manitou

As I've got a copy of Lin Yutang's translation on my desk, I always grab it too. I noticed something interesting. In Wu's translation, one of the lines is: 'Rare goods tempt men to do wrong.' English/Feng, it was "Precious things lead one astray". In both of the above cases, the dynamic was acting from the inside out, to the outer world. Henrick's translation, it was "Goods that are hard to obtain pose an obstacle to one's travels" This can be seen either way: it is time-consuming to obtain goods that are hard to obtain and therefore does present a time obstacle to one's outer dimension, or 'travels.' It seems that it can be seen in the opposite sense too. In the realm of inner travels, that thing that we do because it leads to our center, the obstacle can be looked at differently. If something is hard to obtain, it is 'valuable'. The more we value that hard to obtain thing, the more difficult it is to get to the center of our selves. Lin Yutang seems to tend more toward the inner journey. His wordage is 'Rare, valuable goods keep their owners awake at night.' It can't be interpreted to include the journey from the inner to the outer. It's all inner and reflects back on the manifester of the valuable goods, not his travels. It seems like such a small thing, but in reality it seems to indicate a dichotomy of direction of the various translations on the very same point.

Twinner - I think your steps are perfect for someone who has already evolved from the Jesus Loves Me This I Know mindset. If someone who is more sophisticated in their spiritual concepts still has an alcohol problem, these are the steps for them!

You could also do an imprint to the 'opposite.' If you have an old and deep memory that is somehow associated with lustful behavior, you could do a ceremony which imprints the opposite action than what the memory is. If, say, your first lustful memory is in the back seat of a Chevy in 1962 (if this memory keeps coming up, it's probably the one you're seeking) you could intentionally imprint behavior that is opposite of having sex in the back seat of a Chevy. That would be a hard one to come up with, but maybe something like re-enacting taking her to a movie instead, I don't know...it's not really jumping out at me. As to the lust in general - I would start with the mind there too. Again, ceremonializing it, finding something to signify 'not being lustful'....what could that be? Maybe taking the actions of dressing a woman as opposed to undressing her? But if you do it, do it with at least one other there; have a beginning and an end to the ceremony; maybe smudge the area first with sweetgrass, sage, or pine needles. Have music or someone beating a drum or a rattle just for the mental transport aspect, and to communicate to your soul that there's a beginning and an end to it. the most powerful way to imprint to the opposite would be to find the very thing or memory that's most specific to you. This gets into the soul at a very deep level, if the right combination can be found, and it Bends the Light and changes the dynamic. It works best if the most childlike simplicity is achieved.

The only problem with that is that if we see each other as One, intentional preferential treatment not only cuts some off, but cuts oneself off as well.

