manitou

I really like your answer, DeParadise. I would add that our emotions are based on two things: either love or fear. Anger rises out of a deep down fear. That's the challenge, to get under the anger to the original fear, see it for what it is. Laugh at it if necessary, or imprint to the opposite. Do something 'in the physical' to change that fear dynamic. Anger is actually a wonderful measuring stick for the condition of our insides, once a person can sidestep the anger and see it for what it is.

Your thread didn't flop at all. The humor was readily apparent. Nanashi, your video leaves me speechless. Wouldn't it be nice if all our disagreements on this forum could be settled so civilly? I've never been into any of the martial arts or the gentle tai chi movements - not that I haven't seen the need for it, I just haven't given it a priority because my path was from the more shamanic perspective. But it's so obvious from watching those men working with the chi ball, giving it intent, suggesting direction - this is so tremendously shamanic as well! It's as though we are living in a slowly reacting colloid which can indeed be manipulated by intent and slow, gentle movement - movements like this come to me instinctively during ceremony or remote intent healings. I can't wait for Ya Mu's stillness movement class next week to see if I can deepen my understanding and technique.

I know exactly what you mean, Steve. I watched that again not too long ago and my heart was heavy for days. The singing group Walela (Rita Coolidge being one of the singers) sings beautiful N/A chants, gentle music, just awesome. One of their most beautiful songs is 'Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee'. I'll bet you'd really love this CD. Interesting. They start out all their albums with the same sung chant: 'Is Everybody here? Has everybody got a place to hide? Is everybody safe.. And warm inside?'

I hate to think that something I said made you jump to another thread. K, if posts about inner cultivation are making you furious, it's because something is coming up in you that needs to be tended to. Best wishes as you get through it, K. The furiousness is there for a reason. I think the reason you weren't furious at CowTao was because CowTao had a more gentle way of saying pretty much the same thing. CowTao is a shining genius Sage as far as I'm concerned! You may have picked up on my residual arrogance, which may have butted up against any that you have left too. I do apologize for being too direct. I must immerse myself more in CowTao-ism.

If you're saying all is One, and all seeming opposition is One, then I would certainly agree with you. Are you merely saying there is no difference between the Sage and the ox?

Metaphors, I think, are usually the triangulation necessary to make the unsayable visible.

DeP - very interesting video, although I never got the part about how the tapping was actually done. But I do understand the part about putting yourself in another's shoes and trying to 'feel' the disease and the pain. I'll use this method as well, but sometimes with a proxy (if remote) like a teddy bear - something I can actually hold, massage, love....thinking of the person I'm thinking of for the healing purpose. This seems to magically open the heart chakra, and I think that when we manifest from the inside to the outside in Awareness of Who we really Are, the feeling of love in the heart chakra greatly magnifies the Intent and energy we are sending. If the healing is done with the person right there, I often will 'tap' on their back to get the attention of their higher self and talk directly to It. This is done as a surprise to the patient (almost momentarily sending them into a Castaneda-like second attention) but it at this moment that their inner self can be addressed and asked to perform differently, if needed. Cancer cells, for example. I talk to the cells and thank them for all they've done to call the attention of what needs to be adjusted within the patient; then I tell them that their presence is no longer needed. (Then triangulation is needed to try and determine why they are manifesting cells that are eating themselves, and often a reverse imprint is also needed). Perhaps the tapping she's speaking of (EFT or something?) is getting the attention of the higher self as well. Or, as Castaneda would say, the energy body.

1. The reading of the Dao over a period of 20 years became the synthesis and the template for the type of person I want to be. 2. I just Love. And let life come to me.

Inner work taming the ego makes the connection.

There are a few folks here on TTBs that I've mentioned what my husband Joe has been going through with chocolate. He's been getting up in the middle of the night...getting dressed....going to the store and coming back with a pound or so of Hershey's Kisses. He eats them all, makes a total mess of his room, and he wakes up hating himself every single morning. In essence, this was the 'dry drunk' of the alcoholic who's not drinking. He has finally gotten through this, I'm so happy to report. The way he did it was because I had him look for a memory of when he was 8 years old. The reason I chose 8, was because every time he would get angry the last few weeks (during this episode) he would act out an 8 year old! He would throw things around....he would go into childish snits....the number 8 just kept coming to me. He got down to it. Once he allowed himself to get through the anger he spent a full day in his room, and he started crying. And crying. and crying. He realized the anger stemmed from a molestation that happened to him when he was 8 - it was his step-father's drunken brother. Joe has always had this memory, he's told me about it before. But he always talked about it with no emotion at all, almost as though "wasn't everyone brought up that way?" Something inside him separated when that was happening to him, and the Other that showed up had a terribly hard shell that protected him from this memory. It wasn't until the recent breakage of the shell that the two are now merged into the One, in that particular area. He had never grieved this occurrence when he should have, when he was 8. But he felt a tremendous amount of self-pity in his tears the other day for that young child inside. And oh yeah. He no longer goes out at night for chocolate.

