Some great words on the inner journey

[Sahaj Nath]

 

I hope this makes more sense to you.

 

makes every bit as much sense as the first time around, only this time the LIMITS of your perspective are made even more glaring. plus, you're not responding to anything i've said. so before i bother, i'll wait for that response.

 

it's not that i didn't get it; it's that i don't agree. and i think i was pretty clear as to why. if you don't want to actually dive into it, then that's fine. but you waited an entire day to finally respond to me, and it turns out to be non-responsive.

 

i won't insult you by repeating everything i've stated in my previous post. i'll just say that your criticism of Ramacharaka is extremely, EXTREMELY narrow. far more narrow than the scope of the passage and the scope of "our" reception of it. kinda illustrates paradigm i laid out; my perspective includes and understands yours, but it also transcends those limits to include and understand more.

 

if there were no such thing as developmental stages or human potential, and if our capacities were always static and unmoving (the way that your analysis assumes), then i would be supporting you in this thread. but you don't seem to understand/acknowledge the limits of your scope. you today vs your voices today, and nevermind how they got to where they are today from where they were at age 7.

 

YOU'RE IGNORING THE FACT OF YOUR OWN DEVELOPMENT PROCESS AND THE ROLE THOSE VOICES PLAYED IN THAT DEVELOPMENT.

 

i hope THIS makes more sense to you. and if not, i'm over it at this point. i know that i've been as clear as i need to be if you wish to genuinely engage what i've argued here.

 

there are voices in my head that suggest it's absurd to piss & shit my pants as a grown man. should i do it anyway and call it liberation? cuz that's essentially your argument.

[manitou]

If you think there's something that I'm not getting, I would appreciate it if you would at least try to let me know, so I can try to see this thing you're referring to .

 

It appears from where I sit that you are separating yourself from your internal dialogue. It is frustrating you, it is critical, it is annoying. This was the very thing castaneda spent years having to do - shut the critic up. This is a good thing, a very good thing.

 

From my perspective it appears that you are just short of realizing Who you are. Please consider the possibility that there is a god and we're it. When we get through our personality and inner dialogue we get down to the original Idea of manifestation of love. We can tap in willingly, and when we do, the channels open. I'm not referring to an electrical channel, I'm speaking of a vocal channel that will appear through your words when it needs to. There are several here who can tap the source and channel the thoughts. It sits at the base of our personality, before our personality was formed by reaction.

[Otis]

Please consider the possibility that there is a god and we're it. When we get through our personality and inner dialogue we get down to the original Idea of manifestation of love. We can tap in willingly, and when we do, the channels open. I'm not referring to an electrical channel, I'm speaking of a vocal channel that will appear through your words when it needs to. There are several here who can tap the source and channel the thoughts. It sits at the base of our personality, before our personality was formed by reaction.

I have no problem with what you're saying here, Manitou. I just frame the metaphors a little differently.

 

I also "channel" thoughts or inspirations, although I'm not sure that I'm ready to call their source THE Source. I just don't want to label things as "ultimate" or "final" or "true" because I may always learn something different tomorrow. How do I distinguish "true" inspiration from mundane inspiration? I'd rather not put those things in mental categories, because then my description shapes my experience. Beliefs end up ossifying my viewpoint, and deciding my path.

[Otis]

makes every bit as much sense as the first time around, only this time the LIMITS of your perspective are made even more glaring. plus, you're not responding to anything i've said. so before i bother, i'll wait for that response.

I'm happy to engage in a conversation with you about this, Hundun.

 

Yesterday, I had activities all day, and didn't have time to give proper attention to my reply, until the evening. I honestly did not see, in your post, a response to what I had written, but rather a riff on my use of a couple of words, like "arbitrary", and assumptions about how I came to my reasoning. Because I didn't hear you address the argument itself, I thought I must have not been clear, so I re-stated it as succinctly as possible.

 

If you have trouble with what I'm saying, then I'll be happy to clarify. If you think I'm missing something, then I'll be happy to read your response.

