Nikolai1

True but voting as an ethical act has two domains. We vote out of self interest, for example for he party that will tax us least. Also we may vote out to concern for other humans, so we might vote for certain foreign policies. To not vote has impacts beyond the private self

No job can ever beat the shit out of your spirit. Your spirit is absolutely untouchable. It is a constant source of strength and it does not matter not even one iota what the outer body is doing with itself, even janitoring. A person whose spirit is well realised can enter any situation fearlessly because their sense of self and esteem is so strongly rooted in the source of all pleasure. What the person 'gets' out of the job financially is also quite unimportant. The person already has all the pleasure that others need money to buy. If this isn't the case with you, then you need to discover that what I'm saying is true. You're an older wiser person now, and it may take getting a shitty job to show you how far you have already come. I promise you it won't be as bad this time round. I know this is true because you don't really have a choice anymore. Your dissatisfaction is relentlessly impelling you to make a change. That dissatisfaction and your spiritual maturity are exactly the same thing! If you weren't ready to move on you wouldn't want to move on. All this strong need for a mate is a sign of the need for a general growth in all areas. You just to do things in the right order: job, apartment, first and friends, hobbies and girlfriends next. You get that money however you wish. Don't think it has to be just like your Dad. But it does have to come before everything else.

But in terms of the outcome of an actual real life election, all these different types of not voting are the same. It's simply not voting. So the practical outcome is: those who vote are the the ones who decide what this real life situation will be next.

Yes good point. And some people get very obviously called to be a teacher. Others set themselves up very deliberately and wilfully because conceptually they understand the basics. Maybe the first type will be better than the second at producing future 'spiritual mathemeticians'

Hi Dreambliss - would you like to tell more about the time you were living alone. How it was for you? What went wrong?

I vote but I attach very little importance to it. I cannot understand these people who get all het up about tax rates, or changes in benefits when the proposed changes will amount to virtually nothing. Even if it's 200 quid a year for the average household - who would notice it? I think anybody who understands what is really important in life, the true sources of meaning, beauty and love, just loses interest in politics. I think that a person can more or less transcend their own socio-political concerns, but this isn't the same as apathy. It's simply not needing politics anymore.

Been to see him? Heard what he's like? Etc

I did my A Levels in Bishops Stortford - not much happened there either!

Where do you live?

That was in London I guess? I'm moving this summer to a town called Totnes, a small place in Devon, but amazingly there's an advaita type teacher there called James Eaton. Don't suppose you know him do you?

So it was good for you? Not a waste of time?

There is no similarity between you Nungali and Dreambliss because you worked, were independent and therefore able to follow your heart. Dreambliss cannot follow his basic heart's need for a mate because he has zero independence.

For my second idea, I'd like to take a different tack. There is only way way in which all of this thread can be combined into one coherent strategy (its even unconventional!). OKCupid Profile Name: Dreambliss Calling all you career women!! Are you a busy, driven woman with a flourishing work life? Do you long to find a soulmate, but cannot take the time to look? Are you accumulating wealth fast, but long for a partner to share all the fine things that your money can buy? Would you love to have some kids running about your mansion, but can't bear the idea of sacrificing your career to care for them? Look no further! I am a spiritually realised male who naturally wants nothing more than to stay at home looking after our kids. Yes, you heard right...Our Kids. Not only is my 40 year old equipment still in full working order, but sexual release is the third most important thing in my life ( see list below) Let's release each other from unhappiness! I can be reached by email, cell or XBox Live... etc. what do we all think?

