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you can't embed encrypted sites (https) if you take the s out and leave http it should work

Maybe you do... i tend to think that everyone knows deep in their heart what they need, although i have my moments of doubt. I really just wanted to share my own experience, i cant even really advise following in anyone elses footsteps, although some good advice has been shared. Its difficult times that cause people to search their hearts and expand beyond their present boundaries. But i can advise to be patient with yourself, you will make friends with yourself and conquer loneliness, or meet some new people and find some new places. Or both. But don't be hard on yourself with expectations and ideals is my advice. Just be lonely, and channel that feeling positively and creatively, is i think the best advice i was given. i found myself unable to connect to old friends for a time too.. just letting things fall away and generally irritating people in my life (especially the ones who took it personally). One of the best things for me socially was to get involved in my sanghas and take a more active role, so i volunteered to chair a "working group", and started reaching out to people where before i would just show up, sit, and leave. I still feel very much alone in a crowded world, but im not lonely. I know its different for everyone and my experience might not mean jack turd to you, but its all i have to offer. I wish you the best during this transition. with blessings michael edit: and what rainbowvein said! emotional crap is so often fertilizer for realization

even if someone could accomplish a state like sahaj samadhi or any higher state of consciousness for that matter, would they be able to maintain this state after they were released from their trance? Because through meditation, one gains the ability to enter those states as a matter of will. All the hypnotization would prove is that that state lies dormant within, which is the foundation of the meditational teaching and really is nothing new. since this is all based on conjecture, i am curious why people don't just self hypnotize their way to the more liberated states of consciousness... i'm lolling at the fact that i never thought of the idea before!

i felt like that for a while and then i got used to it. fill your time with worthwhile things, whatever you do, and some things you don't do yet, but might try doing and like more than you thought you would if you can't connect in an ashram or a temple, good luck in the world... i see the sense in 'go meet people' but then again, i don't. i don't have a lot of friends, i've just made my peace with it. i don't walk to the same beat as the masses, or even most of the non-conformists, or anyone really but other spiritual seekers, and even at that, only a handful of them and i see eye to eye. Which is more information about me than was asked for, but i thought i would volunteer it in an attempt to help you feel better. theres a huge difference between being lonely and being alone. I have learned to be by myself (which i am at present) and not be lonely (which i get sometimes in truth, but am not at present) and am learning how to do it better every day. Do you have a girlfriend/boyfriend/whatever youre into? That really helps good luck leon!

nityananda and gurumayi are like night and day wow i've never seen him speak, yeah he is really understated. I have never been able to stay in gurumayi's gravity... i always spin out quickly. Don't really like her to be honest. But thats just opinion... two pennies i shouldn't have shared in the first place

hundun, yes those transmission are nutty. Sometimes i will be driving and he'll be on and i won't be paying attention and all of a sudden my energy starts moving and i realize that he is talking about the exact movement that i am feeling, and that its happening just b listening to an mp3. wtf? yes electric is a mild understatement the intensive was, well um, intense. I was breaking through stuff that had hampered me for a lifetime like it was just made of paper. Kriya city, but i expected that. I personally encourage everyone to explore the hard light teachings, meetings, and intensives, vids, mp3s, whatever. I live three Thousand miles from Mark so i am very grateful for his web presence and the energy which comes through his audio and video teachings. I especially love how he will say "and now we're going to sit for two hours" in his recordings, and then the music will play for 10 seconds or so, and he comes back after having sat for 2 hours, and his voice is no different in range, pitch, tone, meter, nothing, like he's just always in that state anyway and sitting for 2 hours is just something one does if one is so inclined ho hum. that is wonderful. when i sit for a while my voice changes. it gets mellower and quieter, deeper and calmer. his voice is exactly the same. and i joined that yahoogroup last month, some good stuff, but it needs more people. thanks for the alert!

