manitou

To remove elaborations of origination and cessation - This is to remove time from the equation. Things are more easily known when you can look at the entity as a pile of concurrent phenomena, all happening at the same time, to look at someone in the whole. I recently had a bit of a falling out with a friend. If I look at this friend within the confines of linear time, I would remember that the last contact I had with her was unpleasant. My subsequent reactions to her would be colored by that. But if I look at her not in a linear fashion but a vertical fashion, where everything I know about her is heaped on a vertical plane, the spat would only be a tiny part of the wonderful being that is Her.

Who in their right mind has a polished brass bird perch? That's just plain mean, Mr. P.

I tend toward the depressive myself. The best way to see my life as anything but a downward trajectory is when I can shut off the mind and be fully present in the Moment. Start with where you're sitting. Is there anything out of place immediately around you? If so, straighten it up. Make it look nice. Then expand a bit. Does the carpet need vacuuming? How are the windows? For me, the trick is to do that anywhere, even if I'm somewhere else. Pick up a piece of trash off the ground. Just something, no matter how small, to do something for someone else, even if that someone is 'the world in general'. It gets us out of ourselves. This life is just a story we keep telling ourselves.

Waves are formed on the ocean. As the wave moves, it does not take the water molecules with it. It maintains its shape by travelling through the molecules. Such is equanimity, as I see it. The 10,000 things as they rise and fall, knowing that form is but a temporary expression and subject to constant change.

What great lyrics. A snapshot of fears brought on by our thoughts. But thoughts that are eradicated as soon as the Oneness is recognized. I'm still waiting for that suspicious-looking stranger flashing me a dangerous grin

I think that's an excellent article. He has put into words what some of us have stumbled into. Finding the initiating imprint. Particularly when you take into consideration that linear time is an illusion and it's all actually happening Now. Therefore, it follows that the initial imprint can actually be healed if looked at simultaneously.

I know there are plenty of healers here, each with their own modality. My healing style is to see personality dynamics and how it relates to the particular malady; curing the patient of the malady by re-aligning or tweaking a personality dynamic. My style is part Mary Baker Eddy, part Ernest Holmes, and part shamanic, as this is performed as a ceremony. What I'm trying to say is that I think I just realized something wonderful for all of us. As we know, energy follows thought. I am currently trying to ease the pain and spirit of a woman who has 4th stage cancer; she's lived about 6 months past her expiration date. Her energy is still good - I've been doing some reiki on her and she glows after a treatment, she loves it so much. So today I was washing my kitchen floor with a sponge mop. Suddenly Shirley's cancer popped into my head. I realized in one big internal gulp that scrubbing the spots off the floor would be a perfect metaphor for the cancer cells in Shirley's body. I have found success by "bringing things into the physical", almost as if you're somehow tricking the brain to do what you're showing it to do. I'm showing my brain the malignant cells that are easily cleaned up as though it was never there. There is truly a power in performing a small physical act and showing the I Am inside all of us that this is what we are willing it to do. I have two more floors to wash. I will do each in the same mindset. That I am washing away her cancer cells. This I think is a powerful tool for healers of all kinds. Going just a bit further, the most likely reason Shirley manifested her cancer is because she's married to a chronic alcoholic - she's never gone to Alanon or learned the art of living with an alcoholic - she still thinks if she yells at him enough, he'll stop. She's been trying this clever tactic for 50 years and it hasn't worked so far - so I'm helping her change her reaction dynamic. (That's a whole discussion in itself) This cancer has gone way too far, I think, for anything to be done about it. But that doesn't mean that I won't be trying anyway, focusing my mind on something symbolic of ridding her of cancer cells. Like washing a floor. The point of all this was to express what I think is a really easy and powerful way to move mental energy toward your client, whether in your presence or not. Ernest Holmes would have us take the identity of the person we're facilitating as our own, during the session. The theory being that we're all One anyway, and if you will it so, you can then do the healing on yourself but intend that your client shares the results. This is for distance healing.

…..and yet, you are hanging out in a forum that has much to do with enlightenment. If your life is chuck full of activity, that is the path of Karma Yoga. One can achieve enlightenment via this route. The challenge is to do everything in front of you as mindfully as you can - and develop that sense of awareness where you realize that you're not really who you appear to be. Silence the mind; to learn this can take years. You have the opportunity every single day of being an enlightened human being, of transcending your "normal mortal" viewpoint, and being in the awareness of the communal awareness of everyone who has the ability to transcend. Enlightenment is just to be able to do this better and better. And the most vital part of enlightenment is not to read all you can possibly get your hands on, but to actually pare down those parts of you that no longer serve a purpose. Things like your judgment-meter, the resident cynic, the boastful man, the overbearing spouse, the egomaniacal dweller within our own little universes. Until one trains the mind to think as we want it to think, it will be only trial and error for a long time - but so worthy to aspire to. Once our vision is at a higher place on the hill, away from judgment or cynicism, we will notice that our life circumstances will now reflect more of a simplicity, a balance; whereas before, one may be manifesting their own chaos without ever realizing that they're the ones doing it. Energy follows thought.

Yes, spiritual practice does seem to undermine worldly ambitions. I think it's just a matter of "what we want" as we go through life. I think we have to get through the illusion of worldly ambition to realize that the Truth we're seeking lies in our own self-realization. And then it seems to become a process of elimination of the unnecessary things or relationships which do not further that cause. Yes, I'm afraid mine has already reached a stage of maximum peterage. I find myself, at 72, having to rely on a different intelligence; not an intelligence that requires memory, which I don't have. But having command over the way we relate to the Here and Now, staying in consciousness as much as we're able - this concept keeps me functioning, and I can actually slide through life pretty well without memory. Except for a few quick glimpses, I don't remember my childhood at all.

