Search the Community

In my own experience, there are many passageways in everyday life to the "spirit world". Most of those we are unable to recognize. Falling asleep, or fading out of ordinary consciousness, you may get a small glimpse. It is mostly challenging for us because of our identificaiton with the rational mind. So if I am able to get glimpses, the method is to become abit like Peter Pan. Decide to let go of your ground of reason, and become "in-sane", in a way, meaning stopping the feeding of rational thought, our greatest delusion. Then suddenly you fly. This can be done contemplating a piece of art, music, a natural scenery, when in deep connection with a loved one, when emerged into an activity. Forget about doing it intentionally, and forget about using drugs. I personally remember these instances vaguely, and I think it is important not to remember them so well. The most vivid was an awake dream I had on a retreat where my master was delayed, and we were playing around with many of his practices as we were waiting for his arrival: (I found it amusingly poetic at the time). I sat and was told to focus on a challigraphy. I struggled, and found the whole thing abit stupid and boring. Maybe 5 minutes before the session was over I finally let go, and whommm... I was flying over snow. It was Mont Blanc, as I recognized it. I ascended upward high above the glaciers, higher and higher until I reached the summit. Then it started again with lightening speed, upward, again and again. And then I had a strong emotional reaction and something passed. I don't know if that was bit beside the point, but I considered the mountain as good a spirit as anything. h

I think I understood what the ghosts were from Mak Tin Si's explanation already. If I have not understood it, then my misunderstanding is going to become apparent later on when I try to say something about ghosts within Mak Tin Si's framework. I myself do not rely on that framework though. I am curious about other people's frameworks, at least sometimes, and I want to see how other people live within their framework and what flavor their life has. It's not an either-or relationship for me. Perspective is part of nature. It's not unnatural. Mind in my view is primordial. It's not something in the brain. The mind is something without characteristics. You can think of the mind as the highest abstraction or the ultimate meaning or one's true or "high" self, or many other names. The mind is not the same as the mindset. Mindset is a structure that resides within mind. It gives shape to experience and it introduces somewhat stable "laws" and relationships and so forth between and about phenomena. Mindsets come and go, but the mind is always present. The mind plus mindset is what makes terms like "time" and "space" have meaning. Without these two, terms like "time" and "space" would have no meaning and could not be experienced. Since mindsets, from the ultimate point of view, can be picked up and dropped like one would a man's tie or a woman's earrings, it makes sense to not take on a mindset just because it is traditional, but to take it on consciously because it is either good or beautiful, and one can do so creatively. If no one teaches a good mindset, you can make one. To do this you need to have a lot of wisdom, but this stage is not unattainable. Anyone who makes wisdom their number one priority in life can attain sufficient wisdom to become creative at the ultimate level after some years or decades or at most a few lives (in my view). In other words, once one is determined to go in that direction, it doesn't take too awfully long. I'm explaining this to give you an idea of where my questions are coming from. The mind, and even the silliest and dumbest mindset are not unnatural. They are natural. People often believe that their minds and thoughts exist extra-nature, outside nature, and somehow impose, rape and violate nature. I don't believe that. It's possible to create an experience of disharmony and clashing energies, but all that is still completely natural, because nature is all-embracing and so is mind. And I have seen physical manifestations since I was a child, but I don't believe that physics is the ultimate truth. Somehow I was able to rise above my perception and my original beliefs. I will not die with the same beliefs I was born with. I'm not saying it's good or bad. But it's a possibility. I personally like it for myself and I wish other people would become aware of the possibility of consciously molding one's core beliefs. Most people sort of take for granted their core beliefs about reality. I guess that can be OK and fun. It's part of dreaming. But consciously molding core beliefs is also a valuable part of dreaming. There is regular dreaming and lucid dreaming, innocent dreaming and dreaming on purpose. I see it as all good and cyclical. I think the flavor of one's dream/experience/life has to change once in a while. What if you already had 1000 lives where you see roughly the same things and believe roughly the same things? Is it enough yet? Are you tired of the sameness yet? For me the answer is yes. Maybe seeing spirits and believing as you do is something you've only been doing for 10 lives and so it's still cool and fresh. I don't know. ----- To Stigweard and TheWhiteRabbit: Thank you! That was interesting. Stig, your square gives me more questions than it gives answers. Why square? Why only 9 squares? Why that order of numbers? Needless to say nothing there seems intuitive to me and it makes no sense. Why is hun on the left sude, west, and po on the right side, east? Why can't hun be north or a corner? I just don't get it. It's obvious to me that the square is arbitrary, and that's fine. But! If you make a system like that, it better have some interesting and elegant properties. However if the system is arbitrary, but is not intuitive, and has no interesting properties and no elegance, then I don't think it's a good system. It is subjective, but that's my take on it. The magical square appears clumsy to me.

