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When I first met my wife, I had a dream that I'd never had before. The next day, she told me that she had the same dream that night, and it is a recurring dream of hers.

Hi All, I'm here to learn about the Tao. I've been led here by my inner experiences, in wakefulness and in dream. I come with no background/study in the Tao, so just following my nose. Looking for a way to bring some balance to the energies that are at work in my body. Thanks for what appears to be a great resource and forum for discussion. Peace.

Sounds like a dream you didn't have. Or almost had. Our mind sometimes does funny things just as we are coming out of unconsciousness.

I woke up one early dusk and felt extreme vibrations in my head, (and also my ears were doing that thing when you yawn, does anyone know what that is?) like my brain was 'buzzing?'. It lasted for a very short few seconds or milliseconds. I looked down at my feet and at the end of my bed there was an old lady standing and talking and she kept saying things but i only saw her mouth moving couldn't hear, but I somehow knew or thought she was complaining and ranting. I think my brain related her ranting to the vibration in my head, so i really sternly told her to shut up (i didn;t use the words shut up, i didn;t use words at all but i know i somehow asked her to shut up) and as soon as i did she got startled and ran out of my room. i think the vibration stopped when she was startled, not sure tho. then i proceeded to open my eyes and was surprised because i thought my eyes were open, but they were closed, and i could see the room like i would would if my eyes were open. when my eyes were closed everything in the room was the same except the light coming from under the door. i noticed that there was light after opening my eyes. i thought this might have been a dream, but something in me tells me it was something more than that. any thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated-

Was that your dream ? Everything happened very quickly. You must be a rock. ( I mean have the perception of a rock ..... along view over time ; (from 6.00)

Maybe things weren't going wrong but they are unfolding the way they have been caused. And your expectation of them was incorrect due to your own ego/subject interference. Besides, if your own insight assessment is correct, you would have seen the outcomes long ago. I know I would....in a dream message form.

Quite so, i just dropped out of college (not hy choice) and i always had this dream of becoming a shepherd (i think it started when i read the book The Alchemist), and dropping out of college made me realize i can do anything with my life. Like i have a clear page to write on. I talked with my father about it and he is supportive of it, he said he'd by me sheep and hire a someone to help me. Its either that or join a meditation school, but after some research i couldn't find a school i liked or a school at all.

And this" A star at dawn, a bubble in a stream; A flash of lightning in a summer cloud, A flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream." Refers to the Total Solar Eclipse in 2017