This excerpt from The Wheel of Time, written by Castaneda, is where he is commenting on another book he wrote, Tales of Power. His description of the loneliness and the impeccable intent required to be a warrior reminds me a lot of some of our recent threads here. Thought you might enjoy it.... "Tales of Power" is the mark of my ultimate downfall. At the time that the events narrated in that book took place, I suffered a profound emotional upheaval, a warrior's breakdown. Don Juan Matus left this world, and left his four apprentices in it. Each of those apprentices was approached personally by don Juan, and assigned a specific task. I considered the task given to me to be a placebo that had no significance whatsoever in comparison to the loss. (The task given to him was to write another book) Not to see don Juan anymore could not be soothed by pseudo-tasks. My first plea with don Juan was, naturally, to tell him that I wanted to go with him. "You are not ready yet", he said. "Let's be realistic." "But I could make myself ready in the blink of an eye," I assured him. "I don't doubt that. You'll be ready, but not for me. I demand perfect efficiency. I demand an impeccable Intent, an impeccable discipline. You don't have that yet. You will, you're coming to it, but you're not there yet." "You have the power to take me, don Juan. Raw and imperfect." "I suppose I do, but I won't, because it would be a shameful waste for you. You stand to lose everything, take my word. Don't insist. Insisting is not in the realm of warriors." That statement was sufficient to stop me. Internally, however, I yearned to go with him, to venture beyond the boundaries of everything that I knew as normal and real. When the moment came in which don Juan actually left the world, he turned into some colored, vaporous luminosity. He was pure energy, flowing freely in the universe. My sensation of loss was so immense at that moment that I wanted to die. I disregarded everything don Juan had said, and without any hesitation, I proceeded to throw myself off a precipice. I reasoned that if I did that, in death, don Juan would have been obliged to take me with him, and save whatever bit of awareness was left in me. But for reasons that are inexplicable, whether I view it from the premises of my normal cognition, or from the cognition of the shamans' world, I didn't die. I was left alone in the world of everyday life, while my three cohorts were scattered all over the world. I was unknown to myself, something which made my loneliness more poignant than ever. I saw myself as an agent provocateur, a spy of sorts, that don Juan had left behind for some obscure reasons. The quotations drawn from the corpus of Tales of Power show the unknown quality of the world, not the world of shamans, but the world of everyday life, which, according to don Juan, is as mysterious and rich as anything can be. All we need to pluck the wonders of this world of everyday life is enough detachment. But more than detachment, we need enough affection and abandon. "A warrior must love this world," don Juan had warned me, "in order for this world that seems so commonplace to open up and show its wonders." We were, at the time that he voiced this statement, in the desert of Sonora. "It is a sublime feeling," he said, "to be in this marvelous desert, to see those ragged peaks of pseudo-mountains that were really made by the flow of lava of long-gone volcanoes. It is a glorious feeling to find that some of those nuggets of obsidian were created at such high temperatures that they still retain the mark of their origin. They have power galore. To wander aimlessly in those ragged peaks and actually find a piece of quartz that picks up radio waves is extraordinary. The only drawback to this marvelous picture is that to enter into the marvels of this world, or into the marvels of another world, a man needs to be a warrior: calm, collected, indifferent, seasoned by the onslaughts of the unknown. You are not seasoned that way yet. Therefore, it is your duty to seek that fulfillment before you could talk about venturing into the infinite." I have spent thirty-five years of my life seeking the maturity of a warrior. I have gone to places that defy description, seeking that sensation of being seasoned by the onslaughts of the unknown. I went unobtrusively, unannounced, and I came back in the same fashion. The worlds of warriors are silent and solitary, and when warriors go, or come back, they do it so inconspicuously that nobody is the wiser. To seek a warrior's maturity in any other fashion would be ostentatious, and therefore, inadmissible. The quotations from Tales of Power were the most poignant reminder to me that the Intent of the shamans who lived in Mexico in ancient times was still impeccably at work. The Wheel of Time was moving inexorably around me, forcing me to look into grooves which one cannot talk about and still remain coherent. "Suffice it to say," don Juan said to me once, "that the immensity of this world, be it the shamans' world or the average man's, is so conspicuous that only an aberration could keep us from noticing it. Trying to explain to aberrant beings what it is like to be lost in the grooves of the Wheel of Time is the most absurd thing that a warrior can undertake. Therefore, he makes sure that his journeys are only the property of his condition of being a warrior."

Temper a sword-edge to its very sharpest, and the edge will not last long. I think this can also be analogized to never being the first. By speaking with a sharp tongue, by trying to display our wit and cleverness; this does not last long. At some point the way of nature is for the storm to be over. For gentility to set back in. For calm to prevail. Or else, the end result is always failure, collapse. Yutang uses the analogy of stretching a bow to the very full, and you will wish you had stopped in time....success contains the seeds of downfall, as he would say. Our pride. And when a person places their stock in outer treasure rather than inner treasure, there is no place for contentment, the concept of enough, or feeling that anything is safe. We have turned over our inner peace of heart to outer circumstances.

There you go.

And there....is the crux of it.

