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10Y x 365D x 16Hr = most of my life. I think i'll try to summarize my theory. Reality is frozen by excess of structure and technology. A deep mind equals a deep will equals magic Magic controlled by the deep, though always adventure-seeking equals one bright tomorrow. The eternal majesty of dream

It's been a long life, no matter how young I am. Day in and day out pondering. The neverending washing sea. I have a theory, prominent amongst the prominent. When I say that it has been a long life, I do not lie. From woodworking to metallurgy, to ancient skills such a flintknapping, just because I felt I should know. When you are awash in the ocean, you might as well swim. I struggle to summarize. I don't enjoy doing so, so I will not. This post, like the Great Tao, will be long and winding. I will not be content until this reality makes sense. Nothing else matters. There is nothing to enjoy other than perhaps taking a walk or food, and that can only take up so much of my day. My theory is simple. Wisdom is will, will is magic. Reality is steady. Why? It takes belief, righteous or wrong, to dedicate yourself to intellect or duty. We plenty of belief. Frightening amounts. But what is magic? It can also be called ESP, but the only magic that's fun is telekinesis. With telekinesis and the wisdom to use it right, every day could be a phenomenal adventure. But why is magic so hard? As long as you've researched it and have an open mind, you will know that magic probably exists. Though there are alot of charlettons who guise for money or regard, I have seen plenty which makes me believe it could exist, and my minor skills with ESP, which I call Farsight, agree with me, but its too hard to describe. In a world of magic, the only responsibility is to common sense, and the only limitation of fun is your own imagination, and that seems pretty damn good to me. The possiblity is worth every last inch I have. I believe thoroughly that the reason that magic is inaccessible is that our intellect, collective intellect, has gone too far beyond our wisdom. Like a scale, when weight is pressed too hard on one side, the plate hits the ground the scale rests on, not to be lifted again by any small force. To rebalance it, we need weight on the other side (in this case, dream/heart to oppose intellect/structure). But I also believe that willing it into existence isn't enough. We also need to pursue Tao... center, depth... For even in balance, too small a scale can bend and break. The true meaning of the soul is the gauge of our inner-strength, and when it is over-encumbered, it becomes bent. Soul is found amongst the winds and the water. Now, I must remind people that the colors of yin and yang are highly ornamental. To the north-west, there is structure. To the south-east, there is desire. To the south-west, there is muchness To the north-east, there is littleness. The northwest is represented as an aqua-blue as dark as hematite, and is of mud The south-east is represented by an amber as bright as silver, and is of smoke The south-west is represented by an amber as dark as hematite, and is of coal The north-east is represented by an aqua-blue as bright as silver, and is of mist The north is of violet, means stillness and consciousness, and is of water The west is of black, means of effect, and is of stone The south if of red, means of energy, and is of fire The east is of white, means of time, and is of wind. When coal outweighs, there is violence. When mist is prominent, there is fear When smoke is prominent, there is excess desire When mud is outweighs, there is excess structure Now, that which is of wind, excessively, feels pain. The pain of fear for mist, or the pain of unfulfilledness for smoke. It is not their fault, they must simply be taught strength, of heart, body or mind. That which is of earth inflicts pain... the pain of violence of the pain of forcing of belief, coal and mud respectively. It is not their fault, they are lost, but they do have to be stopped somehow. Just as gracefully as possible. This world is of water and earth. This reality is of water and earth. The extreme of structure and belief has frozen reality, and the smoke of magic cannot be accessed. Magic cannot be accessed until we are light of mind, and to be light of mind is to become targets to the fanatical masses. To do as you do is largely illegal. In a world of 1 gun for nine people (lord of war, worthy movie), I cant walk around with a sword. Swords are so much more poetic, but if you like em, you probably going to be seen as a crazy person who needs to be stopped. Now, wise men of old, like the founding fathers, made sure that most things that shouldn't be illegal are not, though there is still plenty of moral laws. Most of all, there are still alot of morals. Do as your told, never EVER do what you enjoy, and never question the perfect system. You know its true. I wont get into it... Such topics bother people. Desire can bring us pain if we have no control over it, but most desire does not inflict harm. It can be seen as wrong, but it rarely does harm of you look at it objectively. Now, i still haven't been clear on my theory of the universe. Magic will open when you're deep enough. How deep. Infathomable? Such is the Tao. But depth is just that. It's seeing things for what they are. It's understanding things. This doesn't mean beliefs necessarily, though as long as people do not push theirs on others, it is fine. Depth is a funny word. It's like the fine, moist earths that even smoke can love. It's exceeding mud at its own game. It's the rare tough (resistance to shattering) black stones (manganese oxide is black and extremely tough, like rubber, but harder. It makes tough stones). and the pure waters that roll over moss and rock. With enough depth and dream, we can unfreeze this reality, at least for ourselves, and all that reach this plateau can live a life of adventure and dream, and inspire the many. "I have seen many things in a lifetime alone. Mother love is no more in this brave new world." -Iron Maiden If you care to discuss, write.

Another I thought of is The Fountain by Darren Aronovsky - some folks love it, some hate it, I love it. He also did Pi and Requiem for a Dream which I admired. I think he also directed The Wrestler - haven't seen that one yet.

Sorry, I kind of skipped over this question. No... I have not removed all my obstacles. But, I have had many, many glimpses as to what that's like, to whatever degree I was able to glimpse or another. One of my obstacles seems to be, how to not be stressed out in front of the computer. It feels like this bombardment of really dense and sticky energy from T.V. screens and Computer screens, I don't know how to integrate that too well, except sometimes. The point that all obstacles are removed can be elucidated by this poem. Nagarjuna's Mahamudra Vision Homage to Manjusrikumarabhuta! 1. I bow down to the all-powerful Buddha Whose mind is free of attachment, Who in his compassion and wisdom Has taught the inexpressible. 2. In truth there is no birth - Then surely no cessation or liberation; The Buddha is like the sky And all beings have that nature. 3. Neither Samsara nor Nirvana exist, But all is a complex continuum With an intrinsic face of non-inherent existence, The object of ultimately clear awareness. 4. The nature of all things Appears like a reflection, Pure and naturally quiescent, With a non-dual quality of suchness. 5. The common mind imagines a self Where there is nothing at all, And it conceives of emotional states - Happiness, suffering, and equanimity. 6. The six states of being in Samsara, The happiness of heaven, The suffering of hell, Are all false creations, figments of mind. 7. Likewise the ideas of bad action causing suffering, Old age, disease and death, And the idea that virtue leads to happiness, Are mere ideas, unreal notions. 8. Like an artist frightened By the devil he paints, The sufferer in Samsara Is terrified by his own imagination. 9. Like a man caught in quicksands Thrashing and struggling about, So beings drown In the mess of their own thoughts. 10. Mistaking fantasy for reality Causes an experience of suffering; Mind is poisoned by interpretation Of consciousness of form. 11. Dissolving figment and fantasy With a mind of compassionate insight, Remain in perfect awareness In order to help all beings. 12. So acquiring conventional virtue Freed from the web of discursive thought, Insurpassable understanding is gained As Buddha, friend to the world. 13. Knowing the relativity of all, The ultimate truth is always seen; Dismissing the idea of beginning, middle and end The flow is seen as Emptiness (non-abiding). 14. So all samsara and nirvana is seen as it is - Empty and insubstantial, Naked and changeless, Eternally quiescent and illumined. 15. As the figments of a dream Dissolve upon waking, So the confusion of Samsara Fades away in enlightenment. 16. Idealising things of no substance As eternal, substantial and satisfying, Shrouding them in a fog of desire The round of existence arises. 17. The nature of beings is unborn Yet commonly beings are conceived to exist; Both beings and their ideas Are false beliefs. 18. It is nothing but an artifice of mind This birth into an illusory becoming, Into a world of good and evil action With good or bad rebirth to follow. 19. When the wheel of mind ceases to turn All things come to an end. So there is nothing inherently substantial And all things are utterly pure. 20. This great ocean of samsara, Full of delusive thought, Can be crossed in the boat Universal Approach (Buddhadharma). Who can reach the other side without it? The Twenty Mahayana Verses, (in Sanskrit, Mahayanavimsaka; in Tibetan: Theg pa chen po nyi shu pa) were composed by the master Nagarjuna. May All Beings Be Happy!

