manitou

Today I happened to be reading A.J. Girling's translation of the DDJ. This is the very thing it talks about in Chapter 48: DIMINISHING AUGMENTS Attending to knowledge one seeks to increase Attending to Tao natural diminishing. Diminishing Diminishing Wu wei's richness augments. In action with no actor (wu wei) nothing remains undone To fully appreciate life, adhere to selfless action With attachment to personal goals it is not possible to get the best out of life.

I met him at a Yamu qigong seminar! Wonderful fellow! I miss him too.

Me too, Marbles. But I'm not suffering about it either... Suffering takes a type of back seat when the 'goodness' or 'badness' of a situation are no longer defined as good or bad.

I've never really seen the utility of clumping the whole god thing into a group of three. And I don't really see the utility of separating god into religions. As I see it, it's all the same thing. The thing that is phenomenal to me is that, regardless of where in the world we're born, we all have a voice inside us that pushes us to understand something greater than ourselves. I don't think it matters whether you're standing in front of a statue of Buddha or Jesus - it's all the same thing. There is something inside us that wishes for betterment, and that voice will be with us throughout our lives. I've come to understand that everything, everything is god. Or Dao. Spirituality is present everywhere, and is represented always by truth, love, cleanliness, clarity. WE....us....we are a very important part of that One Spirit. We are the thinking part. The voice inside us prods us to understand, to perceive, to express. It seems to me that this is the tip of the spear, at this time in this dimension, and we are the thinking and talking Creator. It lives within us, within our DNA; the brains for the whole enchilada. 'It' doesn't live up in the sky anywhere, no place outside of ourselves. God is the brilliance within our DNA that forever reaches toward the light, then reverts back to itself. We must revert to the core. There is no authority on this. We're all a tiny piece of it. We, communally, are the Creator. And there is no place for Good or Bad. Is-ness is the result. So in relation to the above question about whether it's heretical to interpret humanity as Christ, I personally think it's not heretical at all....I think it's the way it is. We Are God.

Sometimes ya' just gotta take a little break....

I've been living with the K-thing for may be 30 years. Very powerful at first (physical), but as the physical lessened, I noticed the presence of a third eye. Eh. You're both right.

All paths go to the same place. It just doesn't matter, and I don't think the metaphysical commonality of all paths can be found...no, experienced, until the dogma of all religious varieties are discarded.

Hi OldBob, There's plenty spirituality in them little books. If you read them and didn't see it, you probably weren't ready at that time. I've read Sorcerers too. It doesn't minimize the spiritual dynamics in the books. She's pointing out that Carlos isn't a perfect human being. I don't think Krishnamurti was a fabulous human being either, but he sure said some stuff. Castaneda was a big part of my path, but just part. I later discovered the DDJ and found all of you to learn from. What a wonderful journey this has been! But no path is a worthless one if it brings you to enlightenment. The bridge that bridges the gap between head knowledge and experiential knowledge - that's the hard one to find. Before finding it, humility must be found within.

Didn't mean to quote myself. My computer skills are legendary. " I will dart past the Eagle to be free". I saw the name of Maya Angelo pop up somewhere yesterday. What instantly went through my mind was "I know why the caged bird sings" I never put it together before, but YESSS! I know why it sings! It sings because it needs nothing other than himself to be contented. He knows he wouldn't, couldn't, be any more joyful than he is while expressing his happiness. He doesn't need to fly anywhere. He's got everything he needs! I saw a movie many years ago, where a passing American soldier had a conversation with a captured soldier, inside a razorwire Nazi containment area. The captured man in the enclosure was an enlightened one. He was able to transcend his circumstances, marvel at a beautiful sunset from within the razor wire. He had even found a way to look at his condition and captors with love. I'd love to know what movie that was...

And we are the entity

From Castaneda, again? What a powerful paragraph. "the power that rules my fate"..... I can only understand this from the POV of time actually being non-linear. i.e. 'the situation has already happened' (even if it's not happened 'yet'). This takes the drama out of anything. "I cling to nothing" - opinions are a thing of the past. Make no assumptions. Not vested in any particular outcome. "I have no thoughts, so I will see"....This is where meditation for years pays off. We gain control of the monkey mind, we have a modicum of control over the spinning of our thoughts. The ability to stay in a state of 'not thinking' does enable one to see everything, with unassuming eyes. "I fear nothing, so I will remember myself"....If one can finally get to the place where there are no fears left over, one can "re-member" themselves. To stand fully in our spot, to enjoy the sun on our faces. To take our place in society and to know that we are fully deserving of that which comes our way. I think re-member in this sense, almost means 're-make'. Maybe someone else sees it differently? "Detached and at ease"....when we know who we really are, that we are indeed gods walking the earth, what is there to fear? I Am the I Am. My feeling is that 'not-doing' is how to get along best from day to day. Things that would have expended emotional energy previously, no longer elicit a response. Because it's all good. "I will dart past the Eagle to be free"....The very best part, the point of the whole practice. The seeming conditions in life are just that....'seeming' conditions. To get to the point where conditions don't phase us any more, to 'know' who we really are, to realize that nobody's up there judging us. This is a big deal, IMO. The realization is that there is no right and wrong. Just is-ness.