Sure - the first important point is that my confidence in TWR and the Bön methods was already very strong before I started the dream yoga practices. I think that, in and of itself, is helpful. That confidence in the teacher and the method really helps drive the practice. It's easy for Tibetan children growing up in a monastery to have very powerful confidence, trust, and devotion in the teacher and the teachings, much more challenging for secular Westerners like me. But that is an important ingredient. I think it both fuels and maintains the degree of patience and persistence required to be successful but also somehow creates a bridge between our regular, waking mind and a deeper level of awareness. It is that deeper place where we begin to bridge the waking and sleeping dreams and also begin to connect with the archetypal figures that are difficult for Westerners to embrace - the deities, protectors, and so forth. It took me many months (nine or so, I think) of practice before having any success in lucid dreaming. I'd had occasional lucid dreams since childhood but I'm referring to those arising since starting the practice. The first major breakthrough occurred while I was attending a retreat (on a different topic). I can't say what exactly did it for me but I think it was a combination of the months of practice and the environment. The environment was very special - there was a very strong vibe of love, respect, and sacredness present for me. It's hard to describe but it was palpable. I think the sleep environment is VERY important as is our frame of mind upon going to sleep. I had three powerful lucid dreams in one night. I won't go into detail but the first seemed to be testing me, the second and third gave me an opportunity to make an important change in my life that I'd been struggling with. Since then the practice has been less stable than I'd like to admit. There are periods of time when lucidity occurs regularly and other times when it is elusive. My non-lucid dreams are always much more clear and detailed as well as mostly enjoyable and somehow nourishing. There was a time when I would struggle with insomnia and periodic night terrors and nightmares, that is an extreme rarity now. My success with lucidity in dreams seems to be related to a number of variables - my mood, how consistent I'm being with my practices (especially during the day), my state of mind at bedtime, my level of exhaustion, how mindful I'm being throughout the day, my use of mind-altering substances (and by that I mean just about anything, including things like caffeine and alcohol), use of computer, TV, and other distractions. There is also a fine line between taking the practices too seriously or too lightly. Too much seriousness, too much focus on the goal, too much concern with whether or not I'll be lucid is bad for the process. Rinpoche says this is one of the biggest hurdles for many Westerners to overcome because we're so goal driven. On the other hand, treating the process or the dreams themselves with disrespect or in a careless manner is equally problematic. It is good to develop a deep respect for the teachings and for the deeper level of awareness that serves as a bridge between waking and sleeping dreams. Once we do become lucid, what we do with that precious opportunity is also very important (eg do we squander it on pure entertainment or use it to cultivate skills that will serve our spiritual practice?). In the Tibetan tradition all of this is viewed as very sacred and precious and yet not too serious, meaning there is also a playfulness that is important - much like one feels they suddenly wake up and realize, this is a dream! You're much like me in that regard. I am a scientist by training and profession and often struggle with many of the concepts that are not easily and objectively observable. For my purposes, there simply are no satisfactory explanations that could pass scientific scrutiny to remove your doubt. At least, I've never heard any and I'm not able to present one. Certainly I have worked through these questions in my own mind with my own paradigm and can make a few general comments. A thorough discussion would take way too long. Thinking about channels and chakras - we are energetic beings by anyone's definition. We are beings full of motion and activity - from our blood flow, to our neural impulses, to our gut movement, to our muscles, the life and death of our individual cells, their inner activity. Even deeper, all matter is energetic. All of that's easy to understand. Next look at the chakras and what they represent, I'll talk about the Bön perspective (of which I'm NOT an expert, just an interested novice). First I'll say that I do not look at them (or meridians and channels) as discrete, observable physical structures. I look at them more as general trends and pathways that are highly (perhaps infinitely) flexible. There is a chakra at the crown of the head - this is associated with the brain and its activity. This is where we are considered to be closest to connecting with truth. It is related to awareness. No doubt there is energy centered in the head and brain, no doubt this is somehow connected to awareness, consciousness, and so on. That's easy for me to accept. Then there is the throat chakra - it relates to our ability to form speech, not only audible speech but the internal narrator. Then the heart chakra, then the gut, then the sexual organs. Each of these 'centers of energy' correspond to an important physical organ system filled with energetic activity and also each corresponds to a complex of emotional and psychological processes that we relate to these physical systems. These relationships seem to be somewhat archetypal and cross many geographic and cultural boundaries. When we practice, whether it is cleansing channels, guiding energy, clearing chakras, we are using our awareness and our intention to connect with areas that we normally ignore. That is to say we focus on things like emotional and psychological pain or repressed feelings, we focus on dysfunctional patterns of behavior that we generally aren't aware of, that sort of thing. For example, someone asks you a question and you react to them in very predictable ways based on prior experience, rank, station, perceived threat or influence, and all of that. And there are definite connections between certain types of processes and feelings and physical organ systems that are deeply embedded in our minds and in our language (eg I've got a hard-on for something, my heart is broken, that makes me sick to my stomach,...). So somewhere deep in our mind and language we connect physical and energetic phenomena in ways that have a deep effect on us. So I see these systems of practice as using whatever tools it can to help free us from the ties the bind us - the dysfunctional patterns, the automated responses, the repressed and suppressed psycho-emotional baggage, physical pain which represents psycho-emotional trauma, and on and on... The tools are things like awareness, focus, movement of the body and breath, sound, the very things that connect us to our environment - our awareness and sensory perception. I don't think of a chakra as some magical circle in my body. To me they are complex connections between my psycho-emotional "body" (for lack of a better word), my intellectual framework, my conditioned patterns, my cultural biases, my physical body and so on... This is what we are working on when we practice. We need to make these practices deeply personal for them to really be effective. It is not about believing in magic or in the drawings of an old Chinese or Tibetan for me. It is about actually living and personally experiencing the magic, like seeing a dysfunctional pattern of behavior that's resisted change for decades suddenly loosen and dissolve. The way I came to trust in the truth behind the practices was through spending time with the practices themselves and learning to let go of the intellect's demand for an explanation. I was lucky enough to have a teacher who explained absolutely nothing. He taught you what to do (Daoist cultivation) and you did it for a few weeks or months, came back, had a little chat, and got more to work on. Little or now theoretical framework or explanation. That was great for me as no theoretical explanation would have satisfied me. What did satisfy me was seeing the changes in my body and mind after a period of practice. The more I did the work, the more benefit I saw. Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche is similar as a teacher. He is not one to get bogged down in theory. He knows the Western mind well. He knows how unsatisfying most of the Eastern theories and explanations are to our ears (meaning skeptics like you and me). I think he also knows how distracting and counter-productive it can be to simply "believe" in something. If you simply believe, you don't have to do any work, and you also won't see any change. He emphasizes the practice itself and the very tangible effects they have on us. The proof is in the pudding as they say. That is the source of my "faith" - I put that in quotes because to a lot of people it's a dirty word. I use it more in the sense of trust and confidence based on direct experience, even in the absence of any scientific evidence or exploration. You put a certain amount of time into the practices, you see positive results, you dig deeper for longer, you grow even more. If they do not work for you, that is OK too - everyone needs something different at different times in their lives. If the warrior seed syllable practices are calling to you, I would suggest you follow that call. It is little things like that which can literally change our lives. If they are not a good fit, let go and move on. Life's too short to hang on to things that aren't working for us.

