manitou

Thanks, HolderFold - sounds like a common sense approach. I will definitely go to that one if this build-up happens again. It's flowing normally now because of some visualizations and other techniques I've been doing. But yours sounds like a very good one, and aligned with the qi flow.

It was during a visualization, a meditation. I've never done this type of meditation before, I always meditate with no-thought, I've been doing it that way for over 30 years. I think that the visualizations will bring my heart to a place of deeper empathy than just the no-thought, as when I did it last night, I found myself holding Maven to my chest, and it brought a tear to my eye - she was so dear, so delicate. And I love to hold Flower Glow's face gently in my hands. Actually, my knowledges of practices other than no-thought meditation is sorely lacking. To this point, I've walked more of a shamanic path. I seem to be edging sideways into an appreciation of things Buddhist. I've been listening every morning (and sometimes just doing a plain sitting meditation at night) to a Bon / Chod CD that a Bum ran off for me, and the more I hear it, the more I take the voice and chant of the man chanting into my heart. It's as though I don't understand it, and yet I understand it at the same time. I just can't explain it to myself or anyone else. Something is going on.

You'll know I have to search that backpack too.

This is way out of my league, but I have to share something that just happened to me a couple nights ago. A Bum who was working with me to help dissipate K-energy in my crown chakra suggested that I visualize a Buddhist deity. I am not a Buddhist, but have recently read several Sutras and recognized aspects of myself in Flower Glow, so I decided to use this entity as my visualization. In visualizing Flower Glow, I saw him as a bare chested Asian man with a man-bun, and drawstring pants. The next night, another entity was with him. This time it was a slender Asian woman in black Chinese pajama-type outfit. She told me (intuitively) that her name was Maven. At first, I thought she had transmitted 'Raven', but she transmitted back, 'No, Maven.' To my knowledge, I have never heard the word maven. If I did, it is far beyond my memory. I didn't know there was such a word as maven. But just out of curiosity, I googled 'define maven' the next morning, just in case there was a word like that. Imagine my surprise to discover that a maven is an expert; and in fact an alternative definition is 'guru' or 'master'. I am dumbfounded.

Stosh. Please forgive my crassness. Your new avatar made me do a real double take. I used to work in a jail. I am doubled over with laughter.

It's like past, present, future. 'Still you can say that it belongs to the self also', because it is the consciousness itself that attracts the body, or the building of the body. There is the body in retrospect - the moment prior to conception, or the twinkle in the eyes of the parents; the joining of the egg and sperm, the present; and the future body which manifests around the consciousness. And Oroborous continues to eat his tail, here and now. The karmic remnants, the string of pearls, that is a continuous play, acted out by ourselves, our ancestors, our descendants.

Oh, duh. LOL.

I agree - it does look doable. The unearned / earned income limitations seem to extend to food and shelter; there doesn't seem to be any mention of gifts etc, in fact personal property seems to be exempt. (if owned prior to the SSI grant; however, it says no more about personal property if obtained after the SSI grant. Maybe I'm just not seeing it). I've been living with PTSD for 35 years and I have no ability to focus on documents like this. I so appreciate your willingness to check, as you have. I have a feeling the bike shop who bills Medicaid may be the ones to talk to about this. Or maybe even an anonymous call to SSI or a knowledgeable social worker. You're fabulous - thank you! Barbara

Kar3n - I just checked and it is SSI. Mom is going to have to be very careful with this. I just told her to keep any further donations off the website. There's a local fellow that wants to put Jaiden on the local TV station about this, but that may be a bad idea. I can't thank you enough. How awful if his Medicare benefits were somehow affected. Like this poor woman doesn't have enough on her plate already? Now Jaiden's younger sister has been given a diagnosis of Asberger's Syndrome too. it all just makes my head spin, how unfair life can be sometimes.

I just looked at the article. It says the 'resource limit' (not sure what that is) is $2,000. If there has been $1300 raised (and we raise no more on the gofundme site, we can lower the profile and keep it out of the fundraising site), I wonder if that would be okay? Flawed system isn't the word for it! I'm guessing the adaptive bike company may know more about this as they deal with it all the time. I don't know if he's SSI or SSD. The situation in the article (as to the genetic origin of his disability) sounds very similar, and that boy was on SSI. Do you know any more about the resource limit? Thanks a million for the heads up, Kar3n!