I was just sent one of those forwarded joke emails from a friend - I just have to share this with all of you. Although this takes the form of a joke, for some reason my soul really clamped on to Dr. Phil's actual words. As heady and theoretical we love our discussions to be, sometimes the earthiest has the most dramatic and immediate impact. CALMNESS IN OUR LIVES. "....By following simple advice heard on the Dr. Phil Show, you too can find inner peace. Dr. Phil proclaimed, "The way to achieve inner peace is to finish all the things you have started and never finished". So, I looked around my house to see all the things I started and hadn't finished, and before leaving the house this morning, I finished off a bottle of White Zinfandel, a bottle of Baileys Irish Cream, Wild Turkey, a package of Oreos, the remainder of my old Prozac prescription, the rest of the cheesecake, some Doritos, a box of chocolates, and a half bottle of scotch. You have no idea how freaking good I feel right now."...... As to Dr. Phil's actual advice, does this kick anyone else in the gut, or is it just me?

I just can't argue with you guys. All I know are the odd things that happened to me, things I can't even begin to describe, while reading those books. It happened with my husband as well. I know that your arguments must be right - there are too many of you extremely intelligent and aware people telling me otherwise. It's like trying to convince someone that just ate a chocolate truffle that chocolate actually tastes awful. But your arguments are, intellectually.....overwhelming.

Please don't write me off as a whack job... As I was just sitting here with my finger down on the mouse reading this exchange between you two, kundalini energy just came up through my mouse hand and down into my heart chakra. This only happens in the presence of Truth of some sort, I've observed in the past. My husband's foot turns inward electrically, the same phenomena; it acts as a sort of Truth compass. I'll bet the Truth that resides in my soul responded to the Truth that was speaking from your souls. You two are having a most intelligent and deep conversation. I'm just going to stay out of the way and listen to you and hope you post a bit more.

I was just wondering how many of us prior derelicts have made it into this forum? And if you're here, do you find that the 12 step process was instrumental in achieving any degree of clarity that you may possess at this time?