its clearly a conspiracy no coincidences here

is that nityananda gurumayi's brother? i have been loving the new vids, thank for updating the hardlight channel i did my first streaming intensive last saturday, it was electric

hi rainbowvein i think that both of those approaches are good. What i had in mind when i said it was visualizing ones own death, not in a gory way, but just to imagine that one day your biological functions will cease and you will continue on. If a person has rehearsed this scenario in their mind, they can be a little more familiar and better prepared for it. I think that realizing past lives is good too, but might not be within the scope of everyones abilities. So i agree its a good approach but i mentioned visualizing ones death because anyone can do that. So sure, it can take the form of fantasies or random death scenarios, but the point isn't to visualize 1001 ways to die lol... its to brace the mind for the dreamlike phantasmagoria which takes place after death, to put yourself in the place of a disembodied or noncorporeal entity, and be that as your self in the imagination, thats what is helpful in jogging realizations and setting oneself up for success in the bardo. i don't think you have to practice all that much, or do it morbidly, i think that just preparing oneself for an overwhelming light and walking into it, something simple like that, is good. It causes one to gather their feelings about the people places and things of this lifetime into a neat bundle and accept and let them go as temporal. And it builds mental "muscle memory" so that when one is in the bardo they don't freak out and run around like a chicken.

you are most welcome i think that visualizing death and really preparing oneself for the eventuality in which they will not have a flesh body, or anywhere to go but into the bardo, is good. To familiarize oneself with the light is what the Bardo Thodol recommends, because a lot of people get "out there" and its like a dream, they are kind of on autopilot.. the great light appears and they fear it, they fear their own dissolution, the unmaking of themselves, and they run from it deeper in to the bardo. They can spend a lot of time in the inbetween, or they can in the snap of fingers enter the light. Some adepts can rest in the light for a long time, bathing in bliss and dissolving samskaras and obstructions effortlessly for ages on end. So if one doesnt go into the light, where the will of divinity itself has a say in what happens to the person, they might go into the other portals into the worlds of gods or animals or to hell, they might, like in a dream, just do it habitually, not even really realizing skillfully that they were doing it as it was happening. So the best thing to do is be prepared to be confronted with an overwhelming light that has the potential to be terrifying because it will dissolve "you" and spit you back out somewhere else. But it is overwhelmingly agreed that entering the light and being absorbed is the best option, and the ticket to several other more interesting options, such as staying in the light for a long time, and being reborn in an enlightened realm like siddhaloka or a buddhist pure land etc. Mark Griffin has an excellent excellent mp3 series on the Bardo Thodol here which is well worth $26.95 (and im poor) so checking that out might prove fruitful too.. i find that the original text by Padmasambhava is a little archaic and confusing, and that Mark's talks might be a lot better for westerners. btw its a 5 part talk, each part is like 70 minutes long

why don't you use jump into a tub of frozen water for an hour then and use the power of belief to keep yourself warm. make a vid!

qi has been detected by science, and by instrumentation. theres a great overview of the technology and scientists at the forefront of the field in the third section of Kundalini Tantra by Swami Satyananda Saraswati.

i think its amazing how the expectations or conditioning of the mind can influence what one experiences in the bardo... as if, if one was attached to their family, they will see ancestors, and if they are attached to religion, they will perceive angels and the light as "god", while shaivites perceive it as the kundalini of shakti, and buddhist as the buddha-nature or clear light. how wonderful. Having been out there myself, i was pretty convinced when i came back that there was actually a god and that i was bathed in its energy for a nice short while. It was overwhelming bliss, like words cant describe.. like overfuckingwhelming, thats the best i can do with english. a cosmic tidal wave of unconditional love and ecstasy washing my mind and spirit. It was the most excellent experience of my life by leaps and bounds, i can't even think of number two... maybe my first internal orgasm or something that doesn't really even compare so its stupid to think about. the best thing about my NDE is that it eradicated my fear of death. I will be happy to go, it is wonderful. Death is fun. as long as you go into the light that is... crucial point edit: also want to link to http://www.nderf.org for more stories and where you can submit your own experience to the database if you have had one. yknow for the sake of science

thanks SereneBlue, i found that article particularly refreshing. I have long believed that if there is really one truth, or one reality, that we all share, then no religion can lay claim to that, but that the truth instead lies in the overlap or the points in which all the religions moreorless agree on. Generosity, humility, kindness, etc. Its so ironic that religion causes so much emotion, blindness, and bloodshed. Yuck. I think that the world is less than 500 years into its renaissance of scientific rationality, so in time, people will probably embrace a spiritual philosophy that is seperate from the trappings of religion. Seeing the teachings of the buddha in this light is no different from seeing the teachings of jeshua ben joseph as non-christian in nature. I think that all the progenators of what-later-became-religions would rather that people didn't get caught up in its attendant, well, passion ignorance and aggression, to put it in buddhist terms. They all seem in touch with the divine, the spiritual, the oneness of things, and then got followed by a lot of people who weren't. Such is the way of things i guess. thanks for sharing that article

