manitou

Marbles, what is your opinion actually? That we truly are separate and there is no cohesion or order in anything? That this is all one big serendipitous accident? Please state your opinion in your own words. A squirrel can communicate with another squirrel because they have the same brain construct. A spider with a spider, a dog with a dog. A human with a human. We Are all the same brain. We manifest our reality, whether we know it or not. Yes, it does all come down to the error of separateness-thinking. We can choose the Me Against the World approach and live safely in a chair watching movies and eating popcorn all day - or we can engage life and live it without fear, realizing that we are actually The Manifester and there is nothing to fear. Does this fly in the face of what you would call common sense? Fear is error-thinking. Do you think fear is primal, or is it something learned? My guess is that it's the latter. Returning to our natural state is the goal of the Sage, the Buddha, the Enlightened One, the Christ Consciousness. There are two men lazing in the ocean, on rafts. One is lazing because he does not know what lurks beneath the surface, he is ignorant. The other is lazing because he knows what is there and realizes that those things are illusion, a creation of our communal manifesting mind. He has fretted over the creatures previously but now knows that they are illusory and his mindful Oneness with them protects him. Which is the sage? Or, maybe we should define Sage.

I wouldn't think that arachnophobic is something that someone wants to Be. Is it wise to remain in a state of arachnophobia? I would think the Sage would remove the fear before finding his Sageness. All reality is relative. It is not substantial. It is perception. This we can have control over. I do not think the Sage was born the Sage.

I think that once the fear of dying is transcended, it takes but a moment to step into that realization on the battlefield. True, there is momentary fear, even within a Sage or an Enlightened One - but the next moment he realizes his mistake and transcends it; he is now capable of anything. I always like to go back to the straw dog metaphor in the DDJ. Does the Dao really care who lives or dies? No, IMO. We're all part of the one - as in we're all tentacles on the same octopus, regardless of where or when in the world we have our existence. It is the connection with that understanding that truly makes us fearless.

My feeling is that you are quite right here. The inner journey which leads to wisdom (Sageness) makes us aware that there is no separation between this and that, here or there, now or later. To feel fear is nothing more than holding in our minds the illusion of separateness. The Sage would have evolved in his thinking beyond this and found the oneness. I feel like he is a metaphysical dweller who must dwell on the physical plane. When the inner awareness of Oneness with All makes its appearance in our psyches, when the Awareness hits us, there is nothing left but a feeling of love. Faith is irrational, as is fear - when looked at in this context. Faith in what? Some religious entity 'out there?' Fear of what? Something separate from you? I submit there's no such thing. Matter is matter, regardless of how it is animated or fixated. Any viable Master will lead one into ones' self where the answers lie.

There is a couplet in the DDJ (Yutang) which reads something like: "That which is feared is truly to be feared, But distant yet is the dawning of awareness"

How is the wisdom acquired?

As an aside, I think this is one of the most important things I've ever seen on this forum. It's all in learning how to think and not to parrot the ideas of others, regardless of whether they have Rinpoche after their name or not.

My feeling is that the Sage wouldn't be a Sage if he hadn't dealt with his chronic fear of spiders. A muscle memory from long ago would indicate a chrystalized fear. The true Sage would probably feel at One with the spiders as well as everything else? Just guessing here.

I think Dagon is spot on. Would the arachnaphobe be a Sage? I think there is a false premise to the question from the onset.

