Nikolai1

All of the work in the world, all that we call good and useful, is performed by the ignorant. Ignorance is the tool that the Tao uses to get things done. The busy, practical person is in a state of enchantment. They believe that what they do is useful. What they fail to see is that in a different time and place the Tao is using another useful, practical person to undo and spoil and ruin all the good work. A big cause of suffering in this life is that we meet this person. In fact the world is full of people undoing all our good work. But on one point you and your enemy both agree: The sage, (who has cultivated wisdom and dispelled the Tao’s enchantment), is an extremely useless and lazy person. He is quite happy to let us get on with our work. He does not tell us to desist. But he won’t lift a hand and help. Last April I said to him: ‘The bush on the driveway is spreading out of control. In one week a branch has grown 10 cm, which means by this time next year we’ll have 5 metre branches covering the whole yard and the car won’t even reach the garage! But he refused to lift a finger! Said he was busy til Christmas and he’ll look at it then!’ Why is this? The sage cannot help but be lazy. Once the enchantment has been lifted, his mind, body and heart are now completely unable to participate in the useful work in the world. However much he tries it won’t work. For a while this upsets him too! But with time he learns to stand aloof from his fellow bipeds, and to view their work as dispassionately as he sees the work of the ant or the tree. The people are just instruments of the Tao, and the Tao does not see fit to use him in that way. Wherever we are working, whatever we are working for…this is the index of our ignorance!

Don't get me wrong. I love work. It fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours! Jerome K. Jerome

Hi brokenyogi I think you're being a little bit harsh, based on my reading of the article. But it sounds like you might have met him? Maybe his limitations come across more in real life? For anyone who already understands, this is clearly great advice, but as I'm sure you know even Ramana Maharshi had massive difficulties teaching self-enquiry. There are many people who simply do not get it. They cannot help but focus on objects (inner or outer) rather than the sense of I. For these people RM did not labour his point, but would always allow them to carry on with what works best for them: chanting, mantras, deity worship, whatever!

I've noticed in meditation that if I feel I'm not centred on the moment, I breathe more from one of my nostrils and then I feel more stable again. I was not taught this but rather my body seems to do it naturally.

The last couple of weeks, I log onto this place and immediately I read something something so deeply relevant to my situation it seems that the writer knows me personally. For example thelerner wrote this the other day It wasn't addressed to me but the words were exactly what I needed to hear, and actually brightened my day. Nungali wrote something to me personally that seemed so relevant to me that I actually asked for more. I didn't get it, but maybe it was impertinent of me to ask, like you shouldn't test the oracle by asking the same thing twice. There's been a few more things that I won't more you with... Is it possible that this website operates in the same way as the I Ching. Does anyone else get synchronistic moments here?

A synchronicity is simply a feeling of affinity for the moment we are in. It feels known, familiar, understood and we can relate it to other people, things, events. This feeling is either remarkable or unremarkable and therefore synchronicity is a spectrum. At the lowest unremarkable end it is simply the things we have known and learnt and understand at the egoic level. We feel affinity for blue cars, they have meaning for us, if we have just bought a blue car. At the highest end we have a feeling of affinity in all sorts of situations. Random moments feel familiar and understood so our egoic minds fabricate explanations for them. Jung famously saw a fish dead on the beach. He tells us it was the fifth fish symbol he saw that day. But his ego invented the other four in that moment. All he had was a feeling of very strong affinity and familiarity for the dead fish, and this made him think fishes had been part of his day. The miracle of synchronicity is not a sequence of meaningful events. This is an illusion. The miracle is the intense feeling for an innocuous experience that leads us to, on the spot, weave it into our existence. This intense feeling comes with spiritual practice, which is why synchronicity is a phenomenon that we feel, but then later stop feeling as the ego stops fabricating memories

If this is all synchronicity means to you then you obviously don't have much experience of it! You're not wrong, with your example. and that does happen to us all, but when it does it doesn't really impress us. But some coincidences completely stop us in our tracks, and leave us awestruck by the universe. And they increase with our development, and give us pleasure and encouragement for they are a very good sign of progress. I pity you your 'bloke in the pub' no-nonsenseness.

This is such an amazing summary!

To make a request of God, and to expect that it will be delivered requires a purity of faith that is rare in the secular West. And yet petionary prayer is still very much alive and well! This is through a certain behaviour of the atheist which, though different at first glance, is emotionally, intellectually and spiritually identical. I'm talking about any act of pure self-assertion. By this I mean the everyday business of 'making a decision and sticking with it, man!' The belief that the sovereign power of our own self-will and determination gets us whatever we want is indistinguishable from the belief in an omnipotent God. As I wrote in the Archbishop thread, this attitude, in theist and atheist alike, represents the lowest level of spiritual development. We request from God, or we pursue with determination, specifics only - things that we want and need in our mortal life, and which the spiritually mature person has lost all interest in. But we mustn't be mistaken, these two forms of getting what we want really do work. Desires that are strong enough will eventually manifest, whether we Imagine it to be through God's doing or our own. But it is still the case that the spiritually wise person wants for nothing in particular and has no desires that are creating his reality. He wants only what IS, and believes that whatever Is must be what he desired.