How I wish we had politicians that understood this. To actually find one that knows that he will probably not be elected again, but stands unwavering nonetheless.

The whole series is a trip. You'd love the characters. How much less I 'make a choice' these days. More often than not, it comes at me, I handle it. I love what you say about experience of self vs. the raw beingness that underlies all potential experience. To experience the raw beingness, I've found that periodically going through the exercise of knowing that the other person in the room also has the very same feelings is helpful. The sense of a warm void inside me (and strangely enough, it's always 'okay', despite indications to the opposite) is the same sense of a warm void that you feel inside you. The warm void inside is all the same everywhere! That's the shared raw beingness that is us! That's where the default emotion is love, but our conditioning hides it. But we all have it. Peeling the onion exposes it. Apech, I know exactly what you're talking about on the series 'talking' to you at different levels. I've noticed the very same thing in the series, and I've supposed that's because my 'eyes' are in a different position every time I re-read one of his books. Same with the DDJ and other great tomes. You see something different each time, as you're ready to see.

Aah, apech! Thank you for posting this! It is wonderful! I think you and I both have a history with Mr. Castaneda, he certainly put my feet on a path. Wisdom is wisdom. It seems to me that Wei Wu Wei is none other than what he describes as "phantom intent". This is a point where there has been a type of soul surrender, to get into the second attention, and to receive the benefits of wu wei. No longer is the seeker as affected by the events of everyday life; he is living more with the 'skimmings', which are very helpful abbreviations of a dynamic. Seers (I include myself here) can identify 'skimmings'; I refer to the process as triangulating, because one just picks up a few threads of the skimmings (abbreviated dynamics) and see the problem/condition/malady. Skimming is not the same as jumping to conclusions. Rather, it's allowing the dynamics to rise to the top on their own; to see why it is that a person is 'manifesting' a particular situation or condition. It's not by using the head to figure anything out. It's standing back and waiting to 'see' what's there. A huge difference. I think that to 'intend the mountain' is to be able to break down the components and see things as they are, with no emotion or preferences. Once one gets into the 'intending the mountain' frame of reference, it does immediately stop the flow of the outside world chaos, as Castaneda mentions. I see this as wu-wei, only after the intent is determined, the default answer is to 'do nothing' to change dynamics, let them play out of their own accord. One must of course respond to things coming right at you, but for the duration of the situation you are not the 'actor'. Everyone else is. You're the watcher. He makes slight reference to time being pliable, which is how healing can be done on something that happened way in the past. Past, present, future are all illusions. It's always Now. When the seer gets into the mindset of Now, this is how old dynamics are tweaked. Again, thanks for posting that, Apech! I

That's pretty much the way us desert dwellers look here in California too.

Bow tie

The Dao is a bellows

Except that it opens our minds if we're receptive. Vast potential can direct one to have an idea and then to act on it. But even to discuss this notion shows how we are creatures of habit, or at least I am. I look at my routines is to realize how much I limit myself by daily repetitions. One reason it can't be fixed in time and place, is because it's all Now.

Seems like 'life' gets this way too. Nice post!

You little quantum physicist, you! I always go back to the intelligence of the forming embryo, how the cells line up according to an incredible blueprint, repeating over and over. We are that intelligence, we are that god-being that has been put in charge of utilizing that intelligence. And the only thing separating us is our individual conditionings. We are the manifester, we are both the communicative, creative, and aware aspects of life. Your words are beautiful, iinatti!

If a person is a soul-tender, it places a different light on it. To me, that means that nothing is more important than the condition of my 'soul'. That means I need to rectify the twists and turns within my thoughts, learn to undo those things which remain in me from early conditioning that cause me to react or act out in some particular way. Once one has worked on this for a while, the results can be felt in that we can step back from the drama and see the occurrence for what it is. But there are no more Rules, no one else's moral code. When you're reading yourself and the condition of your own soul, any answer becomes obvious. Do what's in the highest interest the moment dictates. No one else's rules are necessary. The Karma thing is tricky, as I see it, because of the awareness that all is actually happening Now and linear time is actually the illusion. We buy into the entire mental constructs of government, relationships, bad ones repeating over and over because we're manifesting it - the lesson needs to be learned, and until the message is understood, the manifestation will continue to occur, regardless of whose face is on it. But I do know one thing. If you stop putting bad stuff out there, you'll stop having it happen. Like, if you want a friend, be a friend...

OMG, this is beautiful, Lairg. Thank you.

Hey. The computer is part of the whole thing.

(did you have a tiny epiphany as you were writing this?)

My dearest Mr. Foote, do you have any fingertips left??