Hi Dreambliss, What you need speciifically is money. You need the freedom to move and act and be in the social realm in accordance with your own inner impulses. Now, your impulses might be conventional (like your taste in women) or unconventional (like your interest in the Shamanic), it doesn't matter. Money is the Qi of the social realm. It is a form of energy, and you are depleted. Some impulses require vast amounts of Fiscal Qi: beware of these impulses! I think what you want for a contented life can be achieved by relatively small amounts. But now you have way too little even for your modest needs. You know this is the truth! You want a girlfriend but you haven't got anywhere near the money to do anything but sit in your room.. If you don't want to change yourself, don't. But then I would only be recommending that you not get upset over your love life when actually you don't want a love life. It would be conventional thinking to suggest that you MUST start a family. I'm not saying that. I'm saying that if you want a family and a relationship then you must find the money! I don't care if you work - win the lottery if you can. I only care that you find the money, even if its the bare minimum. OK, so what other ideas do you have? If it gets you the money then its a good idea. They earned him the ability to find a wife and raise a family. Again, if you don't want that there's no law that you do. But it would be wisdom to make sure that you don't harbour conflicting desires. It sounds like your Dad led a blameless kind of life, but maybe he has been a imperfect example if he didn't work from a place of joy and exuberance. The best examples love their work, and would do it even if they didn't need to financially. Well I for one think you should leave and move to some kind of city not too far away. The model you represent is a human westernised version of a model that is repeated throughout nature. It is a pattern woven by the Tao itself and you see it in the birds working to feed their young, the ants building their nest, and the human their cities with all the manifold functions of a city. Your work this far has been, let's call it Priestly in nature. But there is a part of you that wants to express a more active role as a Householder. You are changing, and so needs your changing, and this means your behaviour must change. This is very, very, very common, especially at your age. All this "I don't want to conform" stuff is an outworn narrative for you. It was appropriate while you were a priest, but now you want all the conventional things that the householder wants: wife and kids and home. You have conventional desires? You must be led by conventions like money. Simple as. You know, it won't be anywhere near as hard as you think it will be. I can absolutely promise you that!

I predict Tories to win on seats but Labour and Lib Dems to govern. Which is also exactly what I want to happen but without the Tories winning on seats!

No Brand is telling everyone to vote Labour, except in Brighton where they must all vote Green to keep their 1 MP.

even russell brand is saying vote labour!

Hi Dreambliss This thread has been running for 8 months now. There's been no success whatsoever and now you're trying to manipulate the system in a pretty undignified way in order to get it. It just seems to me that there are very major barriers here: the girls you want don't want you, and If there are any who might consider you, then you won't consider them. You blame OKCupid, but I can't see how this would be different on another site. You are headbutting against fundamental attitudes of mating. Even if the miraculous happens and there is a girl who you like the look of, and she likes the look of you? What then? You tell me that you can't even afford a mediation class! How can you afford to do anything except just sit in your room doing yoga together? It's just not a real situation, as it stands. Your outer circumstances are extremely narrow, and cramped. You just don't have the social power to do all the things that need to be done if you are to meet any individual and creatively build a life together. A relationship that is based on sitting in your room, at your parents house will not blossom into anything. Just a seed cast into the desert. Yes, it is a situation that has enabled you to blossom internally: intellectually, spiritually, creatively...but you are not blossoming on the outside, at all...and a relationship with another self, a different self, is about outer compatibility. You have to put the fundamentals in place first. To try and find a mate on the Internet is really putting the cart before the horse. You need to move out, and find work. You need to become an independent autonomous man in the world. I'm not saying you need to be really rich, but you do need social power. You need to be able, in some basic degree, to participate in the social realm that is shared with other people, other females. Now you're are totally stuck. If you can take this step, then you may find that your life will blossom extremely quickly. This is because you are ready on the inside. On the inside you are highly Individuated with a distinctive set of interests, hobbies and skills. They just need to be mirrored externally. If that happens then I have no doubt that you will suddenly find yourself an attractive man to precisely the kind of women who interest you. You're not the first person in the world who reaches middle age and finds that they need to radically change direction. It's very common, but scary and painful nevertheless. Like many, you've allowed yourself to become imbalanced, and you want to make the correction before its too late. Clearly dating just wasn't important to you as an 18 year old, but it is now. This is the just the order you've done things. Another man may find his life totally spiritually barren, despite his outer attainments. Finding this will be painful and bewildering for him, just as making the change is frightening for you. So I think this thread should be locked down and replaced: Dreambliss gears up to find a job...help! And then another thread will quickly come about being your own man in your own apartment. By then you will have money colleagues and hopefully living in a place where mediation clubs and centres are a bike ride away. Get all this right and I don't even think you'll need to do a thread on the dating part! Best wishes, and please tell me if I am the one being unrealistic.