The title of the book, Buddahood without Meditation, I assume is referring to the vajra aspect of transcending the physical aspect of understanding....is he referring to the phenomena where the enlightenment is instantaneous and not as a partial result of the clearing-the-mind skills obtained by years of meditation? Is this what you got from it? Referring to pg. xxiii of the Introduction, this would seem to be the case. He writes: The most special approach, the most secret of secret paths, is the swift path of utter lucidity, the vajra pinnacle. Untainted by considerations of good or bad, timeless awareness is the naked union of awareness and emptiness, atemporal in its original purity. This is the inherently and fundamentally unconditioned natue of mind itself, the enlightened intent of kuntuzangzo, free of elaboration. This secret key point of view became completely evident to Dudjom Lingpa. I'm not greatly attuned to the Buddhist structure, but certainly this corresponds with being in step with the Tao; untainted by considerations of good or bad, timeless. This writing seems to be the result of a great experience the author had with a vision, a dream, an encounter with immortals. When people speak of the "short path" on the forums, do you think this is the phenomena they speak of? An instantaneous awareness of utter lucidity that remains with us? I look forward to hearing your thoughts, Steve...

\Funny that you say that. When I first got sober 31 years ago, I had to come up with a 'power greater than myself'. In my arrogance, the only power greater than myself was the power of gravity. and that's what I used. I still do, as it is part of the Whole.

I am truly Laughing Out Loud. Love you, Mark Foote! Or maybe it just has something to do with Love being the basis for everything and just bursting at the seams to manifest. Less scientific than your take, but it fits into my understanding pretty well. Actually, I was just kidding about the Company thing. That would be pretty dual, no? As you think about it, when you feel Love are you not bursting at the seams? Maybe that's what it all boils down to. And when we get to this point, all things fall into alignment - when you feel unconditional love for all.

I love the pure woven light concept. That's all we are. And yes, I think it is the vehicle to realize our own god-ness. This could be why incarnations apparently stop when the god-ness is realized; the only remaining question is the purpose as to why Spirit needed to self-realize through the physical. Company?

Also, 3bob, I think the very thing that best illustrates matter/no matter is the fact that matter has been identified as both a particle and a wave. A particle takes up space, a wave can be measured from point A to point B. I wish I were more scientifically schooled so I could better explain my feeling about this - it is just an intuition. I actually think our 'natural state' is downright invisible, as demonstrated by those adepts who can actually disappear. Perhaps in some way it is Error Thinking that got us into this material state.