Thank you for all the responses. I feel like I have this constant urge to bounce between practices. The grass is always greener syndrome. No doubt this is a symptom that I need to address through meditation and daily conduct. But... when I think about this logically, perhaps these paths are not for me. Perhaps, because of my skeptical mind, the only meditation I can do is breath meditation. The only issue with that is ... well, chakras and lights and gurus and internal channels and shamanistic goddesses sounds so much funner. But due to how I have been raised, my faith is lacking. Steve: I have also taken a skim of Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoches's dream yoga book, if that is the dream yoga book you are referring to. I found the explanation of the relation of dreams to waking life to be quite fascinating, but I did not do the exercises because I decided to do the western approach of lucid dreaming instead. Right now I am just keeping a dream journal and doing reality checks throughout the day, but still no luck with lucid dreaming. I'd love if you could describe how your process with the dream yoga techniques went. The warrior seed syllables are enticing to me, but I am constantly wondering how they really work. I have still felt no concrete evidence that I have chakras, so there is constant doubt about the practice. Obviously this will hinder the practice, and I don't do this intentionally, but in my subconscious there is doubt. I am wondering if you have a more secular explanation for the benefit of this practice that might ease my mind a bit?

I can't speak to AYP as I know nothing about it. I don't know how the Bön practices compare to AYP. I think the most important thing is to think of what your objectives are and focus on tools that will help you achieve them. Also think about how important this is to you. I'd urge you to not give up on something easily because it seems complicated at first. That is just an indication of unfamiliarity. Don't short change yourself. If the practice looks promising, invest a little time and effort and see what comes of it. It's just like any skill - driving, riding a bicycle, addition... it take a little practice, then it's easy. I'll share that when I first looked at this dream yoga methods I was similarly put off. I read the book but didn't begin the practice right away as it seems terribly complicated. Later, I decided to push myself to try it and am very glad I did. It took a few weeks to get the hang of it but the payoff is a practice that you can make your own and can potentially enhance your life in important ways. Making changes that enhance our quality of life generally requires quite a bit of persistence and fortitude over time. These very qualities are cultivated by challenging ourselves to take the difficult road instead of the easy road. A few words about Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoches's practices. They are all traditional Tibetan practices that, for the most part, have been simplified for Western, non-monastic consumption. In general, they are easy to learn and integrate well with one another. The core elements are there so any of his practices can serve as a foundation for major transformation. The warrior seed syllable practices take a little time to learn but are actually quite simple once you get the hang of it. You simply start with one, get comfortable with the basic sound, posture, and so on. Then you can add complexity like chakra and color and so forth. Same thing with the supportive practices like the 9 breathings of purification and tsa lung exercises. Take it slow and enjoy the process, at the end of the day that's really all that matters. Good luck with whatever you choose.

I do not feel the need to invoke images from the past when arguing for a British withdrawal from the E.U. It is not the past that causes me concern but the future. You appear to relish the idea of a homogenized Europe and see it as a dream state. Your dream is my nightmare.

