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Hi mwight I'm just a confused being relying on the insights of others instead of direct personal experience, so I can't really offer an adequate personal definition beyond the general one given by Dzigar Kontrul earlier on. Now all the teachings I've received say that enlightenment is beyond concepts so nothing that can be said about it will ever be definitive. However, personally, aspects of it can be deduced from how enlightened beings manifest to us in various accounts given by the enlightened traditions themselves. Since one of the titles of the Buddha is the Awakened One, then sure, enlightenment is waking up from this dream of life and death. My personal 'definition' - for what its worth - is at variance to your definition which seems to advise that enlightenment is to be avoided because it leads to a putative annihilation. Is enlightenment a nihilistic "complete and total annihilation of self, identity, ego, life and attachments to loved ones/things"? From the accounts of the lives and enlightenment of the Indian mahasiddhas far from it; there is warmth, humour, outrageous behaviour and compassion. Self, identity, ego, life, attachments and loved ones are put in to a different perspective and instead of being context become content. Indeed the passions and the fifty one mental states are worn as ornaments and are the manifestations of enlightened energy.

On energetic practices: Qigong, Neigong and other practices can result in the over stimulation of the mind and lead to anxiety, and panic attacks, manic type euphoria, and sleep-deprivation induced hallucinations. The practitioner needs to be able to ground out this abundance of energy, or gather it up and store in in their lower dan tein. Some methods on grounding are sitting on earth and feeling the energy being dumped into the earth. Slow deep breathing. Eating a heavy protein meal. Taking a luke warm shower as long as possible, and feeling the energy draining away. Getting a good restful sleep by taking melatonin, and chamomile before bed. Isolating themselves from others until the excess energies are gone from their system. Please don't take this as an attack, really its just a rant against society. On enlightenment: A lot of people think enlightenment one of those things you can try out for the weekend but then go back to work on Monday at your 9-5, and then go bowling on Tuesday, and church on Sunday. We're really talking about fundamentally changing the way we view reality, a complete 180 in paradigm. That isn't something you can achieve and still remain exactly as you were. It's really not a "have your cake and eat it too" scenario. Enlightenment is a completely new paradigm and mode of being or rather non-being, learning to adjust to it, while still acting normal and functioning according to your previous paradigm (while in the presence of others) isn't going to be easy. I guess it all boils down to how you define enlightenment. If you define enlightenment as an expansion of mind, self, ego and consciousness, or elevation to divine status, etc. Then yes there are better ways. If you view enlightenment as permanent non-dual awareness, awakening from the dream, and the realization of truth, then no there isn't a better way. You can't keep yourself, your ego, your identity, your sense of self, and still be enlightened, Sure maybe you could keep your ego around as perhaps a costume used to interact with the rest of society out of necessity, but its not the same, there is no one behind it. Everyone says they want the truth, but what if the truth isn't something they would like to hear. What if is scary, and leads to uncharted territory? The Buddha said verbatim this world is a dream, and we are all asleep. To wake up you must first realize the life your living is a dream. Not many people are willing to do that. Sometimes people have so called "psychotic" reactions to glimpses of truth, they have as a result of their meditation. 10 minutes of true non-dual awareness would be enough to send most people I know into a serious existential crisis. But that isn't such a bad thing,that is if they really want the truth. What if the truth means the life they have been living wasn't/isn't real, and the ego and identity they had built up was no more real than a fictional character in a dream. That just isn't something people want to hear, or much less think about, truth or not. They want something which will make them feel good about themselves, give them purpose and meaning, within the context of what they currently believe to be real. Truth isn't what most people are after, they really want sleeping pills. If truth and enlightenment are truly what someone seeks, then a so called existential crisis, or "psychotic" break might just be the best thing to ever happen to them. Rant on psychosis: Modern day psychiatry is a sham. Any person who belongs to a non-mainstream belief system or lack thereof, runs the risk of being diagnosed with a disorder or illness. Despite the fact this runs completely against the founding principals of our constitution, it is common place and accepted in our society. Every day across the world, thousands of people that pose no threat to themselves or others, and are perfectly capable of functioning in society are imprisoned and drugged until they are deemed "well". This diagnosis is made by individuals who practice not an objective science, but an art. There are many people who have been committed for espousing the teachings of the Buddha as actual realizations they themselves had, or in a literal belief (not intellectual) in pantheism, nihilism, nondualism, shamanism or a myriad of other religious or philosophical ideas and concepts. They're incarcerated and drugged, and lost in a legal limbo for the rest of their lives if they don't pretend to "get well". Some people who refuse to admit their "insanity" are given shock treatments, and strait jacketed in padded rooms. The lobotomy is still a practiced procedure, although now it hides behind the term "psycho-surgery". The long term effects of some of these medicines are horrible, renal failure, Parkinson's, diabetes, and some are extremely neurotoxic. I am not sure modern day psychiatry is any better than it was in the dark ages, when we preformed trepanation to release the demons from peoples heads. A persons sanity should only come into question if they are unable to function in society and abide by its laws, and rules, or if they pose a threat to themselves or other people. Unfortunately that isn't the case. This is worth watching

I think when most people talk about enlightenment, what they are really talking about is apotheosis. How would you personally define enlightenment? If it isn't waking up from this dream we call life, what exactly is it then?