Yes, Siddha Yoga... it has real shaktipat, it follows the teachings of Abhinavagupta and Kshemaraja, has many scholars of the Kaula tradition, some of the most important ones on earth in fact that practice it. So incomplete? That would be your opinion. Swami Muktananda started practicing the practices of the Tantraloka in secret towards the end of his life, but fully taught the 36 tattvas and the teachings of the Shiva Sutras. He had incredible Siddhi's and realization, etc. He was a great yogi of high realization within the Shaivite system. But you are entitled to your opinion. Sorry Vajrahridaya I dont know how to do the proper quote thingy. Yes It does have proper Shaktipat, my first teacher within the tradition was Authorised and taught to give it by Muktananda and he taught and Authorised me to do the same. Interestingly The source or Connector for Shaktipat as given By Muktananda is Muktananda's guru Nityananda. Nityananda was not a Kashmir shavite. Muktananda Loved the Shavite teachings and did a lot to spread awareness of the teachings as he felt they mirrored his experiences closley. Nevertheless His base was in the strongly Vedic view of the universe as taught by Nityananda. He never had a Kashmir Shavite teacher and worked it out as best he could just reading the texts. This is why I said he has an Incomplete understanding of Kashmir Shavism. He did meet Swami Lakshmanjoo and they loved each other but that does not equal a complete understanding of the system. And I dissagree with you saying that consciousness changes with the content. Consciousness is the Field the content happens in. Anything can happen in side it but consciousness remains the same, just simply experiencing whatever is within it. My argument for this is that we are Conscious 'of' something which Implies a separation from the content. In the process of realising Turiya one sets about to regain awareness of consciousness in all its states. Often one starts with dreams as its easier there to hold awareness of consciousness than the next stage - Unconsciousness and deep sleep. It is only unconscious from the point of view of the waking state which cant really remember even much of sleep let alone Deep sleep or unconsciousness. So you can remain Conscious right through waking, dreaming, deep sleep and so called un-consciousness. And in all these States Consciousness does what it always does - Just is aware of everything that is happening. Without changing. Just because you from the limited waking state perspective cant remember being conscious in the other states doesn't mean that you are not, or that consciousness is some how Changing. My example should cover that of the dream memory you loose as you awaken. Here you were obviously conscious in the dream and had just enough to know it was there at awakening but lost the memory of it nonetheless. If Turiya was established you would loose no memory of anything, ever. And all the content would be continuously changing within everlasting consciousness And I too talk with Gods and Goddesses, and Saints, and Bodhisattvas, and to my Inner being but the difference I feel as to when I Focus my attention On God, capital G, Parama Shiva, The Whole... I know who I am talking too and I know who Talks back. It is completely different. So your answer doesnt cut it for me... And say for argument sake That it did, why would a Bodhisattva (promoting a universe without an underlying Deity) pretend to be God? wouldnt it be far more Enlightening for me, if he didnt answer thus showing me the truth that there is no God. Its like saying that you me and gold are having a conversation and I ask you a question and Gold steps in the way and pretends to be you and answers himself. Sorry I don't buy it.

Dream on brother. I am his mirror more like. And yours too. I am the master of meanings; not their slave. I say what's what in this mind stream. When you internalize authenticity and authority like yours truly, then come talk to me again. So I'll see you 10000 lives from now, if you are very lucky and have been doing your homework. It's obvious you haven't even begun to contemplate, or the words "they" and "actually" would not appear so flippantly in the same sentence! What's actual? Do things have actual representation? Is there ACTUAL meaning of words? Next thing you'll say that there is some substance somewhere and that meanings are stable and are not alive.

First, who was your teacher in Kashmir Shavism? were you raised in India? I am just looking for a background for understanding as there are many schools in the west with an Incomplete understanding of K.S. Such as Siddah Yoga. You experience Dependent origination within consciousness but Consciousness itself doesn't change. You say we were not always conscious but are you talking about Consciousness itself or the present individual content within Consciousness? Before you answer that too quickly, Have you ever had a dream that was amazing and that you wanted to hold but felt it slipping away as you woke up no matter how much you wanted to remember it? Could this be a nightly microcosm of the experience at birth and death? Consciousness Itself does not Change during this experience. Only its content. Oneness which Buddhism seems to deny. Have you ever merged with a lover during Lovemaking, experiencing fully being them...? what about the universe? If there is no foundation of oneness for the unitive experience how can It be experienced? And a bigger question for me again is about the experience of Personal relationship with Divinity. Buddhism cant even come close to Answering this one but the Experience is real. In deep prayer, where does the guidance come from? where does the decent of Grace and the miracles it bring come from? when we listen enough to allow God to speak to us, who's voice do we hear - And we do hear a voice. You cant easily write off these experiences had by millions of mystics within the Theistic traditions. Have you had any of these experiences? For me Kashmir Shavism is still the only tradition I have found that can answer all these questions... Funnily enough I love Buddhism and plan to spend the next 10 years or so studying Dependent Origination and trying to realise emptiness. To me it seems like the most brilliant and achievable system available. I actually have faith now that I can achieve Enlightenment in this life My Kashmir Shavite teacher is too far away for real consistent guidance (in Delhi) even with regular Phone calls and Email. And there is no support of a Sangha here.

