i am

Thanks for the replies. My case wasn't self consciousness based on social media. I'm a bit too old for that. The stage example I only used as an extreme example of what I'd feel. Walking across campus, I'd be tense. Because I felt people were watching me walk. I'd have to have my hands in my pockets, or tucked into my long sleeves, 'cause I wasn't quite sure how to let my arms hang. Short sleeves sucked...would have to keep my hands in my pockets. My shoulders were always tensed up. I was self conscious of how skinny I was, of how I dressed, of my hair, my personality, of everything. It's hard to do anything just not caring what people think. Because I really cared what people thought. But you get older and more secure, and you care less and less what people think, and you get over it. And maybe all that attention you used to pay to yourself in a negative way, starts to become positive, as you become self aware

Yeah I'd hate to get bogged down in definitions. I think most typical American (or otherwise) teenagers could tell you all about what being self conscious is. It's walking around unable to relax because you're afraid people are watching you and judging you. Standing in the mirror for way too long before you're willing to leave the house, going over and over whether you look ok. Always being tense and moving unnaturally because you feel you're "on display" and being judged. Basically imaging you are insecure, and on a stage with a huge crowd watching everything you do in your life. That's self conscious. It's definitely a type of vanity. It might even be vanity with no confidence. Vanity with too much insecurity. Self awareness is knowing the space you take up. Knowing your biases. Knowing how your mind works, your personality. Knowing more or less how people see you. Knowing how you react in certain situations. Knowing the lens through which you see the world, basically. Which allows you to transcend it. I guess I relate being self aware to being "realized". Knowing who you are and how you work, and therefore you have the ability to step outside of that framework. I feel that before someone can really be aware, they need to get rid of the self consciousness, or it will only feed it. But then I think that as I've become more self aware, my self consciousness has faded away. But I agree that to a certain extent that just happens with age. I do feel that being self conscious is a huge roadblock to enlightenment. And then I started thinking "well wouldn't a self conscious person, attempting to become self aware, simply feed the disease?" But I don't know...

It would really look a lot better if they fixed all the typos in that book description...oh well. I wonder if he's talking about the experience Ram Dass had with his guru, when he gave him LSD? Anecdotal, but definitely something to think about. I think we can break down the definition of drugs until no one knows what we're talking about anymore, or we can stick to what we all pretty much know the OP meant. No offense to anyone...I completely understand. Someone flipping me off in traffic for absolutely no reason used to send my emotions off into no man's land...sugar makes me crazy...but we know what the OP meant. People have already stated it, but I think the right drugs at the right time can be very beneficial for some people. I absolutely believe that we'd all be better off if we came to our understanding and cultivation in a completely natural, sober way, without drugs. I don't advise anyone to take drugs to help their cultivation. But the fact is there are a lot of people who are on the path, who wouldn't be if it hadn't been for a drug-induced experience. A lot of people who came to certain flashes of understanding because of drugs, when it otherwise might have taken them years of meditation or maybe another lifetime of work. Is it better to reach those realization through meditation? Yeah, probably. At some point you might open a door you are not cultivated enough to deal with. But like anything...the extreme stances people sometimes take on this issue seems very un-Tao...

Which governments promote no carbs? The USA sure promotes carbs.

Funny, I see a victim mindset here. Someone disagrees, you read all sorts of things into what they say which aren't even there, then fly off the handle claiming to be victim and insult the person having a rational argument with you. Sorry...but you're in the wrong here. Stick around, though.

Exactly. It always makes me sad when someone looks at the natural world and is upset by how things are. Why take the negative connotations popularly associated with the term "parasite" and turn all of life on earth into that negativity? What we are is: what we are. All life relies on other life to live. Yes, absolutely. To understand that, and turn it into a somehow sick, negative thing is an unfortunate way to live life.

That's the way I like to play the game. "what's the worst that could happen?" I could die. Ok. That's not so bad. Let's go!

Yeah there are certain work schedules which just aren't conducive to cultivation. You can get stuff done, I'm sure...but working graveyard shift is a hindrance to it. I won't say some corporate executive working 70+ hours a week can't suddenly become enlightened...but I think for most of us, at some point, if we want to progress, we've got to set up a life for ourselves which allows a natural sleep schedule and time to reflect.

I think at some point, if you're lucky, you'll settle into a natural pattern, which follows the sun. Lately I'm off by myself a lot, so I'm in bed at 9:30, up at 5:30. No alarm clock. Other than when the birds start up which is usually around 4am. Hearing that means I have another hour of sleep I love it. There's no time like the early morning. I love being up i the dawn, before everyone else, just me and the animals and birds. It's a different kind of "time", that early in the morning.

I've wondered this quite a bit myself. I dropped everything recently and in some ways it's allowed me to progress spiritually, but in other ways it's hindered it. I mean if the path to enlightenment is just a quiet, simple life...being on an "adventure" isn't a path to enlightenment. It's hard to calm down my mind...too much to think about...Much harder to get into a routine. Much harder to meditate and do qigong. But also no job tying me down, no need to conform to anything I don't want to, and a great chance for growth. Time of discovery and all that crap I think that a quiet, simple life of near total security (needs being met), with a dash of adventure here and there, at least in the earlier stages, is actually a pretty good path. For some people the "journey" may be a necessary step to open them up. Then they need a quiet contemplative life after that.