i wish

depends on how you meditate. most people find it challenging to master the monkey mind and deal with the issues that invariably come to the surface. maybe youre just blessed

thanks for a well thought out post samwardell

great post marks of glory, i completely agree

yes good intentions, like i said, as a student of buddhism i understand things differently, and the buddhism i follow actually makes a lot of sense, logically, intuitively, and has done for me exactly what it promised to do, so i just want to share that. Like i said to scotty, no personal offense was taken at all. So since your post is long im gonna get to addressing it... theravada and geluk tibetan vajrayana are two entirely different schools of buddhism, so i am wondering why at a vajrayana monastery they were handing out hinayana literature. Yes a lot of buddhists got lost along the way, in spite of shakyamuni's (and everyone else's) best attempts to steer them correctly, they got lost in nihilism, in suffering, in the abysmal human state such as they perceived it, and could not climb out of that hole. There are whole lineages of lost buddhists that are following their own projections moreso than the buddha-dharma. Again, i'm sorry you got caught up in one of those situations. At least it only lasted a month. the insights of the masters who have gone before us are the shoulders we stand on as children to gain our vantage and view. Without their efforts and teachings, we would be very unlikely to find the truth ourselves. That is the point of view that causes one to joyfully make a prostration, delighting in humility, without being humiliated in the least. It is gratitude and reverence for those who came before, not humiliation or vanity. It is possible to perform prostrations in vain, thinking "oh the lama will see me performing prostrations and think i am a good student" but that is not the point of prostrations. It is hard for someone with a strong ego to see the sense in humbling themselves before the masters and teachings, they think they are the guru themselves and anyone who would bow is a grovelling dog begging for scraps, while they feast on wisdom itself, but usually that is a mistaken view and they are just too arrogant to show respect for the lineage. Its a common western delusion. people trust the buddhas because their teachings have led to liberation and awakening for so many. If political leaders could awaken and enlighten, people would have faith in them too. I tend to think its not that hard to understand but thats just me. I think you are superimposing your own point of view and your own prejudices and experiences upon everyone in the world. Try to understand that in spite of the room for error and the need for clarity, buddhism has helped a very great number of people in exactly the way it said it would. the methods of some schools are understood to yield enlightenment after trillions of lifetimes of effort, while the efforts of other schools, like vajrayana, to which the geluk tradition belongs, are said to be able to yield liberation in a single lifetime. I can't personally explain that discrepancy or verify the truth or lack thereof inherent in it, but i can tell you its not a difficult decision on my part which school i will cast in my own lot with. To be honest i never took much inspiration from the theravadan tradition (with the exception of the students of ajahn chah of the thai forest tradition... his lineage seems to capture the spirit of liberation) as its been explained to me, its not a goal that one is actually hoping to accomplish in a comprehendable amount of time, as much as it is a confirmation of the oneness of oneself with those around them, and an acceptance that the problems of the world are their problems too. There are tantric practices within buddhism which theoretically would allow me to commit suicide right now and be reborn in the pure land of the west anyway, to experience bliss for aeons if i so chose. The bodhisattva's vow, to return to places of suffering for as long as beings are suffering, in order to help liberate them, is a counterbalance to the natural selfishness that causes sentient beings to want to experience bliss forever. Like maynard said "why can't we drink forever" well we can, its just that when we do, those that can't go even thirstier. pro·found    [pruh-found] adjective, pro·found·er, pro·found·est, noun adjective 1.penetrating or entering deeply into subjects of thought or knowledge; having deep insight or understanding: a profound thinker. 2.originating in or penetrating to the depths of one's being; profound grief. 3.being or going far beneath what is superficial, external, or obvious: profound insight. 4.of deep meaning; of great and broadly inclusive significance: a profound book. 5.pervasive or intense; thorough; complete: a profound silence. profound does not mean easy to understand. I wish it was easier for you and for everyone to grasp, but unfortunately life is complex and confusing and does not yield its secrets easily. It takes some people years of study before buddhism makes sense... they just do it because they have a karmic connection to it, or a deep seated desire for liberation which gives them faith that one day it will make sense. And usually, one day, it does, if the student is sincere. Just because you are confused doesn't mean that the purpose of buddhism is to confuse.. thats illogical. taoism (not unlike buddhism) if for all kinds of people, included naive and deluded people who think that they are going to gain the secret of immortality from some old text or another. And people who want to watch the clouds go by and not give any thought to the reality they are trying, unbeknownst to themselves, to escape. And lazy people. et cetera et cetera. Does this mean that all daoists and self styled dao-lovers are guilty of those things? No of course not. That too would be illogical. But my point is that all religions and ways of addressing spirituality have their pitfalls and weaknesses. There is no easy path, no simple way to freedom, no way to lay on your back watching clouds in which the clouds themselves do the work reserved for you. That is a truth of life whether you are daoist or buddhist or worship the spot on your wall. I caution you against thinking that there is an easy way, or that you will actually live forever. Could be delusion. Doesn't mean life is hell, it just means that there is work to do if you want to reap the harvest of your labors. Good luck to you WWROA.