Rex, When Buddha said this world is a dream, that wasn't meant metaphorically. We conduct our lives as though everything we do has purpose and meaning, and were marching forward towards some great end. What meaning does a dream have? What meaning does instrumental song or an abstract painting have? I think you might be missing what I'm getting at. You don't want enlightenment, because it isn't something which will better your life. As a matter of fact it will destroy it. It is a complete and total annihilation of self, identity, ego, life and attachments to loved ones/things.. Awakening is death. A hollowing out of being. This world my friend is a big sand box, and we are just toddlers playing make believe with our sand creations. Hey look my sand car is bigger than yours! Look at my sand house! And my sand money! And my sand computer. Look at my sand man, and all his little sand friends! Somehow over the course of our game of make believe we forgot we are not the sand people in the sand world, but rather the makers of it. Enlightenment is reaching adult hood, and realizing playing make believe is a game children play. Walking out of the sandbox and trying to figure out just what the hell is really going on. http://youtube.com/watch?v=Z1RQmnSJoRg http://youtube.com/watch?v=AXmzcroUmdU

OK so last night I was reading at Hard Times, the local anarchist cafe (for Mpls. readers). I left there at 3 a.m. or so, after shooting energy into a friend of mine who is really into Algernon Blackwood and his "cosmic horror" buddies (previously he was into Crowley). We shared garlic cloves as I recovered from that 75% discounted Easter candy at Walgreens. haha. Anyway then I had 3 mutual climaxes with this young well-endowed female who sat across from me. Of course I was sitting in full-lotus as I do all day long. Oh yeah I was reading Richard Feynman's autobiography and he was the Triode Amplifier master of western science. That's how he started his career -- fixing tube amps in the depression in NYC. What's fascinating is that he wondered about "streamless consciousness" and so focused his mind when sleeping to see if it slowed down or just smeared into gibberish. He broke his sleep into two intervals so that he would double his dream mind yoga practice. He figured out that it was the latter (the mind turned to gibberish) but then he also developed lucid dreaming. Finally he realized his dreams were symbolic and took advice from a Freudian analyst about it. But Feynman stopped just when things were getting interesting: He dreamt that the back of his skull was getting soft and that an metal rod had penetrated the back of his skull. For anyone steeped in studies of alchemy it's clear that he had developed his astral body for spirit travel. For example the skull DOES become soft when the body is filled with electromagnetic fields -- as detailed in the book "Taoist Yoga: Alchemy and Immortality" and as I experienced and as detailed by qigong master Chunyi Lin -- http://springforestqigong.com. Feynman already was dreaming in color (DMT-pineal gland) and was young, healthy -- so his emotional ethereal body was already strong. He was developing his Higher Emotional consciousness but he stopped. Anyway Feynman just assumed that his brain was "bored" with lucid dreaming and therefore was making up new gibberish -- he didn't want to analyze it and of course Freudian psychology didn't provide any answers. The subconscious answer though lies in his Triode Tube Amp work - Feynman focused on one particular problem which first gave him the "genius" reputation. A radio had really strong noise -- and Feynman figured out that the tube amps had to be reversed because the preamp was getting to hot to fast. As I've stated the I-thought is the Pre-amp and Feynman, by relying soley on mind yoga, ALSO heated up his brain too fast, without grounding the energy in his lower tan tien of Taoist alchemy. Gurdjieff states very clearly that the problem with the West is that the sex energy remains undeveloped -- and clearly Christianity doesn't develop the sex energy (not CONSCIOUSLY that is). Most people consider Gurdjieff a Sufi but he stated that he relied on Pythagorean teachings -- the original gnostic Logos of the Bible. The Logos goes back to the time of tantra in Buddhism and in fact Gurdjieff's teaching is most closely related to mahayana buddhism, as detailed in Professor and yoga master Nan, Huai-chin's books (best-sellers in Asia, but unknown in the West, precisely because Nan focuses on grounding the energy in the body, instead of relying on mind yoga). The connection between the Taoist lower tan tien -- or what Gurdjieff called the Moving Center -- and the Intellectual Center (the upper tan tien, the brain) is the middle tan tien or the Emotional Center (the heart). What happens is that the heart emotion is over-excitement as the alchemical transformation of sex energy -- and the love energy is shot out of the eyes as love-light. That's how tantra works -- you shoot the heart energy out of the eyes, through the pineal gland, but at the same time you take in the Moving center energy from where you shot the Love energy. It's just yin-yang or negative-postive harmonics. As Gurdjieff states, the Moving Center is NEUTRALIZED or grounded by the sex energy and this is why it's so important to develop the sex center. It's detailed how Gurdjieff also practiced what I call "O at a D" -- in Colin Wilson's book The Occult. So in Taoism the meditation practice always focuses on the lower tan tien -- in order to take the electromagnetic love energy of the heart-mind -- and ground it in the stomach (so that the energy doesn't just stay at the electrochemical level of over-excitement). But this grounding also entails replacing the moving energy with the love energy -- and this is why Gurdjieff always ate very little food. That was his tantric secret. I assure you that the western diet is totally against alchemy (whether it's lack of omega-3, too much omega-6 or sugar and salt, etc.) Gurdjieff practiced what in Taoism is called a "modified bigu" diet. Ramana Maharshi, for example, insists that even mind yoga, what he teaches, must rely on vegetarianism. So anyway as the heart energy increases then the higher emotional consciousness is achieved -- but only when this is grounded in the stomach -- through pure logic as the source of the I-thought -- will Higher Intelligence be achieved (what's called Nirvikalpi Samadhi or the Emptiness in Taoism). Just as Richard Feynman reversed the amp tubes so that the radio wouldn't overheat -- so too must the pre-amp, the I-thought, be reversed so that it's stored in the stomach, thereby causing the final level of alchemy described by Gurdjieff in a chart in the end of "In Search of the Miraculous" -- the heart-mind has now been completely filled with the sex energy converted into pure consciousness and, just as Ramana Maharshi achieved and Gurdjieff describes: the WILL (kidney reproductive energy of the moving center) and the I-thought are merged or united back into pure consciousness (the Number 8 person of Gurdjieff or the Level 8 consciousness of Mahayana Buddhism). Just like Christ, Ramana Maharshi literally stopped his heart for over 10 minutes, but did so with total self-awareness, the I-thought as the Pre-Amp. This is the goal of Advaita Vedanta, the secret of the Gnostics, etc.