Hi all, Back in March I started this thread about what I called my 'dark night of the soul'. Well it seems that it may be true that 'the darkest hour comes right before the dawn'. I was at home, idly watching an between Richard Dawkins and the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams. They were discussing 'What it means to be human': Dawkins was suggesting that being human is experiencing the purposeless expression of our genes, Williams was saying that the human being experiences and grows ever conscious of the Divine Intelligence that created our universe. Needless to say they were disagreeging, albeit politely, and each felt that their views were ultimately irreconcilable. What I found very interesting was that the Chairperson started the debate by clarifying points of agreement. The first two were that humanity has evolved over time and that the best way of understanding our situation was through logic: something cannot both be and not be ant the same time. The third point, which I found most interesting, was that each agreed that there is an objective truth that can be comprehended by the intellect. I realised with a flash that I no longer believe that the intelligence is capable of this. The intellect is only capable of generating propositions that then need to be contrasted with their opposite in order to be intellectually comprehensible. Dawkins and Williams were both representing the opposite poles in a classic dichotomy: the universe as purposeful vs purposeless. It was very clear to me that their positions are intrinsically and necessarily irreconcilable. And what makes them irreconcilable is the fact that both share the same aim: to describe objective reality. By a strange twist of logic, I saw it to be logically the case that the logical is illogical. I realised that it is precisely because I have become detached from the intellectual approach that I see Dawkins and Williams as arguing the exact same thing. And yet both agree that taking my relativistic perspective is the most intellectually dishonest thing you can do: it is what Dawkins calls a 'cop out'. But I notice: I am at peace on this matter - the nature of the universe: these two are quarrelling with each other. This was more striking for me personally because I have most my adult life taking the exact same approach to truth as they do. What has happened to make me change? I realised in a flash that, despite the aimlessness of my dark night, I have somehow found a substitute for intellectual truth. I call it peace, and it is a felt experience in any given moment. I can rely on it. It is a place of stability and I can go there and see what is going on below. I can see the differences between Dawkins and Williams, and yet for myself feel only peace of mind on the same subject. I can also see that these two very intelligent men are also searching for peace, and hope to find it through intellectual certainty. This is what motivates them into arguing and persuading. I can also see that they will never find what they are looking for by taking the approach that they take and I see this without any feeling of anger or regret. I realise that I have found something extraordinarily special. It is a place I can live my life from. It is there whenever I want it, and it is only when I forget it that I will find myself in the meaninglessness that Dawkins and Williams are trying to banish by subjugating intellectual opponents. But what is this peace? How does one live it? By one of those beautiful coincidences, I logged on this morning to write and I found these words written to me by Heartlumination, a newcomer here: How could I possibly put it better? This IS how to live. And I know exactly how to do it - in fact it's pretty easy and obvious. To come out of the dark night I think you have to start all over again. You have to go out and, from square one, deliberately make every interaction an interaction from the heart. The heart is is there all the time, substantial and obvious. Not only is it the place of love, it is the place of wisdom. It is the place of peace that enables me to see very clearly why Dawkins and Williams are not at peace, and were I to meet them, it is the place that would enable me to tell them all about what I have learned. This is really a good day! I feel like I want to start living all over again! All the best to you all, who were patient to read this far! Nikolai

Hi Jetsun I guess what I think is that nearly everyone lives by intellectual constructs. Those who say they don't are usually just unreflective and don't realise the extent to which our existence is structured by our concepts. This is why the Buddha is so powerful in exposing this. Dawkins exposes the limits of intellectual concepts too...but only the kinds of concepts the religious tend to use!