1) Except we will become a full member of the EU once we vote to stay in. What Cameron didn't announce was what he gave away. In exchange for 'not closer union for Britain' he gave away a veto on changes to the EU itself. We have lost the power of further negotiation because Cameron either never had any intention of us leaving the EU (hence his overheard comment to Merkel that after the referendum he will dock the UK into the EU), or he is such a useless negotiator that he fails to understand the element of time. Hence, if the EU changes dramatically, then Britain will be forced to make changes in order to continue trading. In effect, a veto on ever closer union is like a man who needs a car, waving a piece of paper in front of the dealer saying he doesn't 'have' to buy a car. 2) the effects of NIRP are widely understood by any economist, the exact sequence of consequences are less predictable but the outcome remains the same. If you understand time preference-that people prefer a commodity today than wait until tomorrow then this forward time preference has a value. The result is the destruction of capital formation through saving. Capital formation is the primary necessity for production. It is the driver of productive wealth creation. Break that link- which NIRP does and you have too many people chasing too many goods/assets and the price of goods increases rapidly and the value of the currency collapses. 3) OK 4) Right and left extremism are on the rise. 5) I was pointing out that Schengen is idealism. The reality is that these countries don't work together with open borders. As this is a key plank of the EU along with its failing currency and rise of extremism is the internal destruction of the EU. It's slowly pulling apart and, as it does, the bureaucrats and vested interests will plough ever increasing amounts of tax payer money trying to save their dream. I don't want Britain to be part of that inevitable collapse, or the long drawn out economic and social destruction which will precede it. Indeed there was some role play thing on newsnight where the guy playing the EU made it dead clear that they had no intention of giving Brotain a deal, because that would set a precedent for every other country. 6) Greece is a symptom of 5) it will herald more trouble on successive weak southern/Balkan economies. Greece shouldn't never have joined, as we shouldn't have joined, however, at least we are in a strong position to depart, poor old Greece is trapped. 7) MEPs are representatives of each country, they can speak and vote, but they have little power to speak of. This is how the EU was set up. It was designed not to be transparent or to be tampered with by the people. It is to give the illusion of sovereignty but is entirely a top down and anti democratic. This was to prevent any state ( meaning Germany or France) getting its hands on the power structure. Unfortunately it's grown into a vile monster and it won't be shut down or changed until it collapses under its own weight.

Of course there will be greater Liberty because a democratic sovereign state is far closer to the individual than the EU unelected federation. You can't tell what will happen anywhere, but one thing is certain, when you have an unelected bureaucracy it is far less tolerant of individuality and is open to hijack by any kind of extremism to abuse. Me old dad told me years ago-he was a committed socialist-that he clearly saw a fascist future for the EU and that has become reality. It is a corporate and bureaucratic wet dream with an unelected leadership. It is losing its outward trading significance and introverting. There is talk of ending cash, it already has NIRP and cash withdrawal limits. You vote Britain in and if you wanted a bolt hole if things turn nasty it won't be as easy to find a place to run to. The EU is not only stagnant, but it's economy is failing. It has high unemployment and will face even greater waves of low skilled migrant immigration from cultures alien to western values. Barbed wire fences are going up. Extremist parties are on the rise. The treatment of Greece should make it clear what kind of a thing the EU is. It has become impossible for them to escape. It's likely that Britain will be asked to pay greater amounts into a ailing basket case without any hope of ducking out. Those that sit in the EU gravy train will sip champagne, eat caviar and drive around in chauffeur driven luxury whilst those on the outside work like slaves. These are the facts as they stand right now. We can't know if the EU or Britain will get worse or better, but we can see that European productivity and living standards are in decline. We can see the number of migrants that are flooding in each year and the EU seems unlikely to prevent it. NIRP is a reality, limited cash withdrawals are a reality and the removal of large denomination notes is a reality. Fences have gone up, extremist parties are on the rise and the destruction of Greece is headline news. None of that can be denied.

Usually your physical body dies while the other subtle bodies (emotional, mental, etc) live. You can think on that as losing your body but keep being able to feel and think, only on "other world". It is possible to access other people's memories as well as collective memories, but this isn't common. If you can't recognize your existance there then it may be memories from other people, indeed. Try thinking on how you saw the world as a child. Can you relate your infant self to your previous self? If not those memories may not be yours indeed. You saw them on third person? Most of mine where on first person. It was through my eyes. If you saw those memories in third person than you may have experienced indeed dreams, other people's past (not memories, but actively seeing the past through psychic sight) or been subjected to artificial rememoration. There are techniques were a spirit sees your past through psychic sight and then project an image of it in your dreams or your mind directly. However, that isn't regression. Depends. Some people become insane in the emotional world and can't plan anything. Those may be subjected to forced reincarnation. However, most people do participate in their life planning, including details about their future body anatomy. The degree of participation varies from person to person, place to place and hierarchy to hierarchy. Which hierarchy? The ones you subject yourself. For instance, if you do a vow of obedience to the catholic church while alive, this keeps going after death. You can expect for them do remember the vows of servitude you did, that is for sure. Conscienciousness is indeed one thing. However, the dissociation between mind, emotion and consciousness is a process recognized by psychology. Indeed, it is one of the main objectives of psychoteraphy : To allow for the person to notice she isn't what she feels or thinks. But what is a dream? So far the main use i had for those experiences was regarding problems i had with my mind. Old traumas and psychological issues i had to solve, some of which had roots in previous life. One of the most intense ones was a life i couldn't leave my body after death for a period of time. With my emotional body still stuck on it i felt the deterioration process and the semi-mumification due to have died on a place with a lot of sand and sun. This trauma followed me to the present life in a unconscious terror of getting thin, which brought me to obesity. It was only after noticing that, indeed, the past was in the past, that i could start getting healthy again. It can also be used to recover knowledge, as it has happened to me once or twice so far - recovering knowledge on a certain ritual to help a friend of mine, for instance. However, i do agree with you. If one has no uses to memories of past life, then they are not a priority. They may be interesting to entertain, but just like memories of childhood or teen years, there is no reason to become obsessed with them.