Thanks for inviting me to your blog. High-weirdness is a very appropriate term for me. In first grade this girl kept on picking on me, teasing me, because she liked me. I remember that I used to breathe in such a way so that my chest was always puffed out, thinking this made me look better. She kept saying that my name, "drew," spelled backwards was "weird." So I asked the teacher and she informed me that the girl was wrong. haha. Then, without me knowing it, apparently the girl's mom arranged with my mom to make me go out on a date. Certainly I hadn't told anyone else about this girl, so it definitely wasn't arranged by anyone I knew. So my oldest sister made me go ice-skating with the girl, without anyone asking me!! Then the girl took me to her apartment where we ate little goldfish crackers with her mom looking on. I hated it all because I had no choice in the matter and felt like a piece of meat. Of course I had no way to express these feelings, much less process the reasons which caused them -- until -- the boys in my first grade class had a contest who could hold their breath the longest, while walking across the school to the bathroom for handwashing before lunch. Long after all the other first grade boys had started breathing again, for some "unknown" reason I was determined not only to win but to keep holding my breath. I knew I had won the contest but I kept holding my breath. I guess it felt good. I was woken up by this taller African-American student in my grade who was very nice. I had hit two cement walls in the corner and then the cement bathroom floor and a trail of blood streamed out of the back of my head while I returned to the room, screaming and also pondering my bright orange school t-shirt, now ruined. Our school motto on my t-shirt was: Aim Sky High -- with a rocket shooting to the sky. High-weirdness had started early. It wasn't until a couple years ago that I had even connected the events of my breath holding and this forced date with a girl. I had come across several different, totally unrelated references to the medical fact that it's impossible to hold your breath until you pass out. The anterior cingulate gyrus or something overcomes your will power, as noted by psychologist Stan Gooch; by a medical doctor for a global explorers club, author of "Extreme Medicine;" and also in some other neuroscience book. I'm thinking, wow, I disproved western science in first grade! Then I started pondering, why the hell did I hold my breath till I passed out anyway -- especially since three different sources say it's impossible? Finally after meditating on it, suddenly it hit me that I had actually been really pissed off because my sister had, without even asking me, taken me to go on a date with this girl who had blatantly been attracted to me but with whom I didn't want to be involved physically. It had been humilitating and my repressed anger had been projected through this otherwise innocent contest with my fellow classmates. Anyway I was telling this recently to a friend of mine, this old man who has worked in the best used bookstore in Minneapolis for some 25 years. He told me that there's a "Rituals of the Sherpa" book which states that the first Western expedition of Mt. Everest required the sherpas to hold their breath until they passed out, in order to qualify to be guides. haha. The "Extreme Medicine" book also includes a climb of Mt. Everest where the sherpas save a climber from what the Western doctor assumed would have caused death. The sherpas chanted around the climber's body -- all night long -- shooting energy into the injured body. For me my High Weirdness healing started with observing my mom's use of music for psychological escape. My music teacher was young and beautiful and so in first grade I also started music lessons -- piano -- and kept practicing until I performed a senior concert, my final year of high school, with my own compositions and many advanced classical pieces played by memory: Bach, Mozart, Brahms. I had studied with her husband, a music professor at the University of Minnesota, and when he showed me the natural overtones of the piano harmonics, I suddenly realized that music enabled creation of the whole energy spectrum. He, of course, dismissed my insight but he had no logical reason to argue. And so my level of High Weirdness become even higher. haha. I told my piano teacher that I thought music connected everything. At this point I had been playing punk hardcore music mixed with all styles of rock, blues, country, jazz. I was singing in a church choir, and in school choirs, and then I started playing free jazz. I was in several bands -- reggae, folk, a classical string quartet, etc. But I realized that my interest in music was more philosophical and my teacher in music composition taught me ear training and orchestration and he also gave me two fascinating books: "Mind and Nature" by Gregory Bateson and the "Tao Te Ching." Off I went to an experimental college with no grades, and my hallmates had a clothing optional nude policy and when ever it was someone's birthday they all dropped acid. I chose to immerse myself in avant-garde film and books, all the while taking classes from Leftist professors. One year was enough at that Ivy League experimental school -- Hampshire College -- and its surrounding colleges. I then moved to Alaska where I worked for six months out in the wilderness. I lived with a high school sweetheart, two years older than me, and we were in a cabin owned by a mercernary or professional soldier in Africa. He was also a mountain climber who fled the U.S. in the 1960s after being caught selling L.S.D. His dad had been a prominent Jewish grocer and he didn't want to threaten his respectibility. So Alaska was really High Weirdness. We were just south of Denali, or Mt. McKinley, the steepest mountain in the world -- going from the ground to 20,000 feet, with no plateaus. There were tons of people escaping society -- former Vietnam Veterans, oil workers from the south of the U.S., workers from Hawaii, Phillipines, Japan, Haiti, Russia, Mormons, big drug dealers, etc. Things got too crazy and too dangerous and so we left when the snow was six feet deep, before Christmas -- after living in a cabin with no running water, no electricity, no phone for miles -- bear tracks had covered the area around our cabin. I told my old music professor recently that I'm feral because of that Alaska experience. I had read Ken Kesey up there -- one of the beat writers experimenting with psychedelics, and I had read Ulysses -- both great books to read in a place so isolated from civilization. Since then I got heavy into Leftist activism, living in a hippy commune cooperative, working and supporting local, organic farming, doing civil disobedience and achieving new policies for divesting from slave labor in the Third World. The intensity to get these things done was enough to cause paranoia and mass confusion and finally to lead into real conspiracy politics -- just from running into High Weirdness, for example a professor who praised Nazi SS major Werner von Braun as his greatest personal mentor. I got censored from my University job as a political writer because I had exposed this professor praising Werner von Braun but no mention of the Werner von Braun personally supervising mass slave labor, testing rockets on civilians, or even being an S.S. major. At this point the University administration had sabotaged my email because I had exposed the lawyer running the University threatening the tenure of the professors helping me to stop sweatshop labor. After I confronted Al Gore, then vice-president of the U.S., about how "everyone know's the CIA controls the drug trade," his secret service got nervous and I had a cop take down my identification on that same night -- no reason given. Leftist analysis was just too limiting at this point. Slavoj Zizek had responded to my critique of his work, stating my music philosophy was "very fascinating" but his book in 1997 had only dismissed my analysis without dealing with the information on its own radical ecology terms. Zizek just wasn't being honest. At this point I had already explored qigong and even had experienced qigong master Effie P. Chow. I was amazed that a security guard reported that the fuses had been blown in the room adjacent to qigong master Effie P. Chow's lecture. I felt the strong magnetic fields between the palms of my hands, but my girlfriend who was with me at the qigong presentation was skeptical of qigong. So I kept doing research and even went to San Francisco in 1996, staying with a A.B.C. friend from highschool -- American-Born Chinese James T. Hong, the film-maker. In 1999 I finally met qigong master Chunyi Lin and knew right away that he was the real thing. The first class he went around us and without touching us he shook his fingers and even though my eyes were closed my body immediately filled with bliss and I saw bright light. My girlfriend at that time was this really beautiful blonde, several years younger than me, but the deep happiness I experienced from qigong master Chunyi Lin was way better. By the end of 2000 I had already gone a week with no food and even just half a glass of water -- just living off the free energy of Taoist alchemy. I had never been hungry and my energy just got stronger, with less sleep needed. Really strong electromagnetic fields permeated my body and freaked out my friends. I healed my mom of a serious disease, I pulled this old lady's spirit out of her head, I saw dead people as floating orbs of light, I had telepathy, precognition and telekinesis. When a vortex of electromagnetic energy spun around me, causing the whole room to spin, I knew that was going too deep, too fast -- and waking reality had truly become a dream. After that qigong master Chunyi Lin touched my forehead with his fingertip and this intense blissful light permanently magnetized my pineal gland. I even stopped practicing qigong for a couple months and the same magnetic bliss in my pineal gland remained. Now I have about ten orgasms a day -- internal climaxes which cause my vagus nerve on the right side of my neck to pulsate, thereby shooting out electromagnetic fields into females around me, creating a mutual climax. This happens when I sit in full-lotus which I do as much as possible. Last summer I went three days without any food and I was never hungry -- I just kept having what I call "O at a Ds" or orgasms at a distance with females. The females suck up my yang electromagnetic energy, with my vagus nerve pulsating and my pineal gland shooting out the energy, while the full-lotus sucks up their yin electrochemical energy. This creates a real feeling of true love in the heart chakra. It's definitely High Weirdness.

