Nikolai1

So a person is like a kind of church, or sacred grove? Something has accumulated where they are? I like this! Beautiful architecture is to stone what yoga is to the human body.

Yes I call it peace, but I feel it as a pleasant buzzing in the chest. The atmosphere feels charged and meaningful. Perceptions are sharpened. There is a strong tendency to fall into silence, perhaps close the eyes. This is the Church Feeling! But like I said, for me it seems very important that we discover that this peace can descend upon us anytime - no church required!

I think an important part of spiritual growth is that the feeling of Church can also happen spontaneously within so that, as Jesus said, our bodies themselves become our temple. A person who is only capable of religious feeling while in a physical Church must surely be stuck?

And it can felt as being out there and in here: 'The chapel was holy ground; but it was my holiness within that recognised and responded to that.' 'I am holy, and my kitchen was sanctified by my presence; or even my humble kitchen is holy ground like the chapel.' The holy spirit is made within or without by the act of interpretation we make. Idolatry is when we refuse to accept that the chapel is a humble spot like my kitchen. It is not holy because all do not feel it as holy, just like my kitchen.

Yes me too - exactly the same. I love churches for the holy atmosphere and the peace. But the same peace comes when I'm not in Church! I wonder if those who need a Church in order to get the holy feeling are called the idolaters?

A few years ago I met a woman and I couldn't understand the depth of the love I felt for her. The sexual element was not that strong. I asked myself: 'Is she a wife from a past life? Is she my sister? My soul mate? I also realised that my love for her was my love for my essential self. This women was kind of quite like me. If I was to have female twin she would probably be a lot like this person. But this was just a manifestation - the outer symbol. Deep down we were the same, and I was in love with that unity.

Really nice post, thank you! Inspiring for anyone whose practice has prompted them to change direction in life.

You only have to meet a wise happy person who lives in harmony with himself and nature. This person does not develop technology. Technology is the outer symbol of human neurosis.

No it's not all in the mind! Bodily chi is very real and the healing is very real. The problem with idolatry is not unreality, it is partiality. The churchgoer so full of sweetness in the presence of the saintly relic, feels bereft when the relic moves to the next church - the church which beat them to the new roof fund. The person who benefits from the chi energy healing, will next month suffer from a chi blockage or stagnation. The is the problem with chi in finitude - it is dualistic. When we no longer need to manipulate chi. Then we are at one with it

That's a brilliant observation!

Everyday things can be invested with the numinous force when we project our belief and consciosness onto them. Thus the old bone of a saint can heal and transform the atmosphere of a Church if that is the mindset of the churchgoers. This is called idolatry but is a common and perhaps unavoidable spiritual process. Those who locate chi within the body and manipulate it here and there are doing the same thing. It is idolatry. But it is only because the original chi energy is no illusion that it can be concentrated and felt in the body by the idolatrous practitioner. Your question is another rendering of the essential question: how do the finite and the infinite interact.

Yes the cultural difference was symbolised by our dress. I would have been in T-shirt and shorts. He was in a black suit and thick hat. My thoughts? Probably very simple judgements - here's a bad and wrong human being. But I was clearly in a very present state of mind and I was probably more interested and occupied by my own bigotry. But I'm now interested in spotless' basic point: that we can sense racial difference and our bodies respond to it.

So true! I was always of the view that racism was just learned bigotry and hated it, and judged the people who were like that and open about it. I prided myself on not being like that. One very hot day I was in a queue behind a Hasidic Jew in a dark suit and brimmed hat with long forelocks. I became aware of the revulsion inside me - it was a very embodied nausea, like if woken by a large spider or cockroach on my face. I was very surprised and quite shocked that the feeling was there. I only hope that being conscious of deep racial fear makes me less likely to act on it. I also wonder whether having it brought to the light has helped, as I haven't had the same experience since? I truly hope no-one is offended by me sharing this. I think honesty on the subject helps. I imagine that the true bigot may feel what I felt, but then imagine that must be a sincere and valid reason it. I say that we can feel the bigotry and yet still discount it and overcome it if we are honest and motivated.