The way I see it, We Are It and we are the projectors of the maya. We are just the current thinkers in the process of evolution and we create our own universe. We are the artist. I agree with you that there is no disconnect between the seen and the unseen, but if we're capable of transcending the physical self and emitting not only the I Am consciousness, but to love every brother as ourselves (ourselves being the hardest one of all to love!) we can change our physical circumstances. If you want to attract a good woman to your life, you must become that which you want to attract. This is where the life recapitulation is important and the clearing-out process is necessary - to remove as many vestiges of unnecessary ego as we can. If we get caught up in anger (or even bliss) we are still caught up in the illusion. The Native Americans who follow their spiritual path of their heritage would call this 'developing a heart of stone'. This is not to infer that they develop a 'I don't give a hang' about life. To the contrary, it's to transcend all the emotions and see things as the cardboard cutout that it is. It says this in the DDJ as well. Depending on the translator, the words will be different - but it says that there are two ways of seeing things - to immerse one's self into the emotion and understand the Seen, or to transcend emotion so that the unseen intent can be seen. It's like getting out of the trees to see the forest. We have the choice every moment of our lives. But in order to transcend the Seen, this must be done from a point of ego removal, a point of Oneness with everything. If we allow our excess ego to color our vision with our own personal opinions, we're not seeing clearly, we're seeing through a crooked and contorted path, depending on how much ego and opinion is in the way. I do see it as two sides of the same coin. And I know that when I do a triangulation of one who comes to me for such purpose, all I have to do is to look at their current manifestations (their relationships, their living conditions, etc) to See where the correction needs to be made; this is done by rising above their manifestations, seeing where they currently are. I utilize a 'heart of stone' as mentioned above and relate their immediate problem (as they perceive it) to their inner condition (as I can see it through their manifestations.) Another way to See, if you're an artist, is to do a drawing of the person, and squiggle all sorts of nonsensical shapes around their portrait. Then, mindlessly 'color' all of the mindless shapes, to color it in different colors (I use magic markers). Sometimes I'm led to include stripes in a particular shape, or a series of dots, etc. I just let the coloration and style 'come' to me. But to continually turn the page around so that I don't subconsciously 'manipulate' anything in the drawing. The answers come from out of the ethers. I recently did one for a very heavy woman and we immediately found out what the problem is. She's eating at that which is eating at her. A nasty looking entity was gnawing at her leg, but the nasty entity also had a rooster-come sort of thing on its head. This I interpreted as a wake-up call for her. Another shape which emerged was a person-shaped entity who had a block for a head-shape; contained within that head shape in the middle was a red square, but it was a maze-shape which encompassed the red square that indicated to me her blockage. I asked her, when we were trying to figure out the drawing, if there was anything that was 'gnawing' at her. Well, there was. Her sister slept with her husband a few years back, and the marriage was terminated immediately. The woman I was doing the reading for has never had the courage to confront her sister about this, because she spends much time with her sister's sons and loves them very much. I'm guessing that Chris (the woman I was reading for) has a component of 'get-backness' by trying to pull the affections of the boys toward her and away from her sister, but that may not be the case, as I don't know the woman that well. But the blockage is that Chris has never had the courage to confront the situation. When she starts to feel the anger rise after her sis says something that reminds Chris of her sister's betrayal of her, she'll make an excuse and leave her sister's house and go home, fuming. My suggestion to Chris was to put out her intent to heal the situation. To utilize wu-wei, although she doesn't understand anything of the Tao. I told her that the next time she feels the ire rise, take a deep breath, let the anger pass, and then go up to her sister, hold her hands and look her in the eyes. Tell her in the most loving way she possibly can how she feels about what happened some years back, but don't do it in an accusatory fashion; rather, do it with as much love as she can muster. But the wu-wei trick is to let the situation and the right moment evolve into her. Don't do anything prematurely, as her own manipulations will not be allowing the Tao to handle it. A bit off track, I admit, for this discussion. But it's a strange way of connecting the Seen with the Unseen. Perhaps I'm in the 'no-man's land' you mentioned, but I can get out of it at the drop of a hat. Strange thing, our subconscious. It certainly knows things that we don't. Sorry this was so long!

In Castaneda-esque, it sounds like your assemblage point is no longer fixed at all and everything is in the moment. You are a very free man, Mark Foote.

I can't even guess on that one. I just don't have the education. All I can speak of is my own universe, which started at the moment of conception. My maya will discontinue in the death process. My guess is our particular illusion started with the big bang and all of the suns are part and parcel of each other. Maybe it started with something like 'let there be light?' Maybe it will end when it's all sucked into a black hole. Maybe it'll start up again on the other side of the black hole, a different dimension. Like a bellows. 3Bob, thank you for your kind words. Also, a bit earlier you said something about attaining true freedom. My idea of true freedom is the freedom to embrace death without fear. All other fears are an extension of that fear. Once we can do that and realize that our consciousness has always been and will always be, we're free to live in the flow of love.

