manitou

Aren't we all atheists here? In the sense that it's pretty well acknowledged on this forum that there's nothing "out there" to worship. Besides, who would be interested in a god that needs to be 'worshipped', for god's sake? what kind of a god would that be? An insecure one? Is it pure atheism when one acknowledges that there is a loving undercurrent that seems to bind all this together, and which one can tap into to ensure harmony with nature? Is this not Taoism?

I like to look at it from the inside out. All is Mind. One big huge giant mind. We each are a conduit to that mind. Our limitations are imposed by our habits, our upbringing, and unresolved karma from our life or an ancestor's. Our physical minds can be viewed as a sort of filter that prevents the fullness of pure knowledge as long as it is still in a less-than-open state, or a state of judgmental-ism. To fully open the mind is to work toward no judgment whatsoever, total acceptance. To accept Life as one big Whole, no good, no bad.

How bout a maternalistic Taoist? It's simple. We are One. Most of us don't know it. Look back over your own life. Doesn't it fit together rather like a puzzle, to this point? Can you look back and see why some things that happened to you happened to you? Can you see how it brought you to your path? Can you see that it was exactly what you needed, not necessarily what you wanted? Can you see that free will in an unenlightened one is merely reaction to stimulus? Fear of not having enough is a powerful stimulus to accumulate things in life. Most of us, until learning that we are One and have nothing to worry about Are most concerned about accumulating. We don't have free will Until we truly learn to think. Find out what's worth keeping then blow the rest away.

work the 12 steps of recovery. Don't think about it. Just do it. Even if you think you don't have anything to recover from, it is a powerful template for taking you through yourself and out of your place of confusion and stucked-ness. Replace any mention of 'God' in the steps to a concept you can live with. Replace the word 'alcohol' with 'life' (or in your case, 'thinking'). It's just a question of getting yourself out of the way - new age thinking and old age thinking are not incongruous, they all lead to the same Awareness of Self and who we really are.

Well then maybe our attachment isn't the weed at all, it's the stumbling...

Amen to all that. I have come to see weed usage as an attachment that I must lose. Just as soon as these last two plants flower and produce.......

I found myself wondering about you the other day too. Are you okay? It's all good.

I read these books a long time ago. But every once in a while, a seed that don Juan Mateus planted in my soul bursts up from the ground. It happened today. If you have read the books, do you remember the part somewhere don Juan was trying to get Carlos to 'find his pace?' and Carlos had no idea what he was talking about? Unless I'm mixing this up with another part, didn't Carlos run out into the desert on a moonless night trying all sorts of ridiculous paces until he came up that he thought was 'his'? If I recall, don Juan was in stitches. I don't recall that the book ever came across with any sort of answer for Carlos. I suppose it was left to be inferred that he finally did find it. But I find that this is the magic of the Castaneda series - how often a question will much later be answered (or 'realized') in your heart, and you didn't realize the question was there! Today I discovered my pace, without realizing it. Inadvertently. I was walking my dogs along a creek in the woods today; the wildflowers were just starting to come up, the place was full of bugs and birds and sounds of life everywhere. I watched a water snake make his way across the creek. Spring has finally arrived. I was walking at a stroll, not a pace at all. I could smell every aroma in the air, feel the sun and shade alternately on my face. The bliss was indescribable in The Moment. Is it possible that we all have the same pace, and that it's not a pace at all? It's a stroll of appreciation?

Don't know the answer to the Toltec question - it's a tradition, that's been handed down, as in China, India, etc. One who has walked the path often finds that things in the books start happening to them. It's crazy and magic at the same time. That was our experience some years ago. The knowledge has continued within my husband and I. Please don't feel that you have to make a judgment on Mr.Castaneda's work by speaking to others. If you are fearful about something, then the books are not for you. There is no one in the world that can convince me that there is 'nothing' to Castaneda's works. I've been there, done that, and it is an incredible journey which still continues. Best wishes to you -

Mr. Castaneda was merely the messenger. The transfer of information is between the reader and don Juan Mateus, the nagual. If every master was judged by his subsequent students, I'm afraid we wouldn't have many masters left.

Well, although apparently I took the wrong path, I'm pretty happy with my current state of understanding. Have at it, guys. But whatever you do, don't take the word of someone who has walked that path for years and come to the place of transcension.

