konchog uma

thank you SIME, awesome words, im glad your neurosis are dissolving! yesyes daily sadhana indeed i am largely non-neurotic, but when i sit for weekend intensives, mister hyde comes out of the closet and jumps up and down on my head. and heart. Its challenging, so i know i have buried stuff which i have just skillfully learned to evade but not yet eliminate. I plan on exercising a great deal of patience for myself and of course the people around me for that reason.. i know how irrational i can get, even as i am being irrational i can see it LOL

there are always changes in store for us. Nothing new there i heard wandering wolf speak in 2007 about the end of the long count, and he said even the mayans didnt know what to expect. he wasnt making any predictions. There was one surviving prophesy, that the god of war would be fully dressed in his finest regalia at that time. Everything else is lost to conquest. I have been, am, and remain ready for a drastic end-of-the-world scenario at any moment and recommend all my friends to have a plan in case america invades iran and begins a conflict which will escalate into world war 3. Thats the prophesy in revelation (the bible) anyway... that china and russia will become angry and nukes will ensue. But i am a strong believer in free will and the idea that nothing is really written in stone until it is. All the same, i think its good to have relationships with aboriginal and native people in your respective area, and to have a plan so if the power grid goes down and chaos ensues, you have a better option than FEMA camps to consider. But as wandering wolf said, only our choices in the present will define the future. Nothing is destined except what we create collectively. So with an optimistic heart, i advise everyone to be ready for the worst, and work to create the best with their actions.

@ jetsun: thanks, every time i do an intensive, my issues pop up for a few days, i get grumpy and wake up irritable and have general problems. I don't know what to expect on a month retreat, but that book sounds helpful @ CT: i can really feel what youre saying, especially about pacing myself to the beat, thats helpful. thanks for your encouragement

thanks apech good reality check

your attitude seems bitter, and you seem like you have already made your mind up about what is worth while and what is correct et cetera. but in spite of that, i'll do my best to respond. which calendar did the mayans inherit? and who did they inherit it from? "preceding cultures" the olmecs kept some calendars but not as many as the mayans. I don't think there's any evidence for what that blog claims, and they certainly don't cite any references for that claim in particular. but its kind of a moot point. According to don alejandro, wandering wolf, the grand elder of the maya today, the mayans inherited their calendars from star people, not from the olmecs or some other previous civilization. I can't dismiss that site as bunk out of hand, and have no interest in doing so, but their information is in places in contrast to the record of history and to the testimony of the maya today. the mayans kept twenty-something calendars, so saying "the mayan calendar" is kind of misleading. empower for what? um for its own sake? i didn't know i needed to justify empowerment. if you don't want empowerment, don't educate yourself. Which btw is a completely valid path, no judgement, but im not interested in validating or justifying empowerment with reasons and logic. and what is the use of all this talk? again, more for its own sake than for anything else. i happen to enjoy calendar studies, and love mayan art and culture. I appreciate terrence mckenna, although as you astutely observe, he did do way too many drugs. brilliant nonetheless. i dunno, i think you're looking too hard for reasons and rationalization, just have a conversation and enjoy it... or don't have one. thats the daoist way right?

surrender is the key to so much freedom and empowerment congratulations on your insights!

for the record, i think the persian calendar is widely considered most accurate, but didn't measure time in the same way (in the pulses of evolution which express themselves as the emergence of novelty) as the mayan at all. the mayan calendars (both tzolkin and long count), are based on a base 13 and base 20 system which is the pulse of what the mayans understood as "sacred time" or spiritual time. They measured the movements of the planets and heavenly bodies in relation to each other to understand temporal time. So not only are the mayan calendars way more accurate than people without advanced technology should ever have been able to come up with, but they measure a different kind of time on top of ordinary procession of planets and celestial bodies

so what isn't an illusion? the mayans knew that the tropical year was 365 point-whatever-it-is days long. Their Ha'ab (solar) calendar didn't reflect that, and the tropical year wasn't relevant to the long count (the one that ends on 12-21-12), which is what mckenna is talking about. But the Mayans and their calendars have recorded time accurately enough to surmise when the big bang was, when biological life emerged, when primates emerged, and other phenomenal accomplishments. All this can be read about, i suggest Carl Johan Calleman for starters. time moves in patterns. If it is an illusion, so is everything else (the point of my unanswered questions up there) and knowing about it only gives one agency over and within it. So maaaybe the scholarship of McKenna, and likewise the Mayans, can be used to liberate and empower people. just sayin edited for clarity

awesome

yes very transformational, i can feel it tilopas six nails are the heart and soul of my meditation right now, you couldn't have said it better. They are like my mantra. I am digging everything you said, very much in accord with my heart and approach to this

thank you SIME! you mentioned grounding the experience of retreat into reality... how do you do that? personally, i mean?

what isn't an illusion? and if you're going to study a calendar, the mayan one is the most accurate to date just sayin

thanks TI, never seen that book before, it looks great. I found it on www.abebooks.com new for $9. I look forward to reading it! Thanks for your recommendation

oh i don't know, i think some people are thinkers by nature, and need the constructs of the left-brain to hold on to on their way up the mountain.. and some people aren't. I'm not, so i agree with you from a personal standpoint, but i've seen philosophy and concepts do people a lot of good, so i've come to accept that people have different dispositions from person to person.

