manitou

I've found that emotions don't sway life as much as they used to. When I was younger, it seems like I was a roller coaster of emotions. The premise that awareness of emotions can lead to enlightenment, my view is that this happens only when the cause of emotions is examined and worked with. Anger is the best. Why so angry?? Why do you feel threatened? What are you afraid you'll lose? Why is it so important that you be 'right?' There is always something to trace back to. A fear of lack will trace back to a particular memory, or period of time. Your desire to be 'right' is probably because at one time the young child was punished for being 'wrong'. Once it can be seen and understood why the snowball started rolling downhill (and look how big it is now!) the tendency which causes the fear/anger can be lovingly changed. We understand that we are raised by imperfect human beings, who were brought up just the same way, who didn't know any other way to parent. Once the pattern is seen, it can be disassembled. Disassembling tendencies found through memory, if done fearlessly, will result in the loss of the 'trigger'. If there is no trigger, there will be no need for anger. That is because the more enlightened you become, the less you're at the mercy of your emotions. All these snarls have been worked out, life can be viewed with 'acceptance', because your ego isn't involved one way or the other. Forgiveness is important here. Realizing that nobody is really 'doing anything TO us', they're just walking their own trigger path left over from childhood and sometimes we get in the way and take some incoming. But to forgive, to truly forgive....is an acknowledgment that nobody's keeping score, that everyone's doing the best they can at any given moment. There's no need for anger any more because people are now given a hugely wide berth in which to operate, from our point of view, and we don't take it personally when someone 'doesn't treat us right'. With no triggers within, life becomes very easy. The roller coaster of ups and downs straightens out, and there is nothing within the heart that is affected when someone 'disses' us, or acts contrary to the way we think they should act. It is all acceptance, and once this is achieved, things actually get pretty funny, when we see all the situations that people get stuck in. Once this is mastered within one's self, the transformation is unmistakable. Our mood becomes lighter and lighter, fear of tomorrow leaves us. The ups and downs are replaced with a feeling of joy and well-being, which will occasionally swell to bliss at the appropriate times.

As I see this, it can be understood that we are all the 'I Am', all connected and each a part of the collective I Am. We essentially are 'god', and therefore it appears that the passage refers to replacing 'your' eye with the eye of god, your hand as the hand of god, etc. When this is internalized to the point where it is in our consciousness and held in our attention, we have entered the kingdom. We finally Realize who we really are.

Done!

Everything I see, everything I touch, I find myself 'thanking' from time to time. I thank the intelligence within that form for knowing how to hold together, knowing how to retain its shape. I understand at a deeper level what Don Juan Mateus (Castaneda) meant, when he would say 'a shaman is never alone'. The shaman would be the equivalent of the sage. They both know that everything contains life and intelligence, and therefore can look at everything as friend. Plants and objects are friends. All of humanity is friend, because we all share the common stem, the common dna of our lives that lets human branches go their separate ways in appearance, but in reality are all connected by our common soul. Apparently different conditionings make for different appearances and different actions. There but for the grace of (insert yer word) go I. And when I look into the eyes of another human or other being, that our souls are connecting just for an instant and the oneness of recognition is felt, however briefly. This is an assumption-free zone.

LOL. I think 'God' is a lot closer than we think.

This! Linear time is an illusion. Were it not for planetary rotation, time wouldn't exist at all. Our ancestors are here with us now. We are here with us now. People who haven't been born yet are here with us now. Yes, on the DNA! I AM General Stark of the American Revolution! How incredible this all is!

I grew up with a horrible sense of my sexuality - imposed on my by my folks, and acted out and self-imposed in various ways in the ensuing years. I was never able to see sex as anything but sinful and dirty, and this remained with me throughout adulthood. It was only when I had several experiences of tantric sex with my husband that I realized that sex isn't dirty or cause for humiliation or embarassment. I finally got to experience sex as it should be experienced - without shame, without self judgment. It is wonderful that the Rinpoche quoted by CT refers to sex as the second fuel. On one hand, it elevates the status of sex to something of importance, as opposed to my previous fear and contempt for it. In my experience, that thing which 'we are' wants nothing more than a sensory experience in this lifetime! That includes all of it, free of judgment. We can honor it's desire by being true to our feelings, our desires. This is why we are apparently nothing much more than a big sensory skin bag. Maybe Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, after all. Trying to become good, or holy, or enlightened? It seems silly now. Realizing our true nature is apparently all it really wants of us (which to me, begs the question "Why??") Just because, I guess. Enjoy the ride. Knowing that all of this is just one big head trip is SO COMFORTING! Especially with the condition of the planet at this time; the chaos, the climate change due to our own cravings for More. @CT - I do believe I have finally answered my own question on the Budhalands referred to in the Lotus and Avatamsaka sutras. I know I've posed this question several times on this forum. I do now understand that they are the lands of all the possibilities we didn't take, or decisions we didn't make. As atoms in the physical world break apart and knock each other around and cling together, so do the quantum possibilities. As above, so below. A decision made has the alternate road built into it, and I do believe that the alternate road not taken branches into its own pathway of cause and effect. A Budhaland created! As it says in the DDJ, the earth is patterned after the universe, man is patterned after the earth. Atoms = possibilities.