I love the idea of self digestion. This is it exactly. If we remain stuck in one place and viewing the world through angry eyes (because of things that happened in our childhood) our lens will always be clouded. We don't have to uncloud our own lens if we don't want to. We don't have to do anything we don't want to. But we can't wish the clouded lens away. If your template is followed earnestly, it would lead to the same uncarved wood that other inner templates take you. It must be done earnestly and honestly. Preconceived attitudes are visible to others, and this comes out in anger, sarcasm, and challenged ego on this forum. Plenty.

I couldn't agree more. But the trick is in the inner cultivation. We go backwards, through the years, through the junk that was drummed into us in school and by our poor parents, who were indeed victims of the same lousy conditioning by their parents (or sometimes exactly the opposite because one generation 'learns' from the previous). And ad infinitum. We get down to who we used to be, before all that started. That is the genuine, the uncarved wood. Going backward in time and inspecting important relationships and junctures. It is after that has been done that Wu-Wei can be realized. And this, of course, needs to be joined by left brain 'education' (or more likely, education and then rejection) of our particular structures (paths) for the purpose of understanding. I think Wu-Wei, from a physical point of view, is a joinder of the left brain and the right brain in balance. The inner journey, as it is nearly all emotion, is a left brain exercise which turns into a right brain phenomena if done to the point where emotions are uncovered and cried out; times when the child was previously stifled from crying out the situation at the time, or grieving sufficiently. and then, after the grieving, must come the forgiveness. In order for the Sage to get to the point of alignment where he can See each and every option (because he's not reacting out of ego) this balance must be achieved. A butterfly landing on a bubble, so delicate. when we get to that point, we can choose to become a Witness to the action; to act by non-action. To just stop. Let the chips fall where they may. Find the pattern of love in the chips on the ground, see the way of the Dao. But then the terribly odd thing is that non-action isn't really non-action at all. Somehow it sets things into motion, it sets things right. Maybe it's because the Sage's consciousness is at a higher level and it lends a template to right result, I don't know. But if we remember Who We Really Are (because we've gotten down to it in the inner work) it is more understandable. We, us humans, are in essence The Creator, as all is one. Perhaps a donkey is a creator too, but we are the animals who can find and experience it directly. I'm not sure of the context in which folks on this thread have talked about spontaneous action. Spontaneous action was what I did before I got sober. It was always totally thoughtless, self-oriented, often drunken. Spontaneous action to a Sage must certainly have Love at the base of all his actions, even if the loving thing to do is sometimes the painful thing to do. The Sagely spontaneity is Loving. That's what makes him the Sage. Or the enlightened one.

Funny you mention this, Leon. I just closed out the Facebook page I never used anyway today, for that very reason. The facial recognition thing. It just looks like identity theft looking for a place to happen, if you ask me....

Stan, I'd really love to hear your thoughts on your own question.

That was a nice find. I'd like to add that I think it's Knowing and Accepting the responsibility that we are indeed the Creative Spirit - that there is nothing separate out there that's going to save our butts - that it's just us. That those of us who are willing to wear this responsibility do so with love and tolerance for all, realizing that we are all at the same time Mother Theresa and Jeffrey Dahmer. That we make no distinctions of good or bad, rich or poor - because that is all relative anyway and of no real consequence. That we find the true being that manifests within us and wear that from moment to moment to the best of our ability, doing so with humility and a tamed ego.

Another way to see that is We Are the Universe. Nondual. The same ember of coal that we have burning in our hearts is that from which we manifest. That ember of coal duplicates the fire in the center of the earth. It emanates out, cools, manifests from the inside out. We follow the earth's pattern. The earth is a chunk of the sun. We can all draw separate conclusions from this.

LOL. I'd start with The Art of War. The transition would just be a flip of the coin.

I just got a mental image of an old master riding an ox. I know that there is an expression within the Dao context of 'riding the ox'. I never knew what it meant, but I think I do at this moment. The ox is a very slow animal. The master is riding the ox (as opposed to say, a horse) because he is aligning himself with the natural slow passage of time; in essence, Wu-wei. The alignment of our insides with our outsides and with the natural harmony of the dynamics of heaven and earth. It is from this position of riding the ox that we can have perfect vision and be granted the 3 treasures: Love. Never too much. Never be the first in the world. Wu-Wei is the internal acceptance of the fact that we manifest from the inside to the outside, that we are in fact the creator. All of us communally. Some know it, some don't. But we're all it, we're all the One. Those who know it consciously must use their knowledge of this without ego, otherwise you get the Hitlers of the world. This is why the inner work is crucial and ego must be tamed to ride the ox. If ego overrides the inner knowledge the performance of wu-wei will be used for unknowledgeable purposes.

Not to get all Christian on everyone, but I think this must be what the Nazarene meant when he said "those who have eyes...See! Those who have ears...Hear!", or something to that effect. As we used to say when we were children and someone called us a name, "It takes one to know one. Nah na nah, na nah, nah!" The nazarene also said something about returning to the mind of a child....you never hear this from the pulpit, I don't think. But how very much we knew instinctively as children, such as the above silly little comeback mentioned above. And yet....how very true and poignant we find this to be, when we come full circle and approach enlightenment. It takes one to know one. As a child. The child before he became jaded and fearful and cynical and aggressive and contorted to suit the preconceptions of their parents.

