manitou

Nicely done, as far as I'm concerned.... Those particular paragraphs seem to point out the beauty (and the gift) of no judgment at all. Non judgment seems to be the path to attainment, in a convoluted way.

THE IMPORTANCE OF LIVING (by Lin Yutang, TTC translator), written 1939 P. 28 A Biological View "Why do we despise the body, when the flesh itself shows such intelligence? After all, we are endowed with a body, which is a self-nourishing, self-regulating, self-repairing, self-starting and self-reproducing machine, installed at birth and lasting like a good grandfather clock for three-quarters of a century, requiring very little attention. It is a machine provided with wireless vision and wireless hearing, with a more highly complicated system of nerves and lymphs than the most complicated telephone and telegraph system of the world. It has a system of filing reports done by a vast complexus of nerves, managed with such efficiency that some files, the less important ones, are kept in the attic and others are kept in a more convenient desk, but those kept in the attic, which may be thirty years old and rarely referred to, are nevertheless there and sometimes can be found with lightning speed and efficiency. Then it also manages to go about like a motor car with perfect knee-action and absolute silence of engines, and if the motor car has an accident and breaks its glass or its steering wheel, the car automatically exudes or manufactures a substance to replace the glass and does its best to grow a steering wheel, or at least manages to do the steering with a swollen end of the steering shaft; for we must remember that when one of our kidneys is cut out, the other kidney swells and increases its function to insure the passage of the normal volume of urine. Then it also keeps up a normal temperature within a tenth of a Fahrenheit degree, and manufactures its own chemicals for the process of transforming food into living tissues. Above all, it has a sense of the rhythm of life, and sense of time, not only of hours and days, but also of decades; the body regulates its own childhood, puberty and maturity, stops growing when it should no longer grow, and brings forth a wisdom tooth at a time when no one of us ever thought of it. Our conscious wisdom has nothing to do with our wisdom tooth. It also manufactures specific antidotes against poison, on the whole with amazing success, and it does all these things with absolute silence, without the usual racket of a factory, so that our superfine metaphysician maynot be disturbed and is free to think about his spirit or his essence."

I think there's a kind of evolutionary dementia going around having to do with naming baby animals. I've got 2 four month old puppies and I can't get a name to stick either. Nothing seems right, or it does at the time and then a week later it's wrong.

My guess is that both Jesus and Mozi were enlightened men. Their similar conclusions would have bubbled up from the inside in either event. Enlightenment is always going to want to elevate the downtrodden.

Also, please know that there is a difference between Carlos Castaneda's 'modern day shamans', which Don Juan Mateus spent years getting Carlos to become, and the type of shamanism that is often alluded to in these threads, which is the more anthropoligical view (indigenous societies, ceremony, and assistance of drugs). When Castaneda first hooked up with Don Juan, Carlos thought he was getting all the skinny on the indigenous shamanism (drugs, etc) - Carlos was an anthropology student at UCLA when he first met Don Juan. What Carlos actually found, over the years with Don Juan, was enlightenment, something that Carlos hadn't expected at all. The drug use in Carlos's case (at the beginning of his exposure to Don Juan) was to get Carlos to see in a right brain fashion - his anthrological brain was very set up to left brain vision. Carlos's brain had to be totally f*cked up to get to the point where it could be reassembled in a healthier alignment. The modern day shamans who have travelled the Castaneda path (such as myself and others on the site) find that the Castaneda path indeed takes one to the room where all paths meet. This is the path of Toltec wisdom. Because a modern day shaman has done the inner work (as Castaneda had to do by recapitulating his life and see where he had wronged people, etc) the modern shaman aims for the state of mind where one is not controlled by his character defects and acts free of encumbrance of old energy patterns. The modern day shaman (when in consciousness) is hand in hand with the Sage; they are one and the same. If one can hold shamanism up to the light and inspect it, one would find that the shaman walks the way of the Tao (love, never too much, never be the first) as an end result. The magic that is attained at the end of the path is the same magic that is attained with the Tao - that of accomplishing by 'doing nothing', (or wu-wei). The shaman would call this the Power of Silence, that power which is activated once the shaman or sage sets his intent on an outcome and then stands back and 'lets it happen'. The shamanic path will not fall under the path of what is rational, any more than the Tao can. At some point, there must be a surrender to what is not rational in order to fully see either discipline. The magic cannot be truly explained to someone; it must be experienced. When one concentrates on a shamanic path, particularly by Castaneda and the many shamans who have used Castaneda as a jumping off point and developed the Toltec wisdom even further, the truths are found by 'losing everything that is not true', same as the path of the Tao. It leads to the same place, just a different path. Please understand that those of us who identify as modern day shamans are more aligned with recapturing the wisdom of the ancients as opposed to sitting around a campfire slamming jugs of ayahuasca in South America, although I'd surely love to try that one too! Actually, I do incorporate cannabis into my path, as it promotes a type of 3-dimensional observation capacity that is certainly obtainable without it, but for purposes of healing ceremonies it is nice to be able to summon the mindset at will and instantaneously. But it does seem that there is a discrepancy between what people think they know about shamanism and what is actually the case. I suspect we're talking about 2 different things - the modern day shaman and the shaman of old - and this tends to confuse the conversation. As far as I'm concerned, it's the Toltec wisdom that is the prize, and it's the trappings that are optional. The end result is the same: the shaman (and the Sage) receive their nourishment from the Mother.

