manitou

I still think we're stuck in dualism if we think things are Good or Bad. My view is going to come off as sociopathic here (especially funny coming from a retired cop) but I delved into the Right and Wrong for years during my career. Agreed, society mandates that there must be rules, and they must be followed. Therefore homicide is Wrong. But what would the Dao say? The Dao would say that we are but straw dogs. Straw dogs were just that---straw. They were ceremonial replacement for concepts or persons. If we are Straw Dogs, that would infer that the point of beginning of one's life or the point of ending is of absolutely no consequence. if this is the case, why is homicide such a horrible thing, looking at it from the perspective of the Dao. The life manifestation (the straw dog) merely snaps back up into the stream of consciousness. What difference does it make when and where it makes its appearance? But of course there are other considerations. The family remaining. The ripping out of their guts when their family member is killed. Certainly this is a consideration. But is it not possible that this was part of the plan too, that the Dao (or the impulse toward the One) would have them go through this experience to bring them more clarity of understanding? We're all links of a chain and the chain just wants to go Home, IMO. The other consideration would be the damage it does to the murderer's psyche or soul. Again, this would be part of their learning process. To act out on impulse (or even planned homicide) which would ultimately implement the changes for that person to get closer to the light....perhaps by remorse and the desire for atonement. At-one-ment. I think understanding this to the fullest is above our pay grade.