Woeful illusion Begs the return of Oneness The action of Dao

You're so welcome. If a healer is able to relax into the I Am consciousness (for lack of a better word), this is the state from which the session should be done, if possible. It's all about the mindset of the healer. This can result in deep physical healing, in addition to deep spiritual healing. What about this with you, Fa Xin? I'm not acquainted with your modality, but you sure seem to understand the mindset.

And, theoretically, the optimal healer's approach would be from a place where linear time is not acknowledged - to hold that in one's psyche, knowing that time is just 'piled up on itself'; in that regard, it would be possible for effecting a healing of something that happened many years ago - which is usually the root for the current manifestation the patient is making. Where the mind goes, energy follows.

That's like something from a scary movie; Pet Cemetery or Chuckie or something.

LOL. Then, surely the ultimate truth is Nothing.

and I'll bet that's the very last time you put a personal question out to the Bums. So many ideas from so many wiseacres, myself included.

Have you read the Dao de Jing? Lao Tzu uses the same wisdom as Sun Tzu in the Art of War, but it translates better to everyday life. The work is a short one, but deep with wisdom. There are many different translations; all wonderful, but contingent on the spiritual development of the translator. If you've not read or studied it, I would recommend Stephen Mitchell's translation for a first reading. This (or any translation, really) will show you the mind of the Sage, which is a good template to keep in mind as we go throughout the day. The Dao Bums is full of people who have followed different paths, but found ourselves in a place where all paths seem to meet. And the Dao de Jing is the commonality between many of us. What an incredible work. Let the thaw begin. It's most likely a huge blockage for you.

Figure out what first kicked off the initial fear, long ago. This fear is a duplication.

The older I get, the more I think that the best *help* is to just be a torch bearer. If our services are required, it always comes to us anyway. Why look for trouble?

No doubt that's where it started. And the thing to remember when going back through childhood is that your dad was brought up exactly the same way by his father, and his father the same way. It's the gift that just keeps on giving. Once we make the shift from blame to understanding, this removes a big road block. Do give some thought to the relationships you've had in your life and see if they didn't all end pretty much the same way. When I was real young, maybe 8, I remember walking home from school and suddenly stopping on the sidewalk. An awareness hit me (incorrect awareness, by the way). I couldn't believe that I was that 'bad'. I had been walloped the night before. But those beatings did confirm to me over and over that I was somehow 'bad' in some way. And the boys I was always attracted to were Bad Boys. That's all I thought I deserved. This is how I would set up the inevitable, each and every time.

This sounds like a very good start and could be very effective. Try to find the situation(s) in your very young life that first caused the walking on eggs situation. Did you have to walk on eggs around your dad, mom, anyone in the home?

Another thing. If we're in a relationship where we find ourselves having to walk on eggs periodically around the other person, this very feeling is the same one that keeps wanting to repeat itself. It's a familiar feeling, it's 'Home' in a default sense. That's the very dynamic that needs to be addressed; this is done by several means. Forgiveness of the person who inflicted pain on you as a child is one way, and usually is the most potent. It's like untangling a chain of gold jewelry, but it needs to be done to effect the change.

Escott, if you want some help with this, please PM me. It's simple but not easy.

Hi Yonkon, so sorry to hear about your struggles. I tend to think in metaphysical terms, and in actuality we 'manifest' everything going on around us. The Intelligence lives within us and in all of life, taking shape as it sees fit. If you're anything like me, and it sounds like you are, you have a tendency to manifest unhealthy relationships around you. You will continue to do so ad infinitum, unless you change your own inner dynamics. There is a reason that you are repeating a particular feeling inside you with each relationship; a feeling that you experienced as a small child. It's up to you to find that memory and use it to heal yourself. All of us humans do this; we all suffer from negative imprints when we were kids, some worse than others. But the feeling is the thing that gets habitually cycled and duplicated. As in one bad co-dependant relationship after another. As someone said above, it's a habit that has been replaying inside you for a long time. At the very bottom of all this is the need to live in a relationship where we are a victim of some sort. We choose people who are unlikely to heal because they're addicted to their own re-creation of a negative childhood memory. It's so symbiotic. It's like the right bolt finds the right nut. They actually don't really want to get better, and we actually don't want them to get better. At a subconscious level, of course. That's where the powerful stuff lurks. And we're called the Enablers. We enable them to stay sick because our attention is always focused on them, their every need is met, we tell white lies for them, and god knows the hours we spend encouraging them, yada yada. You what what I mean. I know you do. Please feel free to PM me if you want more specific information. I had to go through years of changing my reactions to an alcoholic husband, and I was able to do it through the Alanon program. It sounds like you are accustomed to introspection so the concept should be very easy for you to grasp. I'd be glad to help if you want to try and sort this out for yourself.

The thing that is always remarkable to me is how one begins on a conscious path to awareness, and at first it seems that there is so much to learn, to read. And then one realizes that wisdom is not found by adding to one's mental storehouse, rather it's subtracting those things from ourselves which get in the way of clarity - our conditioning. Which leads us to the realization that our prior mental structure was just that....a mental construct. How very simple it all turns out to be. Too simple to make any sense at all. Seems like it took so much 'work' to get to this point, and yet it lays out in front of us so easily....merely put one foot in front of the other and live life. But with a different perspective; one where we don't buy into the drama because we understand the 'unreality' of it; and yet it is the very stage upon which we play our part. What a strange setup this all is. The Catch-22 of life.

Just as the Dao that can be spoken is not the true Dao.