Yes, but for me the true hallmarks of spiritual bypassing are its episodic nature. The ego returns to the fore - episodically - and uses the insights of realisation to its own advantage. The next day we aren't buying into the egoic worldview and we avoid the accusation of spiritual bypassing. This yo-yoing, I think, becomes less exagerrated over time - but this is a process I think we all go through. There's lots of people in spiritual circles who aren't even remotely spiritual. They are in it for the same reasons people get into anything: boredom, opportunity to meet people, a scenario to create a persona, projects and aims to busy themselves with as they sojourn through life and before they shuffle off this mortal coil. If the scenario is nominally 'spiritual' then these people might get accused of spiritual materialism, or bypassing - but it's actually not. It's just plain old materialsm and inauthenticity. Go to your local church. The psychology of the place is identical to the local bowls club, or the local atheist society. It's just raising money typically, with surface level variations on the things they talk about. Chogyam Rinpoche will have met many of these folk. True spiritual bypassing is a difficult time, for sure, but it is the product of bravery and intelligence and consciousness. No-one is pained more than this process more than the sufferer themselves.

One thing I think is that some element of spiritual bypassing is pretty much inevitable. This is why I don't like it when it is pathologised, or described as an error or a pitfall. Spiritual bypassing is what happens when our old egoic worldview has been supplemented by the spiritual worldview, and the two are intermingling. Just as night doesn't turn immediately into day, and there is a dawning phase in between - spiritual bypassing is just the behaviour of somebody undergoing a major transition in their worldview. I guess it's the job of the teacher to point out to the student that there is further to go...but this doesn't mean that it's a pitfall. The spiritually bypassing person knows what they know, and the traits they show are the traits of acheivement.

The point is that your life will change for the better. You will become more peaceful, more loving and the nitty gritty of your life will become surprising and miraculous. Ever seen a newborn baby when it's hungry? - the little sweet face puckered up in fury? Ever seen the childish, brutal man swearing and cursing at the referee when the decision in the game doesn't go his way? All this is of the Dao, but also so is the desire to move on from this. Awakening is not just learning to watch ourselves behave as we always did. There will be a positive transformation that will be pleasing to you and all those around you. When we have moved squarely into the Absolute, we feel alienated from life. Two years ago we swore as furiously from the grandstand, but now we see it as all a game. But this doesn't stop us from feeling a certain guilt over our loss of passion, and a nostalgia for the times when we were participating full-bloodledly. But please don't pathologise your state and imagine that - when you 'get over it' -you will return to the fray in the way that you once were. And don't allow yourself to feel inferior to all the unconscious brutes who are living in the thick of life, and suffering as a result. Chapter 20 of DDJ address this point. Your De will come to you as a revelation, and it is totally unknown to you as an individual prior to awakening. An unconscious person's De is collective in nature. It is conditioned by the time and place and culture and circumstance. It can be recognised as a pattern because so many people particpate in it. The individual De is authored moment by moment and can't be predicted nor formulated. The sage leaves no tracks that can be followed. What we call aimlessness is actually nothing other than conduct that can't be intellectually summarised. Actual aimlessness is impossible. But the awakening individual will start to feel guilty over their aimlessness because they are no longer prodded and driven by the collective illusions. It's a really beautiful moment and a huge relief to see that your life is, and always has been valid and worthy and that your aimlessness is actually the virtue of liberation from unconscious drives. This freedom and relief gives us the confidence to live our lives exactly as we want to in our hearts in each moment- and this is the discovery of our De.

I think Objectivists have a noble aim at heart. It seems they refuse to reduce consciousness to matter, nor matter to consciousness. And in this they do avoid, at an intellectual level, the age old dichotomy. But when you truly overcome this dichotomy, thought ends. The subject / object split is seen through. There is no longer any that, for us in here to talk about. This, I think is intolerable to thinkers like Rand so they get thinking, and get talking. And when they try to put their words into practice, they come out with the same old materialism...And you Karl, are exactly the same. It is not for nothing that they can't seem to shrug off this accusation, this association with the materialists.

In the introductory paragraphs to Objectivism on wikipedia it says: 'Objectivism's central tenets are that reality exists independently of consciousness, that human beings have direct contact with reality through sense perception, ' This is pure materialism; indeed, perhaps it's purest expression. So you are drastically either misundertanding objectivism , or p´misrepresenting it yourself. As we start to move on with our thinking, I think there is a phase, before we have consciously rejected the old, that we describe the old creed according to our new idiosyncratic way of thinking. Before long, the purists - our old colleagues - start to object and it dawns on us that we are no longer who we were. Perhaps this is happening with you?