Yes, move within... my lucid dream states and meditative states have revealed a lot. The trip is going to be personal, but the view is very specific when it comes to Buddhism and interpersonal. It's not a all is one type of interpretation, though the cosmos does work in one way and one way only, interdependently. Also, the way one works with the energy specifically reveals different fruits. The energy systems of the different paths don't always agree because we are working with subtler than body energy and formating that as karmic receptacles for specific results which are different dependent upon the spiritual view. Buddhism reveals just how complex it all is and dependent origination does NOT point to nothingness and emptiness does NOT mean nothingness. This is a meditative and mystical revelation that is quite specific in Buddhism. One could call the flow of dependent origination as Tao (as in "The Way)... but one would have to scrutinize to the point of emptiness, which does not mean nothing, but rather no inherent, static beingness. Calling any substratum inherently real and true, Tao, God or whatever, saying we are all one with this... does lead to future recycling. See you didn't see my main point was that Buddhism actually describes WHAT liberation from Samsaric experience is through many ways yes, the final way being called Dzogchen, Ati Yoga, or Mahamudra because it goes right into the expression of the fruit of practice and focuses on that fruit as practice rather than in lower vehicles in Buddhism that mostly just talk about practice and philosophy and not so much the actual experience as Vajrayana gets into. In Dzogchen you engage directly with the experience of what it is to be liberated through transmission from a master and have a liberated outlook throughout the entire cycle of practice that one undergoes to make that glimpse of direct perception of liberation a permanent state of constant cognition. I know other traditions talk about this too, but the view is off so the outcome is going to be different. You asked about Tao, but how can one talk about Tao without talking about those that talked about Tao? How liberated were they, and how omniscient were they before they came up with a term to describe some sort of ultimate nature of things? Other paths are religions. Buddhism is a clear system that offers many different ways to experience directly dependent origination... Emptiness is more of a philosophical term that points to nothing other than the flow that is dependent origination, or interdependent co-origination. Emptiness is not nothingness, but just the fact that I as a perceiver and part of the whole flow have no inherent self, that my self is a coagulation of experiences and interpretations all linked in a chain of causation leading beginning-less in origin. So, according to the Buddhas teachings, the interpretation of a mystical experience as a substantial and self existing substratum that is all and nothing, which is the same descriptions we find about Brahman (the impersonal featureless consciousness that is the mirror that all reflects upon) is all a mis-interpretation of meditative experience. The cycle of Samsara is so deep and tenacious that just because one meditates deeply and has deep mystical experiences does not mean that one knows liberation, just maybe subtler forms of samsara, which was the Buddhas point in setting up the 6 realm system of interpretation with the 31-planes of existence. link to 31 planes of existence. I also grew up getting acupuncture as my mom would trade her art for free sessions and yes I've experienced the benefits. It's not that this stuff is not beneficial, it's just that the Buddha was specific about what liberation from samsara or the emancipation from recycling and unconscious rebirth of one's mind stream and exactly how the entire cosmos works. He's very specific when he say's that, This is the view that liberates and these other views do not, even though they do lead to benefit, they don't lead to final emancipation from unconscious re-birth. When I was a practicing Advaita Shaivite, I saw directly the truths that Shaivism talked of and saw them as absolute and shared by all religions, the one God that expressed as it all and all the religions were just ways that this God in all compassion brought beings back to him/herself. I didn't understand dependent origination and that my experience, though supposedly highly evolved, blissful, merged with the cosmos, powerful, meditative experiences of going to different realms and dimensions, talking with and seeing great Gods of my lineage. I meditated for years in an Ashram for 4 to 6 hours daily also chanting 4 to 6 hours and offering selfless service the rest of the time, sleeping little, eating little and healthy, writing in my journal and reading sacred texts from all traditions from coptic christians, bibles, nag hammadi library, dead sea scrolls, st. john of the cross, st. francis of assisi, miester eckhart, theresa of avila and lisieux, st. hildigard van bingen, etc., Taoist material, tons of Hindu stuff and saints, Jnaneshwar, Tukaram, Mirabai, Janabai, etc., Sufi mystics, Rumi, Hafiz, Mansur Mastana, Rabia, Kabbalah stuff, on and on... Even Buddhist stuff, but translated wrong with misunderstandings of emptiness/dependent origination plastered all over them due to heavy christian influence or hindu influence, mis-contextualizing the teachings of these Buddhist Masters and glazing them over with Hindu substantialist sensibilities. The whole idea of a tea coming from one pot is a very Theistic interpretation, or Monist where everything is a singular substance expressed in different ways. Buddhism does not believe in this but see's this as an interpretation of mystical experience that limits and eventually rebinds, even if it seems blissful for some time, at the end of the cosmic eon it only leads to recycling, even if one enters into a high bliss realm after death, without direct perception of dependent origination, no liberation. These types of interpretations listed above all lead to long lived god realms in refined forms or even as formless pervasive beings of love and power, but not final liberation, and the so called immortals of Taoism don't base their realm on the right understanding of dependent origination, which is a product of direct perception and not merely an expression of logic. So, they are not really immortal, they might just live in a refined realm for trillions of years. Because of the clarity of Buddhism there is a great seamlessness between direct experience and the clarity of explanation that is not paralleled anywhere that I have found.

On of my favorite quotes at the moment at least is from the book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick After the character Isidore finds out that the story of the profit Mercer was faked he sees the Mercer before him. After a few events and discussion he says to the Mercer "I didn't like that about the whiskey, that's lowering." To this Mercer replied "That's because you're a highly moral person. I'm not. I don't judge, not even myself."

So I was out to buy food at restaurants near where I live, and I saw the Tao Bum again (from this post: http://www.thetaobums.com/index.php?showto...&hl=tao+bum ) So I missed him because I had to order food, but I saw him again on my way back. So I spoke to him, I said "This may sound wierd, I remember you from _so_and_so_ and I'm wondering, why is it when I have a thought, you make those wierd motions? (didnt say wierd I imitated the action)" First he said "i don't know, thats just the way I go with things" then he spun around and backed away during the spin a little and said "For motivation" His voice sounded very clear to me. I looked at him in his eyes then and they looked very clear as well, the exact colour of the sky above (whereas they were darker in the rain when I met him as i remember), but I noticed fear coming up so then I looked away, at this point he asked "Anything else?" I said no, then I said "wait" and said, "by how you do things, it makes me think you know, you feel, something deeper" and I dont remember what I said after that, but he jsut said "i don't know" and left, I said good bye, take care, and good luck. I noticed as I turned away and left that the house in front of which we met had a statue of Buddha in front of it. I had a dream about a week back where this ivory-coloured eerie (yet somehow comforting) figure with circular eyes, mouth, and a fairly round body, and he may have had white-ivory clothes with red accents, sat beside me in class, and said "the buddha is busy in his office now, he will see you soon" I also looked at him at sort of the same way I looked at this man, then the figure disappeared from my dream. No individual thing has ever disappeared from my dreams as far as I can remember, just entire scene changes. It was a first, and interesting both in the form it took and the content. On my way home I was thinking and started peeling back concepts, as that seems to be what he was getting at, and where I am in my practice, and then I noticed a feeling in my chest coming through. Like what happened in this post: http://www.thetaobums.com/index.php?showtopic=9916 With the realization of this new energy, my shoulders, groin, and thighs are now sore... Feeling in my body seems to be exposing pains that I can only assume have been there and unfelt from the past.. If you guys have any insight to shed on any of these things please feel free to do so.

ever heard of The Four Agreements 1. Be Impeccable With Your Word Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of your word in the direction of truth and love. 2. Don't Take Anything Personally Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won't be the victim of needless suffering. 3. Don't Make Assumptions Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness and drama. With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life. 4. Always Do Your Best Your best is going to change from moment to moment; it will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick. Under any circumstance, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse and regret. in the path of no more learning ...only the strong will survive... and you will do become your own teacher