 

I'm going off to work now, but I'll check in the evening, and if I have time, I'll be happy to engage with whatever critique you have for me.

[dwai]

Hi 3bob - can't quite figure out what you're saying here.

 

When you allude to mastery, are you speaking of mastery over the character defects?

When you say divorce, are you referring to elimination of the character defects?

 

 

Very true...Great discussion.

[dwai]

If you think you are a cluster of functions, you haven't gotten quite down to it yet.

 

And this gets exacerbated in a "This vs That" paradigm. To see the paradigm and the rules and not understand the underlying "essence" leads to this kind of thinking...imho

[manitou]

And this gets exacerbated in a "This vs That" paradigm. To see the paradigm and the rules and not understand the underlying "essence" leads to this kind of thinking...imho

 

 

I see what you and Otis are saying here.

 

What I'm referring to is what produces Knowing.

 

I'm referring to something that isn't so much a brain function, but rather an elimination of all other possibilities through experience - not through reading or attaining, but through becoming. It's not a decision one way or the other, and it's impossible to describe what I'm trying to say, so I think I'll quit.

 

I'm sure we're all on the very same page, just different vocabulary.

[dwai]

I see what you and Otis are saying here.

 

What I'm referring to is what produces Knowing.

 

I'm referring to something that isn't so much a brain function, but rather an elimination of all other possibilities through experience - not through reading or attaining, but through becoming. It's not a decision one way or the other, and it's impossible to describe what I'm trying to say, so I think I'll quit.

 

I'm sure we're all on the very same page, just different vocabulary.

 

I was actually referring to Otis' posts. I am very much in sync with what you are saying (or so i think)...

When reason is stripped away, that is the deep canyon into which Carlos jumped into -- the gap between the Tonal and the Nagual. Different systems access it in different ways --

 

Carlos/Don Juan's way was (at least as expressed in Carlos' books) to access the Nagual directly...

 

Advaita Vedanta/Yoga/Tantra's Turiya state, Taoists Tao is also the Nagual...the mysterious, inexpressible which can only be experienced and cannot be talked about.

 

I find HUGE parallels between Castaneda/Don Juan's Way of Knowledge and Power and Advaita/Yoga/Tantra/Taoism (dare I say buddhism too...but I will not emphasize that any more on this forum for fear of derailing beautiful and meaningful discussions such as this). I mean, strip away the syntax and they are all guiding the seeker to the same place.

 

Tonal (Material World) -- Vyavaharika Satya (Relative reality/existence)

Nagual (Not-Tonal) -- Paramartha Satya (Absolute reality/existence)

Great Eagle - Brahman

 

the theory and the practice are very similar...the same focus on impeccability, on being a Warrior, of stalking the "Lower" Self without respite till it can be exposed and stripped away...

[Otis]

And this gets exacerbated in a "This vs That" paradigm. To see the paradigm and the rules and not understand the underlying "essence" leads to this kind of thinking...imho

I don't get it. What kind of thinking am I doing? What is it that you think I do not understand?

[dwai]

I don't get it. What kind of thinking am I doing? What is it that you think I do not understand?

 

Doesn't matter...to each his/her own

[Marblehead]

Just spot read some of the posts here. Funny, I think, that we sometimes get lost in our own conversations. Perhaps searching for something that may not exist.

 

But life goes on and we should walk the inner journey even if we can't find a path.

[Easy]

But life goes on and we should walk the inner journey even if we can't find a path.

 

Marble, you are such an old sweetie...wouldn't Marshmallow be a better handle? It works so much of the time around here, but there are times that call for jerky instead.

 

Like now is the time for some investigations, a time to go back to the source of this thread...this Yogi Ramacharaka. He was such a fraud...some businessman out of Baltimore working the New Thought circuit at the turn of the 20th Century. This Beast Within garbage has nothing to do with Eastern Philosophy and a hellova lot to do with Protestant Christianity as it formed the basis of Yogi Ramacharaka/William Walker Atkinson's Babbitesque perspective, plus a variety of other subforms of American culture circa 1910.

