. How different, then, is the "other" out there, who is currently making bad choices? How could I not have empathy for that person, when I have been that person myself? Why should I expect another to "get it all right the first time", when I have learned how impossible it is for me to do that?

Yeah, I agree. Another good way of deconditioning yourself may be just to spend more good quality platonic time with women. Spend more time with them as friends and equals, so that the previous associations do not rule your interactions with them.

I agree with you, Marblehead. Idealism, IMO, doesn't have much to do with Taoism, and the shoulds have very little to do with reality. I think there are plenty of emotional traps when shame masquerades as compassion, giving rise to martyrs and victims. And yes, I think there are stages of self-care that need to be met before we can really be healthily present and available for others. "Put on your own oxygen mask before helping someone else with theirs." But a great deal of what we term compassion is merely looking beyond fake scarcity. Quite often, we think we can't give what someone else needs, without somehow endangering our selves or our family. But that's often subject to false positives. If I am inclined to cling to what is mine, then I can easily find 1000s of reasons to say no, when I really don't need to. Another big part of compassion is forgiveness, which is really just saving myself the agony of hating others. It is a great favor to myself to forgive others. Another great part of compassion is merely seeing other people as full and total people, rather than just objects in my way. That costs me nothing, and helps me understand those I have to deal with. The other elements: e.g. letting go of blame, learning to listen, practicing generosity, and seeing the divine/perfection in everyone, all just refine my character, and lead me toward a lighter, less emotionally burdened life. No ideals need be followed. No oughts or shoulds need be mandated. I just need to practice shedding the false alarms that keep me constricted and unavailable, when I actually have a great deal to share. What is good for me, just happens to be good for others, as well. IME, the path of compassion is also the path of freedom.

Several of you have already written parallel statements to this, but I have my own metaphor that I think is worth contributing. Part of the problem, I think, with how "compassion" is taught in the west is that it's in context of a dualistic worldview, and thus relies on some spiritual authority. "Be compassionate towards others." Why? "Because you're supposed to be ..." or "because your virtue will be rewarded" or "because God said so". Collapse the duality, however, and compassion is the only reasonable thing to do. Collapsing the duality does not necessarily mean trying to be other people. It can mean merely being our life. There is no part of me that is not my life; so I am equally correct living as my life, rather than living as me (as if I were a being separate from life). In other words, I am not the discreet concrete organism that needs to endure and survive my life; rather, I am flow, the process of living and growing itself. If I am my life, than I am best served by loving everything within that life. What purpose do I have in resenting the thing that I am? This of course, includes other people in my life. If I hold grudges, resent others, keep people at bay, then I am doing that to my life, as well. The only way to fully embrace my life, is to embrace ALL of my life, all of my experience. Thus compassion is not borne out of duty, shame, or spiritual discipline, but out of exuberance, out of joy for living. How can I not want the best for you, if you are part of my life, and your happiness is reflected in my life?

Personally, I don't believe that our paths call us to "get rid of" anything that we were born with. There is nothing in the human body (other than maybe the appendix) that does not serve a purpose. As several people pointed out, what you try to hold down or eradicate will only grow in its power over you. What I recommend is changing your relationship to lust, rather than trying to rid yourself of it. Have a sense of humor about it; allow yourself to fall into lust, but with awareness. The big mental step is merely surrendering the justification. When you find yourself going down the rabbit hole of lust, remind yourself that it's just a game, just a test of your awareness. Rather than trying to value women instead of lusting after them, allow yourself to feel both. There is no wrong feeling, only unhealthy relationship to the feeling. As far as premature ejaculation goes, I think the best remedy is practice! Best bet: find someone who will join you in your exploration. Be utterly honest with her or him, about your previous issues, and be clear in your request that you explore that territory together. Face it; once you are with that girl (or guy) in bed, you will have to face lust. In fact, lust is the whole reason you're there. So why see lust as the enemy? See it instead as the context, in which you are expanding your current repertoire of capacity. There is nothing to overcome or defeat; the lust is part of you, so don't try to defeat yourself. Just become friends with all of you, including your lust.

Dance! Particularly trance/authentic dance. The practice is to get on the dance floor and allow my body to move the way it wants to, without me projecting any 3rd person "how do I appear?" on it. It is simply about (yin) finding the paths of least resistance within my body, and (yang) allowing the limitations/pain to guide the dance. I have found myself drawn to "floorwork" (i.e. hand- and head-stands, break-dancing), I think because my body wants to move 360 degrees, in all possible directions, to wake up out of my old habits. Because I always let my body lead, I never get injured dancing, despite starting pretty late. Stretching and dance are basically the same practice for me, just stretching is slower. It's always about least resistance, no forcing, delicious stretches, in which (as much as possible) my body is moving itself rather than "me" moving it. I've had fantastic health benefits from the last decade of stretching. Partner dance is a great way of losing "me", and surrendering into the mutual dance. It's my most common experience of non-separation. Parkour is an awesome way to make friends with my environment, experience the flow of movement, and calmly face my fears. Riding my motorcycle, particularly lane-splitting, also allows me to face my fears, and provides a practice in which I have to be present, or else. There's no room for mind-wandering when passing between lanes of cars! Improv comedy. I've recently started taking some classes, and it's fantastic! What a great way of surrendering the clever monkey mind, in favor of diving right in. Staff spinning. I've been practicing with a martial arts bo for a long time (all improv, like everything else). Like parkour, it's making friends with the material world, and allowing the staff to lead the dance, rather than trying to do tricks. Also, since I spin at the beach, it teaches me to surrender the concept of being watched, and continually bring my attention back to the flow, rather than "how am I viewed"? And lots more!

Dear all, The Taoism forum on Myspace has just shut down, due to their internal changes, and my need for discussion is without a home! What I have seen here, so far, looks very interesting and respectful, so I appreciate y'all's indulgence, as I learn the ropes! I look forward to engaging and enlightening conversations with all of you! best, otis