My view is that we all have this wonderful spark within us that wants to get to full Awareness. We all have it, even if we're total deadbeats. The total deadbeats may have to recycle through a few times more. Any path that takes you through yourself is going to result in self-awareness, self-realization. This is what the spark wants, for us to recognize it in its true form. I do think that all paths lead up the same mountain - even devil worship, if you want to get ridiculous; because devil worship will ultimately lead to the One as well, once the devil worshipper arrives at the realization that there is not Two, there is One. The devil worshipper would have to ultimately realize Love in the equation, as that's the underlying force. The Castaneda path is the wisdom of the ancient Toltecs; that part of it that has survived to this day. It leads to the One as well. It is Tao in another form, the dynamic at work in a part of the world that didn't have privy to Lao Tzu. But it certainly takes you there. I climbed up the Castaneda path (as well as the path of self-discovery through alcoholism recovery); I ran into a copy of the TTC at a yard sale and loved it - it perfectly meshed with my own understanding. And they all meet at the intersection of Be Here Now and Love your brother as Yourself, in my view. Us old Castaneda hippies are well represented here. Vaina - there would be no reason, with the understanding you possess, to go back and start a new path. Whatever you have done has put you right where you need to be, any more than I would decide to suddenly take up Buddhism and start all over again. Once the path has taken you to inner realization, this is where we all meet and what binds those that possess inner knowledge. It's all good - and I think the 'horses we rode in on' are merely different colors and breeds....but all horses none the less. In my view, the only 'wrong' path is the one that says all other paths are wrong. To answer your original question, yes, the Teachings of don Juan would be a good place to start; all the books have the list of his writings inside the front cover. If you're interested in Castaneda, he's a hoot. What's good too is the further understanding gained on that path from subsequent shamanic writers like Ruiz or Ken Eagle Feather - which merge the original knowledge into more modern day terms and actually extends a little beyond Castaneda, IMO. If you're curious, have fun with it. You'll come to love the characters as your own family. A lady named 222 Buttocks, for example - although she loses a bit of weight and becomes a stone fox after she walks the path and sheds her excess illusion.

I don't want to defend Castaneda in this thread because when you've walked the path of the Toltec wisdom for many years, there is no doubt in your mind that there is incredible wisdom there. And as Marco said, it all involves developing a 360 degree perspective from one's own assemblage point. The illusory thing about Castaneda is the seemingly simplistic stories - but one must stand back to see the connection between the teachings of don Juan to Carlos and see them for the metaphysical truths they contain. I guess it just depends on how your brain is set up. The books worked for me because my brain was left brained and logical before I got involved with Castaneda. His books helped me shake up my linear perspective and be more receptive to things unseen and illogical. He taught Castaneda to Be Present. And to be impeccable. And to track his own behavior - all things that any viable path in the world will ultimately lead to as well. I always find it a little odd that often times don Juan would bring something up, like having Carlos recapitulate his life (similar to 'taking a personal inventory'), and Carlos would be working on his recapitulation for years. But the books never really came back and gave you the inner dynamics of Carlos' personal inventory; I suppose it would have taken a whole other book to record those results. But I suspect that many people miss this part, if they decide to pursue this path. A life recapitulation is not a great deal of fun but in my view absolutely essential to spiritual progress.

LOL - I get Prius mileage on Castaneda. Regardless of what others may think of him or what is written, he surely tapped into something. I will be real hard to convince one who has come up on the Castaneda path that he is all wet. He was just right for my mind at the time. Getting back to the physical and metaphysical pace, it occurs to me that most religious icons, when you think of them, are in a stroll, aren't they? Is Buddha or Jesus ever pictured walking along at a fast clip? The Dalai Lama? The sage? What they all seem to have in common is their gentle and slow nature, that pace at which the Here and Now can be realized and appreciated.

I think you're experiencing what I'm talking about. Castaneda was taught by a master (nagual) of the Toltec tradition - Carlos Castaneda, his student, was a UCLA anthropologist working on a thesis about indigenous societies, or something similar. What he ended up finding instead was enlightenment, although in a different sense than he expected. He spent many years in the company of don Juan Mateus. Carlos did what most of us would do - when asked to find his pace, he ran out into the desert and tried all sorts of paces or gaits on for size, trying to find 'his'. My point with this thread is that our 'gait' or pace, in a more metaphysical sense, (as don Juan Mateus would have intended it) it is perhaps the maximum pace at which one could feel At One With Everything. If we're walking at a hurried pace, our mind is elsewhere, not in the moment. Not in the Now. If we are pacing for exercise, this is goal-oriented as well and staying in the Now would be difficult although probably possible; but I think that a well paced exercise walk would probably lose some of the awareness of what is in front of us Here and Now. The bugs, the bees, the sounds. It would take an adept one to maintain that kind of clip and still experience all the essence that nature has to offer. I think I'm just talking about a plain old amble. An amble where everything is noticed, touched, and talked to. My other half had an interesting conversation with a centipede today. I'll bet that's the pace that don Juan was trying to get out of Carlos after all was said, done, and laughed about.

Woof, Vortex

Darling, it just seems to me that you're putting an awful lot of blame on the kundalini activity.....

The way I experienced it yesterday was the pace at which Here and Now was present - no hurry, just appreciation. It was that sudden awareness, the Here and Now-ness of my stroll, which suddenly struck me and reminded me of the enigma that Carlos Castaneda found when don Juan was challenging him to find his pace. I'm thinking now that don Juan wanted him to find the pace of Oneness - not hurried toward a destination or striving for something. I could be dead wrong as to don Juan's intention, but it was just an odd juxtaposition in my mind when the moment of bliss occurred. It answered a question I must have had percolating in my mind for years but I was unaware of it. But the answer came in its own good time - if indeed that was don Juan's challenge. Maybe the pace he was looking for from Carlos was unhurried and unstriving and un-goal oriented. Eh?