 

I have been studying Taoist philosophy for 34 years, and in the profound depths of that time I've had the ecstatic wash of Kashmir Shaivism flow across my life from my lover, and neither one of us have ever heard of this "beast within" garbage, this Yogi Ramacharaka hoo ha. Its all Protestant Christianity. It is not wonderful at all...the moderators don't want to hear what I would like to call it.

 

Nonetheless...I have been reading with some interest this dialogue between Otis and the ferocious Hundun with great interest. My take is that Otis is a little on the soft side and if he thinks that there is no psychological function higher than another then he might want to research thoroughly Karl Jung's writing on the Archetype of the Self. Or on the far other, less intellectual, side of that spectrum, come nut cutting time if one is still debating brain functions--this as opposed to that--and forgetting the supreme overriding impulse of bestial instinct, one is going to end up singing soprano.

 

Then on the other hand we have the ferocious, nickle-silver, feline overbite of Hundun and his Ken Wilber influenced hierarchical elitism..."transcend and include" and the ridged 'this is inferior to that' which is 'inferior to something else' Jacob's Ladder into the hierarchy toward the Heavens... It all has what an irreverent friend of mine calls a "Kenelingist" vocabulary. I can understand what Hundun is all about and it works well if one's privileged guru is pontificating into a tape recorder in a Denver loft and living off his dead old lady's Texas gas wells. But if I'm headed down into the world's most violent capital city outside of Somalia and in coming back I can't get to our house except though some torn-up concrete, fallen-to-the-dogs barrio alley-way because there are too many murdered dead guys laying in the street between the best exit off the freeway and home then that hierarchy between one's own well being and all that yada yada yada crap about watching your slack hand's back is inferior to considering one's responsibility to all life on the entire planet is pretty feeble. It doesn't wash at all. Hundun might be talking correctly for the Euro-American Privileged but that's not more than 5% of the species. The rest of us have to deal with floodgates open on the processual flow of unimaginable variables from every imaginal direction plus a few dozen more contingencies than he puts up in his imperious little posts. I'm glad he can write about hierarchical development forever and the nobility of top-bunk leadership. And I'm just as glad that I've lived long enough to laugh it all off.

[Sahaj Nath]

...and to think i almost didn't return to this thread.

 

 

Easy, while i get where you're coming from, and i even SHARE your very same criticism applied to the many blind-spots of the oftentimes overly ACADEMIC (not overly intellectual; no such thing in my book) Ken Wilber, you REALLY don't know me well enough to jump into the deep end and challenge my credentials with respect to understanding the very REAL struggle of the "less privileged." but because you don't know me, and because my emotions are INCREDIBLY RAW right now, you may have to forgive my bite in this post. just know that i'm doing my best to give YOU the benefit of the doubt, and at the moment this post is therapeutic for me.

 

most of my friends on this board know that i'm an African American former gang-member. i've actually LIVED the shit that you're talking about conceptually, and the amount of insult that i feel at your flippant assumptions about where I'M coming from is off the chart right now. but i get that the baggage here is mine, not yours. so just bare with me.

 

this is how real it is for me. just last night, right after a meditation session with one of my higher level students, i got word that the son of two dear friends of mine was killed this past Saturday in a drive-by on very the block that i grew up on. a block that ME AND MY HOMEBOYS made infamous. no bullshit.

 

here's my facebook page. check the time stamps. read the links. hell, you can even troll my F-List if you like.

 

 

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home#!/profile.php?id=535691087

 

 

and here's some quick & easy videos for those who might be allergic to too much reading:

 

 

 

after the day that i've had, returning to the hood, questioning the youngsters, learning the TRUTH about what really happened and why, and after consoling the inconsolable, and being torn about whether i would ultimately SET an example or MAKE one, it's a little, no, it's a LOT surreal to return to this board and find your "analysis" on what you think i'm about.