Not easy to explain. There are several facets. We are all mirrors of each other, in that we have to have the thing inside us (a personality defect, e.g.) in order to recognize it in another. Or if we continually manifest something in our life, maybe an unwanted thing, like a particular personality type - it's just the same dynamic playing over and over inside us that needs that personality defect to 'complete' our emotional loop. The emotional loop needing completion is the one that has been there from early childhood, and it wants to be re-enacted over and over again until we finally get the message and change the thing inside ourselves that causes the re-appearance. E.G. I have always attracted emotionally damaged men. It's because of the savior complex I still have inside me, that thing that needs to 'fix' something, because I couldn't fix myself. We can actually look at our own progress through the nature of the people we attract around us. If the same character types keep showing up, we can be sure it's not 'them', it's 'us'.

If it wasn't in ourself, we wouldn't recognize it.

I remember often that any form at all is 99.9999999999999% space, equivalent to the ratio of space contained within the spinning boundaries of an atom. Were things not spinning, whether in the atom or a planet in the universe, there would not be the vision of a form at all. And as it says in the DDJ, (paraphrased) the utility of an object is in its emptiness (a cup, a room, a window...) In seeing the unity of all things, the 'matter' is the same for everything. The same qualities, the same components. It is only in the 'idea' that holds the matter into form, whether the form of a human, a tree, or a rock. Everything is still spinning with life, although not visible to our eye. It is nice to remember this when walking in nature.

Agreed, and it is the true Self, not the conditioned self, that needs to be found. The True Self is the one we all have in common, the point of awareness, the pinprick of light within us, that does the manifesting and knows what we need.

Could it be that your body is telling you not to worry too much about the nuts and bolts of any particular practice? I don't know that I have anything that anyone wants, I've never walked a Daoist or Buddhist path. I have no lineage. I've never known a monk or gone to a monastery for anything. I do know that something really profound has changed in me - and the Dao Bums had almost everything to do with it. I see the answers in the caulking between the tiles, not in any particular tile. The most important component of any enlightenment I may have experienced is the undoing of self. I have unravelled myself to the core, to the best of my ability. Sometimes I think us alcoholics and addicts are the lucky ones. If we want to avoid a premature and ugly death, or rubber rooms, then we have to unravel self. Once this process has started, at some point it continues on its own, with or without my consent. This has been my only practice. This, and years of meditation to be able to experience stillness of thought. And by snagging the incredible bits of wisdom here and there on the Bums, whether it came from a Daoist or a Buddhist. Oh, and I forgot: coming across a translation of the DDJ at a yard sale. This, and triangulating other translations, I have taken very seriously and internalized. I could feel the ringing assent of my own heart the first time I read the DDJ. I knew that was My Truth. Somewhere earlier in the thread, someone mentioned feeling burnt out because of having loved, and having experienced disappointment. This happens if there are expectations on another person, and an expectation that the person act in a way that we might want. But to live in true realism, where we have no expectations but instead accept a person for just what they are (not what we think they ought to be), this is the touchstone, IMO, of the impersonal and unconditional love we are speaking of here. And the DDJ does tell us that we can choose either perspective. To get entrenched in the emotions, or to live in the 'isness' of what is happening. I often find myself remembering that we are all straw dogs, in the eyes of the Dao. What I take that to mean is that the Dao doesn't really care who is the thumper and who is the thumpee. At our core, we are manifesting what happens to us in life (I know how controversial that statement will be, but perhaps I just need to look at it that way for my own personal reasons). I have a social conscience that is deep and well aware of the unfairness of life. I mourn the fact that I have it so easy, and there are so many in the world that have it so rough, live on nothing, live under brutal conditions. There are several ways I work that out in my mind; one is the self-manifestation aspect; another is the possibility that I too, in another incarnation, have lived a miserable life in unbearable conditions and that it's just their turn in this lifetime; and another angle is that the piece of divinity that we all share and carry within us knows exactly what it is that any individual person needs in a lifetime to bring him to the surface, like the lotus growing in the mud and ultimately finding the sun. What a wonderful and rich thread this is. I feel honored to be able to discuss such things with the incredible Bums here.

