三江源

hi bodyoflight, it would be kind of you to elucidate so that my immaturity can be cast in light and so potentially transform.

~I like the Maslow list, I like Maslow, I first stumbled across him when I was 15 and it was a great intervention in my awareness to find someone making sense! What a relief! And what I notice about that list right now is that it is about balanced adaption and growth within ordinary awareness. 1. Realistic orientation 2. Acceptance of self, others, and the natural world 3. Spontaneity 4. Task orientation, rather than self-preooccupation 5. Sense of privacy 6. Independence 7. Vivid appreciativeness 8. Spirituality that is not necessarily religious in a formal sense. 9. Sense of identity with mankind 10. Feelings of intimacy with a few loved ones 11. Democratic values 12. Recognition of the difference between means and ends 13. Humor that is philosophical rather than hostile 14. Creativeness 15. Nonconformism And I think now that enlightenment - much as chop wood carry water applies - includes a fundamental inclusion in permanent perception of what would be considered 'non ordinary reality'. I guess 8 could (and might not) include this.

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Thankyou for sharing, too,sun. About the reprogramming.. YES x100! Tis like an old road that we know how to travel is inbuilt in us, and we are reversing out of it and building a new pathway.

Great to hear, Art. Congrats! and thankyou.

we could have a long thread debating wether the pics are photoshopped or not. RIP Bin Laden.

Hello CowTao. Yes, who knows, this simple qigong could be a solution with drawbacks. I wouldnt be surprised! Nothing seems to get 100% positive reviews. It could be a first aid box rather than a spiritual revolution for oneself. For me, it worked. I am a kinaesthetic person, and I felt my blockage in my body and was able to clear it this way , to reach a level of freedom and lightness which gave me the space to have a considered perspective. It was a first stage process, to identify and clear rubble. As you say, in this instance it may not be the most helpful approach. I agree that there is an aspect in cleansing the self via the healing sounds and so on,whereby we strengthen the self via that mode of purification. This is pretty much the same as most psychotherapeutic models ie dont think about losing the ego until we have a strong enough ego to withstand the threat of ego loss.. otherwise what you will experience is fragmentation. And so much resistance that stagnation will result, so your choices for a too early attempt at freeing up ego grip are fragmentation and stagnancy! Not such a delicious menu.. And yes I agree with you about the anger and fear. I was thinking about this thread last night.. thinking that I wanted to contribute even though I knew my hatred wasnt the 'same' as Moth's in it's genesis and way. Because I think hatred is a taboo subject and feeling in any serious sense amongst so many of us personally. And if we can make it discussable, ownable, and sortable, then this is progress toward light. I was thinking about the hatred I expelled ( it never returned) and wondering was it anger, was it fear.. what on earth was that feeling, at it's root. It was a huge repudiation. A huge NO. As you say, precisely, behind the hatred was a craving for freedom. A creative impulse, behind such a dark mask. Whatever method gets you to the root is a great one. Lucky for us there are many and various techniques these days. We can pick a flavour we like. BTW, a small point... Ken Cohen doesnt suggest that we breathe in 'good'. There is no such thing as 'breathing in good'. What it is, is breathing out the stuck chi and breathing in fresh chi. It is an ENERGETIC SHIFT exercise, with no 'moral' imperative at all. ( I have used it to get rid of hangovers, and it works for that too... ) I think it is also likely that anger is diet related for some people, sexual frustration for others, lack of being loved for yet others, and lack of drinking enough water for others, and a lack of contact with trees and nature , for yet more. Any and all of the above. And thankyou for your thanks, I appreciate you saying what you said, and I appreciate your presence here, too, a lot.

Funny, we found out the world isnt flat, but we expect our selves to be so. Either this or this.. I think is a function of existing in time that we are habituated to think is 'now' or 'then'.. surely not both?!?!?! that would be unpossible! we dont see the model of layers ( simultaneity) as integral to everything, although we see it in trees and sedimentary rocks and millefeuille.

Love this. And love this description "neverending fountain of spewing data, and heavily related to one's karma or karmic seeds." guh guh guh guh guh guh guh guh guh guh guh <--------- that's my thoughts, that is.

Forgiveness is such a relief. I just also thought about build up of inner heat as a pattern that exacerbates this emotional situation. If one has a pitta constitution, ayurvedically speaking, it is easy to get overheated in one's reactions and respond with impatience.The cooling remedies offered by Ayurveda are a great practical help, to fiery types. I like very much what de_paradise said : "your own lily self".. heh! Just so. Apart from the irony intended in there, what I note in response to this is that part of the 'chewing gum' came, for me, because I felt I had betrayed my purity/inner child by putting myself in the wrong situation. So easy to hate any disillusionment of a child. We have to forgive ourselves and know we are fundamentally intact and radiant despite all and any affronts.

Hi Jetsun, thanks. I think is very relevant to the thread. Really good point : we just cant 'get rid' of our shadow,it isnt possible. We have to give ourselves love, recognition and understanding while healing stuck patterns, and shadow recognition is a lifelong process. In the K Cohen excercise we breathe out the stagnant chi and breathe in fresh chi, and it is in the breathing in healing energy that we replenish ourselves.. it's clear from what you say that it's good to remember not to hate our hatred, not to negatively judge our negative judgments and so on ad infinitum. EFT is great, having it's first step as self acceptance. Actually EFT would be great for Moth. I think KK mentioned the inner smile too.. the smiling energy is tremendously powerful, healing and self accepting, and tremendously difficult to find when we feel paralysed in the heart area.