Update on the Jaiden situation: Hello, friends. The funding page has collected $1300 and change - I am not actively soliciting more donations around town until we can really get this cost pinned down. We had a stroke of good luck. It turns out that I found a man who has no use of his legs, and he got an adult trike called a "Quickie" which is adaptable. The company is located up in Youngstown, OH, only about 40 miles away. They will even bill Medicaid if it is determined that there is a medical necessity for one (I would think there is in this case, as Jaiden is gaining weight as he is unable to exercise much at all - that can't be good for his heart, circulation, etc). Plus, they will send out a physical therapist / adaptor person to actually come here to Jaiden, rather than us having to take him up to Erie, as we previously thought. This is really good news. I gave the family this information yesterday. The grandmother expressed concern that if Medicaid got involved, they might get dinged for a commensurate amount as it would be considered 'income' from the donations which have come in - although if this happens, we can rob Peter to pay Paul and just have the donations to fill in the gap. One way or the other, I'm going to make sure this boy gets his trike - I couldn't live with myself if we got his hopes up, only to have them dashed over some Medicaid technicalities. Anyone reading this, thank you so much for caring. As I see it, We Are Jaiden, in our singularity. In our good moments when we realize the Oneness. I've recently taken out a line of credit against my house (for the purpose of getting a mobile home in Florida for the winters) and it would be such a small thing to just add to the debt of anything I purchase for this purpose - the 'junk' that we take for granted. It would make no discernible difference to me at all to pay a few extra bucks a month to repay this. And it could change a young boy's life forever. I love you all. Barbara

This is to stay in singularity? also, what are the 3 times mentioned in the first one?

Oh, this is funny. Ergo the dilemma of our existence of duality / singularity.

Perhaps deity wasn't the right word. When I read the Sutras (Lotus, Avatamsaka) I found myself (on a good day) reflected in Flower Glow, if you're familiar. It is Flower Glow that I am using - lots of synchronicity with Flower Glow too, as I have a Boddhisatva figure that they used in the lovely video of the Lotus Sutra on a spiritual TV internet channel (wish I could remember the name of the channel, you're probably familiar with it). It was Chapter 3 of the Lotus Sutra that used as an icon the same statue that I have in my front room - and when my roses are blooming, I often offer them to Flower Glow (which is what I named the statue after reading the Flower Adornment Sutra). Also, in that same video, there is a drawing of a (maybe) 3 year old little girl, blonde curly hair, superimposed within the chest of one of the Boddhisatvas. It looks identical to me, face and hair style, when I was that age. So this is the entity I am using. It fits so well, and I am currently meditating to a Bon / Chod CD that Steve ran off for me and visualizing and interacting with Flower Glow. I am starting to feel love in my heart for the Rinpoche's voice in the CD, plus love when Flower Glow comes into my visualizations. Not only has the intense pressure stopped in the head, it is undoing a knot I have had in my heart chakra for several months. All in all, I'm very happy with this current practice.

LOL. Relativity.

Actually, Jeff has been helping me with some interesting visualizations, and that seems to be doing the trick. He has me merging with a Buddhist deity, touching his heart, etc. It seems to be working - I haven't had the problem since I started doing them.

I was really taken with the energetic balance of the artist singing. Effortless - it reminded me of the Dao where it says the crying of a baby is so strong yet so innocent and devoid of intention. I'm not sure I've ever seen anything more beautiful. I went to China some years back with a group of photographers. The last night we were there was New Years Eve, and we were in a restaurant in the top of a building in Shanghai. There was a small group playing there, one of the men was playing the same square 'cello' type instrument as in the video. Our group was all standing at the big windows, looking over the lights of Shanghai. I walked up to the man playing the instrument and asked if he knew Auld Lang Syne, which of course he didn't understand me. I hummed the song, and instantaneously he smiled and they started playing the song. At the window, we just all put our arms around each others' waists and swayed to the music, looking out, knowing this would be our last night together. I was not the only one with tears in my eyes.

I've noticed that Brian can cause one to become totally bipolar.

Thanks for your concern, Karl. Probably it's not real pertinent to the thread as to my feelings about my mom. You would have to go back through the body of your posts on this forum to see if it's in your nature to be a bug-crusher or not. If it turns out that this tendency is there, there is something to look at there as well. Love to you - signing out now. Manitou

Karl, I think we're saying pretty much the same thing. Re: paragraph I, you're right - there is nothing in a name. This is what I was saying about a tree. We humans tend to fall back on the shorthand of language and assume that language, or the word, is the reality. But the original cavemen, who may have merely pointed and grunted to each other, each saw the tree differently. From where one sat, he saw certain twigs and branches that the other fellow didn't. But each assumes that the other was seeing what he was seeing, and yet he was not. Close enough for government work, of course - but not in actuality. So no, I agree with you, there is nothing in a name. It is merely shorthand and assumption that the other understands from our point of view. Which they do not. I am about at the limit of my abilities as far as pursuing this much further. I just don't have it upstairs like I used to - and you will no doubt squash me like a bug because I can't follow what you're saying. My focus just isn't there any more. But there is one thing that I would like to approach from the right side of my brain, if you'll forgive me for cherry picking and perhaps taking this out of context. It's about your statement about loving Hitler and my mom equally. Here's how I sit on that. That too is relative. My mom was always a lot of fun, we played tennis together, golfed, laughed all the time. My heart soared when I was with her. Now, when I visit her in her dementia facility in California, it's like pulling teeth to be with her. I wish I could say that I 'feel love' when I'm with her. What I feel is extreme irritation at being asked 40 times in one hour what time it is, or where her purse is, although she doesn't carry one any more. The only time I can feel anything for her now is when I just hold her in my arms and tell her I love her. She will place her head against me like a child's, and we will sit there for a few minutes. But there is a lot of transcending that I have to do, and my trips out there are a challenge to me, both because of her repetition and my growing confusion in airports. As to Hitler, here's what I think. I think that, given his karmic remnants from a previous existence, given the continued input of information from the adults surrounding him when he was a child in Salzburg that there was a particular group of people 'ruining' his city and his country, given his own personal feelings of inadequacy which caused him to join up with an aryan type group, given his natural abilities to speak and influence those around him, and given the events of the day leading up to the war - that I probably would have done exactly what he would have done. That any of us would have. So, yes - in that sense I can have compassion for him - or even call it love. But this, of course, is knowing what I know now. To have compassion for him if living in a Jewish concentration camp would have required a true saint-like understand that I don't know if, even now, I would have had. But perhaps someone like Gandhi would have been able.