I used to have intense past life experiences, in altered states, mostly when the transpersonal chakras were way open. The memories came through waking visions or at night when I slept, through dreams. The dreams and visions had a very distinct quality that I can't put into words. They felt very real and had a level of supercharged clarity about them. Years later, I still question the whole thing. These are my questions: - Who or what lives or dies? - Are the memories mine or from elsewhere? (i.e. something collective) - Who or what is observing the memories? - Do we co-create with the reincarnation cycle ("planned lives") or are we completely at its mercy, with no helpful variables? Most of the systems that talk about reincarnation divide consciousness into some kind of hierarchy, especially the western schools, but I don't relate to this either. It's all one thing, there's no higher or lower. The other problem is, in order to identify with past life memories as "mine", it requires me to attach personality to whatever is going on, and that creates other issues. I still have to bring it back to the now, to present awareness. Whatever's happening, is happening. "Ok, now memories of other lives seem to be arising... ok, interesting. Moving on!" It's all just a dream, and in this dream, we may have something called "reincarnation" which may include associated memories. It doesn't make it any less of a dream. If reincarnation is a thing, then it exceeds my understanding or my influence, just like independent arising and dissolving does. It also has nothing to do with me because it's clear to me that no matter how consciousness happens, it is empty of self. The past is definitely not happening, whether it's this life or another life. If you're going to weave such experiences into your own personal cosmology for something practical, then I guess it has its uses. Apart from that, I see no reason to entertain past life memories. They're neither here nor there.

Thanks, I've read the core text which I think is excellent but have never read Roth's book. Would you say some of the insights provided by Roth outside of the core text are relevant for practice and hence worth reading? Thanks, this is something I've heard before and it is something to keep in mind, but my reasoning here isn't based on merely a desire or logical conclusion but based upon some dream messages I've received which, to my mind, has informed me to go abroad for these purposes. Actually I have multiple goals to be fulfilled by trying to go abroad (I plan on trying to get a degree in Mandarin as a second language in Taiwan to allow me to master Mandarin and acquire the qualifications necessary to teach English abroad, another goal of mine. I am also interested in learning the guqin and finding a teacher for that purpose as well.) Hopefully with right effort, mastering the language, and a bit of luck I will find some legitimate teachers who won't pigeonhole me as just another Westerner but will be able to see my sincerity (though before all that I will need to succeed in getting accepted into the degree/scholarship program I am looking into.) Thanks. I learned zhan zhuang from a mixture of video and book instructions, and while not ideal I hope that this will be effective until I find a teacher (I think there may be some in my local area so will have to look into it.) My current daily regimen is to do seated meditation in the morning for half an hour and in the evening if circumstances permit, to do zhan zhuang two or three times a day for 10 minutes at a time, and to do a series of qigong/neigong exercises, namely Bone Marrow cleansing/healing sounds that I learned from Cohen's video, Damo Mitchell's "Ji Ben Qigong" and his instructions on Wuxing qigong, and finally Feng Zhiqiang's Hunyuan qigong. Aside from this I practice abstinence, try to eat healthy, study, and use art/music as a means to have aesthetic and/or contemplative experiences (such as guqin mentioned, but also others) which I see as a useful aid in purification and toward the path.

Recently, i have noticed the importance of the last Thought (activities, mind state) that a person has before sleeping, in affecting the next day in terms of the energy and mind state the person wakes up with and the quality of the whole new day. For example: watching Tv, drama series or something violent before sleeping, will make the person wakes up in a bad mood or feeling tired, Also this is similar to masturbation, thinking of negative thoughts or eating unhealthy food before sleeping. A lot of teachers recommend doing meditation at night before sleeping and ending it with metta of love and compassion allowing the mind to become calm and have positive thoughts. also it is recommend to meditate in the morning to empower your day. (usually if you meditate at night you are more likely to meditate in the morning and be holding that energy during the day) Also meditating at night allow to improve lucidity in the dream, which can be used in solving life problems that arises in the dream state or realize fantaisies. also, if someone try to solve homework or maybe do their work at night before sleeping.. you are more likely to find yourself more motivated to work on them the next day. So, What do you think?