Lerner - what a fabulous video! Thank you! Bearded Dragon- the laws of physics, as man understands them, may not be the All in All. Aren't the most incredible discoveries (electricity, etc) often obtained from intuition, from dreams? Is it possible that there is a perpetual motion principle of which we are not yet aware, that involves no diminution of energy? I'm thinking it is maybe the difference between physical thought and metaphysical thought. The complete merger of the 'right and left brain' would seem to be the perfect balance to discover that which remains undiscovered. I have been reading this book for months, it is so complicated and wonderful. It is Morals and Dogma (of the Scottish Rites of Freemasonry) by Albert Pike. This is the most metaphysical and wonderful book I've ever read, I believe. I happened to come upon a paragraph last night which seems to fit in with what we're talking about here. It's in the 28th degree, starting on page 744. (Please keep in mind this was written in 1871, so it's not an easy read.) If Science has negated or expanded on some of these words, please chime in! Much of the basis of Freemasonry, as well as all world religions, is based on the Kabalah, as Pike maintains in the third paragraph: "No characteristic of matter belongs to Light, or Heat, or flame, or to Galvanism, Electricity, and Magnetism. The electric spark is light, and so is that produced by the flint, when it cuts off particles of steel. Iron, melted or heated, radiates light; and insects, infusoria, and decayed wood emit it. Heat is produced by friction and by pressure; to explain which, Science tells us of LATENT Caloric, thus representing it to us as existing without its only known distinctive quality. What quality of matter enables lightning, blazing from the Heavens, to rend the oak? What quality of matter enables it to make the circuit of the earth in a score of seconds?" "Profoundly ignorant of the nature of these mighty agents of Divine Power, we conceal our ignorance by words that have no meaning; and we might well be asked WHY Light may not be an effluence from the Deity, as has been agreed by all the religions of all the Ages of the World." "As truly dogmatic religions have issued from the Kabalah and return to it: everything scientific and grand in the religious dreams of all the illuminati, Jacob Boehme, Swedenborg, Saint-Martin, and others, is borrowed from the Kabalah; all the Masonic associations owe to it their Secrets and their Symbols." "The Kabalah alone consecrates the alliance of the Universal Reason and the Divine Word; it establishes, by the counterpoises of two forces apparently opposite, the eternal balance of being; it along reconciles Reason with Faith, Power and Liberty, Science with Mystery; it has the keys of the Present, the Past, and the Future." Enticing stuff, as I see it. So Pike continues a page later with a dissertation of the emanation of light, which seems to stem from the REMOVAL of the core, the Void created. I think the question is, what is the 'canal' or 'line' that he refers to in the last paragraph? Is this not the holy grail? Could that canal be the infusion of love, compassion, mutual attraction, gravity - the attraction of two objects to each other? After his paragraphs, I have included a synchronistic dream that came to me last night; actually, more of an image. (Capitalization is mine, indicative of the emphasis placed in the text - however my italics button isn't working, apparently) Also, when he speaks of ADAM KADMON, this refers not to the first man as enunciated in religious tomes, but rather of the IDEA of the first man. "When the Infinite God willed to emit what were to flow forth, He contracted Himself in the centre of His light, in such manner that most intense light should RECEDE to a certain circumference, and on all sides upon itself. And this is the first contraction, and termed TSEMSUM. "ADAM KADMON, the Primal or First Man, is the first Aziluthic emanant from the Infinite Light, immitted (sic) into the EVACUATED SPACE, and from which, afterward, all the other degrees and systems had their beginnings. It is called the ADAM PRIOR TO ALL THE FIRST. (Note from me: this would allow for the phenomena of evolution, IMO) In it are imparted ten spherical numerations; and thereafter issued forth the rectilinear figure of a man in his sephirothic decade, as it were the diameter of the said circles; as it were the axis of these spheres, reaching from heir highest point to their lowest; and from it depend all the systems." "But now, as the Infinite Light would be too excellent and great to be borne and endured, except through the medium of this Adam Kadmon, its most Secret Nature preventing this, its illuminating light had again to emanate in streams out of itself, by certain apertures, as it were, like windows, and which are termed the ears, eyes, nostrils, and mouth." "The light proceeding from the ADAM KADMON is indeed but one; but in proportion to its remoteness from the place of out-flowing, and to the grades of its descent, it is more dense." "From the word ATSIL, to emanate or flow forth, comes the word ATSILOTH or Aziluth, Emanation, or the System of Emanants. When the primal space was EVACUATED, the surrounding Light of the Infinite, and the Light immitted (sic) into the void, did not touch each other; but the Light of the Infinite flowed into that void THROUGH A LINE OR CERTAIN SLENDER CANAL; and that Light is the Emanative and emitting Principle, or the out-flow and origin of Emanation; but the Light within the void is the emanant subordinate; and the two cohere only by means of THE AFORESAID LINE." So it would seem to me that to find the same self-regenerative power (or energy that remains constant and doesn't diminish) would be to understand WHAT THE LINE OR CANAL IS that he's speaking of. I do maintain that it has something to do with love as being the ultimate generating force. Once found, maybe we could truly find the perpetual motion, the holy grail, without having to exploit and deplete our planet. Okay, so here's the short vision or dream I had last night. I was observing what appeared to be a fluorescent light - shaped the same rectangular way, with long tubes for bulbs, as they are. Only I knew in this dream that it was made by an ancient tribe, Mayan or Toltec. There were two holes in the terminal ends of the shade, however (where the inner workings of the lamp would be, as they are placed now). The void hole ran the length of the shade, one end to the other. Tightly wound around this long void was a crush of chicken coop wire, metal in composition. However, it was astounding to me that there was such a perfect long hole within he chicken coop - how did they get it so perfect? I asked. Someone explained to me that it was originally formed around a metal core, a rod, WHICH HAD BEEN REMOVED. (As the void was created in Pike's rendition - removal of the core, contraction in that particular case). I also noted that there were other insular factors, like perhaps another layer of something or other, maybe two layers, can't remember. But there were insulating envelopes of air, or spaces, between the insulating sections. But all was concentric with the void in the middle. I recall seeing no electrical cord, but the darn thing worked. Also, on the outside there were finger-shaped thin sheets of metal, curved in the same configuration to keep the form of where the rectangular shade would be on an actual fluorescent reflector/shade. I got the impression these were reflectors. So - getting back to the canal. Like Lerner said, if you think big enough everything is a huge perpetual motion device at the cosmic scale. Weren't there canals in the pyramids? Do we know what their purpose actually was, other than burial chambers? Energy generators of some type? Weren't they also leafed with gold, which could have served as reflectors? Doesn't it seem that we've unlearned more than we've learned over the ages? Or not.