There's also a lot of people, and especially on this site, who will espouse atheist arguments in one context and in aother talk about 'trusting the universe' or 'following the Tao'. Any principle to which you imagine yourself receptive or in a passive relation is God, and is therefore theism. The person who is content to passively 'follow the Tao' believes in God although they might not admit it!

Neither show a lack of faith. Both show too much faith in your intellect. You need to see that God and Self are the same thing...and then you lose interest in all talk that relates to either.

Even though i was writing mostly ironically here, I've decided to write a new post here about how useful the sage is. We've discussed the idea that the sage is useful in hidden esoteric ways that the rest of us don't understand. My argument is that we don't understand the true nature of all the world's work, and when we do, we see that what the sage does is a natural extension of that.

Spiritual joy and peace are the aim of all activity in the world and are not just what people get if they start meditating, chanting, doing Qi Gong. Our everyday pleasures - a cold beer on a summer's day - are intrinsically spiritual in nature and the only difference between this activity and say, meditation, is in the technique. The goal is the same. And of course, some techniques lead to deep and long-lasting spiritual joy, and others - like perhaps the beer - are shallow and short-lasting. The provision of spiritual peace and joy is called WORK. if our work does not in some capacity produce some measure of spiritual fruit then all the world call it unproductive. The street-cleaner is therefore a species of poet and healer. His work cleanses the world and makes it beautiful to behold. These are spiritual virtues - entire in themselves, and like deep prayer - good for its own sake. Why then does the street cleaner find himself at the bottom of the social scale? It is because the spiritual fruits of his work are so fleeting - it is negated in a flash by the mindless brute with his McDonalds wrappers tossed from the car. All the work done in the world is in some measure productive - and gives to some degree something that another person values. if it din't give value, it wouldn't be done. And we value things for the spiritual benefit they give us. The worker himself is compensated for the spiritual fruits he grants to others in the form of WAGES. With our wages we attend to our own personal spiritual welfare. Thanks to our wages, our peace is no longer disturbed by hunger, and we can enhance our peace through the pursuit of pleasure, or of relaxation. Even our pursuit of Love is helped by our wages, as is our need to transcend our selves through the raising of children. However, so many of our attempts to work are unsatisfactory. So much of the world's work can seem banal and unnecessary. This is because: a) the benefits are so fleetingly felt, as with the street cleaner. other people's work undermines our own work and vitiates the good effect c) the pleasures we procure through our work come at the expense of others - one man's profit is another man's loss. The desire to be more and more spiritually fruitful is AMBITION. The most ambitious will recognise the limitation of even the most demanding corporate enterprises and will wish to devote themselves to those activities that create the deepest and most long-lasting sense of joy. They will start to apply themselves, therefore, to what the world now recognises as spiritual action. But of course traditional spiritual techniques differ only quantitatively and not qualitatively from the world's work. The most ambitious will find it difficult to devote themselves to the kind of work offered to them in the everyday world It does not yield enough fruit for them and therefore seems futile. They therefore withdraw from the market place and pursue their own vaunting ambitions alone. Although they cease to outwardly attend to other's pace and pleasure, they are at least not undoing nor detracting from the work other's day as per points ( and © above. The consequences of their withdrawal is therefore 'zero-sum' in nature, but privately they are attempting to discover levels of productivity undreamed of in the everyday world. They seek nothing less than total bliss. The person who achieves this is the saint, the self-realised sage. They have attained the goal towards which all the world's activity is unconsciously striving. Despite their seeming physical, social and economic inactivity, they have actually been more productive than the whole sum of global economic activity. But of course the realised sage doesn't remain hidden for long. They get discovered, and quickly become a beacon of hope for all the other ambitious workers in the world. They demonstrate and confirm what the devotee are dimly starting to feel. To be in the presence of the sage, to hear his words and to read his thoughts becomes itself the most productive work that the devotee can imagine for himself. He becomes single-minded in his ability to apply himself. The sage is therefore the apogee of productivity and the inspiration for all the most productive people in the world. But only these ambitious productive ones will themselves realise the fundamentally spiritual nature of all the world's everyday work. Sadly, these people will be dismissed as 'useless' by those who are actually less productive than they - those who only understand outer activity and are not troubles by the thought that what they do is banal. Thank you for reading this far...I have many thoughts on this but it's getting a bit long for now.

No problem - just call it supper and stop being so northern.

Nungali, Tell me more, I don't understand what you're trying to say

Actually yes!