You could start working on your lower centers, from the root up, in the manner prescribed by Satyananda Saraswati, who is awesome. You could start by tracking down a copy of Kundalini Tantra by said author and working with the yoga therein. He advises students to start with their ajna chakra then move from the root up, thats why i mention it. good luck

does anyone have the links to those chinese vids about the four medical qigong practitioners making that tumor disappear on video?

Old body, mind, leaves me behind And I'll do you one better While you define your heartless time I'll defend my love forever

of course there will always be people who like to think in dualistic terms and can't fathom that one and zero can coexist, but i personally wouldn't believe anyone if they tried to sell me a ticket for a smooth ride. The spiritual path is work, liberation is not easily attained. and after all, if you aren't afraid of a couple bumps on the road, the destination is probbbably worth it

one can attain union with creation, and also attain nirvana. I see no mutual exclusivity. In some schools of deism, the divine is seen as one with creation and the manifestation of the oneness of all that is. This is similar to the Buddhist idea of interdependance. The Buddha taught in no uncertain terms that life is actually real, there is a reality. He was not a nihilist and didn't like it when siddhas who followed him dwelt exclusively in emptiness and nonbeing and curtailed their engagement of reality there. Much of the third turning or later mahayana teachings were about reconciling the paradoxes that arose from the earlier teachings; things that people misunderstood and got completely wrong. And people still misunderstand them and get them completely wrong! lol 2 millenia later. Oh well, i think daoism is great for reminding us not to think in rigid terms, not to get locked into dualistic ways of looking at things. The "one and the zero" are a yin-yang pair, they are in all likelihood inseperable and shouldn't be thought of as ultimately two different things as much as they are just two sides of the same infinitely complex coin

resonant111, are you a 7 Road? ive been meaning to ask you i love the tzolkin

having a partner and engaging in retention practices is like having your cake and eating it too, i recommend trying it to anyone (just be sure to take care of your prostate! lol) yeah, celibacy without proper technique is completely unnatural, i agree. I would go so far as to say its completely insane. But if one has the techniques required to boost their spiritual and energetic practices, it can be perfectly natural to decide that ones own evolution and growth is more important than busting nuts or having a sexual partner. I mean, from a certain point of view, that of the serious and educated practitioner, it makes a lot of sense. Or for the monastic, where there aren't TV shows billboards and magazines constantly bombarding them with sexsexsex it can make a lot of sense too. But for the ordinary layperson living in society, its a pretty hardcore choice that involves a lot of conflicts of interest. The mind becomes pulled strongly in two directions, which is always uncomfortable. If a person is going to enhance their spiritual practice with celibacy, its best to commit to that completely, not just as a practice, but as a lifestyle, and without likeminded people to surround themselves with, and practices that take that energy and make their lives better with it, and turning their back on the world of sensory indulgence, most people usually go a little crazy and then decide that celibacy is for losers. Celibacy is like anything else, a lifestyle choice that comes along with its rewards, consequences, and attendant ups and downs. But to channel the lifeforce up and within from the loins instead of down and out is perfectly natural as an impulse. The body is even hardwired to store it in the upper centers and make soma out of it, so the option is obviously natural from that standpoint.

Seth was saying that amish who were celibate had problems with rotten semen (ick) but for those that practice sublimation into qi/shen, or who circulate their energy in their bodies, there was no problem. I found that interesting. So you are right, or could be, but the point of retention isn't stagnation, its circulation and sublimation

i used that technique just visualizing relaxation and got a cool feeling in the right side of my head its easy to be a critic and harder to be a grandmaster. I'm not saying i understand the technique, but it got my juices flowing maybe you need abundant shen to achieve better results

not my horse lol i retain because... 1. it makes sex better for me and for her 2. my belly hums and my whole body gets charged after 2 weeks 3. creativity and imagination benefit 4. my natural energy soars 5. i like the challenge of self-mastery i don't force it though, when i want to ejaculate, i do, but thats usually about once every month or two. Forced retention is a recipe for a headache and worse, but natural retention is a wonderful practice

anyone ever read John Crowley's Little, Big? i think its my favorite book i've ever read. Top 3 for sure. http://www.amazon.co...rds=little, big edit: its fantasy btw, not scifi. Kind of a fairy tale but with six foot fairies