Yes, of course. But in the night there is nothing, no glimmer. Then suddenly you realise something that had eluded you - in my case that the peace IS the life itself. al you have to do is be the peace that you already feel. On the same day in March that I started the Dark Night thread I said: I was always aware of the peace, but something about watching the debate made me realise just how rare and special the peace itself is. I could see that it alone prevents me from falling into the pit that Williams and Dawkins are in. I don't wish to say that they are in a pit, but if they had the peace they simply couldn't debate such a matter. They would see only agreement with each other, nothing else. Of course in another sense they aren't in a pit. They are famous, rich and active - the opposite of the aimless obscurity of the dark night. But the pit they are in is of the heart. They aren't at peace, either of them. In this respect I am lucky, despite my dark night. Moving out the dark night is realising just how lucky I already am, and then living according to this awareness. Really, there's no problem with me. My dark night is actually something rather beautiful and rare and special.

Anyone here have experience of a spiritual dark night? I'm not talking about depression, which is usually for some obvious reason. I'm talking about that terrible dry feeling where it seems like nothing in the world can satisfy you or give you joy, Where you go through life feeling like a robot, with no inclination for anything, and no particular aversion either. Just feeling like you alone in this world and seem unable to see the point in it all, like you on the brink of death, but strangely aren't at all suicidal. I'm sure some of you guys know this feeling! Well how did it end for you? How did you know you were out of it? What are the tell-tale signs? Thanks to you all!

Hi heartlumination What a wonderful and helpful post, I really appreciate it. The funny thing is, this morning I logged on specifically to write a post named 'I think my dark night may be ending...', after a bit of a revelation a few days ago, but I won't say more about it here. There is so much I want to say to you but I'll have to limit myself a bit: I understand that this kind of process is common although it hasn't happened with me. I think I've always found it very hard to categorise myself and I don't think I ever had a strong idea of who I am and am not. I have always seen quite strongly the inherent contradictions: I can be outgoing and also shy. I can be lazy and sometimes very goal orientated. I can be kind and bitchy. I can put others first and be selfish. I think I first saw this in myself as a teenager and so I've never developed a strong persona. In fact I remember being asked to describe myself in an interview and I was absolutely stumped - what am I in particular? If there is one thing that people reliably comment on with regards to Nikolai, one adjective, it is: intelligent. Everywhere I go, this is how people react to me. I seem to almost exude it, people start picking up on it without me even saying anything. It's just the air I have I guess. And I also recognise it in myself, it would seem perverse to deny it... Now I've not suddenly seen that I am also very stupid, but something else has happened. My intelligence depended on the explicability of the world. And the world has become a very strange and ambiguous place so that I find myself unable to say anything coherent about it. Knowledge that I previously prized I now see as worthless. Basic aspects of science, philosophy etc have been neglected because I don't read or think about them. The at-handness of the knowledge is gone or going, and I find it hard to speak confidently about things that I was once fairly certain about. So my intelligence is deserting me, and I can't do anything about it. The process of the dark night is therefore not revealing me of something that was always there, rather stripping me of the only reliable aspect of my old persona. To someone whose path has been intellectual, jnana yoga I call it, the energy dynamics you talk about are themselves just more intellectual constructs. Although I fully recognise their validity in other paths, talk of this kind cannot help me any more. To focus on a path is first to exclude other paths, and then to progressively refine your own until you reach a place that all the other refined paths have also reached. I excluded the bodily path early on; but progress in what you call energy dynamics has been happening of its own accord. An intellectual breakthrough that one might get through reading, say, Kant, has a distinctive energetic component felt in the body that never entirely dissipates. A thoughtful person, through successive understandings develops a constant pleasant buzzing that never really goes. But for me these have to come as side effects, not main effects sought. The moment I try to focus on them, an intellectual deconstruction will naturally occur and the felt effects will be inhibited. I think there's probably lots of readers who find this a very dry and depressing path, but that's the way it is for me! On the other hand, for those who focus on energy in the body, there will come a stage when profound philosophical insights spontaneously occur. But the same person will have no success if they decide to sit down at their desk and start deliberately learning formal logic and the history of epistemology! They will simply notice how energetically dry it feels, and no further insights will come! That's just the way it goes! Anyway, I'll leave it there because I want to start a different thread. All the best to you!

Please don't be hurt by people who don't know you, have never even met you!

Chi can be transmitted by any medium whatsoever. There is no conceivable conduit that couldn't be highly successful.