 

true, i've been influenced by Ken Wilber AND Spiral Dynamics. but if attacks ad hominem on Wilber's pedigree have led you to a wholesale rejection of his arguments, then i would suggest that you've thrown the Buddha out with the bathwater.

 

here's how those ideas have impacted me on THIS day:

 

i have homeboys in their mid-to-late-30's, who are ready to come out of retirement and avenge the wrong that has been done on our children. and i absolutely understand how they feel. i'm a former street soldier myself, and it's very easy to pick up a gun and pull the trigger with no remorse, just to know that the the families in the next neighborhood are feeling how WE have been made to feel. i get it. and i can't stop the homies from making that decision if they choose that.

 

others just give it up to God and pray for the families that are most directly affected by the tragedy. they'll never pick up a gun again because "thou shalt not kill" is a rule they have learned to take seriously. plus, their latter-day "spiritual" perspectives leads them to believe that the killings occurred for a reason beyond our understanding, and we have no choice but to trust the wisdom of God if "HE" saw fit to bring these children home as angels.

 

and still others are just thankful that it wasn't their children and that they made it out of the hood alive so their children have a better chance than we did growing up.

 

but none of those perspectives characterize me. and i stand alone in my take on the situation.

 

First, i'm intimately aware of how naked and powerless i feel to change the situation. so much so that violence is not an option, because i see too clearly how it would only serve to mask my feelings of insecurity. it's easier the hate than it is to grieve. i understand why many of my friends are in a state of hate right now, but i am unable to share it. my fidelity is always to the truth of the moment, no matter how uncomfortable or disagreeable. i don't need to easy answers of christianity to help me sleep at night; in fact, i would rather lie awake at night than allow myself to be soothed by a simple-minded belief structure. just doesn't work for me.

 

but MORE IMPORTANTLY,

 

i get something that the others don't seem to really grasp, and you can bet that i will be sharing it at the memorial. and that's that I am partially responsible for the death of those kids. we were the first generation of East Side Piru in Sacramento. there were no adults in our gang when i was coming up. when i was 13 the oldest guy in the hood was maybe 19. so our generation was essentially a generation of kids raising kids.

 

i was proud of my colors when i was young. and i did a lot of shit to make other places FEAR my neighborhood. that's what's called "puttin' in work" for the hood. and i did that. i put in work. i helped build the image that my friends' children later aspired to. and in this moment of grief, i cannot help but to hold myself accountable for that.

 

while it's true that i was a child in search of direction and meaning at the time, it doesn't change the role i played in creating the conditions that now exist in the neighborhood i come from.

 

this weekend i will be dressed in black, burgundy, and red. i will stand up to speak to all of the attendees of the memorial service. i will through up the sign of our neighborhood, a neighborhood that i will always love. and i will openly apologize to my friends for the role that i played in the death of their son.

 

and hopefully i will be skillful enough to make some people think.

 

 

 

i don't think that i could illustrate the original argument i was setting forth any more clearly than this.

 

 

 

don't play me small, bro. you don't know me like that.

[Otis]

Doesn't matter...to each his/her own

I haven't disagreed with you, Dwai, because I have no idea what's on your mind. Or what you believe that I believe. You've only said you disagree with me.

 

This goes for all of you: if you think that I'm missing something, then please tell me what it is. How kind is it, to say you disagree with someone, and then not being willing to say why? How can I learn from you, if you won't point out what you think I'm not getting?

[Otis]

My take is that Otis is a little on the soft side and if he thinks that there is no psychological function higher than another then he might want to research thoroughly Karl Jung's writing on the Archetype of the Self. Or on the far other, less intellectual, side of that spectrum, come nut cutting time if one is still debating brain functions--this as opposed to that--and forgetting the supreme overriding impulse of bestial instinct, one is going to end up singing soprano.

I want to make it clear that I have not said that no psychological function is higher than another. I have just said that I have seen no evidence to support any one function's supremacy.

 

I don't understand the "singing soprano" bit at all. What's that all about?

Edited February 16, 2011 by Otis