I'm up for absolutely anything. The hostel thing sounds fine to me too... I would need some new jammies, though.

Okay! So it's apparently the concavity of the building that is doing that, the same as the concavity on a magnifying glass? Can we not find a way to harness the ultra-hotness of the concave-reflected rays and store them for use as energy for cars, heating, etc?

I was thinking more about the magnification of the reflection, the really heat-producing energy that zaps ants in a hot second.

You sure?

Someone said: (I'm afraid to go back in the thread, I always lose my post. I'm really bad at this computer thing) "Could this be restated to say that thoughts become the building blocks for our evolving awareness? They define our beliefs which are only thoughts we have thought repeatedly. At some point the ego is integrated and stops being such a bossy thing. Our new thoughts and desires become the new building blocks for a new spiritually evolved self." I guess this is the yin and yang of it. On one hand, our yang, (thoughts) must be organized and re-emphasized toward the positive; however our yin (call it our inner being, receiving stimulus) must be cleared out so that the clarity is achieved. It is only by the mixture of the two that the alchemy occurs. Know Thyself, as great one said. And yet the outer thoughts, our expression, must be tamed as well. What a setup. 9th said: "You could look at thoughts like radio signals, and your mind like a radio receiver. Deriving your "identity" by imputing "ownership" of your thoughts is misleading. Its also a specific hindrance in certain endeavors." There is another metaphor that would be applicable here. The sun and the moon, which would directly relate to our involvement in the microcosm/macrocosm awareness. The sun (the yang) is the emitter of the light, or thought.. (the thought being emitted from our brain, growing from a whisper of an idea); the rays emit outward. The moon (the yin) is the receiver, capable of reflection of the light but not emitting of its own volition. One could also look at the yang as being thought-work (where we consciously learn concepts), and yin (where we ELIMINATE unneeded blockages for clarity and elimination of ego-warping reception and perception). I still think the inner and outer must be integrated for balance. I don't know if it could be done on thoughts alone, or education, or learning from a master, or any yang-like searching. The yin, the inner, must be included and merged for the integrated ego. Of course we always keep ego - it's necessary for our survival on this plane. It's just a matter of being able to subjugate it, and this is where we need to learn the inner skills, removing the negatives like jealousy, fear, resentment, etc. so that we do not have to react out of ego. When the negatives are removed, we have 360 degrees of choice of action in any situation. If the ego hasn't been tamed, we only have 180 degrees of choice. If someone says "I hate you", if we haven't tamed ego, we must react and say "I hate you too" back to them (too simple I know, but I think the idea is clear enough). If we have taken the time and effort to remove the blockages we have accumulated, then we go back to reacting with 360 degrees of choice. We can choose to either Love or Hate in any situation, because we are not bound with the 'opposite' tendency to reaction. This is true freedom, as I see it.

Actually, I fully agree with this too. The metaphor of the garden is a good one, and the concept of sin can be compared to error thinking. You're right, it isn't error at all. There is no such thing as good and evil, that is only in the mind of the beholder. Like if you ask a soccer mom what Evil is, she could say that Evil is the dope dealer standing on the corner trying to sell dope to her kid. But if you ask the dope dealer what Evil is, he could say that it was the SOB that ripped him off for his product last night. Einstein, he was onto something, lol. It's only error-thinking if we designate it so. I could consider that my early years were full of bad decisions, alcoholic decisions. I could say they were errors, my decision. But were they really? That so-called error-thinking placed my feet on the road to recovery, which led me here to you. Not too many accidents, if you ask me.

It sure seems that way. I can go from introversion for a while into extroversion, depending on my energy cycle. The vortex / narrow part would be time and space all crunched together - the illusion of the expansion is gone. The expansion would be where the manifestations take place, would be my guess. But as time is all here and now, the expansion is where Time is apparent, drawn out. Like the inside of the bubble as opposed to the bubble-producing fluid - like a kid's bottle with a round blowey-thing. The bubble is the fluid, actually - but the inside of the bubble is our breath. Whoa. Our breath, what a metaphor that is. A molecule would take 'time' to get around the inner circumference of the bubble, whereas if it's still in the bottle it's all mooshed together in a colloid and there is no illusion of time.