I have also heard that the kundalini awakening could be started slowly and in layers. I also heard from a indian tantra and hatha yoga teacher that I visit from time to time that the sexual energy is a part of the kundalini energy. If you read the book "Kundalini the evolutionary energy in man" by G Krishna, then I think you not even dream about asking the question you did ask at this thread, beacase the differences are so huge. It is also an interesting story well worth reading for anybody and especially worth reading if you are interested in energetic work of any kind. Kundalini awakening is somewhat like the maximum energy you can take into your body, I think. And you might be able to deal with it or it might kill you to! F D

I wished to share my own answers to this, please forgive me if I mention what others have before or mention an alternative view to what others have mentioned. I only wish to share and learn. Is there any deities or a Deity in the Taoist way of life and ritual? I dislike the reality that I must address terms before I can share my opinions. The very term deity is complex. However my answer is that if deity exists, then the answer is yes, and if deity exists then the answer is no. I do not claim to know that deity exists, but I believe deity does and thus for me Tao is not only of God, but God is of Tao. However I can neither affirm nor deny that deities exist, I know that I do not know. 2) Can enlightenment be achieved through a Taoist type practice? The answer to this depends on what you think enlightenment is and why you want it. The short answer is that it has been known to happen, but that enlightenment might not be what you think. The very understanding of tao in its ultimate nature is an enlightened concept unto itself. 3) can people convert over to a Taoist way of life or does one have to be born into it? Neither. Living a way of life has nothing to do with belonging to a group or organization. As a matter of fact no matter what group you are in or what you call yourself your actions are still the result of your choices, thus there is no born into or converting to. If there was then it would not be Tao and it would not be pure. 4) is there life after death? Maybe, maybe not. I don't know and I don't think anybody does. Why does it matter anyway? Do we seek eternal life? If so why? To what end? Is not life and death enough? If you knew there was or was not an afterlife would you act any different than you do now? I doubt that i would, I am not motivated by greed of eternal life or fear of eternal punishment, I doubt any student of Tao would be so easily coerced by fear and desire into making claims that they know things which they were merely told, as opposed to knowing what they experienced. 5) Do Taoist believe in reincarnation? I do, but not the incarnation of the soul in new bodies time and time again, rather I believe in the reincarnation mentioned in the Diamond Sutra. This reincarnation I know first hand, however the other reincarnation i cannot affirm or deny for i do not know. 6) Are there other realms than the realm we are currently in? I don't know, I believe so but know that there may be, and there may not be. 7) Does Taoism also focus on Ancestor guides? The IKT certainly practices filial piety, since we all share ancestors this means respecting the entire family, from ancient ancestors to our distant relatives across the globe, the ultimate realization of filial piety is that we are all extended family and even the stranger is worthy of the respect our parents and children deserve. 8) Does Taoism have any mystical practices like lucid dreaming? I don't consider lucid dreaming to be mystical, however one who follows the Tao may practice many things including lucid dreaming. I am not aware of there being the endorsement of such practices by Tao, but some folk religion Tao groups may have all sorts of practices, there is modest diversity in them after all. 9) What are we? Are we a soul? A spirit? What is the Taoist definition of what we are? I am not a taoist, I am a student of Tao. When you know the answer to this question you may become enlightened. Why is a tree a tree? Is that actually what it is? You ask me to name something that needs no name, it existing is enough, to name something doesn't result in understanding. We are that we are, is this not what we are? Things define themselves in and of being, this is how Tao defines. If you name yourself, then that name shall stand between you and yourself, if you define yourself, that definition will prevent you from understanding. What you are can be understood by what you are, but not by words or names. 10) Do Taoist pray? If so to whom? I do. To my heavenly father and ancient mother who are one. Celestial progenitor, higher power, Lao Mu, God. I pray for thanks and sometimes ask that others be healed. I have never had a sincere prayer go unanswered. I also communicate in a way that many would call prayer with everything around us, including people, plants, minerals, and the planet. It is not a form of worship or veneration. 11) What types of meditation are taught in the taoist tradition? Multiple traditions result in multiple meditations. Qigong is very common, moving, standing and sitting meditations are common too. 12) Can someone link me to some reading material on Taoism for beginners? May i suggest the Dao De Jing? ( if I bounce between wade giles and pinyin please forgive me) 13) Were we created? If so by what or whom? No, we were sourced. Creation is the conflation of reconstruction with manifestation from nothing. Tao is unending, it is source and destination, creation is an artifact of the illusion of the world. Just like the thermodynamic laws state, energy cannot be created nor destroyed. There was no time when all that exists did not exist. This is self evident through Tao which is eternal but not in the sense of the projection of human concepts of eternity through the concept of time being a linear thing. Tao allows things to self create in a manner, or to self manifest. It is perfect so there is no need for it to have an idea like creation, it cannot look at a clock or a calender and say, "OK now it is time to to this" that very idea is absurd, particularly if it is attributed to an omnipotent god, god would have no need to schedule things or wait for the right time, there would be no need for intervention either, for what god other than one that is imperfect must step in to fix what he created when it doesn't go the way it should. The very idea that we can create is dubious, I make wooden swords and carve stones, I create nothing but shape and re-contextualize. I am a parent and I know I created nothing, the life that was in the cells that joined together to become my children was there in me, how arrogant I should be to suppose that i created a child or that i created life. Indeed creation is a word associated with many, many misconceptions. 14) Does Taoism have an explanation for those who have seen the deceased in dreams who give vivid messages that prove true in waking life? Does an explanation matter? I have had some experiences involving dreams and premonition that have been highly accurate. I had a dream that my taijiquan teacher moved back to town for specific reasons, I don't know however when or where I had the dream, the memory of it seemed to appear out of nowhere, I told my teacher about it and he said it was absolutely true. In dreams however, we do not require an explanation, after all what is an explanation? If gravity is not explained to us are we likely to float away? Could our minds show us something we need to know through the image of a deceased person? Sure. Could a deceased person show us something we need to know in dream? Perhaps. Either way what matters? The explanation or the dream itself? I can do amazing things in my dreams, including flying around, this does not mean i can fly. 15) do we have spirit guides? Do you want a spirit guide? What would one be? I have had people council me in dreams, who gave me names that I later found out were people who were dead. I am at a loss to understand it and make no claims that it was or wasn't meaningful. I don't know that we do or don't have spirit guides, but I know that if I wanted one I would experience one regardless of if it was real or not. Along those lines, whether god is real or not matters not to me, for my heart goes out to god none the less. 16) Are there any angels? In the IKT they teach that there is a spirit world and indeed what would correlate as angels. I however cannot claim that I know what I have been merely told, even if it is plausible or probable. I believe there may be angels, and there may not be. 17) are there heavenly realms? Yes, they are found in this life here on earth. There may be others too, but don't fail to appreciate what you have looking for what you don't. Please forgive my answers should they offend, I have no desire to be argumentative.

It was just a dream so maybe it didn't have anything to do with anything perhaps. But it did *feel* like a negative transmission and I was still on board with the practice so was confused by the negative vibe. In my normal life I don't really have strong opinions about dudes kissing me as long as their hands don't wander.