I wanted to respond to something in your quote, but I see that the quote didn't get pulled into this post. When the quote says "the old self is your own self", perhaps he or she was looking at it from the perspective that time is an illusion. We ARE our old self, I agree - because Time is an illusion. It's all Here and Now. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I seem to recall that those who have measured dreaming impulses in the brain will say that the impulses appear to last a very short time. However, to the dreamer, it seems to go on for hours, even like it's all night. Is that not proof that our linear brains are stuck in this linear time span, and yet our Original Self appears in our dreams? Or the fact that we can look up into the nighttime sky and see the light from stars that have imploded eons ago? I often think of the I Am as the 'Eye Am'. I also think the eye on the top of the pyramid on a US dollar bill is not the 'All Seeing Eye' at all - I think it is the 'Eye Am' as understood by 33rd degree Freemasonry (in the form of cHiram Abiff, the Awareness of the I Am within us). Our founders were largely Freemasons and I think I recall that Washington was a 33rd degree? I could be wrong there. It floats above the pyramid, the pyramid being the illusion of 'realness'. This country was founded with good intent, but the larger populous were not men of enlightenment or near-enlightenment, so things are way out of whack now. But we must know that all is happening as the Tao is creating it. The trick is not to keep God, Tao, Brahma at arm distance and 'worship' it. Or even to celebrate Jesus' birthday. He was a man, just like us. He attained his own illumination, perhaps through the Essene tradition? How close do we want to get? The choice is ours. To look into the eyes of the bible thumpers who come up to my porch with regularity to save my soul - I have to remember that They Are That as well. That breeds tolerance and even Love within me, once I remember that. Sometimes it takes a minute or two, because my first visceral reaction is adverse. But when I allow love and tolerance to reappear, I can gently sit down on the porch for a while and engage them in conversation. They usually go away shaking their heads. CT, I absolutely fell in love with Israel (can't remember his last name, but I'm pretty sure it has the letters K, U, P, O, and A in it, in a repetitive fashion. Perhaps an N in there as well, lol. His Over The Rainbow is a fabulous song, the first time I heard it was driving up to the Iao Needle in Maui. My heart melted, hearing his song and watching the beautiful lushness around me. It is an implant in my heart that I'll never forget, that glorious moment. As an aside, CT, I'll bet you have a fabulous art collection. Just guessing.

What a wonderful discussion with wonderful people. Perhaps my words were too harsh in saying 'the Dao doesn't care'. I was referring mainly to the straw dog allusion contained within, wherein the Dao shows no preference for one over another. The choice is ours whether to embrace it or not. If we choose not to embrace it, our lives are out of sync. But to find the love within us for everything on the planet, we embrace the Dao, we go with the flow, in each and every situation we find ourselves in. Wu-wei becomes possible, to do without doing because everything is in perfect order if the movement is left to the Dao. Even the most despicable person has the black spots of cosmic Awareness in his eyes, and as such, is the Dao as well. He is just playing a despicable part, that's all - and that is the intention of the Dao as well. Perhaps he too will find more harmony in a few incarnations. I think it goes back to developing the I Am consciousness, to KNOW WHO WE REALLY ARE! And to know who our 'enemy' (if we think of him as our enemy we are unrealized) is too - he too is the god consciousness, the Dao. Sometimes I think it all boils down to that singer that came out with a song a few years back, can't remember his name: "Don't Worry. Be Happy." This is perhaps the most profound song in all of history! All is in order, although it appears chaotic at this time. We are all the I Am, the god consciousness. As I said earlier, our Awareness has always been, Is Now, and Always will be. Eternity doesn't start the day we die. Our awareness has been around forever. We are a very small speck of the grand evolution, and yet if we cleanse our inner selves and get into sync with the Dao we emit pure love and there is absolutely nothing to fear. Especially not death. The essence of the Dao is our golden radiant presence, but we are puppets of the Dao. Just skinwalkers, but it is our choice to embrace it closely and merge our souls with the essence. And to live it to the best of our daily awareness, to stay in consciousness at every moment. That would be our challenge. I am capable of staying in Awareness much of the time, but sometimes maya overcomes me. But not for long. I can feel instantly when I fall out of sync and I try to find a way to love even the most horrific of circumstances and see that it's all in the plan too. Things will work out just fine, despite appearances to the contrary.

My thoughts exactly, rene. I couldn't have said it better. The rain falls equally upon all. When we look into the dark spots in the eyes of another, whether a person, animal, or insect - we are seeing god or the tao or however you want to put it. There is no favoritism. So often things are exactly opposite of what they seem. A segment of our population idolizes those with money and fame, and yet the richest of all are those that have love in their hearts and emit that love. It doesn't matter when we live or die because our consciousness has always been, is now, and will always be. The ourouborus. The tao is impersonal and this linear time-space line is illusion. This is why the greatest freedom is losing the fear of death - because we know that awareness continues on past this little arroyo of illusion we're temporarily in. Once the fear of death is lost, all fear is lost.