Hun & Po TaoBum Topics: Hun, po and other obscurities A question about the Hun and the Po Taoist Terminology ghosts, what do you think ghosts are Taoist Afterlife External Links: Taoist Models of Hun and Po, Part One Taoist Models of Hun and Po, Part Two A note on Hun Po (souls) Hun and Po Yin and Yang souls Fueling the Dream Spirit Po: The Metal Spirit Shen in Neo-Confucian Discourse CHINESE BELIEFS OF DEATH Return to Index (NOTE: Ctrl Click opens a new browser window)

You like to hear yourself talk. I wasn't talking about enlightenment, I was talking about wuji. Truth speaks for itself. Keep living in your dream world of words. Your talking around your own obsticles that the rest of us don't share. Physics are truth. rAicu-IPjMw

When I say ghosts don't exist in my (little) world, I mean I'm oblivious to them. I don't see them. I don't bother them, they don't bother me . If they are there or not it doesn't particularly make a difference. Even if you could produce a ghost it would be hard to know what it was. Its that much harder when I can't see the darn things. I've had conversations with people here I respect and they've told me they see spirits and stuff. I believe them. I don't know how much good it does. I never liked the Chinese thought of earth crowded w/ hungry ghosts of dead, clamoring for food, a sort of unseen zombie movie going around us all the time. With no proof one way or another I rather hope the world's designer was a bit more compassionate. I have a similar problem w/ Christianity; a creator who dooms most of his creation to an eternal hell would inspire anger, horror and rebellion in me. Such a being had better keep its power and never turn its back to me. There's an interesting correlation between the Tibetan book of the dead and some Jewish beliefs. Both have soul's confused after death for a few days. But once the spirit has settled in they go where they should. One part of my practice is a giving away meditation. Reminding myself I am not- my body, not my thoughts, not past, future, emotions, giving up my name and all things. Its like putting a toe into the water of an ocean you know you will one day swim in. Beyond the I don't Know, my religious thought tends to be one of union w/ God in death. Not as my thoughts, but perhaps a closeness to the Buddhist Satori, oneness w/ all things, again there are Jewish parallels. Which may I add posits all good people go to heaven regardless of religious affiliation, least thats what the reformed and orthodox rabbis I've talked to have said. There may well be an active spirit world close to but not visible in our heavy dimension. Jewish writings acknowledge it but say its best left alone. Franz Bardon works come w/ some fascinating descriptions and I think serious dream work (ala Bruce ) gives a path to study it. Yawn, late night ramblings.. Michael

Ghosts and spirits don't exist in my (little) world. Whats I find fascinating is long time practitioners here see them and accept them and consider them almost matter of factly. Even when their practices are totally different there is a commonality of dimensional intrusion. Its as though threre is a line of experience that people cross, a mystical teaching understood-and a new world is opened to there view. I'm not sure that having that view neccessarily effects anything in our common world, but the fact that its so widely seen through the spectrum of different practices points out that it is real. Course that reality is still filtered through the persons experience and expectations. So I suspect one persons ghosts are another persons aliens, one persons angels are anothers evil spirits. maybe.. In his dream workshop tapes Michael Winn constantly spoke of no expectations just see whats there. A hard trick to pull off. Michael

Another perfectly expressed key truth. I know what you're saying is true, but only through the workings of logic. All these spiritual paths which exist world-wide, would not exist if there was no actual experience to back them up. One of my deepest regrets is that I have so far never myself experienced any of these "certain moments", as you call them,... despite being utterly convinced for the greatest part of my life that these windows do occur. I have had some wonderful drug -induced experiences, (one of which being so strong and clear that it may well have been a glimpse through),... but drugs are unfortunately an unreliable friend that I just don't wish to use any more. They're more like a dream than reality, and only diminish one's faculties for continuing the search in the 'straight realm'. The sadness I find is that living the straight life, there's just no more 'highs'. Just a lot of turning over tentative chains of logic in an attempt to understand this existence we are all part of. Being locked into 'mental detective work' has all the life thrillls of an 80 year old jigsaw puzzle addict in an old folks' home. I long for at least a glimpse through one of those windows that so many others have undoubtedly seen through. Just some encouragement to keep one picking up the next piece. ThisLife .