Supernatural is just the stuff we haven't learned to measure yet.

I am dealing with the same question. There is a golf course in my town in Ohio that has had 4 heart attacks at hole 13 in the past 2 years. The last heart attack was fatal, just 2 weeks ago. Hole 13 is next to the high point of the course, in fact the high point of the entire area. The configuration of the land indicates that the high point is most likely a native burial ground. I walked up there to see if I could get any sensations or synchronicity (which I did), and also saw that the golf course owner had recently built a restroom on top of the burial hill. Holy crap. How would the ancestors feel about this? My feeling had always been that disruptions like this were due to residual energy of sorts; but if there is any relationship between the recent restroom and the recent heart attacks, perhaps that indicates that the "spirits are angry" and perhaps that does knock it over into the realm of soul rather than residual energy disruption? Or, in the alternative, maybe I'm just a whack job...

I couldn't agree more. I find that the more I've internalized the Tao over the years, the more dispassionate I become. My capacity for motherly love (or agape love, or unconditional love) has increased for everything, but my attachment to outcomes is becoming less and less.

I'm not sure I see a difference between Love and compassion and empathy.

Wow, we're close to the hub now, Bubba. It's my understanding that apathy can't be avoided, once achieved. This is the shield of the warrior, no pain can get to him. The nature of the beast....the point of view of the Observer.

I just read Semple's article - I didn't know there was a temporary kundalini..... In my personal experience, I became K-active after an auto accident - I watched the truck about to hit us in the rear view mirror, and a voice in my head said "I wonder why I'm manifesting this?" as I watched the truck get closer and closer. It was just an odd thought to have just prior to being crunched. The electrical strangeness started a couple days later - coincidentally, I had bent over to pick up something on the floor and experienced an odd 'unsnapping' of three points in my lower back, down by the coccyx, around the same time. It's definitely had something to do with the opening of the third eye. It definitely has something to do with the chakras being cleared out; I notice that the kundalini energy will sometimes sit at the point of one of my chakras for days at a time; I assume it's because there are life issues I may be facing that affect that particular chakra. At first it was very annoying having the kundalini energy at all, but now after about 6 years I just don't pay any attention to it most of the time. Sometimes it will be sitting in the back of my head and it burns so hot it's incredible, sometimes in just one little hot pinpoint, sometimes as more of a flood of warmth. Sometimes you can 'feel' it pushing through the heart chakra. The real purpose for this thing has had me at a loss since it began. I did read Gopi Krishna's book at the time(which I wouldn't recommend to anyone who is newly blessed/cursed with kundalini energy, as it will scare the bejesus out of you; his case is really extreme!) I just look at it now as something I have to live with, much like my constantly ringing ears. (Actually, that may be related too)

We're talking about two different egos. The one I'm referring to is the one that is anything less than humility.

There seems to be a Catch 22 tied up in this as well. That is, when we are looking for the lesser magik is this a function of ego? I guess it depends - if someone is specifically trying to find a method for a specific healing, etc, maybe this wouldn't fall so much under the ego category. But if a person is intending to increase his stature by attaining the skills of magik, wouldn't this fall under the ego presumption? And if this is the case, then we're maybe nurturing the wrong thing. To live with an understanding of wu-wei (Do-Nothing) and how it works certainly qualifies as magik as well, if you ask me. Granted, not as immediate as the magik we're talking about here. But to be able to set one's intent on a specific and then watching it come around by doing nothing to further it is a feat of magik that is nearly impossible to explain to another. This form of magik seems to be a by-product of living the Tao and earnestly attempting to live as the Sage lives.

The thing that's particularly wonderful about the TTC is that it's really short; rereading it over and over does create internalization after a long period of time, and each and every time you start reading it's at a higher level than it was last time.

Oh that's funny. Did you feel a secret and slightly wicked glee at pushing the minus button and not knowing what it was negatively affecting?

I'll actually go a little further than you will here. I don't think Love is difficult to support in the writings - look at The Three Treasures (chapter 57 in Lin Yutang, I don't know what it is in yours). Love is the first of the three treasures (along with never being the first and never too much). In Yutangs' translation there is a footnote next to the word Love, and it says "ts'e, tender love (associated with the mother). This type of love is akin to the agape love of Christianity. How I translate agape love is this: the daily small decisions we make in our daily lives: what do we do? When someone flips us off because we cut in front of them, do we flip them off in return? Or do we smile? These are the small myriad decisions we make every day. We can either choose the high road or the low road. When I speak of Love, it is this type of love I speak of - not a selfish action premised on getting something in return. And I think it is natural in all conditions, not some. It's either all One or it's nothing at all.