Apparently Castaneda brings up some deep emotions in people; pro and con. I guess my final thought is this - the series of books, I don't believe, was ever intended for anyone to take the events literally. At the first of the series, Carlos makes it clear that don Juan Mateus was not a real person, and this was a made-up name. To the best of my recollection without going back and getting my old books out, Carlos was never shy about telling us these things happened in a separate reality. One of the books, in fact, was titled A Separate Reality. This is merely the realm of lucid dreaming, which many on this site are capable of doing, if we are to believe what our friends say. Don Juan, the fictional character, was probably a compilation of many sources of the Toltec wisdom; the important thing is that it's getting passed down. However, to say these things didn't happen, just because they didn't happen in this particular sphere or reality, isn't quite right. They did happen in a parallel and separate reality. This was the reality that Carlos first found through use of hallucinogens and later without the need for them. don Juan had gotten to the point, as a nagual, that he was capable of including Carlos in his dreams with Carlos' awareness. They had a twin experience. We know that we can go out of body; no doubt everyone here has their own method for journeying. East and West share these teachings. And we also know that one who can manipulate his dreams can also develop the skill of including others in the lucid dream. But the underlying path to self realization is contained within the series of books. Here are a few of the concepts that come to mind; there are probably others that I'm not thinking of at the moment. These concepts are all vital for self-realization or self-awareness. KNOCK OFF THE INTERNAL DIALOG. This was a constant and recurrent theme in the books. It's one we discuss often on this website. The volley of words that stream between our ears at any given moment, our consciousness, is the very thing that don Juan repeatedly had to instruct Carlos about. This must be stopped for any Truth to get through. This goes to stopping the judgments, the superstitions, the bad words we silently say when someone cuts us off in traffic. This was a huge requirement in his shamanic instruction. It doesn't differ from any other road to self-awareness that I can see. And this, of course, is what meditation is all about. LOSE THE SELF-IMPORTANCE This is huge. It means finding a way to push ego out of the way and not let it control us, our actions, our words. Carlos had a lot of losing of his self-identity (anthropoligist) to do; he came to don Juan (or whomever)full of himself and sure of his tight-as-a-wound-spring left brain mental capacities. Those were the very things that were getting in the way of Carlos' development; the old identity and the pride that went along with it. Carlos lost his up-tight identity in a pretty big way during the first book or two when he was ingesting copious quantities of hallucinogens at the beginning of his quest. But not only did the hallucinations aid him in seeing the separate reality of don Juan's creation, but they must have gone a long way in tamping down his ego. After all, how cool can you think you are when you come to in the desert repeatedly, often with bodily secretions present and accounted for. I almost felt Carlos' pain during the gradual death of his ego, which was a slow and painful death. THE RECAPITULATION OF A LIFE This is huge too. Having been in a recovery program for a long time, I personally know the power of taking one's own inventory. don Juan had him remember all the way back through his life - writing everything he could think of as to his behavior in every situation. This process took years for Carlos to complete. Periodically he would mention working on it throughout the series. The Carlos that started writing the series in the 60's was not the same Carlos that finished the series in the 80's. He had become a self-realized man, a self-aware man. LOSING THE SUPERSTITION OF RELIGION I remember reading one mention, and one mention only, where don Juan responds to something dumb Carlos said (as usual) about some Catholic religious practice, and don Juan's reply was "That's idiotic. There is no God." I was a little surprised that it wasn't more predominant as a theme throughout the books. But it wasn't. It was only there once. But the loss of structure was the very thing that Carlos had to lose. Apparently he did. AWAKENING THE RIGHT BRAIN Carlos was all left brain before his apprenticeship. It was through the lucid dreaming and the hallucinogens that his right brain was activated; he began inhabiting a world where Newtonian physics were not the operative thing. Once the connection was established by repetition with the hallucinogens (and the discussions with don Juan or whomever) the hallucinogens were no longer required for extended stays in the separate reality. He was able to do it with Intent within the realm of his lucid dreams. And he learned how to manipulate his lucid dreams; how to break off of one lucid dream into another, and into another; then to return in reverse through each lucid dream bubble. It took years for Carlos to be able to do this. Heck, it took years for him to be able to see his hands in his dreams. But once he broke through that thick left brain, he was able to do it. As to Tensegrity, I wish I had something to offer here. I was not motivated to learn the so-called magical passes. First of all, I hate the name. And I don't think passes are magical. I don't think any one QiGong is the only way, either. I think everyone has to find their own way of dealing with this sexual earth energy in any way that they can. That's my opinion now. I've read and tried so many different magical ways of moving one's hands and moving the energy! I do have my own way now, but it's what comes up in my mind's eye when I'm doing something that requires the earth magic. I've come to the conclusion that They're All Good! What the variable is, is how prepared we are internally to move the energy. If we have been earnest in removing every blockage we can find that affects our mental attitude, our energy flow, our inner dialog, then once you've emptied yourself out, stilled the mind, stilled the body, and allowed the energy to enter your channels, the next step is to plant the seed of high Intent. Energy follows Thought. I think that's really all we have to know. Anything physical beyond that is certainly beneficial for the healing or the ceremony or the mindset of the person in the circle; but it's almost a trapping, as I see it. Actually, although I don't like the name, Tensegrity must be a cross between 'tension' and 'integrity'. Using that line of logic, perhaps Tensegrity started out more purely when it was first Intended. Maybe it emphasized losing the things that needed to be lost (as discussed above) Things have a way of losing their essense, just like a row of kids sitting on a bench playing the telephone game.

There you go.

What a nice topic. I agree that De is not morality or ethics. It is something else. It is that place that is BEFORE the need for morality or ethics. When you have love or compassion for all things in your heart, there is no need for morality or ethics. The compassion is already in the heart, it already knows the answer; not some man-made idea of what is moral or ethical. When the need for 'good' or 'bad' arises the Tao has already been lost. This place of Good Heart is found by doing the inner work, by going in. It is an ongoing process of treating Self with love, which is the hardest thing for me to do, because my entire young life was anything but. I track my own actions every day, some days better than others. My Intent is to be impeccable, to have a good heart, to look at all with compassion. My reality falls short of this, but as long as my Intent is engaged upon each waking day, the actions get better and better over the years. This process in me started by working the AA steps about 30 years ago; the 'going in' process has never stopped. It just keeps on keepin' on.