I agree. I also like MTS's stuff. But it's got to be done correctly and we don't need to have discussion flooded again. Why is there an ego resisting the personal practice area or resisting using a single thread...? Phore, excellent dream, thanks for sharing

this reminds me of a dream i had i was driving along the road. I pulled over my car. I was in a rural setting. on the side of the road there was a large field with a country home setting out in it. there was a fence around the property. There was a wooden gate on the fence. I knew that this was the "dragons gate". whan i passed through this gate i would be enlightened and immortal. I punched the gate. my hand went through the wood. The gate came off of its hinges and was barely hanging by the latch. At that moment i heard a siren and saw flashing blue lights. A police officer pulled over and grabbed me. "looks like another punk kid out vandalizing property. I dont know why you guys are so obsessed with this gate" I realized that even though i considered my actions noble, to the people living on the property I was just one in a very long stream of individuals who had an obsession with vandalizing their property. naturally the police would be waiting to catch the next guy who tried to break through the dragons gate. who was right in that situation? in my perspective i was right. in the families perspective i was a pest. Would it have been right for me to attack the police officer for just doing his job?

I used to think so too. But I've had numerous dreams that became so intensely and viscerally moment-by-moment "real", that I was worried I was getting permanently stuck in another dimension. And so before I'd forget that it's just a dream, I would make myself wake up in every one of those dreams. I've learned one thing -- there are no limits. None of any kind. Everything is literally possible. It all depends on mind. Every time I have let my mind loose, amazing things happen with the same certainty as a falling rock hitting the ground on Earth. Every time the limit has only been what I am willing to tolerate and not otherwise. The manifestation is limitless and always at the ready. I feel it lapping at the shore of my sanity at all times. The only limit is not the mind per se or the power to manifest, but only my willingness to accept and live with what I can instantly manifest and its consequences. Now, since we are talking about mindset, there is a real problem here. The problem is that my mindset is not "just because". It represents my intent! So I can't just throw it away. It represents my values, my hopes, my fears, all my ideas and all my knowns. These are not worthless things by any means. Vice versa -- they are the most precious. And if I give them up authentically, it's not because I apply some rote technique to them. Hell no. It's because I contemplate them and I gradually and authentically realize that my values and my dreams are changing. Then the process of giving up my old mindset is effortless and authentic. There is no rote to it. No technique. It's a living heart. It's alive. It's not a robot. It's alive. It's not a machine. It's alive. My mind is alive. I am alive. There is nothing automatic in me. I have habits, but those are also living. They are not machines. What is this? This is me moving my identity further from the mechanistic and closer to the lively. This way is toward freedom, toward unconstrained life, toward the mastery of belief structures. When you see a picture of a woman on the screen, the screen has no woman in it. But you feel like there is a woman there. Why? Because there is a woman IN YOUR MIND. In fact, it's all like that. There are no external objects at all. It's all just mind impressions dancing around. Solidity, materiality, can only be taken on faith. If it's not taken on faith, it can never be proven. When you think you see a wise teacher, how do you know that teacher is wise? Maybe the teacher is a moron. You know it because the wisdom is always, forever, IN YOUR OWN MIND. You could never recognize wisdom in another person if you didn't first have it in you. This is why foolish people follow foolish teachers, and wise people follow wise teachers, and those with the unexcelled wisdom follow no one at all.