Interesting Yes, I saw Sean D's post. Not sure if this Master is accessible or not or if you would have to study with David to get to him or not. I had lunch with a Zen Master a few weeks ago who has a school here and in Berkely. His opinion was Taoists tend to get too attached to energy phenomena and need Zen to balance this. So his School blends Sundo(Korean Taoism) and Zen Buddhism. As impressive as I found him and as much of a dream it has always been of mine to study directly with a bon a fide Zen Master. Being completely honest with myself the path I initiated with Max is really just still going full force 24/7. I mean I feel I am in Max and Jenny's Maoshan lineage. I haven't taken any traditional Maoshan Taoist stuff with Max but my sense is it's all I need. ATLEAST for a good long while. That said..if Sean was able to share a little more about David's Korean Teacher or share info about him privately with me I would certainly make the effort to go see such a being. Why not? If I need to pay a huge sum of money to David to get the info then it's not in the cards right now. Too many responsibilities and other things going. Cam

Your'e welcome. Thanks for putting in the effort to help me too. That's what this place is for. All of this stuff reminds me of who I am too, it puts me in touch with my better nature. I didnt have the connection you found with martial arts teachers and exorcists, if I had then maybe when I could't sleep at night as a teenager, just like you, i could have gotten some help. Instead I got thown out of the house for being a drug addict when i was anything but. You know, I have only been doing this Taoist stuff for a year, but it has made me think back over my life in different ways. I realized I had been feeling Chi in my body for a long time. As a teenager, I would lie in bed sleepless and the room would grow very small, and my body would grow very large. I could feel the gravity field of my own body and other weird stuff. sometime this is called Alice in Wonderland Syndrome or Lewis Carroll Syndrome. These feelings were connected with great heat in my body and redness and itching in my skin. sometimes I would also perceive a liquid chrome sphere that was simultaneously larger than the universe and smaller than a quark. I would lie there with the distorted room buzzing with this strange apparition in my minds eye, very lifelike. when I would go to school exhausted the next day I would get taken to the nurses office and accused of doing drugs. thank you nancy reagan. I mentioned that I have been trying to contact my higher self, But maybe I should give more detail. After I do the fusion of the five elements, sometimes my head is filled with light. I open up my head like a flower, and this white plant with red flower buds snakes out like a vine, and starts searching around the room. I extend it up through the layers of mist and connect with a dark colored marbled rainbow sphere which feeds me energy down through the flower into my body. After doing this for a couple of months, I had a dream where this thing appeared, a large square sectioned bar, also rainbow colored but is searing electric hues. It was one of those dreams where the vision is of an intensity that makes what we call waking reality pale in comparison. It beamed this energy into me and all of these brown insects and spiders started exploding out of me and being blown to pieces. Last night before I went to bed I called this bar down into my body to try and invoke my higher self. Perhaps it worked? dont know.

Erdweir I suggested a book for you in another post of your Vitality Energy and spirit, by Thomas Cleary. It is all you will likely need, for well everything, but know that it is one of those books you will have to read over and over and over, Specifically pay attention to the section call, "Compass Center Directions" to me it is the most direct explanation of the Tao there is, very deep , not easily practiced, but I have been all over the place and when I finally found real Taoists Priests their methods are more or less exactly as this section describes. As far as this experience goes, all I can say is try and roll with the punches, and don't get scared, hopefully it won't be as weird for you as it was for me, but umm yeah you might want to be prepared for something weird, just incase. Fizix, yes this is exactly what I went through, except rather than simply silhouettes they had tangible form and color, similar to the blue greenish blur than remains after looking at a bright light. You Know? you get a shape of that light after wards when you look away right ? It was as if these things were made of that blur, but detailed, like faces and forms and with depth and dimension, what was scary was well they would all be different. You know like different people, and not just people but things. This even happened to me when I was traveling through asia, and you wanna know whats funny ? There faces over there were yes you guessed it asian. These things whatever they are are clearly intelligent at least on some level, not all of them but some were, there would come right up to me look me in the eye, some friendly, even beautiful, but some horrid and frightening. I mhave to say thie first few times were probably some of the most frightening experiences I have ever had, because when this happens no matter where you were sleeping without fail everytime, thats where it happens. If I was on the couch, I would be on the couch, if I was at a hotel I was at a hotel, if I was in my room, well you get it, point is if it were just a dream wouldn't I be somewhere random ? Weird huh ? I think herb might have some opening effects on certain parts of the subconcious, cause I did smoke early on in highschool, but I was clear of it for more than several years before this all began for me. I think for me it was improper meditation, I think the energy wasn't settling enough, either that or it was something like the phase of things waking up, kundalini maybe, I'm not sure exactly. I hope you guys don't mind me deleting this, it has always been somewhat private to me, those of you who read it I am happy to share it with you and for those who didn't oh well I guess. Hope that doesn't bother anyone.

I don't want to talk to much, but sometimes things should be clarified, for examply someone said being sad and being happy is the same or sad and joy is the same whatever, the truth is it is not. Being joyful and being sad is NOT the same. Happiness brings life, the will to live, the desire to make a good life, to live life and do things. Sadness brings death, desire to hide away, shrivel up and essentially die. When did someone who was truly happy ever kill themselves ? How is this the same ? Happy people build themselves fine careers make good money and live comfortably, they can then meditate all day if they choose, or practice yoga and tai ji all day as they please, eat quality organic vegan food if that is their thing. How are you going to train if you didn't set yourself up well and have to pull 9-5 er's all week long ? When you get home, your gonna just want to watch some tv and pass out. You can still do it this way I guess, but I find it disturbing that people don't realize that those people who made good money earned it, they were the ones that stayed home and studied while others went out and partied, some may resent them for their success, thinking that the way implies we should all be impoverished monks or something, FOOLISH! Nothing but. Make a good life for yourself, then you can do whatever you please, unless you think your hearty enough to go into the mountains and live like a mountain man for the rest of your life, with no electricity or running water, hunting every meal, building a fire for every meal, and simply not to freeze to death. I know survival skills well it is one of my forte's, most people dream of disapearing into the mountains like an immortal, but the reality is, until you are an immortal, you can't do this, you will simply die, if not of starvation, from a wild animal attacking you, or disease from the countless insects which will chew on you threw the night. Those that think themselves so tough in this regard should try not eating for just one week while they hike strenuously, out of ten seven or eight wouldn't make it through a day, and out of those two or three left, only one would make it through the next day. And that one would certainly be chewing on pine cones by the middle of the week. I'm not saying seek fame and glory, I'm saying set yourself up well, and you can train all day or whatever you want, that is the responsible way, the hardworking way. Just sliding by is easy anyone can do that. Throwing everything away is easy, anyone can do that. Running away from it all is easy. Facing life and taking it on and winning takes a true Human, a true practitioner of the Way. I sincerely wish you the best in this regard.