I couldn't agree more. Our source is the sun. We are stardust. We have a piece of the sun at the core of our planet. We develop the flame within us when it appears. This tells me we manifest from the inside to the outside - we are One and we are the mind of the ineffable but it is found by the process of elimination of the blockages within us. I'll go so far as to say I think we actually manifest the weather too. I think the current crazy weather (stemming from global warming and the melting of the polar ice caps), changing the world weather by the very cold melting of fresh water (not salt water) being introduced into the system and maintaining its own current separate from the salt water currents already in existence; consequently all the currents are affected. If one believes that the upshot in the earth's temperature is man-made, it is Greed that continues the trend. My feeling is that the incredible political unrest, the bipolarity within governmental systems, and the need for the wealthy oil barons to have even more than they have (disregarding the rest of us) is what is generating this current condition. But I'm not pessimistic about this. I realize that only the negative conditions make the news. For every action there is an equal and opposing reaction - only the equivalent reaction doesn't make the news. There are those of us, many on sites like TTB's and others, who sit at the top of the cloud, and we will be part of the solution in the long run. But currently the obvious thing is the dark underside of the cloud, not the beautiful loving top of it. We, the earth, the atmosphere, the melting of the ice caps are all One. The great giant mind knows what it's doing - but as it says in the TTC, things must be inflated before they are deflated. I think all the unrest in the world is the 'meek inheriting the earth' . The 'meek' in this sense does not mean those who are timid; I think meek in this sense is the common man, not the high riders.

Boy, isn't that the truth? When I traveled to China (especially in the rural towns) those night markets are scary.

I would go even further than to include all sentient beings. the earth, for example. Is it not an act of love to pick up a piece of trash on the street and walk over to the dumpster, to honor the Mother? If one sees the All as One, this includes all matter, realizing that all of this is one big play that goes on with or without our consent. I've always wondered at the emphasis that some sects place on the importance of relieving suffering. Surely it is important to relieve suffering of every living thing, whether it be a bird with a broken wing, or to give money to a wino that is panhandling. He too needs to have his 'suffering' removed, even if that means he's going down the street to buy a bottle of wine. But I still give the money. My hope is that that bottle of wine will bring him one bottle closer to his bottom, his turnaround point. Or he may die, in which case his suffering will be removed as well. After all, the Tao considers us all as straw dogs, and I don't think it cares one way or the other who dies when or where. It seems that sometimes there is an overemphasis on relieving one's own suffering. That seems a little on the selfish side to me. But then again.....I'm not a Buddhist and I may be looking at this all wrong. When we find the place where all paths meet, there is nothing left but love. The only thing at that point that gets in the way is ego. I don't know if we can ever fully transcend that. I would guess the Dalai Lama has his good days and bad days too. He too has to have enough ego to stay out of oncoming traffic (assuming he's doing the driving) and my guess is that he too must periodically struggle with this as we do.

Or, we could look at it as a gauge for our own development. what a challenge it is, and to apply true love to the situation is the goal. When we can transcend ego, we can feel compassion for the one doing the challenging. Alwayson - I'm not a Buddhist, don't know much about it really, other than what I've picked up here on the forum in the past years. I am merely a Seer that triangulates from all paths and the inner self. Could you please explain to me your avatar, and why it has a red circle with a slash in front of a Buddhist adept? Is this to render your opinion about a path that does not coincide with your thinking?

I think the reason we're getting stuck in this circle is because it's all maya. To describe the ineffable cannot be done. There aren't a lot of different 'gods' at the end of everyone's path floating around out there. There is only one, and its name is Awareness. I also think that the ineffable cannot be spoken of. But it can be lived and shine through our words and actions. The one who places himself atop all others needs a considerable amount of inner work on ego.