Ha! Youy call that bad ? Our family used to dream of having fingers . And we never had any spelling either - not even poor spelling .

OK, thank you for all the advice. Looking up Byron Katie. How does one do a ritual cord cutting? So it really is OK for me to just wrap up my stuff and abandon them? Taking just enough to live comfortably. Not just leaving with the clothes on my back. As far as my possessions, I have moved a number of times. I just throw away or give away things of no value. I might have more than I need. but I want to keep what I have. It gives me a reason to come back someday, pick everything up, and take it to my new home. It is the motivation that keeps the dream alive, finding a place of my own, coming back, getting my stuff, moving away, only this time I have a place to move to. A place of my own. Without that anchor the dream may just die, and me along with it. Probably doesn't make a lot of sense, but there it is. For example, some of the books I have and am keeping are things I wish to pass on to my children. If I throw those things out, it's, to me, like giving up on having children of my own. Throwing out all my stuff is equivalent to giving up on establishing my own home, my own place in the world. Maybe it makes more sense now? Because I am bicycling and have small-medium sized panniers as well as a weight limit, I am already down to the bare minimum. Just a few clothes, a hiking stove and cook set, my hammock, rainfly and mosquito neck, straps, rope, a few books, my nook HD, some wirebound notebooks, personal care items, bedding and a few other things. Will be paring down as I pack. I think I will get started tonight maybe. I think it will help to have the bike packed up, ready to go in a moment's notice.

My bike is in the garage. My drum set is in the back bedroom. I dream of owning a moon, but it wouldnt fit in the garage and the Sun would eat my sticks and make the throne particularly sweaty.

:The real reason for all this TG hoop la: American Thinker May 13, 2016 Escape from Obama's transgender school bathrooms By Daren Jonescu Barack Obama's transgender regime has officially carried its demands for your child's compliance with sexual deviancy to the level of an imperial directive: Public schools must permit transgender students to use bathrooms and locker rooms consistent with their gender identity, according to an Obama administration directive issued amid a court fight between the federal government and North Carolina. The guidance from leaders at the departments of Education and Justice says public schools are obligated to treat their transgender students in a way that matches their gender identity, even if their education records or identity documents indicate a different sex. The Department of Justice, which apparently now means primarily "social justice," aka cultural Marxism, is joining the Department of Education – a thoroughly anti-constitutional entity the continued existence of which represents the greatest failure of the Reagan presidency – to complete American compulsory schooling's true, original, and essential mission: the reduction of the population to a confused, helpless mass of spiritually unindividuated "worker units" for the benefit of a permanent corporate-political ruling elite. The sudden (but long anticipated and well prepared) drive for transgender bathrooms in public facilities is part of progressivism's final assault on modesty and personal privacy. Train children from an early age that sexual behavior is a harmless physical gratification, no more important than scratching an itch; teach them that there are no consequences of sexual activity that cannot be prevented or "taken care of" with a visit to the doctor; teach them that marriage and family are mere lifestyle choices not at all different from any other, and in no essential way related to the erotic impulse; and teach them that nothing but the old-school morality of racists, sexists, and homophobes stands between their bodily urges and a dream world of polymorphous pleasures – teach children all of that, and you have destroyed the soul of man, sapped a generation of its vital energy, and dried up the primary sources of civility, personal responsibility, and moderation. Advanced progressives for a century have known two things with perfect certainty: (1) that delayed gratification, sexual modesty, and in general self-restraint are the chief moral obstacles to the compliant, state-dependent collective required of democratic socialism (i.e., populist totalitarianism); and (2) that government-controlled schools are their ace in the hole, the progressive poison in the civic well that ensures that, in spite of all private resistance, the population will eventually, gradually, succumb to materialism and amorality. Here's a prediction that I am very confident in making: thousands of parents who are shocked and disgusted at the thought of their young daughters being forced to share a shower room with boys are going to be in for an even bigger shock when their daughters mock their concern with "what's the big deal, Dad? I mean, it's just bodies, after all!" This transgender assault is being pursued now because generations have been prepared for it. They have been prepared in public schools, which teach – both in explicit lessons and, more importantly, through their social structure – that sexuality is "no big deal," that modesty is for prudish grandmothers, that sexual differentiation is sexist. Eros – nature's delicate thread linking our bodily urges to our essential purposes, our souls to the stars, our petty existence to being and eternity – is being deliberately snipped, in order to leave us stranded on this earth, with no hopes or aspirations beyond immediate physical comfort and pleasure. In other words, nihilism. Men left stranded on earth, without a sense of the divine, including the divine spark within themselves, are primed for a material savior, a new divinity to replace the one toward which Eros and nature had previously pointed us. They are ready, willing, and eager to submit to the State. Nothing less than that – creating the moral (or rather amoral) platform for progressive authoritarianism – is the true significance of Obama's imposition of transgender bathrooms in public schools. Though inherently absurd, this absurdity is an indication of how far the progressives know they have traveled toward their ultimate goal. The good news, for those still able to hear it, is that the solution to this final degradation is both available and actually quite obvious. Get your children, your children's children, and your friends' children out of public school now, and keep them out. If thinking of your nation's girls and boys being submitted to this degradation – and even worse, thinking of them learning to accept this degradation – is not enough to shake you out of your well-trained adherence to the fool's dream of "improving the public schools," then perhaps you are unreachable. If, on the other hand, these thoughts are able to move you, then it is beyond time to get serious about unraveling America's, and the entire world's, most insidious entitlement program: public education. (If you are in this latter group, stay tuned! I'll be explaining all of this – what public education is, how it came to be, what it causes, and what to do about it – in my book, The Case Against Public Education, coming very soon.) On a personal level, the immediate solution, for most families, is fairly simple. It does, however, require long-term commitment, a lot of mental effort – and a genuine love for your children and grandchildren that supersedes petty concerns about practical inconvenience and reduced income potential. If you understand that hearing a thirteen-year-old girl say, "What's the big deal? It's just bodies!" is the Rubicon progressive totalitarians have been aching to cross, and that they are literally months away from crossing it on a nationwide scale, then is there really anything left to debate about?