You haven't broken your experience enough then. Contemplation allows to eventually break or morph one's experience of what it means to be oneself so much, that it's like becoming a non-human, at least for a short time. I don't mean "broken" in a literal sense. I might as well say "fixed" or just "changed". Prior to contemplation one naturally believes certain things and naturally disbelieves others. That's normal. That's how the mind works. Mind has a certain disposition or tendency. It agrees with some things more easily than others. It's true that we are taught what to believe by society to a large extent, but also we have internal inclinations and some things we are glad to learn while others we learn slowly or resist learning. So even from a dualistic perspective one should see that not everything comes from society. One's own mind has a certain kind of make up to it. This make up is not always explainable to the public with easy descriptions. You don't have to apply conscious effort to have this kind of "default" make up. So in a sense, you are right. You're right in the sense that you didn't have to work to create these rules that you observe. So you might think since that's the case, these rules exist externally. Consider a case of dreaming. When you dream, dream worlds also have rules. Are they external to the mind? I think even the materialists will easily accept that the dream-world rules are internal to the mind. But then the question arises: if the mind can maintain so vividly and so accurately all these rules, why do we need some substance or physics to explain it? Alternatively, does physics explain just how it is at the time, or does it explain how it can ever be? Most people take our current understanding/descriptions/science to mean "this is how it ever is". They don't think, "This is a visionary experience that's temporarily like this, and can change to a different set of rules at the drop of a hat." These are hidden assumptions. Most people don't voice them and don't even think about such things. The problems comes from thinking that effortless equals non-intentional or extra-intentional. The thought goes, "I don't make anything to make the street appear how it does, therefore, since I don't expend effort on it, it is that way ON ITS OWN, external to me, which is to say, external to the scope of my intent." However if you contemplate intent, you have to understand that if effort is to have any meaning, one must be able to have different degrees of effort, in other words, one must have a continuum of degrees of effort from little effort to a lot, and then effortlessness must be a PART of this continuum and therefore cannot signify anything extra-intentional. Alternatively if effort has no degrees, it loses its meaning. Then it's not a state we can exit or enter. It's a constant. This is not congruent with our, and definitely not with my own experience of exertion. To me effort is something that can gradually build up all the way from effortlessness to maximum exertion where I begin to lose sense of myself (over-exertion which jeopardizes one's identity-integrity, for example bursting a vein from an effort and dying, thus at least temporarily not being able to recognize oneself as one used to shortly previously). Also, if effort is constant, then we cannot conclude that such thing as effortlessness exists, since it's then not detectable as a change in anything, and therefore the state of the street is one of effort too, then again you get to a funny point where you realize that this branch of thinking also leads to the same place. The place of there being nothing extra-intentional. If you go further you can eliminate things being intra-intentional too, etc... and that's the entry into a complete mystery. Then nothing at all can be said at that point. Even if you say "things are spontaneous" that's also not entirely correct from this level of insight. At this point one sees spontaneous and intentional phenomena to be identical in their nature and perhaps hesitates to specify what the difference might be, or comes up with 10 or 10000 seemingly contradicting types of differences, etc., in other words, exhibits an intense freedom of mind.

So you believe in energy? You want to stimulate it and use it for your own purposes? Well, take a number then, because you're one among many. Only few people go beyond the need for energy cultivation. In case you want to play with energy, just understand the meaning of it, and you won't go wrong. First, what is energy? Energy is defined as ability to cause change. For example, if I raise a brick off the ground, we say this brick has potential energy. This is just straight physics. But it's important to understand this concept, because the language we use to describe phenomena is crucial. So the brick has some potential energy. It means that if conditions change, this energy will be released, and something will change as a result. For example, the brick will begin to accelerate, that's one change. We say the brick acquired kinetic energy. Then the brick hits the ground and it creates a dent in the ground, some sound and a tiny amount of heat. All that change is said to be the result of this potential energy of the upraised brick. This is kind of how we use that word, when we use it intelligently in the Western sense. Another meaning of the word energy is this -- it's a process that would take effort to stop. So for example, if something is flying around the Earth, like say, moon, we say it has a lot of energy stored in its motion. Why do we say that? We say that because we imagine that if we tried to stop the moon, it would take a lot of doing on our part. That's also known as inertia. Now when people want to practice energy, why do they want it? First of all, people don't believe their own intent has direct influence on the appearances. People believe that intent has certain rules or channels along which it flows. For example, I can intend to move my hand, because that's allowed by my deeply ingrained, semi-unconscious belief system about who I am, what is the meaning of me, etc. "Who I am" includes into it understandings such as "what I am capable of", "how I influence the world", "how the world influences me" and so forth. So, for example, I may not believe that I can intend my arm to fly off my body arbitrarily and lift something 300 meters away from my body. That's against the rules. And yet... people somehow still believe that something is possible that's not completely described by the conventional physics. They figure (wrongly) that like with other things, it's got to follow its own rules. So instead of trying to understand if the physics rules are true or not, or if they are habits of mind, people enthusiastically set out looking for these rules. And many many teachers are only happy to oblige. They say, "yes, I know the subtle rules... I know how you can achieve all kinds of uncommon and unconventional results using secret/subtle energy". And they tell you a story. There are many many stories. They are all different, but the stories that come from Eurasia tend to be similar (the stories in the Americas are very different, for example, and Kaballist view is at least somewhat different, if not very). The idea is that energy has to rise to the head and sometimes even out of the head and beyond. Another idea is that energy must move around, if it's blocked, it piles up and hurts. So without any critical thinking people enthusiastically rush forward, like madmen, to get their energy to rise quickly to the head! Or to get it moving around! OR ELSE! But if you study the nature of phenomena, invariable you will have to understand, eventually, that phenomena are empty of essence. In other words, that at the ultimate level nothing makes phenomena what they are, not even causes and conditions, that ultimately phenomena are inscrutable for the reason of there being nothing guaranteeing the stability of identities. And identities without stability are useless, ultimately. Because if the same identity means various things over time, even as you pronounce the sentence, by the time you're finished pronouncing it, its meaning is not the same as when you have started saying it. That's the implication of instability of identities. So when it comes to energy practice, the implication is that energy is not substantially real, nor is any other sensation. It's like a vision, or like a dream, or like the sunset seen by a blind man, or like the beautiful violins herd by the deaf, like the fur on the tortoise, or like the rabbit's horn. So, if you don't take energy seriously, and if you don't depend on it for anything of substance, if you just do it for fun and coolness and self-expression, then it becomes safe. Still, you need to check your beliefs first. For example, do you believe that energy has inertia? If yes, and most people do believe that, then do you realize that if you summon energy in your spine, it will take equal amount of work to get rid of it later when you discover you don't enjoy the sensation and that you've not been made wiser or more impressive by it? If you realize it, great! In order to check your beliefs, look at how you act, not at how you talk. If you say you believe that there is no such thing as inertia, but you act as if there is, you believe that there is. Belief is how you ACTUALLY LIVE your life and not how you talk. So to know what you believe, check what you ACTUALLY DO in real life. Don't lie to yourself, be honest, but do keep an open mind. Today's truth can become tomorrow's lie. Energy is moved by intent. So understand intent! How does intent work with regard to your own body and the world? First, the intent, within its scope, is miraculous. It works without the "how". For example I move my hands spontaneously. Sure, my movements are constrained by certain rules, but within the allowed freedoms, the movement is spontaneous. Which is to say, I don't produce intent to produce intent to move my hand. It's not a two step process. I don't even want to move it before I move it! I move it AS I want to move it. It's instant. Within the scope of intent the manifestation is instant, without rules, without steps, without explanations, without procedures of any kind. I call it the no-how (as a play on "know-how"). The true know-how is a no-how. So why do people spend so much effort on skills? That's because outside the scope of intent, things work according to rules. For example, if I want a certain change in the outside world, I must pull a lever, for example. My hand will, within its constraint, move miraculously, and I don't need to worry about that. But as I want to affect further change, I must interface through the self-imposed rules. The lever won't move itself unless I push it with my hand. Why not? Because that's how I set up the scope of my intent. Intent, intentionally, fractures itself into "within my intent and outside my intent". It can also intentionally de-fracture itself. When it does so, you won't need to follow any rules for any manifestation, because all manifestation will become like your body, and will move naturally, without you making special effort at it, as you wish. But people cannot believe that! So they work at energy. They think if they can project energy from their hands, they can heal or kill and so on. This is better than what physics allows, so it's like a tiny step forward in freedom. But understand the roots of your intent! Meditate on what it means to intend something. First, is intent yours or not or neither? Does intent have a start and a stop? Does intent have a boundary? How is the boundary maintained? Can it be proven? How? When you think this, slowly and quietly, feel it with your whole being. Move your hand as you contemplate. Touch the surfaces of things. Move objects. Watch intent. Does it have beginning or end? In what sense is it yours? In what sense is it not yours? Where is the boundary? What holds the rules? How do you know what is miraculous and what is normal? Or for that matter, how do you know what is normal and what is just rare? Don't just think. Feel. Reflect. Observe. Be. I just scratched the surface, but to summarize: Understand the nature of phenomena. Understand your own intent. Don't take anything too seriously. Don't become obsessed. Your health is not that precious. One good way to lose one's health is to become obsessed about it. Your life is not that precious. If you have to stay alive at any cost, that's the ticket to hell. Hell beings exist in conditions that would kill any being on this planet in a split second, but they don't die. Why not? They suffer greatly and yet what would kill you in .0001 second, doesn't kill the hell being. Why not? BECAUSE hell being CLINGS TO LIFE AND REFUSES TO DIE, no matter that their life is TRASH. They say, "I want to live, no matter what it means, even if it means my eyes are being gouged out." And the Universe, the mind, is happy to deliver, because at the ultimate level there is no good or bad. You want it? OK, you got it. No problem. There is no moral judgment from the Dao. If you want a seeming eternity of pain, you can enact it for yourself. If you want a seeming eternity of bliss, that's also possible. Just visions! Like having a good dream or having a bad dream is still a dream. To live happy you must be willing to die at the drop of a hat. Die early, die often. Die to the bad life. You have to be very very fragile. If you are very strong and robust, you will sustain a LOT of suffering before you die. But if you a fragile, even a tiny inconvenience will remove your field of attention from the phenomena that's causing the incongruence. So see? Sometimes being strong means being a moron. There is nothing to be proud of if you are strong. I am very strong, but I am not proud of my strength. It means I suffer unnecessarily and make trouble for myself. I don't have the strength to be intentionally weak. Lalalala.... Energy practice is a dream. You're not moving anything. There is no spoon. The rules you're working with are empty. If you keep this in mind, and just use basic common sense, it will be safe. Start of slowly, and if you don't like how things are evolving, just stop. What kills people is STUBBORNNESS. Like the person will get a bad sensation, but THE GURU SAID THIS IS THE WAY, and so the person will disregard their own body and mind and will rape himself or herself until they can't even live, and THEN they will consider that maybe they are wrong and the Guru is also wrong. But not until then. People have incredible pigheadness like that. They'll do the wrong thing until it kills them, and sometimes even when they are dying, they don't attribute their bad condition to the thing that's killing them, but blame everything around them. So listen to yourself. Listen to your body and mind and feelings. Pay attention. Respect yourself. Don't saddle yourself with something just because someone else said it was good. Inspect it. Is it good for you? Then do it. But don't do it based on mere hearsay.