Just went into full-lotus for the first time today, after biking across Minneapolis. There's always a bit of stretching and pain and I make some "huurh!" sounds. haha. Yesterday read Govinda's biography of being a Tibetan monk. Pretty cool stuff. C'mon people -- just sit in full-lotus and the rest is immaterial. Last night I went to the midnight show of PAPRIKA -- Japanese Anime. Pretty cool stuff. Sat in full-lotus of course -- my yang electromagnetic energy shot into the chick two rows in front of me causing a mutual climax. The movie was all about the R.E.M. dream state and how a machine enabled group dreaming and others to control our dreams and how then reality and dreams merged and how the love of Paprika saved everyone. When we sit in full-lotus it creates R.E.M. dream state during the day -- while men are in R.E.M. they have erections and full-lotus enables any subconscious sexual tension to be resolved right then and there. Japanese culture is full of sex obsessed teenage-type males who have lost this secret. haha.

Well, I've had a chance to read a bit more, and see how everything works. Here's a bit more info about me. I started into Taoism by accident. I had heard about Mikel Steenrod as a Qi Gong healer from a friend while I was in Flagstaff, AZ. I have or had degenrative arthritis in my knees and a bit in my hips. It was getting worse by the month. It was non-responsive to Western treatment and TCM had dulled the pain a bit. I was willing to try anything, so I called up Master Mike to try a treatment. I'm a skeptic by training (science and IT) and explained that to him, and he said, I'll never forget this, "All you need to believe in qi are results. Since you haven't had any results yet, it wouldn't be appropiate to believe in it." Strangely, that sold me. I took the treatments. You can actually feel like a qi hand moving around in you. By the third treatment my pain was down to half. It took a year, but I am completely without pain and have normal mobility in my knees. I have sporadic bursts of minor hip pain that he says will only be correctable by qi gong. Along the way, I became a believer in qi. Then I started attending his Taoist talks. I changed the way I live, changed my job, got more financially successful. I was always afraid to leave my job ( a real stressful IT job), but did that and just fell into making even more money. I am fascinated by the idea of enlightenment, and spend about an hour a day meditating and another hour practicing qi gong. I'm really getting into the 4 Ascendant practices. I now have these long, utlra-real, dream conversations. Master Mike says that they are part real, and part fantasy, and that the real parts will sort themselves out. Well that's about it. If you're interested in what I'm doing, info on the 4 Ascendent can be found at www.howtodotaoism.com . If you are interested in healing, drop Master Mike an email. He doesn't publicly talk about his healing practice, as his practice is busy. I look forward to doing a blog sometime soon about my own cutlivation practices! --Glenn

i am content well mostly with what i do to earn a (meager by most peoples standards) living, by farming about an acre and a half, organically. In season April thru October 40 hours a week are a dream, as are 8 hour days. So as i get older it gets tougher to get and stay in shape, and to work from dawn to dusk or almost so 6 days a week. But i meet and work with some really incredible people! I would do it any how pay or not, but seed and land taxes have to be paid. But gleaning also provides a lot of satifaction. The ongoing quest is balance in the farm, and in my life. dave

In the Tibetan Buddhist tradition some gifted practitioners can die for a few days and then come back to tell others what they saw. These practitioners are called delogs: http://www.amazon.com/Delog-Journey-Realms.../dp/1881847055/ I hope the accounts are exaggerated to put the wind up folks so they practice more. One way of training for death is to be aware of one's essential spiritual core and die in that state. Easier said than done of course, and it'll take a life time of practice to be able to have confidence and faith that one has actually stabilised that state. Dream yoga is good training for death as falling asleep is said to be similar.

