manitou

Expanding on this thought, how about: Awareness.... The observation without the element of Time. In our meditations when we're in that crystal globe of awareness, there is no movement from point A to point B, perhaps it's the quantum physics analogy of particle vs. wave. There is supreme clarity, but it is not quantifiable by any of our standard measurements, it is merely a Knowing, not a measurement. Mind, thoughts.... The mind is linear when conscious but not mindful. It thinks one word after the other. (Actually, after I did learn how to actually 'think', I realized that what I had been doing for my entire life was not thinking at all, but Ruminating.) Maybe this is the wave aspect of the quantum phyics analogy.

Expanding on this thought, how about: Awareness.... The observation without the element of Time. In our meditations when we're in that crystal globe of awareness, there is no movement from point A to point B, perhaps it's the 'particle' in a quantum physics analogy of particle vs. wave. There is supreme clarity, but it is not quantifiable by any of our standard measurements, it is merely a Knowing, not a measurement. Mind, thoughts.... The mind is linear when conscious but not mindful. It thinks one word after the other. Once I learned how to actually "think", I realized that what I had been doing for my entire life was not thinking at all, but Ruminating.) Maybe this is the wave aspect of the quantum phyics analogy.

Do you think we should try?

I watched this movie again a couple years ago and had to laugh at the ending - seeing it with spiritual eyes, you have to realize that the Wiz is none other than us. How disappointed Dorothy and pals must have been when they realized there really wasn't a wizard there - just some mousey little guy sitting on a stool pulling the strings. What a wonderful analogy to the question of god / no god. Or duality, if you'd rather. It's all One. We're the Wiz. We have the ultimate responsibility for doing what we want with our own lives. Yeeeehaw.

Sarcasm and negativity. Always my sword. Go for the jugular before they're able to respond. Before they can get to me. That was the mindset that I grew up with, that I was a cop with, and that I became an alcoholic with. it was absolutely my protective armour throughout my adult life until I had to find a way to stay sober. (12 steps). That was the mindset that I had to change 180 degrees in order to find the comfort zone in life that wasn't connected with that brewing internal dissent, aggression, and ugliness. The thoughts can come back instantly, if I'm not mindful. My internal sarcasm is a low-lying creature that lives under the bridge and if I'm not in a balanced state, can raise its ugly head and be real hurtful. I always suppose that it's gone now, that I've grown beyond it. But I can hear its distant rumblings under the bridge. He's still there. I'm pretty sure my sarcasm developed young because I never seemed to fit in with anything or anybody - I'd get rejected from clubs in high school and I was so damned hurt about the social difficulties that I developed this nasty aggressor that lashed out first. Jeez, my folks even threw a birthday party for me once when I was about 10 and nobody came! Seems like this was constant, I really must've been an odd kid. But here's the odd thing about stuff like this. If I were brought up absolutely perfectly in a perfect family and with a perfect personality, would I have chosen the path of spirit that I chose? No, I suspect not. I wouldn't have needed to - life would have been wonderful just as it was. I'm guessing that pretty much all of us who end up places like this have some skewed backgrounds. But we seem to be the same ones who are concerned with cutting through the maya. Long Live Maladjustment.

Cute second video - are you Batman, Otis?

This one is over the top. We have an old spaniel that is around 22 years old. She was on her way out about 6 months ago - lost control of her bladder, can't see through the cataracts, you get the picture. At the time she was dying, or so we thought - I placed a rubber sheet under her one night because I just 'knew that was the night'. Next morning, she was still there. The next day we happened to bring home two adorable 6 week old puppies. They were crawling all over her - I felt terrible, tried to keep them away - but lo and behold the old girl got up from her deathbed and is raising these two! This was six months ago. You ought to see this old spaniel bounding up and down the basement stairs with these puppies. I think she's working on her second 20! We've always had a sense this dog was on the shamanic side.

It looks really good! I love the idea of mixing the spiritual traditions. Thanks for the post!

My husband and I were driving truck & 5th wheel on the freeway - a huge semi truck cut us off, into our lane, his trailer on a path to demolish our Dodge truck. Joe and I both experienced this: it was as though an invisible hand took both our truck and his trailer and gently manipulated the two so that neither would hit the other. It happened in slow motion, almost as if our truck had been lifted off the road. I've never experienced anything like it. It happened in just a few seconds, but every single detail, every movement of both vehicles, was in real slow motion, we could see each and every movement and the reason for it. We both experienced this simultaneously and talked about it afterwards. Wow. To see two huge chunks of matter being manipulated like that. Wow.