Yutang's version starts out 'The best of men is like water; water benefits all things and does not compete with them...." What this may be saying is that in order for man to become like water, to achieve the lowly, is to become capable of diminishing ego. When we are diminished in ego, we have no need to contend, because we are not trying to stand on our tiptoes and be something higher or taller than we really are. The Tao doesn't tell you how to diminish ego, but it writes of the results often enough. The valley of the female, the Yin, the receptive, and the 'lowly', as in the context here, all seem to go together and are the result of many years of non-contention and (the painful process of) ego reduction. Ergo, the Sage. We can either go the easy way or the hard way. We can voluntarily search out those buttons that make us CONTEND (oftentimes here in this discussion forum) and eliminate them through mindful processes of our own; or we can surrender to Life and have it put us in whatever position it thinks we need to file the buttons down for us. It works either way; it's just that the first way is more expedient, less costly, and doesn't usually end up with you on the floor wondering what happened.

Borderline narsicism -- would that be because one has the illusion that one's project is important enough to be finished? I'm not quite following on this one... Incompletion, whether this be physically or mentally - is the sign that we first cast our intent out over something, and then we walked away from it. I think this takes a toll on our psyche or our spirit. The original idea or intent was for a purpose. Then life gets in the way or things take on other priorities. I guess what hit me is dross of those aborted ideas. We are not giving Will his due every time we turn our backs on our original idea. We bring Will into the occasion, then we cease to honor him by walking away. By going back and finishing that which is undone, when possible, can only be helpful to our psyche. But this wouldn't be possible in most cases, life has moved on. The only way to rectify it would be to start from this day forward to be impeccable with one's intent, not to throw it out too quickly - to be mindful of finishing something once it's started. It's pretty easy to see if a person adheres to this balance or not. All we have to do is look at a person's current situation; how do they live? Is their house in order? Is the house clean? This is a direct reflection of what we are on the insides. Is the house uncluttered, or does the man living there have things strewn about? What about the car? When he bought the car, he intended to keep it nice, to keep it clean. Now it's got mud and dust all over it and he hasn't washed it in a year. Again, the man has walked away from his original intent, his original bargain with the energy universe. There is a direct relationship between one's outer conditions and one's inner condition. I'm thinking if there is not a good balance between the two, this is an indication that there is an out-of-whackness somewhere. But the marvelous thing is that we can change our inner world by changing our outer world. More impeccability with our ideas and honoring the INTENT we bring to our everyday lives. I really do believe that out of the mouth of Dr. Phil came a powerful combination of words.

The way the words hit me was to visualize new ideas as baby fetuses. Ideas which die due to lack of impeccability, failure to follow through, laziness, my own fear or marketing myself as an artist - this is what hit me in the gut. These are like lives aborted. I guess it hit me hard because throughout my life I've always been ready with really fine ideas. But not a lot of follow-through. Ouch.

The one who values acting for himself over acting on behalf of the world - at first this seems incongruous, as though selfishness is being elevated. But I think what it's really saying is that the man acts 'for himself' and doesn't worry about his reputation, or what the world thinks of him. To this man can things be entrusted. "Conventional wisdom", or what most people believe, is certainly not the way of the Tao; to be truly attuned to the Tao one must not worry too much about what people think of him - because nobody is going to understand his actions.