Its a three phase thing: 1) Too far in the world, or away from the world 2) Too far correcting yourself 3) Equilibirum Generally we all spend our first two or three decades involved in the world of things in time and space. The spiritually sensitive become dissatisfied with this and then dis-engage in pursuit of the other side of things. It is only when this second search becomes dry and dissatisfying that we harmonise, we bo back to the world, and find equilibrium. I think in your case Karl, the first two phases have been there from the offset. I mean that your psyche has been split by form and emptiness since you were very young and you never fully bought into form like most do. What you have done since is try to solve this split by denying the other side. At present, with your objectivism, you are simply denying emptiness. This is what most people do, most wholeheartedly in their early decades, but in your early decades you never did it and so must do it now. The equilibrium you imagine you have found is that false equilibrium that comes when we suppress opposing viewpoints.

i think lots of people go through this and I'm sure its inevitable that we move too far into the Absolute. There is a tendency to pathologise this process in the West I think, but I think its far healthier to just trust it. When the pain of alienation from the world gets too strong I think you will naturally start to look for ways of re-engaging that give you joy and don't make you despair. I hadn't heard of this 'back to childhood' thing, but when I think of my own experience it makes sense. I was always on the move as a child and was skilled in any sport I tried. By my late teens I had become a very serious studious person and I wanted to spend my time reading and thinking. At that time sportspeople always truck me as shallow. I still find talking about sport shallow, but in the past year I have started to play tennis again after being randomly asked to make up a doubles match. The simple kinaesthetic movement around the court delighted me. The simple rules and the simple aims were like a tonic. Ball bounces this side = good, that side = bad. At the intellectual level I must still say that tennis is a simple pastime, but on a deeper level I love it and adore it. The more you step out of your mind, the better you play. It is glaringly obvious, and yet beautiful to see the Dao take over the game using your own body as a tool. So anyway, I'm not saying take up tennis. But tennis is something I loved when I was young, and now again at nearly 40 it is relating closely to my practice in the world.

I think there's a nice concise teaching in your experience. To be human is to feel the constant pull of the new vs the old, of safety vs adventure, of knowledge vs creativity. Unconsciously you knew you had seen this movie before.You were drawn to it precisely because it was familiar and safe. But you mistook this solid, warm, safe feeling as being a prompting of the heart, and ended up choosing the safe when you should have chosen the new. Also, about the heart.... Don't think that something is coming from the heart just because you want it. The heart is a much more subtle instruction and it takes great practice to even discern what the heart is saying. The only time the heart speaks loudly is in the 'dilemma' - when two alternative options present themselves vividly to us. But even in the dilemma we are not shown where our heart's desire lies. The heart speaks loudly but not decisively. As we learn from experience we see that the heart option is the one that brings us peace of mind and virtue and sincerity. As I said, it can take considerable practice before we even realise that these are what we want. They have a horrible habit of masquerading as things like PS3s!

Yes, this is interesting actually. Emerson made reference to Confucius and, I think, Mencius, but I don't remember anything from the DDJ.

I think Emerson was a highly realised man. And he had such love and respect for Thoreau that I think Thoreau must have been pretty remarkable himself. But we must be more specific: the Oversoul Self-reliance, Spiritual Laws and The Poet are probably my favourite essays!

I was thinking the other day...I've been a serious reader for about twenty years - sice I was about 18. In all that time, a lot of writers have come and go and I have had many inspirations. But there is only one, just one writer, who is as dear to me as he was then. It seems like he stands for something perennial. I never tire of reading him, there always seem to be an insight there to strike me afresh. Ralph Waldo Emerson! So good to hear Old River singing the praises of the Transcendentalists!

Really good points here! I think the difficulty is being able to tell if an activity makes you feel good or bad. It sounds like it should be so obvious but it isn't. To even make this judgement we must listen to our selves in a way that must be learned for ourselves. In personal experience, it is an energetic thing and requires sensitivity to subtle energetic responses. For those who don't have a practice, there is no way of checking in on themselves. There is no 'in' to check in on. All there is, is convention, so the question is: Is this behaviour or activity sanctioned by those around me or not? Do others enjoy themselves when they do it, and are they gratified by the sight of me doing it? If yes, we may continue to partake in something that is actually not bringing us pleasure. But we have no reason to suppose it isn't. This is why practice can disorientate us so much. Not only do we lose the taste for things we thought we enjoyed, but our abstinence seems to pass judgement on those we used to share the pleasure with. This can make those around us very uncomfortable. Perhaps it makes them question themselves in ways they aren't ready for.