I knew this statment would come in this thread! I wrote something about it but erased in my other post. No you cant die. You can try! but you wont be able to do it. Not even if you go into delta-wave levels of meditation. The bodys instinct of survival is too strong. You might THINK it is possible, but in real life it simply is not possible to kill yourself by doing meditation. You might have fear of dying when you do deep meditation, but that is not the same thing as really doing it. You might feel like "if I go deeper now Ill die", but in reality you wont. It is just fear, not real. This is the same as the illusion that you might loose your body if you go to far or too deep in astral travel. It is simply not possible. It is created by fear of loosing one self, but it is not the same thing as really doing it. When I was a kid me and my friends held our breath till we faded to get near death experiences. We where gone mabe 30 seconds, but to us it felt like ages. We went through dream-like journeys that seemed to last forever, or saw ourselves from above and things like that. But we never died! we fainted! After a while we all got such a bad headache that we decided to stop it. If you believe that deep meditation is the same as dying, then you really dont need to be very expereinced to die, hahaha. But I think there is a lot more to what Wang Li Ping experienced than just deep meditation...

In the early part of my days playing pool for money, I developed a pattern. I would lose early and win late. This is a very stressful way to live as a pool player, since it takes longer, uses more energy, and is dangerous if I happen to run out of money early. I only ran out of money once, and that was because I went against my better instincts in making a game, but I was down to my last hundred more than once. This pattern played itself out often enough that I became quite familiar with the dynamic. The beginning remained a mystery for a long time, but I came to know the bottom, the turning point, very clearly. This is because the turning point is clarity, and the beginning was delusion. Basically, what I began to notice, was that I was in resistance to the situation I was in. I told myself all sorts of stories, "I'm so much better than this guy. I shouldn't have missed that ball. I'm too tired to play. This is just bad luck. I just need to play faster. I just need to play slower. I need to concentrate. I need to relax. He's going to wilt under the pressure. We aren't playing for enough money. I hate him. I hate myself. I suck. I'm the best player who ever lived. Just accept that fact and all will be well..." The stories were infinite, and I was quite creative in exploring them. Eventually, whether due to absolute necessity (this my last hundred), or due to some grace of intelligence, I would stop telling the stories, except perhaps one last story, such as "I'm playing like crap," but immediately following that was, "OK." As soon as that "OK" arrived, and I let it take me over, then the other guy was done. It might take a few shots for things to turn around, but a force to win, because it was in opposition to nothing, carried me through. I didn't really know what was happening at the time, but I knew that it felt pretty damn good, and it fascinated me, since I couldn't figure out how this whole process worked. It was my dream to be in that question with another who was in that question, and to play a really true game. Needless to say, I didn't just have to find that "OK" once. Every day I had to find it, and in each new level of competition I had to find it. And, of course, if I found it in pool, didn't necessarily mean that I found it in the rest of my life, though for certain I was looking for it there too... I think a lot of us have some experience with this "OK," since it is universal. It happens at every level. This "OK" is what drives us in our various pursuits, including cultivation, realization, and transmission. It is the good stuff, but when I was playing pool, I had to go through the losing in the beginning, since I was not aware of how I was pushing the "OK" away. And after I got through with riding a wave of "OK," I would promptly take credit for it, and begin telling stories in which I had said "OK" and so I could rule the pool world... or at least not have to lose three excruciating sets to Mike before I began beating him next time. I had reached a new level. Maybe so, maybe not. I began to realize that there is no limit to how bad I could play, as long as I insisted on telling my story... the center of which, was the idea of me. Well anyway, thats a long story, but I tell it to highlight a dynamic. Can we find a parallel dynamic in our own lives? Can we find it in the history of the world, including its religions? Are these dynamics in any way different? Every time that I said "OK," and felt that "OK" as an unstoppable force, it was the true "OK." And how many times did I throw it away? And how many ways can I throw it away? Is anything better than the "OK"? And remember, what preceded the "OK" was usually something like "I'm playing like crap," though as I got better it could even be "I'm starting to slip a little." The transformation was seeing that fact, and letting go of the story. The story could only keep me in misery, or drag me down to misery, until it started hurting too much to hold on.

I had a dream a few years ago where I was talking to a man about ascension. He laughed at me and said if I really wanted to ascend I should run a wire from a deep stake at the bottom of the mountain, to the top and sit on a metal plate connected to it. Then I should fly a balloon tethered by a copper wire, as high as I could and attach that to my head. I simply wrote this off as another one of my crazy dreams I have, I have a lot it seems. I get lots of weird advice like learning to eat gravity and other seemingly nonsense stuff. In my discussions with more advanced neigong practitioners, one thing however has come to light, which makes me wonder. It is absolutely 100% essential to meditate while connected sitting on a grounded surface. Grounded metal objects, or physically touching the earth is 100% essential. This is one thing I have been over looking, and not doing, and perhaps it is the reason for my very slow progress. It makes me wonder though, perhaps my crazy dream wasn't so crazy. I am not suggesting anyone here try it as it might wind up in a lightning strike, and death, but man it sure makes me wonder.

