manitou

It is a good link. I particularly like the description of the developed mind, the luminosity, as being both visible and invisible. The visibility is granted to those that have the eyes to see.

Every book I've ever read that changed my life was found at a yard sale. This was one of them. I'm going to continue with the discussion of the precepts in this thread, but I don't think anybody's reading it. I just like the paradoxes it expresses.

Greetings, Friend - The thing that the I Am consciousness must be combined with is being void of ego at the time of the Awareness, whether this be for a particular purpose, such as manipulating energy, etc, or just a great meditation or even...going about the day, if one can stay in the consciousness and state of diminished ego. Your mantra of "I go into resonance with unconditional love" would certainly take one to the very same awareness, I would think? The only difference I see is just the opposite though - that if the I Am is from a place of emasculated ego, perhaps it's not necessary to remove ego to go into resonance with unconditional love? On the other hand, true unconditional love is devoid of ego in a sense, so I suspect that we're talking about the very same thing but just climbing over a different wall to sneak into the same party.

I've been known to wet the bed when I've had that dream. A little too lucid.

I couldn't agree more with CT's earlier post about love and compassion. I think this is true for all paths. The Toltec way, for example - produces many run ins with negative energy, and even interacting with them (puddle monsters, etc). To learn to use love not only as a shield but also as a sword is the answer. Also, to not judge the dark energy as good or bad is helpful; I also agree that actively using Love to subjugate all negativity, in this sense, never fails - and it does remove the fear of death. The 'abyss' of death becomes a platform upon which we can stand, knowing it can go either way, and yet not 'care', because we realize that in-body or out of body (dead) makes no difference. Life (awareness) goes on. Beautifully said, CT.

Best wishes to you, OldGreen....

What a complete analogy to the TTC where it says (paraphrasing) that in order for the Whole to be understood, get far apart from it, unconnected, unemotional; to understand the individual thing from the inside, one must become immersed in it, feeling the emotions.

Before going to precepts 5 through 8, there is a wonderful discussion of our own nature and how to modify it. I've posted this before, but it bears reposting in this context. "The brute instinct are still with us, constantly forcing themselves into our field of thought. Occultists learn to curb and control these lower instincts, subordinating them to the higher mental ideals which unfold into the field of consciousness. Do not be discouraged if you still find that you have much of the animal within your nature - we all have - the only difference is that some of us have learned to control the brute, and to keep him in leash and subordinate and obedient to the higher parts of our nature, while others allow the beast to rule them, and they shiver and turn pale when he shows his teeth, not seeming to realize that a firm demeanor and a calm mind will cause the beast to retreat to his corner and allow himself to be kept behind bars. If you find constant manifestations of the beast within you, struggling to be free and to assert his old power, do not be disturbed. This is no sign of weakness, but is really an indication that your spiritual growth has begun. For whereas you now recognize the brute, and feel ashamed, you formerly did not realize his presence - were not aware of his existence, for you were the brute himself. It is only because you are trying to divorce yourself from him, that you feel ashamed of his presence. You cannot see him until you begin to be "different" from him. Learn to be a tamer of wild beasts, for you have a whole menagerie within you. The lion; the tiger; the hyena; the ape; the pig; the peacock, and all the rest are there, constantly showing forth some of their characteristics. Do not fear them - smile at them when they show themselves - for you are stronger than they, and can bring them to subjection - and their appearance is useful to you in the way of instructing you as to their existence. They are an amusing lot, when you have reached the stage where you are able to practically stand aside and see them perform their tricks, and go through their antics. You then feel strongly that they are not YOU, but something apart from you - something from which you are becoming rapidly divorced. Do not worry about the beasts - for you are the master.

I just had an interesting thought. (I'm kind of out there metaphysically today, so maybe I should apologize in advance)... The Biblical story in Genesis. It starts with a snake. (Actually, a talking snake as per Bill Maher). At some very high cosmic level, perhaps the beginning of the Judaeo-Christain thought-bubble starting as a snake is analogous with the kundalini snake rising? In the biblical analogy, God gave Adam and Eve the choice of towing the line or going about it the hard way - the way of man attaining his own knowledge. As previously said on this thread, the earnest attempt to rid oneself of ego will result in clarity of knowledge - or kundalini rising. It seems to be one and the same. I also sometimes wonder if the Apple logo which appears all over our current culture (including a bite out of it!) doesn't somehow finish a circle of events that started out with the first bite of the apple in Eden? The end of the Christian thought-bubble of sorts? It just seems that all of the mainstream religions have many of the same lessons written into them, different scenarios. Perhaps all religions all over the world are separate thought bubbles supplied at the time of the Ancients; and it remains for us all to see that it is all just the same thing.