...................... Hug to you from me, sun, for all we feel. I'm glad you havent had problems with hatred. It's a weird, complicated yet pure and exhausting emotion to suffer. I felt it as like a seemingly never ending ream of hot chewing gum that hurt a lot, strangling my heart. Purging it was actually quite quick, but the sensation of purging brought with it a sense that it was taking soooo long to get it out of me... strong feelings seem so HUGE, we tend to image them as potentially bigger than us. ( Hence people dream of tsunamis when they are losing control of their emotional floodgates..) I have the sense that a lot of what I was carrying was family of origin constellation, unexpressed by others, floated to the surface via me. Ancestral Qi!

Nice one, Sun. I've done this one too and it worked well for me. There are degrees of intensity of feeling, so though we are all talking about 'hate' we are speaking of a feeling that may annoy, alienate,disrupt, or eat you up, depending on how strong the feeling is and what prompted it. It's a great opportunity for learning, even though hatred is sooo painful to feel.

hi Jetsun. Interesting idea, what makes you think that purification by subtle body practices isnt actually a deep purification? I'd be interested to know if those who have practised purification arts feel they have had profound effects, or merely palliative ones. Ime, the practices lead to insight as well as purging of build up and clearing of channels.

ejr1069, great post. I just want to add a comment to your (1.) above. It's true as you say that projection of shadow is rife and reclaiming shadow is a lifelong path and takes you a long way to healing and spiritual progress. And sometimes things we dislike in others are dislikable things, that our best self finds abominable and rails against. It's really important to let yourself know this, to see your own personal code clearly and to allow your instincts to inform you of what smells wrong. So recognising shadow is a delicate art involving self knowledge, self excavation, therefore, and the fine line one must walk with it, is to stay out of the trap of intellectualisation where we rationalise ourselves away from respecting our responses. The great thing is being able to know what you genuinely, from a deep clear place, dislike and what you object to, you can tell this easily when waters are unmuddied. Going direct to the energy system of your body will unmuddy.

Also if you resonate with this one, it's a good one, I know many people find it helpful.

Hello Moth. Times in my life I have felt so exhausted and amazed by the seemingly endless amount of hatred streaming out of my heart. Mine was a direct response to bad relationship experiences. Hate is a negative virtue of the heart. You have as much love as you have hatred. Your capacity has flipped into it's distortion, is all. So, practically speaking from an energetics point of view, that definitely has practical measurable results, you can (1) vent your hatred ie just see it streaming out of you as you breathe out, allow the murk of it to leave your heart with each outbreath. Vent it into the atmosphere with the direct intention of setting that stuck energy free now to transform itself back to free purity. As the murk leaves with each outbreath, breathe in fresh healing energy. ( If you want more Qigong info on this kind of cleansing, Ken Cohen is an impeccable source - it was from his book "The way of Qigong" that I learned this originally.) (2) Learn the healing sounds - Ken Cohen does these too, in his Qigong video, or you can find all sort of info here at tb or on the net about Mantak Chia's healing sounds. This will also help unlock and release the stuck heart energy, quickly and is a good maintenance technique. Ultimately, toning the whole of your system with healing sounds will help enormously and be a balanced solution. But in case of emergency treatment, and for alleviation of build up, do (1) and (2) above. BTW, impressed that you recognize your 'wtf do you know" reaction being set off... lots of people get that repudiating reflex and just believe their line of reactivity as "the truth" rather than realise they are protecting their safe ole stuckness from intervention. It may be neccesary to talk the saboteur away from its weapons, if you are to give yourself space to allow change. Negotiate for space to experiment if the voice crops up and tries to drag you away from it's preferred 'safety'. Good Luck. You have an achievable goal.

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Wingzero, to speak to a bunch of cultivators as if they need external 'facts' about a person in order to ascertain their character is just misplaced.

this is it!

era of literalism above is a link to an interesting little newspaper piece on how subtlety of understanding of spiritual life has been rather swamped by the current age.

Yes. Ime being involved in life is the best test of how the work is progressing. Avoiding sex and relationships and cities and all that is one thing, but nothing shows you how you are actually doing as much as having all your old buttons pushed pretty much all the time by relationship challenges, traffic jams and so on and so forths. I dont think you can say you are progressing at all in meditation if you dont have a more and more opening heart and less and less ego drive.

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Well......... yes! Surely. I take your point about not being sure how many here are spiritual practitioners in a serious sense, Iknwym! I still think of the tb community as containing those that although they rarely post, I know are around and very actively engaged in genuine depth work. The level of petty confrontationalism here deters a lot of people from posting.. but they stick around, often, one way or another. And I am surprised from you to see what looks like - and forgive me if I have misread - an underestimation of the systemic power of laughter, when as practitioners we know perfectly well that laughter opens channels fast and connects what was disconnected, within the energy body and the larger energy body between people. It is a surefire easy way to include the body in a process which can all too easily become head centric and mere cerebralism. So many times I have seen and experienced huge laughter releases from people practising shamanism, or spontaneous qigong, or people who are in love just giggling so much, because they are open and flowing. Please dont fall into a trap of being dismissive of laughter. That way lies psychological and energetic and spiritual ill health. Laughter is a healing force and a force that draws people together. We puncture inflation and we celebrate our lack of control of events when we laugh... it's pure dao in action.

If it is actually difficult for a spiritual practitioner to 'get' this.. . well. Do I over estimate everyone or are you underestimating everyone?