I guess you're asking us for our personal definitions of self-realization and enlightenment? My views on this continue to evolve but I'll give it a shot, briefly... Each of us is a body equipped with a sensory appartus and associated with a process of thought. The sensory apparatus is our only method of interacting with the environment and our process of thought is our only way of being aware of and processing that interaction. That means that all we can ever know or be aware of is limited by thought. Anything beyond our capacity for thought and experience is, well, outside our realm of experience for ever, by definition. The movement of thought is such that it is never satisfied with "what is". This seems to be a consequence of the biological drive to survive (find more food, better shelter, copulation partner with better genes...) and the process of conditioning (you need to be smarter, stronger, better smelling... so that you can have more food, better partner and so on...). This disatisfaction with "what is" extends to our understanding of spiritual matters, our sense of self, our understanding of God and the universe and so on... Now, here comes the important question - "who am I?". What is it that is not satisfied with "what is" - show that to me. Localize it. Pin it down. You cannot -ever. That is because there is no me. There is the body and the sensory apparatus, but where is "me"? Me is the movement of thought centered around a collection of thoughts associated with conditioning, experience, memories, and so forth. So this movement of thought surrounding the collection of memories and conditioning (ie "me") decides that there is something better. THis is because "what is", the current state of affairs is always made up of good and bad, pleasure and pain - this is a consequence of yin/yang, mutual arising. The thought arises that there is a state in which all of this conflict is resolved and there is neverending bliss. Where does this come from? Gurus, spiritual salesmen, old books and scripture, aversion to pain and suffering, you name it. But what is it really? It's just another movement of thought. Another concept derived from the known universe. Wanting what is beyond "what is". But the "me" can never go beyond itself because it is simply a construction made of thought. It has no reality beyond concept. So I currently feel that this concept of perpetual enlightenment, or some state of permanent absence of thought or endless bliss is a concept of thought that is perpetually unattainable or in other words, bullshit. I do believe that people have (and I have had) experiences of the interrelatedness of everything. I also think that one can see through the concept of individual self or separateness from other. That is, it is possible, and not too difficult, to realize that there is no "me". There is the movement of thought and this is centered around a perspective born out of memory and experience. THis awareness can be sustained and liberating. It can dramatically reduce suffering. It has for me. Yet I think there is always that biological drive to experience some sense of individual self for purposes of survival and the conditioning part is extremely difficult to let go completely but perhaps some do it eventually (Ramana, Nisargadatta, Gautama, perhaps, perhaps not). I could define "the seeing through the illusion of separation" and "understanding the erroneous concept of self" as self-realization, perhaps. And at advanced levels it may completely shed all vestiges of conditioning. That would be the highest level. I could then define the idea of a permanent, blissful, thoughtless, ecstatic, higher energy state as enlightenment. If that's the case, I will state that self-realization happens to alot of us to various degrees, and enlightenment is bullshit mostly sold by charlatans. I don't really like to use those words, however, because it takes so long to define them and because so many people invest so much in the dream of "what could be". Probably an unpopular view but I'd rather be honest. Just my current view and experience, FWIW...

You know a lot... You know a lot about enlightenment... you know a lot about your 'journey'... you know a lot about the multiverse interpretation... Have you ever considered that knowing is the one thing that's keeping you asleep, dreaming the dream that is 'mwight'? Have you noticed that 'knowing' is just a form of illusory control? Once you 'know', you can be sure... there is no need to be unsure, confused or even be aware of what you know - because you already know it, it's all under control. Notice how everything you think of spirituality is controlled - I need to be able to sit in deep trance for 10 hours... I need to be in a void... I need to develop gamma brainwaves... I need to be able to demonstrate power - and then I will know I'm enlightened... Just below the knowing and control - in the gaps between - there is Now - that contains all the universes all the good and all the bad, all the strands of all realities but all at once... to get to Now, you have to let go... then you have to let go of letting go - I suspect the 'knowing' part of you is reading this and thinking "this guy knows nothing - that's exactly what I do already"... another opportunity to let go ... When you start letting go, really letting go - not letting go in a controlled, tightly scheduled way - but letting go in the same way you would have to let go to allow yourself to fall off the edge of a cliff - when you really let go, you will be presented with what is. And just like everyone else who decides to travel the way you will have to confront all the stuff that is obscuring Now, the stuff that's been buried, that's been suppressed by the part of you that knows... The stuff that you refuse to acknowledge as important for you - grounding, emotional stability, relationships etc. may well become important - I don't know, and neither will you (remember - when letting go, there is nothing to grasp or hold on to...) To know or to Now - that is the question

How many truly enlightened people exist in the world today? If the stories are true Wang Li Ping, and a handful of others. Maybe 60 to 100 people out of 6.6 Billion, those are really bad odds. Even the Dali Lama admits he is not enlightened. Something isn't working, surely there should be more enlightened and ascended beings in our ranks if our current teachings were sufficient. I am doing my absolute best to research the most advanced and esoteric systems passed down by masters who have real power, and figure out what they have in common, what works and what doesn't. This seems to be a logical approach. So far I have found 3 masters with actual demonstrable power and all of them claim it is something which anyone can develop, but I digress. I am aware I might be wrong, but this is the conclusion I have drawn logically from all my research. I think above all else Buddha stressed logical and rational thinking in his teachings. i.e. if it doesn't agree with your reason don't believe it, no matter even if I said it. I am paraphrasing but you get the point. Accepting a person can be truly enlightened without some deeper understanding and control of the dream, is one such thing that disagrees with my reason. If a person came to me claiming they were enlightened, I would require proof to validate such a claim. I don't care how peaceful and blissed out they were. I don't care if they achieved true non-dual awareness. I don't care if they spoke like a pansy and threw flowers at me. That is just common sense to me. I don't think it is rational to accept such an assertion without some proof. My view of enlightenment, and ascension, are not in keeping with the "chop wood, carry water" analogy. Perhaps what I am looking for will only be realized by technological advancement and not through spiritual searching. A person carrying water and chopping wood and claiming to be enlightened, is in my opinion either in a state of true non-dual awareness, or delusion, and neither of those things really constitute what I think of as enlightenment. If a person were fully enlightened, they would be awake, aware of the dream and eventually able to control it in ways which would manifest beyond most peoples comprehension. If the stories about wang li ping are true this is what I assume a modern day Buddha would be like. Perhaps what I am seeking isn't really enlightenment at all. Perhaps its scientific apotheosis: a correct, complete, and total understanding of reality, the universe and all its functions, is more what I am searching for. Einstein said he wanted to know God's thoughts. I totally relate to his quest, and that is more in line with my idea of enlightenment. But then again enlightenment is only secondary to my goal of never being reborn. If this means existing as a spirit eternally, thats fine. If it means a state of total non existence that is fine also. Right now that is my main goal, everything else is just icing. All that has been stated here is merely my opinion, and I am certain it can be wrong. I have been wrong about a lot of things in my life. I seek power to awaken, and transcend this reality. I seek power to help heal and teach others, and make the world a better place. I view these things as morally correct uses of power. I am not trying to tell you you are wrong if you disagree with me. As to why I posted this in the first place, I don't really know. Sometimes I like just speaking my mind, and seeing what others think. Is that a bad thing? I don't feel I really need to convince you, if you disagree with me thats your prerogative. I'm not here to sell you on my view of things, I am just throwing it out there.