Your learning to swim! Great job! Often times complete stillness brings your perception to this point of body mindness. You just waded into the pool where your feeling the basic currents. Welcome. Sensory Isolation can be as simple as sitting in a pool of body temp water. That will induce a dream like biofeedback loop. It can be very simple to find yourself in these naturally altered states that are windows into the multidimensional nature of the human race. Yes, practice makes you high, on life. I'll wag my finger but only if you wag your tail and make some ripples! The only altered state you should be "concerned" with is the one that blinds you from real body awareness. Long term tv and computer use is the worst IMHO. The rest is hearsay from naysayers who fear what can not be catagorized or dfined. Be a cup, the water is the cup. Be a saucer, the water is a saucer. Some like it wet. 5L_Ws11qgkM

Dreaming is an out of body experience. When you dream, your consciousness goes to your astral body and your astral body goes to the inner world. I've been told that when you have been practicing advanced meditation for a long time, you'll be able to exit your body consciously. I have not yet experienced this because I'm still relatively a beginner. Although I have had a few less noteworthy experiences. The closes thing to conscious out of body experience I had was during meditation, sometimes my entire body would go numb and it feels like I'm riding a sort of vortex. This is just a split second experience but still half scary half fun. The most unforgettable was when I went out of bed to go to the bathroom. When I tried to switch on the light, my finger went through and I panicked. And then I suddenly found myself in bed again. I realized then that I had an out of body experience. Other times I just had lucid dreaming where you're dreaming and you know you're dreaming. This happens to me occasionally.

Control your emotions - equality/equanimity and follow the little girl's advice in smile's story. I once had a dream to buy gold, so I did. Made a quick $5000.

I am struck by the many attributes we tend to give our fellow beings... steriotypical or extraordinary... We seldom let ourselves get the true sense of who we deal with, or admire or think about or even just dream about... For me - the greatest similarities between any juxtaposed people is that we assume so much without actually taking the time to let the other folks we are interested in actually express themselves to us in any meaningful way... So much is illusion when we presuppose... We play more tricks on ourselves than others play on us...

"Life, existence, is happening all by itself in this moment. It is a flow of energy. Stress arises because you try and control this moment. You resist this moment. And the greatest way you resist this moment is through the identification with thinking. Thinking is always about the past or the future. By being involved with the thoughts, you avoid the present moment all together. You avoid life itself. You live in a mental world that only exists in thought. It is a dream world and it is a completely different reality to life in this moment. If you let go of control through the acceptance and awareness of what is in this moment, suddenly the mental world with all of it's conflicts and desires stops being real, and you experience life itself. There may be fear because the 'you' as the controller does not exist outside of this mental world. But when you realize this 'you' as the controller is the source of all stress, you become willing to give it up. Then you truly feel alive, as life itself, nourished in the eternal radiance of unconditional peace. Nothing dies in this process. Rather it is an awakening to true living. You discover what you truly are. Blessings, Kip" Discover How to Awaken Yourself To Your True Nature of Unconditional Peace By Visiting the Enlightened Spirituality Website

A great movie about Aboriginal dream time: "The Last Wave" Australian. Stars Richard Chamberlain. 1979.

So we live in a matrix. My body and the world is not real. When I reach enlightenment I see the world as one, and I will laugh and laugh about how reality really is. Ramana Maharishi said we never know if others are real. I think Hinduism says that life is only a dream and you have infinite potential. I am just on the path, so I don't know how reality is, but I wonder. How real are others? For example: I play a game with 50 participants, after a lot of praying to God and hard work I will be the winner of that game. Is this according to the law of infinity? I mean, because we are infinite we choose parallel worlds in which we win the game instead of others (like in dreams) Applying quantum physics this could be true?? (because every one is a center of a universe) There are infinite possibilites already existent? I don't get it. It seems that others are real, but sometimes I don't think it seems so real to me. For example, people can predict the future. I have seen weird things happening during Tarots game. This was an answer I got from a spiritual friend: The world is in you. It's a projection of yourself. As you save yourself, you save the world. Thus I think he means others are not real. But this will be a weird question for you, because either I am unreal or you are unreal or we exist in multiple universes at once?