It seems really likely to me that the 'I', if we look at it as All being One, reincarnates along family lineages - DNA. This also follows the law of reversion of the Tao, as investigating our own family lineages through DNA and other means will ultimately all revert back to being One anyway. A really good literal metaphor is Ancestry.com. In fact, everyone on there just calls each other 'cousins' anyway, because it seems like there's a branch connection at some point with any family you wish to connect to if you go far enough back. Already some of the Ancestry lines go back to Biblical lineage, if the Bible is to be believed for historical genealogical purposes. If anyone has had the experience of connecting with the golden hum, the golden essence, the lifestream...you will know it when it happens. Once that has been tapped into, even for a moment, you Experience the fact that time is merely a construct of our own limited thinking; it's not capable of seeing all things as Here and Now. But when the golden aura place is entered, suddenly time is not a factor and lack of awareness is not a factor. So why not reincarnation? Wouldn't it make sense to not have to re-invent the wheel in a cosmic sense every time a baby is born? I am so sure of the Oneness (because of my own experiences) and the possibility of removing Time from the equation for clarity of vision - that I'm starting to think that the 90% of the brain that we don't consciously use is a collective brain that we all share. I think the 10% consciousness is merely our personality and delusion of separateness. Somehow, through our collective brain, we are actually the Creator who is projecting this all.

JB - this is an extraordinarily wonderful description

Very best wishes to you Joe! The type of meditation I've always pursued is not the guided type so much as the desire to rid one's mind of thoughts. There are so many techniques! My own personal technique was just watching a tiny spiral with my eyes closed and trying to think of nothing else at the time. When a thought comes in (like an item on a shopping list, for example!) one technique to get rid of it is to gently whisk it away mentally with a lotus flower or feather or something. When one's mind is trained to singularity and you have control over whether you want your inner dialogue turned either off or on, then we're in a position to experience the Oneness that is the great giant mind.

I'm having a little problem with what the newspaper shaped thing is at the top of the tire. Do you think it's something he rigged up for her so her small black shoulder bag didn't get caught in the treads? Or maybe she's carrying a Blackberry. Either way, it was a damn nice thing for him to do. To live in Ohio is to often get stuck behind one of those p-p-p-p-plowers. If it's anything like here, my guess is that they're both on the city council.

A further paragraph is emphasized in the Light On the Path book. I think this is beautiful - "Seek in the heart the source of evil, and expunge it. It lives fruitfully in the heart of the devoted disciple, as well as in the heart of the man of desire. Only the strong can kill it out. The weak must wait for its growth, its fruition, its death. And it is a plant that lives and increases throughout the ages. It flowers when the man has accumulated unto himself innumerable existences. He who will enter upon the path of power must tear this thing out of his heart. And then the heart will bleed, and the whole life of the man seem to be utterly dissolved. This ordeal must be endured; it may come at the first step of the perilous ladder which leads to the path of life; it may not come until the last. But, O disciple, remember that it has to be endured, and fasten the energies of your soul upon the task. Live neither in the present nor the future, but in the eternal. This giant weed cannot flower there; this blot upon existence is wiped out by the very atmosphere of eternal thought." It's difficult for me to think in terms of 'good and evil', as the first sentence says; again, I think this goes more to when the book was written than anything. I think part of living in the eternal is not to make judgments as to good and evil. But my personal 'evil' is selfish thinking, arrogance, pushiness, and negativity in general. This is my natural state of being, or it was. It is through pursuing my own personal demons (and continuing to do so) that the eternal thought can finally be attained.

After such an experience (which culminates after a long time of cultivating) the odd thing is that one who has had that experience can hear it shine through the words of others who have had that experience. There's no doubt in my mind, Steve or CT, that you've both had it. I can tell you that I have too, but also wouldn't expect anyone to believe me. At some point we just stop having 'beliefs' and it turns into Knowing. We all Know the same thing, at the end game. But this sort of validates the pony under the pile. It's there in all of us. Some find it, but earnestness is the key.

Huzzah. Pure and simple.

Wonderful picture. It just had to be taken in Ohio. Not sure about the picnic basket thing though. I think their picnic basket would be a lot larger. Just sayin...