It doesn't seem possible to improve on how Khalil Gibran put it. that was a thing of beauty. Thank you for typing that out--- Yes, I agree it's all about our everyday life. Discussions in this forum often remain in the theoretical, and it would be nice to see this moved a little closer to home. Every action in our day is a direct reflection of our personal philosophy, at the deepest level. And the incredible thing is that we can change our philosophy by first changing our actions. To try and remain in a state of gentle kindness as we're going about the day - this can be an incredible challenge - even though we may sail the heavens in our understanding of the Tao. The Sage is not a fictitious character that we are reading 'about'. The Sage is us. Or at least the highest level of us. It's what we aspire to, otherwise all of this is just mental masturbation. Living in the Appalachians as we do, we are utterly surrounded by bible-thumpers. It seems that their way of looking at things is smug and arrogant - after all, they're going to a wonderful heaven (in fact, they'll be swooped up in some sort of rapture mechanism) and the rest of us heathens will remain here in the slugfest. But there are some wonderful things that come out of their beliefs - many of the churches hook up with say, Habitat for Humanity or simimlar organization, and the church members do an active type of volunteerism. There is some real good there, even if the reasons for participating are selfish or styled toward a satisfactory afterlife. We all make up the whole. The way I see it, I see humanity as a series of concentric circles, each circle containing the same mindset of the people in the circle. The Christians have their place, as do we. There's nothing more beautiful than a Mature Christian who has climbed out of the dogma and ascends to the room of Oneness. When they finally aspire to a Christ-like countenance, this is the room where all paths meet. It's easier for a Taoist to make their way into the room - because the form has already been lost. It's very easy for an atheist to meet in the room - all they need to add is love, if their mindset permits. They have no structure to transcend. The room where all paths meet is the room of love. This is also the room where Wu-Wei, The Power of Silence, or The Peace that Passeth All Understanding comes together. It seems that all great paths end up in this same place where non-action is actually the true dynamic when one knows how to use it. Love and wu-wei go together. I see the Tao Bums, and other sites like this one such as EnlightenNext, etc. - as one of the concentric circles I mentioned above. We are like-minded people communicating at a high frequency vibrational level. Our intent, some of us, is as impeccable as we can make it. This phenomenon with the Internet and instant communications and bringing like-minded spiritual people together is quite something. It's all one. Our psyche is one with the Internet, one of the 10,000 things. Perhaps discussion forums like ours are the tip of the consciousness sphere, as far as human communications are concerned (on a mass level). It feels like we are evolving - and the Internet is the tool doing it. We ARE the supreme intelligence, and for the first time the supreme intelligence can speak back and forth to itself.

Thanks Veejay - really, the only courageous thing was going to that first meeting, in my case. Once I got there it became pretty obvious what the problem had been.

Regarding Chapter 7; It seems that the analogy is drawn between the universe not living for Self, giving life to other things through its transformation; and the Sage not living for Self, giving life to others through his transformation. By putting ourselves last, we are not standing on our tiptoes. We are not contending or trying to be more than we are. But by putting ourselves last and Doing Nothing on a situation, the situations will rise and fall as they are intended, knowing that we hold the truth in our hearts and the truth will finally come around to fruition in its own time. The Sage is not a manipulator, but he is capable of bending the light at a very deep level. This is how his Self achieves perfection.

Yes, there are plenty of girls there. and girls who are earnestly trying to make a change in their lives. You're not 13th stepping the newcomers, are you, you devil? Alfred, your mention of the police keepers and the nurses is very much mine and Joe's story. I was the cop, the one who needed someone to watch after. My husband (Joe) was the child - the skid row wino. When we met each other at an AA meeting, it was like two forces of nature rushing at each other. We have lived through many years of this dynamic, and seeing it change a little at a time, like moving an old rusty door. The interesting thing is that living with a low-bottom drunk (even a recovering one) has caused me to reach higher and higher in order to transcend horrible behavior. This was 27 years ago; we're actually still together. This has been a HARD path for us...but the dynamic between us is so strong (or sick, whichever) we've broken up many times and always returned. Now we're too damn old to worry about it and too many health problems coming down the road. We're just two happy little peas in a twisted pod...

Geez, there's no denying that things are upheaving at the speed of light. (Literally, because of our instantaneous communications capability). Something's going on...