Wonderful video, Otis! Those adults were engaging in some serious mayhem. I've noticed another thing about youthening in our brains as we age into spirituality. The rest of the world, especially the chronic critics, will see you as as naive and unsophisticated. It takes a certain amount of boldness to truly be free, uncritical, open-minded, full of wonder, childlike. Others will regard you as a fool. It's not for sissies.

It's a lucid dream that I'm aware of as I am awakening. I can prolong the state by not opening my eyes or trying to think too much. I am aware of each word and recognize it as being a viable English word, but my mind can't put the words together in a recognizable sentence. They're disjointed. But I'm definitely 'awake', as you would be in a lucid dream. then when I open my eyes, I'm awake.

We seem to be touching on something here that is more elusive than anything we've talked about in a while. What this discussion is triggering in me is the strange and unbelievable awareness that although my body is aging, there is a part of me that is returning to my childhood in my brain. I am getting more child-like in my thoughts and actions - I enjoy things more, I find myself giggling like a little girl sometimes. I find that all the inner dynamic magic anomalies that we try to share here is always an inside job. Our teachers can point to the moon on any of this stuff, but we have to internalize it in our very own way. And the way to internalize all the energy stuff involves simplifying our thoughts and our brains and our intents to the harmless and fluid state of an infant, it seems! I have a general thought-picture of one who walks the Tao and is impeccable about the subtleties and the intent: a person standing in a flowing river, looking downstream, but walking slowly backwards, upstream. Almost like a 'back to the future', or even the reverse of that. There is a definite dichotomy between the aging process of the body and the unfoldment of the brain. It is aging in reverse, when we find the way! I get a sense that the backward aging of the enlightening brain is analogous to the end of a cosmic cycle within the universe. I think that the more of us who are experiencing the enlightenment process, perhaps we are the very moving force that is bringing the cycle to an end (if you buy into any of the Mayan cycle explanation). As we may very well be the big communal Manifester, maybe it stands to reason that with the advent of instant communications worldwide, that the quantities of enlightened thinkers will increase exponentially. We can only hope..

I think many of us have had the instantaneous Aha! (particularly when we realize who we really Are), and that the Aha! continues settling in through the years. This is the process of self-realization, as opposed to attaining external knowledge. We realize things from the inside out, not the outside in; the result of this is Self Awareness. Our external attainment of knowledge aligns with our deepest internal motivations, and at some point our internal motivations are in the alignment of the Sage, if we are sincere in walking this Way one day at a time. It's because of the behavioral and personality modifications Tao makes within us that we gradually enlighten; we enlighten from form and from negative thinking. We enlighten ourselves of confrontation and the need to see anything or anybody other than the way they actually are. We enlighten in our attitudes; we become capable of feeling a love for the most obnoxious folks, and we develop the type of patience that knows that the Tao is actually in charge and will bring about the very best result in time. I think enlightenment also includes trusting that the universe actually knows what it's doing at any given time.

"I'm not so sure I understood that. Could you explain more why it's important to live a full and happy life if you believe that you're not going to remember any of it when you die (since you will be brain-dead)? I mean why would living matter at all if you won't have consciousness to recall any of it?" Maybe we just return to the consciousness stream - and although we have a physical brain perhaps we have a cosmic brain too that will remember. Maybe we don't have to remember, it's not necessary; as long as the soul develops to the intended point there may not be need for memory.

root in the dark place, the rising of the knowledge between yin and yang

I like this. It seems like in so many ways we are heading toward the dark ages (I equate this with religious fundamentalism on the rise, our rape of the planet, and the incredible disparity between wealth and poverty in the world). It's nice to think that there's an actual viable reason for this; to return to harmony with nature and balance.