As to everything being all good, this is merely a choice of mindset that I use to keep to the positive. Our mindsets are our choice, after all. By choosing to see things as all good it eliminates the necessity for categorization and judgment. The Tao treats us like straw dogs, no preference to anything. By aligning ourselves sith the valley of the female and endeavoring to live our lives in wu-wei we can be assured that we're in alignment with anything that happens. In that sense, it can be seen as 'all good'. It's all in the planned manifestation of the 10,000 Things, which continues without regard to time or space. Even if there is something that appears horrible, like the murder of a child (I hate to use this illustration, I'm a retired cop), how do we really know that that's horrible after all? Did the personality of the child not incarnate into full awareness of what was being created? Is it possible that there's no good or bad attached to the death of that child, from the soul's perspective? Perhaps the soul achieved what it needed by being murdered and the life terminating early? After all, the child was treated like a straw dog as well. I've interviewed many child molesters and rapists. Almost to a man, there is an uninterrupted chain of karmaic dynamic that has come down from childhood, often being a victim of the same type of crime. In fact, it's almost as though there is a phase of the perpetrator that stopped growing at the time of the initial trauma, whatever it was. In that sense, the perpetrator and the victim are one and the same; often they're the same "age" along those lines of development. Yes, the perp needs to go to jail for a long time. Better yet if we actually had some rehabilitative services while in prison, although AA and similar meetings on the inside go a long way. The removal of the perp from society for a given number of years is for the benefit of society (we can get along just fine without a child molester living down the street) rather than punishing anyone. Mere punishment is not effective on a malady of this nature. By looking at everything as 'all good and within the purvue of the Tao,' we find no need to hold dark thoughts toward another, no matter how hideous, which would result in us separating ourselves from that individual, which creates a false sense of superiority and separation from one another within us. Our judgment of the perp does nothing for the perp; it merely keeps us uncomfortable and out of the flow of Tao.

When the Tao says it is impartial and sides only with the good man, I think what it is saying is that the 'good man' can always count on karma, if the man lives his life in an impeccable fashion. I think the straw dog concept also applies here, paradoxically, because the Tao will always find the lowest place, the most expedient answer. One who consciously places himself 'in the ravine' of the Tao will always reap the benefit ultimately. Also, when it talks of a good man, I don't think the Tao is placing a right or wrong value on a man's worth or behavior; merely differentiating between one who is aligned with the way of the Tao and one who is not. What a wonderful dichotomy we who are on the path get to discover; how the concept of Never Being the First, Never Too Much, and Love all merge together to form both a safe harbor and a means to an end, i.e. an enlightenment of sorts which serves to provide a sense of clarity.

Thanks for speaking up. I look forward to your participation.

Hi - welcome to Tao Bums. Your post was really interesting - nice to have you here.

There we go! The room where all paths meet is the room where all structure has been understood and uprooted in order to get to the Void. It seems to also be the room which is infused with love as its base truth; not in a sense where love is reserved only for the good actors; but for the bad actors as well, as no judgment is involved. This is also the room of wu-wei, or mastering the art of Do-Nothing and allowing the Way of the Tao to have full reign. It is a room of many synchronicities when one is inhabiting it, an indication that you are living in the Tao and not dwelling in the ego battles of everyday life.

I'm adding Lin Yutang's translation of Chapter 79, which is debatable whether this is the same chapter or not... Maybe this Ch. 79 doesn't match up with your translation, but the differences make for interesting conversation. LXXIX. PEACE SETTLEMENTS Patching up a great hatred is sure to leave some hatred behind. How can this be regarded as satisfactory? Therefore the Sage holds the left tally (sign of inferiority in an argument) And does not put the guilt on the other party. The virtuous man is for patching up; The vicious is for fixing guilt. But "the way of Heaven is impartial It sides only with the good man." (Discussion): I don't know if "the beginning of the thread of Tao" would equate with the way of Heaven siding only with the good man. It probably would, if projected out to its natural consequence? What is a Good Man, to the Sage? I would say this is a man who has done battle with and transcended the flames of ego; it is only without indulging ego that the Sage is capable of holding the left tally, or the inferiority in an argument. Or as the Tao would say, 'never be the first'. Patching up a great hatred is sure to leave some hatred behind - therefore the Sage holds the left tally. This seems to be really about crunching our pride to the point of where it really hurts. The way of the Tao will follow naturally and bring things to an orderly conclusion, once the humility is unearthed.

Life's a lot easier if you consider it All Good.