This is common among brainwave entrainment enthusiasts. They use brainwave entrainment tools to achieve specific brainwave patterns of sleep, notably theta and delta. It is said that 20 minutes in theta is equivalent to 4 hours sleep. It is prevalent during REM sleep when we dream. Delta is the slowest brainwave pattern and is prevalent when the body repairs and restores it's self. Practitioners have good results getting as little as 2 hours sleep in the short term, but it catches up to them in the long run. Problem is that we are wired to sleep at night, and be active in daylight. The brain produces melatonin after dark, which makes us drowsy and sleep. When sunlight hits our retina in the morning, it changes the melatonin to seritonin, a hormone associated to feelings of joy and well being. Babies produce a lot of melatonin and the production gradually slows. That is why babies sleep a lot and seniors don't. When you mess with your circadian rhythm, your brain quits producing melatonin like it should. Melatonin is a powerful antioxidant. That is why shift workers have shorter life spans. I would only mess with my natural sleep cycle if I had to.

I see the way. But as the saying goes, just because the sun is out doesn't mean all the snow is melted. I would say there's no constriction, no holding back. When you see the small mind as the mind, this is clear. How can you be constricted? Ignorant, yes. Forgetful, yes. This seems to be more where the problem lies. Actually, I was not fully clear when I said there was nothing else. There is perceiving. Not a feeling of perceiving, this is a perception. You're just restating what I said. Thus, there is agreement. You're missing the point. The point was, there is nothing beyond perception (and perceiving). Adding more perceptions (i.e. thoughts) doesn't establish anything about perception. The point is, you cannot go beyond perception to talk of crazy things like "essence" or "identity" or "bases." You assume a lot, gih. I've noticed a tendency to take a tiny bit of information, and extrapolate. I see you're misinterpreted what I said, and come to a conclusion based on it. I don't blame the misinterpretation, this is the nature of communication. You're right, my process is not refined. It is easy. It is simple. It is using awareness to investigate. Not concepts, theories, or mental tricks. Just observing, watching, noticing. It's not about smart or dumb, fancy or plain. You can talk about patterns of perceptions, and these are not necesarily perceptions. You see a light. Then it is gone. That is impermanance. But you aren't REALLY seeing impermanance. You are seeing a light, light, light, gone. Well, it goes more like this. Eyes open, tree. There was no volition, no process of selection, coloring, or shaping the tree. It is just there. All that other stuff "beautiful sight" "rain" "thunder" this is just adding thought. Soemtimes there are thoughts, sometimes not. But again, not controlled. As you noted earlier, they arise spontaneously. Now, you appear to say that it arises partly of effort. While I admit that what you say here is interesting (and makes me wonder what your experiences actually ARE), I do say I smell ego. Shape, control, change according to will, this is small mind stuff. Does big mind care? But on the other hand, if this was possible, I suppose it would loosen up small mind's grip, if not destroy it. Let me say this point is deferred. But there is no lucid dreaming without realizing one is in a dream. To paraphrase Gurdjieff, how can you change anything unless first you are present? There is some responsibity, I would hope. If you start a process, you should be around to finish the job. This is another big leap, again based on little information. Read again what I wrote, perhaps with some calm passivity. I wouldn't jump in front of the car, and I'm pretty sure you wouldn't either. As any good soldier knows, a battle plan usually lasts about five seconds into an actual battle. Your reaction to my words says more about you than about me. And vice versa. Again, I won't play into your options. It's not either/or, choice A or B. I would keep less in mind than what Lin Chi may or may not have done, and more what we can do hereand now. You seem to profess different things at different times, so who knows? You brought up the Buddhas.