Back to the question of humans being animals. Well, part of us is. My view of this is based on the "doctrine of signatures", and on an essentially neo-Platonic/Hermetic model of the Cosmos. According to this view, existence evolves through a number of levels. "Below" the human being (and there is no evaluation connected to this), there is inorganic matter, plant life, and animal life. Those forms if existence are more closely connected to the Earth. "Above" the human being, there are levels of non-material existence. In the Abrahamic traditions, these belong to angels, archangels etc, all the way up to the nous. Other traditions speak of various Deities, Bodhisattvas etc. It really makes no difference. Those are the levels that we associate with the the heavens, or various spiritual realms. Human beings are right in the middle zone between the realms "below" and "above." It's as though angelic beings have taken hold of animal bodies, (quite literally) uplifting them, while severly limiting their own original cosmic awareness at the same time. The reasons for this go beyond the scope of this post, but I might talk about them somewhere else soon. Certain Asian traditions are particularly explicit about Man being the link between Heaven and Earth. Thus, the two middle lines of an Yijing hexagram belong to Man, with Earth below and Heaven above. In Zen meditation, we are instructed to simultaneously sink into the ground and stretch our spine as if our head were suspended from above. The middle part of a plant represents Man in Japanese flower arrangement, etc. Plants are mediators between above and below in their own right. But as living beings, they are pre-conscious. Which is to say that their consciousness hasn't really woken up yet. They exist in a dream state as it were. They drive their roots down into the chthonic realms and open their blossoms or crowns to the sky. They spend their existence in perfect harmony with the Cosmos that surrounds them. At the same time, they have little choice but to thrive and wither with the conditions that are surrounding them. They can't move places in order to accomodate to changing circumstances the way animals can. With the animal, separateness and individual existence begins. With this comes the "fight or flight" response - the foundation for survival skills on an individual level. The human being is the only animal that has an upright spine. With numerous nerves protruding from it, it reflects the roots, stem, branches of a tree. This may not be immediately obvious, because on the physical level, our lower end doesn't reach down into the ground, nor does our upper end resemble a plane that opens up to cosmic influences like a radio telescope; instead, we have heads which are closed spheres, essentially. But the morphology of the plant is present in the system of our chakras, ranging from "root" to "crown." The crown chakra is actually seen as connected to the pineal gland which we now know to be sensitive to sun light, much like the leaves or petals of a plant. The human being is the completion of the macrocosm turning into a microcosm. This is understood both in Daoism and in the Hermetic tradition (among others, Paracelsus wrote about this). Thus, the origin of Mankind is the blending of animalic and angelic existence. Still bound by physical conditions, to be sure, the human being is able to master and transcend those conditions by the application of free will, imagination, higher intelligence. Those are reflecting the angel within us.