double post

nirvana is a state that one attains, not really what one becomes. It is the extinguishing of grasping, aggression, and ignorance; of the ego of attachments and aversions that cause suffering. That lower self is not all that people are, so in its absence there is not nothing, there is something. That something is the awakened self, or buddha. So the point is not to extinguish or become nothing, its to liberate, and become a buddha.

quite so

sorry for the confusion between "illusory" and "unreal" reading back over it i see i use them interchangably and then insist in the difference between them DOH so the buddha did teach that life was illusory, but because people didn't understand that, he then taught that life is real. But he wasn't contradicting himself. Clarifying himself actually. Life is illusory and real in the same moment.

which is different from rebirth, which is what ceases upon liberation. so do quantum physicists, but they will still tell you that life is real. yes, people misunderstood the doctrine of emptiness and began to cultivate themselves in an escapist manner. life is illusory, but its not unreal. hows that for better semantics? lol its like a dream.. totally real while you're in it, but then it switches to another dream, and its not real anymore... so its kind of like asking is yesterday "real"? can you show me it? only now is real because we are in it. Right now, the moment you read that last sentence doesn't exist anymore, and won't until you reread it if you so choose. So in many ways, we can see that life possesses an illusory or unreal element. And when its over, we're off to somewhere else, and what we're doing right now won't be "real". So this moment is real, which is why buddhism and the spiritual doctrines recommend resting in it, but thats as far as it goes. There are a lot of illusory aspects to reality.. like the fact that its 99.99% empty space and .01% energy.. another "unreality". So we can agree on the experience of it, but it doesn't mean that things are as they seem. i have no reason to believe that heavens don't exist. They are taught about in all the mystery traditions of the world, other worlds, little worlds, big worlds, faerie, siddhaloka, pure land, it goes on and on... why should i believe that this world is all there is? rather abrahamic. except they believe in heaven too well i can't really claim to know what they meant by that, but there are certainly stories of those who came to human incarnation from other places, places of enlightenment and bliss. I don't really know tho, and yes its different in the tibetan thought. So its hard to pin down "how does this work" i have even seen some people say that enlightenment is the literal extinguishment of consciousness, like upon liberation one becomes like a golem or something! that makes me laugh... i think theres a lot of ignorance out there and some people just want to make grandiose pronouncements rather than find out for themselves by achieving liberation lol aw you dont offend me in the least.. i don't take it personally, and i have seen much worse takes on the dharma and not been offended. I appreciate your point of view, as always, and i appreciate white wolf running on air's. I just understand things differently, and for the sake of our mutual understanding, i chose to respond contrarily to what had been presented. I hope you don't feel chased away by my tone, that would be my mistake, for which i appologize.

by that token flowing hands, why reverse the flow of the microcosmic orbit, or channel the semen up the spine to nourish the brain? I would say that trying to extricate oneself from suffering is natural and unavoidable too. i don't think its about being a buddhist, although that path has born me the fruit of less suffering in my life. I think its about keeping the grasping self, the ego of attachments and aversions, in a downward trajectory until it finally crashes and dies. There is no limit to the beliefs of people who can do this.. they might follow different world traditions but they all have egos which cause them attachment to the wheel of enjoyment and suffering. so in a word, yes, i strongly feel that weakening the ego and reflex of "self identity" will reduce suffering, and ultimately cause the drop to dissolve in the ocean, the individual to become cosmic. As this happens, suffering is reduced. Bad things can even happen to one on the path, but they will take it as a lesson on the path, and they won't suffer out of attachment to pain because of it. thats generally how it works for most, i agree with your advice! lol