Thank you for the kind words, CowTao. But really, the stark revelations are merely a mark of a person who's been in recovery for lots of years. If you were to attend a recovery meeting for some reason, you would hear transparency all over the place. It's the laughter and commonality of our tears and eventual inner healing that reconstructs our shattered lives. I am so very grateful at this point to be an alcoholic, because it set my feet on the path I now walk - I just had no idea when I first walked into the room, bloated, red-faced and sick 30 years ago, that this would be the result . What an incredible surprise. 'It', whatever you want to call it, Knows what It's doing. I guess we must all just play the hand we're dealt in life to the best of our ability. The template for the inner journey is there and waiting for all of us. It's our choice. We can find self-realization or not.

The only thing I'd add here is that your amend to Outi was one of the easier ones because she appreciated the apologies. This is a good starting place. Any fears we may have have come from a very long time ago, though. These old dynamics are the snowballs that have been getting bigger as they roll down the hill; they can be huge distortions, and yet appear 'normal' to us, because we lived through it and made it just fine....didn't everybody? And these are the ones that are the hardest to make because they hurt the most, and usually involves someone who has treated us unfairly. But making amends to these people (perhaps for our retaliation?) are the very ones that do the most good. This is why the recovery process involves going back through one's life - don Juan Mateus had Carlos do the same, if you recall from the Casteneda series. He had him 'recapitulate his life' and find those dynamic junctions that needed attention, amend, or reconstruction in some way. It would be wonderful if it were enough to just see our negative behavior pattern and then intellectually make the change. But it doesn't seem to work that way. The peacock (pride) will always raise its head if it isn't tamed. So will the pig. Or the snake. Or the monkey. Taming it involves more than making an intellectual decision to change. Of course this is part of it, but to really bring it into the physical realm, some physical steps must be introduced. At least this has been my experience over a relatively long period of time.

I think this is a wonderful statement. There's an equivalency here to Karma Yoga, as opposed to Bhakti (?) Yoga or Gnani Yoga. This is the Yoga of living life. To infuse every moment with enlightenment; not because you're out there hollering the answers (because everyone else thinks they have the answers too and therefore a head-butting contest would ensue) but you essentially become the model of the Tao -or... the Sage in action. Probably more specifically non-action. I think the word 'enlightenment' alone connotates being enlightened of something. My thinking is that we are 'enlightened' of any religious structure because we have found the essence at our own foundation, once we've done the inner cultivation. I think we're enlightened of having to react through the lens of ego, the Great Distorter, because we've taken the steps to tame and subjugate that when needed. Or the word 'enlightened' can also connotate 'infused with light'. The infusion of light would equate to the infusion of love for life and all things sentient. Personally, I think we're all just a projector for 'It', and when we keep the lens clean, the movie comes out very clearly.

Steve, your brain must have been smmmokin'!! after all that pondering. At this point in my life, my guess would be that enlightenment is the combination of knowing Who You Truly Are (as accomplished by self-realization), combined with loss of structure, combined with trusting the Universe that things are truly going of their own accord, combined with Love for the Oneness of everything and everybody.

This is probably true of most. But there are exceptions - specifically those who have to go the whole 12 step route to save our own lives. The personal inventory (the acceptance of our human failings) is only the first part. Then we have to tell those human failings to another (a nice ego smasher); and those who actually go further than this get to the amends step. Which is a mo-fo, if you'll pardon my French. Many who just make it to step 4 or 5 can't get beyond that; it is so very painful to make the kind of amends that I did to my dad. But that was the one that went the deepest and was contorting me the most over the years. I was brought up to be the first son, and I was a little girl. The trick is to do it not expecting anything but abuse in return. But having the courage to do it anyway, because the harder it is to do, the more value it has to you, not them. In the case of the amends to my dad, as someone mentioned, it may have done nothing at all for him. (actually, though, I'm pretty sure it did). But it did everything for me. It took an act of courage at some psychic level. In fact, it was probably the biggest clarity distorter of all; the pushed-down, tightly wound rage I think I felt for him just under the skin all my life. And it certainly reflected in the men I chose in my life; they all had a quality that left me feeling like the other shoe was about to drop and I was about to get crunched. That was the comfort level that I had established for myself. So, considering something like an amend, as painful as it will be, may be just the thing that we need. If we feel any residual anger or loathing for those in our past, it does nothing but warp our current clarity. The psychic lens is not a clean one. As to the question about my mom, Steve - I never made one to her because she was such a non-factor in my life. Other than shuffling me over to dad. But what I do now is call her daily (she's in a retirement home) and make sure she laughs at least once a day. I don't particularly like the woman - if she wasn't my mother I wouldnt' have a thing to do with her - but I guess the daily call is a bit of an 'amend' there as well. Sometimes an amend can just be changed behavior. I just think the amend process is pretty powerful stuff.