Oh, that's funny. My guess is that looking at the particular drawing, it looks like it was drawn way back a long time ago. My guess is that the author of the study or the artist who drew the drawing (perhaps the same man) perhaps put his self image, a rather professorial type, as the center. I think this is natural, artistically thinking - unless he decided ahead of the game that people would think it was racist, at which point he would probably put himself up in the left corner or something. And yes, it was a man who drew it. A female artist would certainly have placed in there females as well, although do remember that back in the good old days of that drawing, women may not have shared the status that they do today (not that it's in balance yet, but it's closer). I have a bone to pick with the absolute taboo nature of even getting down to racial name-calling. Granted, it's horrible. But our political correctness is getting in the way of pulling off the scab that needs to be pulled off, and to get into some real discussions. We can't eliminate Any type of discrimination as long as we pretend that there is no difference between one person and the other....and it seems like political correctness just gets in the way of what must ultimately happen. We must see our Oneness.

Give Immortal a break! The intent of his post was to update some old ideas about all humanity starting in Africa. Which color man would you like to see in the center? Does it matter at all? All men are One in their essence, and the color of one's skin makes no difference, other than the life experiences he may have. To consider Immortal as a racist is ridiculous, particularly if you've been reading Immortal's posts for a long time. Like it says in the Dao, when rules and standards and laws are enacted, the Dao is lost. Immortal should apologize to no one. If the picture gets anybody's dander up, they've got some work to do on their own racial biases. Underneath the raised dander is love for all.

I think wu-wei is accomplished by both external study and the inward excavation. Yes, it does result in effortless flow of actions, perhaps towards your goal. Assuming your goal aligns with the flow of the Tao.

I remember watching the movie Ghandi some time back. I have a particular memory of one scene. I think it was a reporter or someone who was being hosted by Ghandi around the compound that he lived in, and the reporter said something like "My! You're ambitious!" Ghandi turned to him, smiling, and said "I certainly hope not." KILL out Desire for Life. We've discussed this a lot on this forum lately. He's talking about our attachments, thinking somehow that they are "life" when they are not. When we get down to the Eternal within us there is no clinging to life out of fear. There is just loving it. We realize that consciousness doesn't stop just because the skin bag is gone. As the Toltecs would say, we are the skinwalkers at this point in time. Kill out desire for comfort. In this context, I would guess that the desire for comfort stems from a selfish motive. Comfort too is an attachment. If we walk through life I think M.C. is saying to embrace everything as if it is all One. There is no 'good' or 'bad' happening to anything. It just is. We could say it's a bad thing because someone close to us dies, for example, but does the Dao care about the individual? I don't think so. I think we're all straw dogs, and the rain falls equally on all of us. The love of the Dao, the Void, that treasure that the Sage possesses: it covers all beings, seemingly good or seemingly bad. It becomes our challenge to unpeel the onion and find the Eternal. It's there in all of us. And yet, she is not saying to sit on a couch and contemplate our navels. She's saying that we should thrust ourselves into life with the full enthusiasm of one who desires it out of fear, although we have none. To be happy (as those who live for happiness) this too is found at the Center. Searching for 'happiness' is replaced by a true Joy that remains with us constantly, sometimes overwhelmingly.

And do you think mother earth considers that she's owned by anyone? this is just a construct of our own mind.

I like this answer. Become a kid again. To do this requires going into yourself and trying to remove all the lies others and ourselves have told ourselves. The inner journey, once it's been taken, will lead you to the Eternal coal which lives inside yourself. then we come to the awareness that life and death are just two sides of the same coin. the fear goes..

Here are the first four Precepts in "Light on the Path" that Ramacharaka comments on: 1. Kill out ambition 2. Kill out desire of life. 3. Kill out desire of comfort 4. Work as those work who are ambitious. Respect life as those who desire it. Be happy as those are who live for happiness. Ramacharaka's next paragraph is as follows: "Much of the occult truth is written in the form of paradox - showing both sides of the shield. This is in accordance with nature's plan. All statements of truth are but partial statements - there are two good sides to every argument - any bit of truth is but a half-truth, hunt diligently enough and you will find the opposite half - everything "is and it isn't" - any full statement of truth must of necessity be paradoxical. This because our finite point-of-view enables us to see but one side of a subject at a time. From the point of view of the infinite, all sides are seen at the same time - all points of a blobe being visible to the infinite seer, who is also able to see through the globe as well as around it. "The above mentioned four precepts are illustrations of this law of paradox. They are generally dismissed as non-understandable by the average person who reads them. And yet they are quite reasonable and absolutely true. Let us consider them. "The key to the understanding of these (and all) truths, lies in the ability to distinguish between the "relative" or lower, point of view, and the "absolute" or higher, one. Remember this well, for it will help you to see into many a dark corner - to make easy many a hard saying. Let us apply the test to these four precepts...."

The wonderful thing about all these old dead guys is that is either resonates or it doesn't. If it resonates, use it!