If you can see the limitations, you can ultimately see how to overcome them as well. That's how cognizance works. How does awareness of a limit appear? When you feel some constriction it's a sense that you COULD move somewhere, but something is holding you back. So the part where you feel you COULD move somewhere is half the answer right there. The other half is to examine the nature of that which seems to hold you back. This involves a certain amount of testing and getting outside the comfort zone. What's the difference between an audio event and an experience of hearing? Can you describe it clearly? I agree. But go further. Even the feeling of having the perception, the havingness of perception, that's also perception. Let's go further. First of all, things outside perception are irrelevant. If something affects perception, it's not outside perception. So either it's relevant and we can perceive it, or it's not relevant and we cannot perceive it. Thus we can relieve ourselves of the worrying about things outside perception. We only need to consider perception and nothing else. This makes the scope realistic and manageable and less hypothetical and less speculative. When you consider something to be outside perception, you enter into a speculative realm in an extreme way. The process of adding is also perceived, isn't it? You do notice the adding right? That means it's also a perception. So if adding is a perception, how can you add something to perception? Adding is a perception. Adding is not something that's not perceived. I agree that nothing can be established, but even in your speculative line of thinking you are not careful. So you reach an agreeable to my mind conclusion via a disagreeable to my mind process. Since the process you use is not very refined, and since the process has not been aborted, it's only a matter of time before the faulty process yields an undesirable conclusion. Of course that's just my evaluation of it. You're missing a little bit of mindfulness. You're not aware of that adding is perception. What's not perception? Can you even discuss something that's not a perception? You'd be talking bullshit, right? You'd be talking about something you have no experience of. When the tiny child knows the difference, as you say, they have a habitual mind-energy. It's a mind habit. What people are not aware of, is that the perception of meaning is a habit. People think that meanings are inherent in the seemingly external objects of the seemingly external world. For example, if you see a tree, you think, that's definitely a tree, that's not a cow, no doubt about it. You don't see that this meaning is being made by your mind. You see that this meaning is somehow implied to you by the seemingly external world, and that you are innocent. You see yourself as purely passive innocent receptacle of meaning, and not as a creator, maintainer, destroyer and transformer of meaning. In reality, the process of perception is not purely passive. It's semi-passive and semi-active, for the lack of a better word. Really it cannot even be described in terms of passivity of activity at all. Meaning perception is definitely not passive. So when you see a cloud in the sky, you know the meaning. You know it might mean rain. You know it might mean thunder. It might mean blocking the light temporarily. It mean might beautiful sight. You're very familiar with those meanings. You can recognize those meanings effortlessly. And since you associate yourself with effort, and some of these meanings appear effortlessly, you think it must be that the meaning comes to you from outside, from the seemingly external world, and that you are seemingly apart from that world and cannot affect it directly via your intent. This is the knot you really have to investigate. Investigation involves contemplation, meditation AND performance of magic. You cannot fully understand phenomena until you make an attempt to, for example, transmute flesh into light, or lead into gold, or cold into heat, and succeed. That can be a tall order, but it's doable. A good place to start, is to learn to lucid dream and try all those things in your dreams first. See how it works. If your memory is not so good, write down what happened. Contemplate it thoroughly. Feel it as deeply as you can while you contemplate it. You can discover A LOT by attempting magic in your dreams. After you learn it in your dreams, and then you realize non-difference between dreaming and waking, you can do it in the waking experience too. When you master the playful appearance this way, when you become a dancer in illusion and not just a ghost of illusion who sits and watches the illusion like on TV... you have to dance in it freely, THEN you will have enough wisdom to equal Buddha's. There is no rush though. You can spend a few lifetimes just practicing sitting meditation without any magic. But at some point you will have to confront your reality-belief, and there is no way to confront it other than to propose a hypothesis: "reality is not how I think it is..." and test it wholeheartedly. That's what magic is. It's a test of a hypothesis that there is nothing beyond mind, that all is mind. The orthodox way of dealing with this is to say that you make no claims, but rather, you only refute the claims of your opponents who claim that there is stability. In other words, if someone proposes a definite and clear view of stable identities, you have all kinds of ways to criticize that view. You don't have to replace it with a better view, because you're a mystic and not a college professor who has to make the kids adhere to a convention as his job. Mystics have a very strange relationship with convention. Don't be an ass. I've done this before and yes, it's empty. Being hit and feeling pain is also empty. I've set myself on fire too. So stop trying to try to out-macho me. I am a bigger man than you and I can tear your head off and drink your blood, understand? My point is, if you want to get into whose dick is bigger contest, you won't learn anything and your days will be short and brutal. So don't offer empty challenges like that. A better approach is an analytical one. Invite me to continue the discussion instead of trying to play off my fear. How do you know I haven't mastered my fear? You will have a very rude surprise if you go around assuming everyone shares your fears and you try to challenge them on based on that assumption. If you want to discuss fear, that's great. But if you want to enact it -- watch out. Are you ready to die right now? Are you ready to be tortured and do you think it's fun? If yes, you're qualified to play that game. If no, then it's more respectable to stick to the analytical side rather than to the side of the wild dance, at least for now. Keep in mind that Lin Chi hit his master straight in the kisser after he got enlightened. He didn't hold back due to respect or deference or the old age of his master. I don't deny appearances. I only discuss the manner in which appearances appear. My goal is to bring more fun, more playfulness, more carefree enjoyment into life. I don't try to create a feeling of absolute certainty about some truth or other. Why "them"? I've done it to some extent. I won't claim to be the best at it, but I've done enough to not have to refer to "them" for authority.

I have battled with this problem for many years. It seems for me when I don't get enough rest and sleep, my will is weaker and I'm more likely to get caught up in negative thought patterns, resenting the whole world including myself for preventing me from getting enough rest. At least for me, dreaming has much to do with it. We all need to dream but with my 12th house moon there is a certain amount a dreaming that needs to be done every night for me to be emotionally (as well as all levels) balanced. If I go more than 1 night of sleeping less than 7 hours, I'm in trouble. I'm certainly envious of those who can live on 6 hours or less every night and still be happy and energetic. Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is a prevalent issue among a few close friends as well. I have numerous theories of why but that's a whole different story

So last night I chose to celebrate cinco de mayo with some friends and got in a bit late. I woke up very tired this morning and all day I've been strongly identified with my thoughts/body/ego/etc. However, when I had a good night's sleep a few days ago, I was very alert/aware mentally and even though it was a tough day I was unaffected by the external circumstances. So my question is this: under fatigue is it possible to remain in a hightened state of awareness even though the external challenges may be greater? Or is it essential that in order to not get caught up in the dream (so to speak) the body needs to be well rested and in good health?