Rumi says 'Like the shadow, I Am and I Am Not.' Would these be the ultimate two indivisibles? I am assuming that non-entities would be ideas, judgments, distinctions? In the Dream Yoga book, the Rinpoche speaks of meditating upon the similarity and Oneness of the sleeping dream and the waking dream. The dream-like quality of everyday life. It seems that both everyday life and dreams speak to us in the same riddles and puns. they are the same. I sometimes wonder if this is why dervishes whirl. To go beyond focus on apprehended objects; to go beyond conceptuality in a very physical way. A means to an end? There is a certainty that arises whose keystone is cemented in Love. When phenomena and events are viewed through the eyes of Love, is this too conceptual imputation? Or is Love the reason for the season? The essence of all of it? Or is this a grasp as well? Doesn't feel like a grasp, maybe it is. And doesn't complete liberation seems to go hand in hand with service? Service such as Steve's description of how he now relates to his patients? As a servant to their being, a loving presence and witness to their expression. Would not Steve be doing mankind a service by starting a ripple here, as he alluded to, with other practitioners? Even a very small ripple extends out greatly. Certainly there are others who feel the hollowness of their occupation, who have a great desire to return to the Self that went into medicine in the first place - to be of service to mankind.

Mipham Rinpoche's Profound Instruction on the View of the Middle Way Namo Mañjuśrīye! Once you have gone through the training in analysis and developed confidence in the crucial point of how the individual is devoid of self, then consider how just as the so-called “I” is an unexamined conceptual imputation, all phenomena included within the five skandhas and the unconditioned are just the same, labeled conceptually as this or that. Although we cling to all these various phenomena, when we investigate and search for them they cannot be found. And when we reach the ultimate two indivisibles, even the most subtle and infinitesimal cannot be established. It is the same for all that appears through dependent origination. Entities themselves arise dependently, Whereas ‘non-entities’ are dependently imputed. So whether an entity or a non-entity, whatever is conceived of uncritically, once it is analyzed and investigated, it is found to be without basis or origin, appearing yet unreal, like an illusion, a dream, the moon’s reflection, an echo, or city in the clouds, a hallucination, a mirage and the like. Appearing yet empty, empty yet appearing— Meditate on the way empty appearances resemble illusions. This is the ultimate that is categorized conceptually. It has the confidence of a mind of understanding, and it is indeed the stainless wisdom of seeing the illusory nature of post-meditative experience. Yet it has not gone beyond focus on apprehended objects, nor have the features of a subjective mind been overcome, and so since it has not gone beyond conceptuality the true reality of natural simplicity is not seen. When this kind of certainty has arisen, then even the clinging to mere illusion can be understood as conceptual imputation. There is apprehension, but no essential nature to the perceived, and even the perceiving mind can not be found, so without clinging, one is brought to rest in natural ease. When you remain like this, all experiences, both external and internal, are not interrupted. Within this fundamental nature free from grasping, all the projections imposed upon phenomena have never arisen and never ceased to be, and, free from the duality of perceiver and perceived, one rests in the all-pervading space of equality. This is beyond any assertions such as ‘is’ or ‘is not’. Within this inexpressible state of true and natural rest an experience dawns that is free from the slightest trace of doubt. This is the actual nature of all things, the ultimate that can not be conceptualized, and which can only be known individually, the non-conceptual wisdom of meditative equipoise. When you become familiar with this state, In which emptiness and dependent arising are an inseparable unity, the ultimate condition in which the two truths can not be separated, then that is the yoga of the great Middle Way. Those who wish to realize this swiftly and make evident non-dual primordial wisdom beyond the domain of the ordinary mind, should meditate on the pith instructions of secret mantra. This is the ultimate profound and crucial point of the progressive meditations on the Middle Way. So begin by thoroughly refining your conduct, and then arrive at certainty, experientially and in stages. With confidence in the illusory nature of empty appearance, there is nothing to be eliminated or enhanced upon the path, and within the equality of the all-pervading space of perfect wisdom, you will come to find complete liberation. In a place where people suffer drought and dehydration, hearing about water will not be enough to quench their thirst. It is only by drinking that they will find relief. The sūtras say this is how it is for learning and experience. Someone with only dry and theoretical understanding, who is worn out by all kinds of reasoning and ideas, does not need sporadic practice, but meditation in proper stages. This is how to swiftly gain acceptance of the profound. Jampal Gyepe Dorje wrote down whatever came to mind, On the twenty-ninth day of the eleventh month of the Water Dragon year (1892). May all beings realize the meaning of the profound Middle Way! Mangalam! [Translated by Adam Pearcey]