manitou

Be in the Now = Be the Task.

Or, separate good and bad. Then combine them.

The situation is ridiculous.

I think he's wonderful, lol. I wonder which one of TTB's he is? Come on...out yourself!

I wonder if labeling ourselves as 'ists' of any type restricts our view. It's like ego is riding on a definition. Reinforces duality. Something to consider

thank you. we just can't seem to actually touch the flame, can we? But some develop channels which occasionally shows itself to Arise from within the individual; the words come not from our own brains, but our brains are used as the filter to express from within the Truth, the Dao. It is seen on this forum, the occasional expression of this Awareness that expresses from the inner to the outer. We see it in each other in flashes of greatness and great words - we are a combination of Eastern lines of thought with Western lines of thought; and people who are learning to use their brains in the sense for which they were developed to this point. To express. To express that warm, empty spot of Knowing that lives within each and every one of us, but divided in form only by circumstances. We are all spokes of a wheel that lead to the void of the hub in the middle. It is here that we meet and understand each other, in the Void of the Dao, regardless of which paths any of us have taken to happen upon this very place in time with others that are about to grasp the inner channel of Divine Indifference. That's for GMP. I would have called it the High Indifference but i think GMP's word expresses it best.

I promise you, this just happened. MANITOU: "I've never seen such targeted coupons in my life. Look at how all these $1.00 off Giant Eagle coupons are targeted at exactly what we buy. This is unbelievable. JOE: "Hmm" MANITOU: "I mean really. Have you ever seen anything like this? I'll bet the NSA computers use the same technology....." JOE: "They don't give Fuelperks.":

Developing the three treasures results in non-duality, IMO. (Yutang: Love, Never too Much, Never be the First). When this is achieved by removal of personality dross, Oneness is achieved. Giving is everything - as the Universe gives. The principle of 'Giving' is realized by the 'individual' - who no longer sees himself as an individual. He is merely part of the whole. Part of each and every human being's own I Am, whether they're in awareness of it or not. To me, this is the ultimate non-duality. To be realized of the fact that we are not separate.

Our higher selves live at the bottom of our acquired personalities. Communication with your higher self would seem to be more in line with Dao than looking for something external to pray to.

Wonderful post, TaoIsEasy. Maybe it's just as simple as the magnetics of the alignment of the moon and sun at the mid points of the day and night, regarding the qi and kundalini spirit. Looking at the taiji symbol, it would appear that the sun (or white circle) is contained within the night, and vice versa. Sometimes I wonder if this arrangement doesn't help create the setup for perpetual motion; one being yang, the other being yin. Just an intuition...

I mentioned this phrase, the High Indifference, in a separate thread about tolerance. In one of my posts I referred to a couple paragraphs from Experience and Philosophy, by Franklin Merrill-Wolff. As it seems like it could have taken the previous thread in a different direction, I thought I'd start a new one. i'd love to quote a few paragraphs from his book, as it seems that it fits just about every discipline, once the terminus of the path is being approached. "The attainment of Nirvana implies the successful meeting of all the dark trials of the Path. The struggle with personal egoism has resulted in a successful issue; the clinging to objects has been dissolved; the battle with temptations and threatening shadows along the Path has been successfully fought; and resolution has been maintained firmly; but there still remains the task of rising superior to Glory. The little appreciated fact is that the Goal of aspiration may become a possessor of the Self, and something like spiritual egoism may replace the old personal egoism....... "We may think of Nirvana as the State in which all of highest excellence or value is realized, and in a form that is not alloyed with any dross. It is, indeed, the Divine Presence of the Christian mystic. It is quite natural to conceive of this as the Ultimate, beyond which there is nothing more. But there is a defect. For here is a State that I enjoy and to which I tend to cling, and thus it involves a kind of selfishness, though it is a spiritual kind of selfishness. Thus I am possessed, even though possessed by That to which I give highest value and honor. After all, Bliss is a valued modification of consciousness. But where there is valuation, there is still duality - a difference between that which is valued and that which is depreciated. The highest State transcends even the possibility of valuation, and its complementary depreciation. The Highest Perfection finds no distinction whatsoever. This is the State in which there is no Self of any sort, whether personal or spiritual, and where there is no embodiment of Supreme Values or God. It is the Vast Solitude, the Teeming Desert. To turn one's back upon the best of everything is intrisically more difficult than to turn away from those things and qualities that one's moral judgment and best feeling condemn readily enough. But it is not enough to arrive at the Place beyond evil; it is also necessary to transcend the Good. This is a dark saying, hard to understand, yet it is so. But he who has found Nirvana is safe." Although he doesn't refer to this as the High Indifference, he does repeatedly in other places in the book. That phrase just seems to describe a mental state that we often speak of here; but it just seems that the combination of those two words, high indifference, describes so well the State. And as for his very last sentence...'But he who has found Nirvana is safe' - could this be construed to mean that this is why the Sage is free from harm? And as to spiritual egoism that he speaks of.....isn't TTB's a wonderful place to work this out?

Like kids with boxes on Christmas morning---

You've been talking to my old man, haven't you?

"Being a bit of a romantic I thought I would do the deed on the missus's birthday as a bit of a treat." I am weeping as I type...

I'd say 14. The left brain seems pretty well developed.

Those are just beautiful...

LOL. For God's sake, it was just a joke.....

It's a removal process, not an adding process. That's the cultivation I speak of. Have you met a useless tree? Seems to me they're always giving - if nothing else, oxygen.

So when a birdie bathes in sand or dirt, he only thinks he's getting clean. As a birdie thinketh, so is he.....

The man does have a way with words, doesn't he?

If we didn't cultivate, it would merely be Tao Ching

A simple metaphor is an octopus. In duality, each of the tentacles think they're independent, separate from each other; not realizing that they're all the same octopus. the mechanism, IMO, is the 'going into self' process and removing the distortions of our acquired personality. The real stuff lies underneath, the I Am - the I Am of me is the same as the I Am of you.

How about using 'Love' as your sacred word? That's what resides at the base of your acquired personality anyway...

My husband uses one for his back, where a fusion is. He's in pain constantly, but he's such an extremist that he starts at '10' on the dial, lol. He looks a bit like he's being electrocuted sometimes - he says the pain of the Tens unit takes his mind off the pain in his back. But overall, it does seem to help him. He uses it every afternoon.

Here in Ohio they take dirt baths when water isn't around, lol.