I think this very question is at the basis of all questioning, all desire for knowledge, the basis for our spiritual quests of any variety. This is the question that is implanted in us, but not implanted in animals. They have no need to question themselves, what language would they use to question themselves? But discovering "Who am I?' - the realization, not something studied, is what brings the contentment (and a type of bliss that is experienced every night when I lay back on my pillow and just say Thank You...to what? I don't know) I used to search for bliss as a 'funny feeling' - something out of the ordinary mundane feelings, something wonderful and elevating, and mentally (or physically) orgasmic. Those times come and go. They're wonderful, no doubt. But if someone is looking for this elevated stated 24/7, it's merely a shiny object. The bliss of contentment, of knowing exactly who you are and fitting inside your own skin, knowing your place in the universe, knowing that all time and space are yours - to me, this is bliss today. It is there whether I am elevated or depressed, although those extremes have greatly leveled out. Depressions aren't very low, elevations aren't extremely high. But the type of bliss I relish today is more of a gratitude type of bliss. And it is 24/7. It is a long path. It takes forever to develop the meditation skills for a mind that is controllable and capable of stillness. It takes forever to go through the amount of bumps and bruises that level the ego, at least to the degree necessary for this type of bliss. It takes forever to remove the inner qualities that hamper us and get in the way, most of which can't even be seen until we start to separate from them. It takes forever to stop judging, to be able to step back from our own thoughts and even realize that we're being judgmental in some way. It takes forever to realize that we are all a grain of sand on the same beach, and that We Are the Beach; there is no separation between us. I am you, and you are I. It takes forever to really walk our talk, and to even develop the desire to do so. It takes forever to lose our spiritual arrogance, to not want to flaunt our abilities with a bunch of titles and letters after our names. It is the most basic, the very foundation, that brings this kind of contentment. The kind of contentment that uses Death as an advisor, as Carlos Castaneda would say....to realize that it doesn't matter whether we are in body or out, we're not our body anyway. It's the kind of contentment that fears less and less as it goes through life. The irony of all this is that so often it happens when we're way too old to utilize it at a time in our life when it would have been so helpful. I wish I'd known this type of contentment when I was a cop. Seems like I was scared all the time. It's worth pursuing. It's worth giving up everything for. It's worth having your ego take repeated beatings, if necessary. It's why we keep coming back to it. Sometimes we walk away from it, but we always come back.

I see it exactly the same way.

Thank you for that, CT - all of it. I loved the growing simplicity of the Morgans.

Comma Sootra

Does this mean 'That Which Knows?'

To me, it just means that it's all good.

That could be said of any structured path at all

Is that spelled Y-A-H-W-E-H?

It's everywhere. It's in the things you want, it's in the things you don't want. It's in our ego, which will bring itself down. It's in the mysterious smile of a stranger that you may lust after. We're always seeking it, even when we don't know it. It's in the lows in life, it's in the highs of life. The lows of life have given me the most. The lows have reduced my ego to a pulp, and when my ego gets up again, it is reduced to a pulp once more. It dwells in arrogance, it dwells in humility. It lives in spiritual arrogance. It certainly dwells in addiction. And when we don't learn, we manifest the same lesson over and over again until the mask is finally pulled off the problem and it's seen for what it really is. Until then, we have to repeatedly duplicate the lesson until we finally get it. It's in the empty nature of money and financial security. It's lessons are in nature, man is patterned after nature. It's in longstanding character defects that continue to work against us. It's in selfishness, it's in unselfishness. It lives in fear, it lives in courage. But most of all, it lives in loving your brother as yourself. Ah, yes. Light on the Path, by Mabel Collins. It doesn't get any more profound than that. A lesson in opposites, extremes, enigmas, and dichotomies. And the central theme of Advanced Course in Yogi Philosophy and Oriental Occultism.

I suppose it's getting close when it's called the I Am consciousness. Still doesn't mean we can describe it, but rather it's something we turn into. I think the closest we can come to describing it is to live it. It is the light on the path.

If nobody saw us stumble, I don't think we stumbled at all....

Yes, but could he catch his underwear on the first try?

Missing @Brian! He hasn't posted in a year. His sense of humor is greatly missed!