This is all a dream dont wake me up plz it was yust getting good

I am as real as you are, but I may be no more than a butterfly's fleeting dream

So you made up this system based on dream qi kung? Who has been your current teachers that are alive and living beings, I dont know if that is on your site and please forgive me if it is. Ape

Your a marketers dream!!! lmfao

I agree with the point you were aking in your first two paragraphs. The story of a woman giving herself a Caesarian, (though interesting in itself),.... is stretching our credibility to suggest that the experience has close parallels to spiritual seeking in our current society. However, I find that your own final statement similarly bears very little resemblance to spiritual truth as I see it. It praises one extreme and spurns its opposite as false and deluded. To me, that process is like looking at the Yin-Yang symbol and extolling the perfection of the black parts. How much better and more relevant it would be without the white parts !! I'm sure you see what I mean. I believe Buddha is quoted as saying something like, "The truth always lies in the Middle Way". From my own personal experience, I followed a Buddhist path with a certified Tibetan master for almost twenty years. The things I saw going on in that organisation amongst many of the supposedly 'most advanced' practitioners,... really almost beggars belief. Believe me, there are NO GUARANTEES with a master, just as there are equally none trying on your own. I think that the best advice on following the spiritual path that I've ever seen is posted here by Sloppy Zhang on a neighbouring thread : "To be honest.... I don't really know I started out with pretty selfish and lame reasons, but those have mostly fallen away.... But I keep walking " Perhaps, if we, ourselves, gradually let go of extremes and just keep on walking, this whole mystery of our existence will simply dissipate like a dream does to a relaxed and contented mind. ThisLife .

Hey Drew, My name is Daniel and I think I was shaving my head back then and chubby. I went through all 4 levels twice with Chunyi Lin, but I had too much emotional pathologies going on to get much out of it, although I did have some amazing 3rd eye stuff happen. I could see others who were doing the same meditation, like a great big human standing on the planet smiling. Lin came in a dream once to work on my back, and I was becoming precognitive. People were treating me as younger. It is amazing stuff. I actually took my first classes with Lin when he was starting out at Turtle Island. Lately with Yan Xin I have been learning to fly, it is akin to a motorcycle rush. I am using YX to deal with parental issues, as the higher steps allows one to see things from their perspective. Better get back to work. Wishing you a happy day.

No neurons friend. It's just mind. What's almost impossible to understand, especially for most of the Western Philosophers, is that mind is not something in the brain. It is something primordial and it is not even "something" at all. Most of the Western Philo is strongly rooted in a doctrine of physicalist materialism, and this doctrine blocks the understanding of NDEs. The mind can be structured via different possible (potential) mindsets. Depending on the mindset that's dominating, you appear as various beings. If you have a human mindset, you appear as a human. If you have a formless god mindset, you appear as a formless god (without a body or location in space). If you have a mindset of a squid you appear as a squid, and so on and so forth. Among humans there is a huge variety of mindsets. For example you can be a physicalist materialist, or you can be spiritual (the opposite or a complement of physicalist materialism) and so on. Having a sense of "me" is just one experience. There is also an experience with "no-me", but it works against the potential of "me". In other words, no-me is related and dependent on me. So you know what you expect to find when you look for yourself. When you fail to find any of it, you experience the so-called no-me state of mind. In no-me state, either some or all familiar features are absent, but you are not stupid or in an oblivion, you understand intuitively what's happening, because the mind is ultimately omniscient. Let's go back to the body for a second. What happens when your body changes to the point that begins to contradict your idea of the body-alive? Your mind can no longer associate with it, that's what. Deep in your mind you have a mindset that tells you what it means to be "alive in the body". When your body changes beyond that point, a disassociation occurs. Now, when I say "disassociation", I don't mean your body is left on the side and your mind flies away. What I mean is that the vision of the body either dissolves slowly or spontaneously collapses. The body is not ultimately real, do you see? What happens to your dream body when you wake up? Where is it? The same thing happens to this body after death. Whether you consider NDE real or not depends on your validation framework. Validation framework is a mindset that separates your experience into real and unreal. It's what tells you that something must be a hallucination, "because there is no way it can't be real." Validation framework is something that you can learn to control, but for most people it is something that's a product of their culture and past "lives" or just past time. It's kind of like a mind habit. I hope this helps.

Ok thanks, indeed why should there be something instead of nothing? God is without cause, omnipotent etc, but why indeed would he have created maya? Some say you only dream this maya, it doesn't exists, or you will understand when you merge with the Divine, but indeed I think there could be other answers than these. Right now I just believe I want to know the reason of the existense of maya as an answer for the mind, because the mind always seeks cause and effect. I hope it will just vanish when I reach my englightenment, without reason without cause : )