Wow, on this thread. Just wow. Interesting, Traveler, that you brought the word emotion into the mix. I don't think anybody had to this point. I think that most folks, when they think of emotions, think of 'emotions in the extreme', when it is to the point where we can actually physically feel the thought - as fear or love. But emotions can be looked at with different eyes - that which motivates us to Express. There must be an 'emotion' of the minutest degree to motivate us to do anything. Reflex would be an immediate reaction, hardly involving thinking at all, other than the initial observation - but which is done because of prior experience. No thought involved. But to Express, to move our arm or leg, to gaze out the window, to make even the smallest movement - this seems to imply that there is the tiniest of emotions under it. Emotion is expression - to emote, to act out. Even if so small it's unrecognizable, there was something in us that caused us to move. Emotion at its very beginning, before getting large enough to manifest into something we feel, or something that is recognizable. To my way of seeing, Love is the ultimate, the absolute, the very beginning and the very end. Perhaps this loving Void just got so loving that it just exploded, causing what they call a big bang. I suspect this is why the universe appears to be expanding. Still. Until it goes back into itself, as the DDJ would say, like a bellows. (Yutang) When we start to reflect love in more of our actions and tilt the balance in the direction of love as opposed to hate, this is when the chemicalization occurs, IMO.

Spot on back atcha! The idea of the manifestation is contained within the void, the unexpressed potentiality. The void expresses itself into the energy to manifest; the internal vocalization gives it form. In everything, we should look for the idea behind it to understand it fully. Thoughts, feelings, opinions - these are merely a result of our conditioning; where and when we were born into the world; what we were taught by well-intentioned mis-guiders in our youth, the error of which keeps the snowball rolling downhill, getting larger and larger, and getting more set in over the years, resulting in ego that gets its hackles up when someone doesn't agree with us, or thinks we're 'wrong'. In order to shrink the snowball we must go back to the origin. A journey into self to re-find the top of the mountain. Where and how did the error thinking begin? I suspect we actually did 'choose' our circumstances before birth, depending on what in our soul we needed to learn in this incarnation.

Until we get to the state that we are capable of being in no-thought (no internal dialogue, as Castaneda would say) what Marbles said above seems true. The wolf that wins is the one we feed. Very nicely put, Mr. M. I think the state of no-thought (or the spaces between the thoughts, as I_Stimpy said) is what the OP was talking about, though. This is a state that we can achieve after practicing this meditation for years. When I first started meditating, I used the method of brushing away a thought with a feather when one came through my mind. I did this for about 25 years. I can now immediately get into no-thought and maintain it until something in the physical world needs my immediate attention. It is also the place from which love of all eminates, an agape love that is unconditional. I had to intentionally get into this mindset immediately yesterday when I picked up a dead cat in the street and placed it back against a hill so it could return to the cycle of life via the vultures. This particular road kill was very ugly, but people were having to drive over it as they turned into a church parking lot and it was traumatizing for people. So the no-thought mindset was valuable on a couple levels: to eliminate any fear of what others would think as I did this; and to see matter as just matter - and also to 'love' the decaying guts by not seeing it as ugly or beautiful, good or bad, just matter. This works. It works for anything. 4bsolute said: "If we substract ourselves here in this human form free from thought, which then surely leads to a deeper understanding in all directions and fills us more with the Universal intelligence - does this mean our Free Will is gone with it?" As this pertains to free will, I don't think it means that free will has gone anywhere. To be able to access the place of Oneness and non-differentiation means that all options are open to us; that we don't have to act from our personal configuration at all. It's a place of non-judgment, where things are seen as they are, not how we think they ought to be. But this assumes that we have done our best to rid ourselves of judgment, of error thinking, of personality defects through inner work; this seems to be the other component needed to act from this place of no-thought. If we have underlying anger issues, for example, still within us - or people we have not forgiven, or amends we have not made for things we have done to others in the past - then our judgment and actions will always be colored by the underlying issues. Through a glass darkly. 4bsolute said: "Or What are thoughts actually? What is the real purpose of thoughts? What is the nature of thoughts? And why exactly do we identify with our thoughts these days in such an EXTREME fashion?" This is like asking why the Absolute is doing what the Absolute is doing, IMO. I don't think we can possibly comprehend this. All we can see is the manifestation of the Absolute's thoughts, which are our thoughts. The thoughts come from the Absolute, from within. The purpose of the thoughts is to little by little morph us into its own image, a perfect being. As said above, there is no 'good thought' or 'bad thought' (although the metaphor of feeding the wolf still applies). But when the wolves are transcended, when one realizes that thoughts just Are and there is no good or bad to it - it seems that our thoughts are the very device that the Absolute uses to perfect us, regardless of how many lifetimes it takes. The Absolute seems to want us to morph back into itself in some odd way. The reversion of the Dao. It wants to come from the void into the vehicle of the physical, IMO. 4bsolute said: And what is the best way to USE thoughts after we un-identified ourselves and freed ourselves from it through constant practice, deeper meditations and other non-conceptional methods? I think it's to Love our Brother as Ourself.