I think one gets to a point where Nature is the teacher. I have gotten so much from TTB's because I find some of the finest minds I've ever encountered here. knowledge on this forum can be triangulated, once the particular structures have been transcended. When one transcends their structure, it doesn't matter that one does not have a teacher any more. One finds all others who have transcended their structure and seem to meet in a kind of junction in the middle...all sorts of transcended structures. It seems to me that the junction is to love your brother as yourself, and to be here Now. The structure is gone. Beyond that, a teacher cannot teach. He merely points at the moon and knows that his student must find the rest for himself and within himself.

This makes a lot of sense to me, particularly if the OP is K-active. The heat thing - it just has a ring of truth in it for me. I didn't have it this bad before becoming K-active. I LOVE jumping into a really cold pool, though. Maybe that's a key, what you said.

Actually, I kind of have the same problem. I don't like showering, although I do it. It's like it takes an act of Congress to get me to step in and get wet, and the way Congress is these days this can be a real problem. Maybe I was a cat in a prior life. In my particular case, it's a remnant of something else. My whole life I felt 'hurried'. Like this moment wasn't good enough, let's hurry and get to the next moment. Something better is coming down the road. That is my default mindset, unless I stay on top of it. This translated to the unwillingness to take the time to shower, as I didn't feel 'important enough' to waste time on myself. After all, I wasn't worth much (in my mind) and the needs of the people around me were much more important. The way my folks raised me had lots to do with that. Shower aversion is also a symptom of depression, which probably explains mine. At least you're not the only one here that's shower-averse. The way I do it now is to talk myself into visiting the 'water angel'. And I do say good morning to her. And I'm always so glad I did.

WillingtoListen - Please consider the fact that you have become accustomed to the attention you receive from posting threads about your unhappiness. Please know that we all love you. As someone who has sponsored people for 25 years in a recovery program, I have seen inner-directed people become outer-directed people in a very short time. An inner-directed person thinks about themselves and their condition constantly. This isn't altogether healthy, unless you follow it up with self-discovery, as has been suggested here beautifully by clarity and jetsun. There is a purpose for your ennui right now. Try becoming more outer-directed, thinking of other people rather than your own misery so much. Is there someone around you that you can do something nice for - even secretly? That's fun - doing something nice for someone else and not let them know it was you that did it. Your self-esteem will increase gradually. Try doing one random act of kindness a day and keep it anonymous. When you repeat that you want your life back, what kind of a life was that? You're 24 - were you a party animal? Was social engagement easy for you? (It never has been for me) I was a party animal from the age of 15 to 35 - yes, it was a hell of a life. But it had to come to an end; my choice was to quit the frivolity (because I wasn't any good at social engagement I was constantly drunk, which made interaction a whole lot easier) or die, one or the other. I quit the frivolity. Please consider the possibility that your reliance on weed has overtaken all your attitudes. Your K-activity may be the cause of some of this, or there may be other more mundane reasons. Please consider addiction. There's another aspect to this too. If you recall, in the TTC the sage is unknowing, bending. He is in a place not too terribly different from where you are right now, albeit for different reasons. The sage walks around with no-judgment in his head, optimally. This could result in a bit of ennui because there are no intense highs and lows any more - we don't have to ride the rollercoaster of illusion. Perhaps what is happening to you has a sage-like purpose and this that you're going through now is part of that, an introduction. In other traditions, there is something called developing a 'heart of stone'. This is actually the same thing I'm talking about. We develop the ability to transcend the illusion of what's going on around us and see it unattached and unemotionally. This doesn't mean we've become cold people, just the opposite. But we become capable of transcending anything at will and seeing it for what it really is. Perhaps this is starting to happen for you, but maybe you just need to be patient. I find my K-activity bothersome, actually. It has given me the ability to triangulate, which is awesome. But the continual electrical buzzing that manifests wherever in my body it wants to is a bit of a pain which takes some getting used to. Just one further thought - I know you don't want to hear this, but if your weed smoking involves a price tag that is too high (and it sounds like it might be) please consider attending a Narcotics Anonymous meeting. It will be an opportunity for you to work on yourself from the inside. You'll meet some incredible people there, you may run into an enlightened one or two. They have literally gone to hell and returned; the good thing about 12 step programs is that it isn't about what you would assume they would be. These are people who are trying to untangle themselves, noodle by noodle, to get at the bottom of their addiction. If done long enough, you get to the bottom of yourself if you are earnest. That is where the truth lies. Please forgive me if this seems unkind. It is not. It is intended with love - and someone who understands self pity.

Thanks Mal - thinking through the money thing has liberated me considerably in some ways.

Yes, darling - I have read your distinction and my teeth are in full agreement.

Does it not seem that gravitation is nothing more than mutual attraction, or "Love" as it pertains to humans? My guess is that the Tao emits Love (gravity) and attracts all to stay on the planet rather than float around in space. At the center of our planet is a ball of fire, a piece of the sun. The sun (and henceforth the ball of sun inside the earth) attract all things, keep them anchored, attract one thing to the other, create love between two people. Agreed that Tao must be experienced through Te. I don't know if a lot of people understand this.