So your take is that Campbell was preaching the philosophies he found in past and current cultures, not just examining and comparing them? That is interesting, and I guess I should go back and watch The Power of Myth. My take has always been that he has studied it all and shown the similarities. "Comparative Mythology" and "Comparative Religion", as the wikipedia entry says. The only thing I heard him preach was this: “If you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. Follow your bliss and don't be afraid, and doors will open where you didn't know they were going to be.” So did I selectively listen and read him? Maybe. I've just always seen him as a guy who found great truths about the commonalities of human experience and spirituality, and encouraged everyone to follow a path that spoke to them. I'll need to go back and look at his stuff some more.

Well I'd say you have the answer to your now-rephrased question. There's no reason why acupuncture, when added to an already correct practice and mind, couldn't help with enlightenment.

Yep. The fastest fast track is you, and your inner cultivation. No amount short cuts will help. But if you're doing your work on yourself, I'm sure a little outside influence here and there is a huge help. I just don't see it working the other way around...lots of external "do this to me" methods without much inner work.

Seems like there's more to enlightenment than opening channels. The right lifestyle with the right mind will open them. Opening them with acupuncture, but then maintaining a less than spiritual lifestyle, along with a monkey mind, would just cause all the old blockages to reappear, would it not?

Why do I feel like we aren't talking about the same thing? Joseph Campbell wasn't a best selling fiction author re-hashing a tired theme. What he did was research ancient people's, as well as contemporary cultures, and show how common threads run through them, most often following the "hero" theme. Either I'm missing something blatant, or people have no idea who Joseph Campbell is and are lumping him in with people they do know, who have sold fictional stories using the plot line Campbell noticed was popular in all cultures. My understanding is that he came to the same realization as you, albeit with a different take on it. Your take, after seeing a "formula" for stories much like the tried, true and tired Hollywood formula, is that authors are using an un-original theme to make money of young seekers. Campbells take, in my understanding, was that people throughout time and different cultures have all yearned for the same thing. And also somehow come up with creation stories, myths, gods etc that are strikingly similar, illustrating either a common truth about what's "out there" beyond the normal perception of reality, or a common crutch among humans to seek "something more" due to their ultimate mortality. But I'm no expert...just someone who watched and read a lot of Campbell's material. If there's some side to him I'm missing, let me know! He, like you, pointed out this common theme. He didn't write a bunch of fiction stories cleverly disguising it, as people here seem to be implying.

One of the things Joseph Campbell did was to look at the myths, religions and stories and different cultures throughout history, as far back as he could find information. What he found was many common threads (beyond that in the vast majority of cases...pretty much different cultures from all over the world at different times telling the exact same stories), one of them being the Hero's Journey. So yeah...when you dismiss it as a template, you're completely correct. It is THE template by which all cultures' inspirational and value instilling myths/stories/fairy tales/creation stories are written. To me that's kind of a big deal.

I read somewhere to never eat raw mushrooms...but can't remember where and didn't really research it further. Fact is I don't like them raw anyways, so I just did what we're all trying so hard not to do and just took it as fact because it agreed with my preconceived notions!

A path towards spirituality and "following bliss".

Joseph Campbell was one of the first people to get me started on this path. I really like him.

I see Greek the most, when I think to look around. Mine are Egyptian.

I have not, but I've read in a book called "Meditations on Violence" the phenomenon of time slowing down. Actually seeing bullets whiz by, etc. I'm sure there are lots of other places people have read about this sort of thing, if they haven't actually experienced it. That's a very cool experience you had.

I don't think there's anyone out there who is confused. People know that milk is milk, and soy milk is soy milk, and rice milk is rice milk. "Milk" is dairy. Of course nothing can be dairy except true milk. But soy, rice, almond etc "milk" is there as a replacement for milk. People understand this. Calling it juice does nothing to how appetizing it is. It still tastes, smells, looks the same as when it was called milk. I see what you're saying, but people get soy as a milk alternative. Calling it milk is absolutely a marketing ploy, to let people know "this is something you can use to replace dairy milk", rather than having a bunch of people in the store saying "what would I use soy juice for?" You need to let them know what your product is supposed to be for. It is correct marketing. Not misleading at all. If coconut were labeled coconut juice, almond labeled almond juice, would that make more sense? They add the "milk" to make it clear that they are milk alternatives. Merrian-Webster has a pretty loose definition of milk, probably expanded to include what people accept as milk these days (soy included). Would you label eggs "unfertilized chicken embryos"? Because "egg" makes it sound appetizing. Is that misleading? How should cheese be labeled? A lot of spoiling and mold happening there... Anyway. I see nothing wrong with soy "milk".

Ah, I was reading it as ingredients, not dishes. As in don't combine carbs with protein. So no rice with a steak. No burger with a bun. No pasta with meat sauce (especially tomato meat sauce!). So I didn't understand...is meat a high concentration protein, then? If so, what would a low concentration food be? Still a little hazy to me but I'll look into it more. Just trying to figure out things like what I can combine fats with, since a low concentration protein is apparently ok, but not high concentration... Thanks.

For some reason when I read Keanu Reeves I heard "Tom Cruise" and read the first post and just couldn't believe what I was reading... But Keanu, sure. I'd believe good stuff about him.

It's like thetaoiseasy wrote, somewhere. What are compassion and love and "doing right", but descriptions of the unknowable, unnamable source (or even descriptions of descriptions)? If you're in tune with the source, these things happen naturally, without any effort. I've been completely avoiding this forum for quite a while and I agree...this is one of those threads that keep me around. Thanks. And I JUST read that Chapter from Castaneda last night. On a side note I think that a thread on the comparison...similarities, differences and compatibility of those book's teachings with practicing a Tao-like existence like I do would be pretty fun.