I have to throw Yutang in here one more time. (I'm going to try to stop doing this in the future!) His spin on this is a dramatically different twist, particularly where he talks about Destiny and Enlightenment. KNOWING THE ETERNAL LAW Attain the utmost in Humility; Hold firm to the basis of Quietude. The myriad things take shape and rise to activity, But I watch them fall back to their repose. Like vegetation that luxuriantly grows But returns to the root (soil) from which is springs. To return to the root is Repose; It is called going back to one's Destiny. Going back to one's Destiny is to find the Eternal Law. To know the Eternal Law is Enlightenment. And not to know the Eternal Law Is to court disaster. He who knows the Eternal Law is tolerant; Being tolerant, he is impartial; Being impartial, he is kingly; Being kingly, he is in accord with Nature; Being in accord with Nature, he is in accord with Tao; Being in accord with Tao, he is eternal, And his whole life is preserved from harm. Then he also has a footnote on the phrase 'Eternal Law' in the 3rd paragraph. This footnote reads 'The "constant," the law of growth and decay, of necessary alternation of opposites, can be interpreted as the "universal law of nature," or the "inner law of man,", the true self, the two being identical in their nature. I love the idea of the necessary alternation of opposites; how often it seems true that things are exactly opposite of how they appear on the surface? This place we all try and describe, this Quietude, this Repose - is the place of impartiality, of tolerance, of non-judgment. When we inhabit this place it is as though we are the witness to the events before us; we are the cameraman, merely recording and watching. Our hearts are not yanked one way or the other. It just all is. It is from this place that agape love or compassion arises as well. Everyone is loved equally. Every thing is loved equally. Not with a burning love like you would feel for a lover, but a warm glow that extends to everything within our individual universe. The place where the synchronicity aligns often because we are so very attuned to the interplay of the elements of nature and man.

It's statements like this that make me realize that we're all going up different paths on the same hill and meeting at the top. This is the Tao.

I can't make out any sequence to the words at all. They're in English, but the words aren't in cohesive sentences; either that, or my ability to see them in sequence is compromised in the dreams; however, I did notice that there were no connective words, like and, as, for, etc. In looking at another website about Cayce it mentions that his viewing of the scrolls was disjointed and seemingly meaningless. This would seem to confirm my phenomena as well, if this is what it is. If it truly is possible that we are periodically given a glimpse into this mysterious place, it would make sense that the words may not be in sequence, because the knowledge may not be in linear sequence. The element of time may have been taken out of it, rendering the words piled up on one another as opposed to laid out in a linear fashion. I'm just guessing here, but it makes sense to me; past, present, and future being an illusion and all....

Veejay - were these during dreams or meditations, and were the words understandable? Were you able to make heads or tails out of what they were saying?

I wasn't going so much for the courage on the dead animal thing as the awareness. Actually, I do have a couple facing death stories as a retired cop, and they're not related to dead animals.

Thanks for the TaoBums reference - interesting thread. Are you able to read the records in a recognizable form?

This was an interesting thought about the AR that I just noticed on a website - "An example of one who many claimed successfully read the akashic records is the late American mystic Edgar Cayce. Cayce did his readings in a sleep state or trance. Cayce's method was described by Dr. Wesley H. Ketchum who for several years used Cayce as an adjunct for his medical practice. "Cayce's subconscious...is in direct communication with all other subconscious minds, and is capable of interpreting through his objective mind and imparting impressions received to other objective minds, gathering in this way all knowledge possessed by endless millions of other subconscious minds." Apparently Cayce was interpreting the collective subconscious mind long before the psychiatrist C.J. Jung postulated his concept of the collective unconscious. A.G.H.

I just had another thought. One thing you could do would be to make your particular work space yours. (If this is just a short-time job this wouldn't make sense, because it would take a while to work up). Make something subtly different about YOUR desk, your area. Maybe a red throw rug and a small muted gold gong? Or water? A place where the Tao would flow. This would become a natural attractant over time, the energy would flow in the direction of love and wisdom. Also, kids would love to hit the gong once in a while - it would just bring a nice different kind of life force to the entire work location. Another thing that would make you more comfortable with the douches is to find something to like about each one of them. If one guy's a chronic smartass, you could admire him for his mental focus and witticisms, try to separate that aspect from the actual remarks. It won't do a thing for them, but it should keep you in a lighter place. The problem of the pack of wolves that jumps at you when you walk into a dealership is just horrible. It's intimidating to the customers, and no one in their right mind actually thinks those smiles are real. As one whose tastes run to the Tao, I can just imagine how much of a fish out of water you are. Your natural inclination would be to not compete, to allow. There's got to be a way that you can be successful without having to join the pack. I certainly wish you well.