Sure if you sit on the sofa and eat popcorn your never going to be a professional athlete. I have made the seemingly impossible manifest in my life, when I decided to go to war for it. Burn your bridges and smash your cooking pots, and stake your very life upon the outcome of the battle. Thats what it takes. It all revolves around your desire, and your will and resolve to accomplish it. If you want something you must stake all upon it, and dedicate your every waking moment and soul even to accomplish it. You have to make it your life's dream, you sole purpose for existing. Eat it, breath it, sleep it. Train, study strategies, and never give up. A complete and total immersion in your goal, its war. Did you know Einstein was an idiot as a child. No really! he was. He was a borderline retarded child. When he was younger he learned to live inside his imagination, and create a virtual world in which to play. He stayed in this state and learned to use this mode of visual thinking to intuitive come up with solutions with problems. He was able to master both hemispheres of his brain and dream up all his theories. I highly recommend a book called the Einstein Factor Written by Win Wenger. It goes into the meditation Einstein used to come up with all his theories. Einstein used deep trance work, he would sit in a chair and hold two rocks one in either hand. If he fell asleep he dropped the rocks and woke up to write down what solution he had worked out with his dream. He remarked he flew out of his body into space to observe, and could feel the gravity waves bending the fabric of space and time and causing the flow of light to be bent around very mass dense objects. We have proven this to occur and call it gravitational lensing. He also realized that time flows at different rates for different observers, certain things effect the flow of time locally like dense gravitational feeds or traveling near the speed of light. If you were hovering outside a black hole, or traveling near the speed of light for you time outside would seem to speed up, and from outside you would appear to slow down. He also realized that all matter is really energy condensed. This was a complete revolution in physics because until then it was believed time flowed the same for all observers. All of these observations came from intuitive realizations during an OBE, whether it be a "true" or pseudo obe it doesn't matter. There is truth to be had here, and thats where I want to be. Tesla one of the greatest minds of all time was able to enter a world within his own mind at any moment, and test inventions and ideas in a mental workshop which was just as real as real life. He had many issues with his sanity due to this advanced ability. Edgar Cayce, Andrew Carnegie, all of these people tapped into this. If you don't think its possible, and that your either born with it or your not thats fine. I don't feel the same way. Maybe I am just a dreamer, even if I never reach my goal I am going to give it all I have.

Let me ask you is a movie on a DVD real? The movie itself is just 1's and 0's in a long string. The laser of your dvd player reads this string and interprets them and produces a signal which is sent to your TV. If you watch this movie and suspend your disbelief for a while you will forget about your life, your problems, your very existence even if you are deeply enthralled enough by it. But... The movie itself has no more reality than does a painting. This is what I am getting at: This life we're living is no more real than is a DVD. We have built up this character, and identified with them, and we falsely believe thats who and what we are. The world, indeed, is like a dream and the treasures of the world are an alluring mirage! Like the apparent distances in a picture, things have no reality in themselves, but they are like heat haze. -Buddha The way we fundamentally view the universe is wrong, just our ancestors believed the earth was flat and the sun revolved around us. Time as we know it does not exist, instead past and future are part of a solid whole of which we only experience the present moment. I liken this to how a dvd works, the laser (your consciousness) reads the data from the disc (your life) resulting in the image being played on the screen (your mind). What we call the past, the present, and future are apart of a solid object. What moves through this object from past into the future is our point of consciousness. The world around us is still, what is moving is our consciousness, not the world. It is my observation that we do indeed live in a multiverse, and not a singular universe. This is also the most accepted interpretations of Quantum Mechanics. It is called the MWI (Many Worlds Interpretation), Hawking is one of the most prominent subscribers to this interpretation. All of these seemingly separate universes, are in fact apart of a larger whole. We navigate through them every moment we are aware. We make choices, decisions, actions, have certain thoughts, etc.. etc.. This is the process of navigating through this field of infinite possibilities. Also all these seemingly separate worlds are apart of the same whole I call infinity, everything that is was or could be. I like this analogy: When you download a song,movie,book, etc off the internet, it is a large binary number. It is an actual number between one, and infinity. Granted its a very large number maybe even exceeding a trillion digits. Far longer than any of us could really fathom, but the fact remains it is an actual number that exists between one and infinity. I have a hard time getting people to grasp that songs exist before we create them, or books exist before we write them, or movies exist before we record them,but its true. They exist in digital terms as large numbers, somewhere between one and infinity. Actual numbers just as real as 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc. You see that is how I view this world, and all the other possible worlds, and all their possible histories, presents, and futures. They are but large possible arrangements of matter and energy, like works of art, like songs, like movies. In my mind at least there is nothing new that can ever be thought, done, or witnessed. If it is possible it has already occurred, and is simply waiting to be uncovered. There was a Greek Sculptor once who claimed he didn't carve anything, his sculptures were already there inside the rock, he merely helped them out. Our world is merely one possible world carved out of infinity, and eternity. One possibility which we could attach a mathematical number to represent. Just like digital song, movie, or book. I argue that if this is the way the universe (or rather multiverse) is then it is indeed illusory. But Illusory doesn't mean that it isn't real or valid to your experience. Most certainly you can download a movie, a song, or a book off the internet and enjoy it. It is real to your experience, and perception. I don't believe there is any fundamental building block, all physical particles are divisible ad infinitum, and the reality we see around is electric, holographic, and fractal-ic. All is caused by the interaction of various waveforms giving rise to our observable universe, and as such is illusory. Perhaps thats an incorrect view, but it rings true at a deep level within me. Perhaps if there is something real about all of this, its our experience. ______________________________________________________________________________ I don't mean to be argumentative, but I believe everyone with enough determination and practice can achieve a true obe. It is possible I just had hyper real dreams, but seeing as I was able to read perfectly and had full control over the mathematical and logical side of my brain I have to wonder.