I was going to use it on me, not you. Have no fear. As I understand it, that which we perceive with our eyes is 99.99% not solid. It appears solid to us, but in reality if you take the weight of the atomic particles in proportion to the size of the atom, that which is actually solid is .01%. (It might only be .001%, I may be remembering this inaccurately. But I'd rather err on the side of caution and go for the hundredth.) What makes it appear as reality to us are these infinitesimal bits of matter cycling around each other, taking up space and time, gravity (or the law of attraction) holding it all together. In essence, all we are is 'thought'. If not 'god's' thought (please substitute your noun there - I actually prefer the concept of Logos or Intelligence) then whose? There is something at play other than mere chance, IMO. So that which you are referring to as a tree is really only the idea of a tree, or at least 99.99% of it. Can we really call the remaining .01% (or .001%) reality? And if we can't all see reality as the same thing, then what makes anyone's reality any better than anyone else's reality? Who is the decider here? (Okay, maybe George W. Bush). We can't even see a tree or a rock in the same way, as I mentioned earlier. And is it a truism that if a tree falls in the forest and there is no tympanic membrane to interpret the sound waves, that there truly is no sound? If it's not interpreted, then I assume they would just be invisible sound waves, not affecting anybody's eardrums and just heading out into space ad infinitum. I think your statement about the blend of spiritual consciousness and active cognitive reason is a darned good one. I think that's exactly what it is. I see the spiritual consciousness part of this equation the 'love'... or gravity or mutual attraction, that which keeps the planets and galaxies cycling, that which keeps the atomic particles in one tight little spinning bunch, that which is undefinable that draws us together and makes us want to love or to mate. I think the spiritual consciousness is there for all of us to tap into as much or as little as we choose. But those who choose to tap into it, to make use of the intuitive intelligence, are the healers, the lovers of mankind, the artists. And the essence of this is love - love for our fellow man, love for our planet, the agape love that knows that it sees the One Being, the Intelligence, the Logos - in the pupils of each others' eyes. Whether the 'other' is a man, woman, child, person on the other side of the earth, a bear, a frog, an insect - it is the web of consciousness that Castaneda speaks of as the thing that holds this all together. And who is to say it stops with this planet? How ridiculous, to be so arrogant as to think so, what with all the zillions of galaxies that we are able to view just with our tiny little Hubble instrument. Certainly there is life elsewhere - perhaps their web of awareness looks different than theirs - they have evolved under different circumstances, after all - but evolution there has been. But certainly we are connected as One to them too - only unawares at the present moment in this illusion of time. Time and space are bent. We can't even depend on a linear time, as time is relative to speed. And, again, the action of the Dao is reversion. It is the snake eating its own tail. It is circular; there is no yesterday, today, or tomorrow which exist as separate periods. It is all the One Now. I suspect that if we could stay in awareness of that 24/7 throughout our lives, we wouldn't age one bit. So please, somebody. Tell me again what reality is? I'm just not sure it's all that black and white.

Is there an emoticon with a noose, LOL?

Oh, that's funny...

LOL Mark. How very strange it was to read your article after making the comment of the bellows action of the Dao and the black hole / big bang conjecture. Micro / macro? It has occurred to me that there is no point in actuality where the in-breath stops and the exhale begins. It's not like black and white. The muscles expand and contract in a gradual give and take; I like to envision the process as being circular with no strict delineation.

One thing I like to do along these lines is to close my eyes if I am the passenger in a car. It's less effective if you're the driver of the car. I imagine that going around a curve to the right, I'm in body. A curve to the left, out of body. I find very interesting your mention of the strings of pearls, the exquisite balance of the spine. I do this as well - I like to sit on a cushion, perhaps a meditation position - but for the purpose of finding exactly the relaxed point of balance, where no muscles need engage to hold the head above the spine. When I am in a place of danger, I place myself within a gyro-type place of perfect balance, envisioning round moving circles around me, gyrating - and knowing (or gnowing) that I will be fine. I have done this instinctively throughout the years, even in my police career - way before I'd ever heard of the DDJ. There must be something instinctual inside of us that knows this. I look forward to reading your written article. I have a feeling much of it will be over my head, however. My exquisite 12th grade education can't begin to keep up with you. My heart can Get Down with you, but my head can't Keep Up with you. But I will try.