As an aside, I woke up this morning with an idea in my mind re: what to do when we're there. Maybe everyone can bring a photocopied page or two from their favorite reading, be it Daoist, Yogi, Buddhist - whatever. a section you feel is particularly pertinent to your practice or growth. Bring enough copies for everybody. This would give us good topics for discussion, should we choose.

Asilomar seems to have many different offerings - some where a room will sleep up to 5 - sharing that would be a breeze. Plus, they've got convention services there - larger rooms - for our own seminar, or just a meeting place. I'm more than willing to help out with anything by sharing a room, or being in a larger room that sleeps more - whatever it takes to make this happen. It would truly be nice to spend as much time around each other as we wanted (or not) - Asilomar might be a great choice. The $150 figure, would assumedly be the total; shared would be $75 a night. Or maybe we can find another 'retreat' place that would fit the bill as well. In a retreat setting, we'd all be in the same place, as opposed to driving back and forth - driving back and forth would be less spontaneous and more planned. In a retreat, we could drop in and out of the group as our energy dictates.

OMG. Asilomar! Do check that out if you haven't done so! I have a query in to them. They have conference rooms and gorgeous rooms all in the same location - it's a retreat location. Senior rate on lowest price room is $152, but if that could be split it would make it quite affordable. The grounds and retreat look beautiful. Multi options on rooms and sleeping arrangements. It's actually a Science of Mind center (my cup of tea!) but apparently they rent to any group.

Bagua - I'm going to google 'Monterey retreat' and see what pops up. Maybe there's some really cool place with bungalows or something that is available for this type of thing. Have you checked around yet on any particular types of accommodations?

I wish all the States people and all the Europe people could get together. Maybe Hahahahahaha can host us from the middle of the Atlantic. On his submarine. Mal, your Aussie troller has one strange mindset.

Can you see Russia from there?

Did Mexico move south while I was napping?

It is. Please don't hesitate to put me to work assisting in the arrangements. Looks like you are doing it remotely too.

I just noticed the choppers in the photo too. What a dramatic moment it must have been for the observers. Wow.

I was wondering about that too. I find it attractive in an eerie shamanic way.

He hasn't been active for a few years - but I did try sending him a PM - offered help from 'this side of the world' if he's caught up in it.

We have one member on the east coast of the Philippines...BLG. I hope they're doing okay after the typhoon. He doesn't look to be in a good place...let's remember him or her in our thoughts. I'll try to contact, but I'm not optimistic about getting through. Hopefully they've moved since the map was done.

Please do, RV! I would so love to see you again! And I can't wait to meet you, Taomeow. Isn't an ehru an animal, and will we need to feed it?