There is no need of a way out! Don't you see that a way out is also part of the dream? - Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Yes I know exactly how it sounds. It sounds like I want power to show off, gain material wealth, or for martial purposes. I don't. I want out of this reality. Nothing here is real, its a dream, I want out of it as soon as possible. The reason I seek power is so I can know personally I am not delusional or insane if I ever achieved enlightenment. In 2005 you see I was experimenting with gamma brainwave entrainment, I had read several studies about Buddhist monks with 50,000 hours+ meditational experience. The amplitude and synchrony of their gamma waves were nothing like researchers had ever seen. Gamma waves are intimately related to consciousness itself, a brief burst of gamma activity is seen during an AHA! Eureka moment. Gamma waves also completely disappear under general anesthesia. I meditated using gamma entrainment at 42hz for about a week before reality began to de-cohere around me. Too many coincidences to mention, some things just so insane no one would even believe me. During this time my entire world view changed, and I realized a lot about the nature of reality. Eventually I got to a point where I discovered I had more than one body, and there were more layers of reality, other worlds just like our own, very similar. I could shift my consciousness between them. Sometimes my awareness got stuck in multiple realities at once, listening to multiple conversations. Sometimes one limb was stuck in one reality and unavailable in another, trying to remember how to remain whole in one singular reality was impossible. I know what that feels like. I am aware this was viewed by outside observers as hallucinatory, I had no real power to prove anything, and wound up getting a spinal tap against my will, and being committed for a few weeks. This isn't something I am proud of but I hope it explains why I want power. To know I am not insane if I ever achieve enlightenment. I want this power to break the chains of rebirth. I want this power to help others who seek the same. It's really as simple as that.

When I went down to the end of train tracks, everything that I was burned to the ground, it was a hard time in my life. Try realizing you don't even exist, and trying to keep it together at the same time. LOL Since then I have shifted my paradigm, and learned to wear my ego more like a sweater. This ego I show to the world is no more real than a character I play on a video game. I had a dream once a long time ago that I and a yogi were sitting in the stream, he pointed to some bubbles grasping onto a blade of grass underwater. "We are like the bubbles" he said, and then I woke up. It took me many years to really realize what that really meant. In essence I believe we are all one being, we are simply having different experiences simultaneously. It is my hope that maybe someday we can all awaken and leave this place, or at least the ones who want to. I have fun playing my character, but I want out of this endless theater. I want to achieve nirvana, liberation, union with god, whatever name you want to call it, To exist eternally as formless awareness, to never be reborn into a phenomenal reality, and realize truth eternally. No pain, no pleasure, nothing at all, just voidness.

If you ever achieved enlightenment, how would you know you hadn't simply gone insane? I don't think it would be possible to make that distinction unless you had the ability to understand and control reality at a higher level than non enlightened "normal people". I guess more than anything, I seek power as a litmus test for insanity. If you claim enlightenment and cannot back it up with a few fireworks your no better than your local time traveling, alien humping, drunken homeless bum. As a matter of fact stating you have achieved enlightenment is enough for them to lock you away for a a few weeks in a mental home until your unenlightened again. I'm sorry I just don't seeing a modern day Buddha allowing some punks to straight jacket them, I just don't think he or she would put up that. A lot of people here criticize those who seek power, and refer to them as megalomaniacs and juveniles etc, but there are some of us who only want power to liberate ourselves. A few of us realize this world isn't real and we don't seek to control a dream.

[Read the following with oozingly copious sarcasm] Of course, you are right. You know it is sooo easy to fake a heart attack.... Really, it was a conspiracy by the CIA and the "man" on the grassy knoll also helped fake the moon landing. He further supplied "Darwinists" with fake evidence to falsly disprove the "real science" of Intelligent Design. If it weren't for the Discovery Institute and the makers of Loose Change (both of whom use the exact same "logic" to "prove" their points) he might have gotten away with that and the "bombing" of the Pentagon.... And while we are at it, it wasn't really a racist redneck who killed Martin Luther King Jr. That was a plot by the roswell greys because they didn't like his dream since aliens weren't mentioned. [End copious sarcasm] In truth, for many now it is hard to imagine a time when the office of President was actually noble to American citizens. We, again, find it hard to understand a guy being so wound up over the assassination of his leader that he would kill for it.

Look within. If there is revolution happening, it is happening within you. It does not have a place. Dreams are fine, what is the source of dreams? What gives them power? Is any dream worth losing that?

What would it be like if this forum were to serve as a nidus to help people to feel the spark that causes them to turn the light inside and find their source? What would it be like if that gradually spread, little by little, across the world; liberating tens then hundreds then thousands? Creating a vast revolution or mutation as some have called it, of the mind leading to real and meaningful change! I doubt that I'm the first to have this thought (or even post it) but... How cool would that be?