Hi GrandmasterP When I talk about desires manifesting I'm basically talking about the Law of Attraction. But it's not as fantastical as it sounds, all of life can be understood in this way of we wish. At 10.07am You are making a cup of tea and it seems Mrs GMP has used all the milk for tonight's souffle. The raw reality of this moment is interspersed with shadowy mental images of yourself at the corner shop. At 11.13am You are making tea and there is enough milk for you to splash a bit into the dog's bowl as well. The raw reality is also interspersed with shadowy mental images of yourself at the corner shop. At both these moments you being at the corner shop exists only in as mental images that are open to interpretation. You could say that you went to the shop of your own volition, or you could say that the shop came to you through your powers of manifestation. Both of these scenarios make sense. After all there are many things in your life that just come to you without effort, and just appear according to their own merry way. But because we live in narratives, stories is all they are, but crucial to the plot are 'laws' about the way things are ...and things like corner shops do not magically appear but must be effortfully moved to. You are right to be sceptical about the Law of Attraction, because it doesn't work for us unless we have abandoned our sense of being a self in time and space. But as a theory it is entirely plausible and seeing that and realising that is itself the liberation that the Law seems to promise. To feel that the corner shop walked to you is itself the liberation. And you won't feel it unless you have first recognised its plausibility at the intellectual level.

In a way you're right to ridicule believers in God who think that God wills things to happen in their lives. But it is equally irrational, and ridiculous, to believe that we do 'most things by ourselves.' The individual self is a construct as extravagantly fantastical as God! It is the empty idol of the atheist. In fact, like all illusions they are of the same ontological nature. The individual self, like God, cannot be seen directly but only inferred to exist through a series of highly changeable outward manifestations. The self itself we never see; just like time, like space, like causality...and just like God. God and the individual self are basic superstitions that the wise do not fall for. It therefore follows that all this talk about 'doing things for yourself' and 'asking God to do for us' - in other words, the very notion of agency - is based on an illusion. The wisest see only the transformation of things. The second wisest see only Self if an atheist, or only God if a theist. The wise atheist recognises that we all create our own reality. The wise theist sees that God is the omnipotent creator, that the individual is his passive instrument, and that individual will is an illusion. The foolish, and this most people at the start of the spiritual path and in general life, see a duality. The foolish atheist sees an individual will that can be constrained by immutable physical laws. The foolish theist sees God's will thwarted by the sinful proclivities of the individual will.

Hi Nungali I love this! It's so empowered! I've lived my life in the exact same way but always felt guilty about it!

38 years on the planet and still no idea what I'm here for. All I know is that I'm compelled towards some things, and won't touch others with a bargepole. I spend my life thinking about truth and self-realisation. If one day I gain some worthwhile wisdom, I'm sure it will become my raison d'être to share it and make the world a better place.

Hi spotless - really great thread, thanks! When you have the time I'd really appreciate it if you could talk about fasting, as you mentioned early in the thread that you did it. i.e. best types of fasting, duration, effects on body and mind etc. Thanks

Être!

The full article is here: http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-29255792 His frankness seems to have been widely welcomed - clearly people seem to like it that he is not putting himself on a pedestal of certainty. But I can't help thinking that this man is the head of the Anglican church - the spiritual leader of an estimated 86 million souls worldwide! How can it be that he has not gained a bit more spiritual confidence? How can it be that the modern Christian leaders are still trapped in the sterile intellectual dichotomy of existence versus non-existence of God? Then we gain a glimpse of the Archbishop's methods of prayer... So it seems that interspersed between the pounding of his feet and his heart, and his heavy breathing and the dodging of pedestrians, the snatches of mental monologue he hears in his head is his idea of prayer? Can anything more vulgar be imagined? Anyone who has made even a semi-serious attempt at prayer/meditation soon understands that it requires the very highest levels of concentration. Silence and solitude are incredibly useful aids to this. But the Archbishop thinks it can be something to be squeezed in to his daily jog! And at the same time he all but confesses that his God is some kind of helperouter, someone to call up whilst out jogging for a bit of advice! Only the spiritually immature would call upon God in this way. To understand God is to to understand that there is a part of us that is perfect and whole and loved regardless of our daily problems. It is by focussing on our spiritual selfhood that our daily problems attain manageable proportions. But the spiritually immature are still very much wrapped up in all the hubbub of the world. Quite frankly, they want real world solutions to the problems without for a moment imagining that the problem is themselves and their overestimation of the inessential. He admits that all this 'is not probably what the Archbishop of Canterbury should say.' No doubt he means that it is politically reckless to admit doubt. But he should be able to say what he wants, and it is surely better that he admit his immaturity rather than attempt the appearance of holiness. But there is one brutal truth that remains. A good deal of his ´deacons, priests, chaplains, lay readers, alter-servers and everyday church-goers will instantly recognise in this speech the tell-tale signs of spiritual immaturity. They will doubtless have passed through, and resolved, perhaps long ago, the same kind of crisis. How on earth does he maintain his spiritual authority. His words are nothing other than the admission that the skills that brought him to the head of the Anglican Church were merely administrative.

Actually we probably agree more than you think. Buddha's teachings were intellectual, philosophical. But the fruit of the teacing is as much of the heart as the head

Hi GMP, So glad you warmed to my good friend, the Reverend Theophilus Pudding. I'm very fond of him myself. Yet, alas, all is not so well with him. This very afternoon he got some pretty black looks from the Bishop, when offering his collection of South Sea Island fertility statuettes as a prize in the Harvest Festival Raffle. It seems anatomically correct and politically correct aren't always the same thing.