Fear of the Feminine

[redcairo]

I'd like to remove all the divorce laws immediately and a lot of other laws which favor women overwhelmingly. Then husbands will have more power and ease of mind.

 

Just don't marry. Easily solved.

 

Power over what?

 

Peace of mind over what?

 

Nothing can protect you if you ever eat or sleep. :-) 

 

Patriarchy, by the way, is what favors marriage. Which becomes self-evident why, when you look at -- hmmn, I think it might have been your own response on another thread to a kundalini yoga teacher who said five men for her sounded like a good balance. OMG greatest post ever, the hysterical response made me laugh like crazy, usually you have to throw a big spider on someone to have them freak out like that! I'd have said something but the thread is locked now. Ah well...

 

You sound very young. Probably you still have time to just avoid marriage altogether, until you've had significant internal changes anyway.

 

No way you can be feminist and 'empower' women if you're the least bit spiritual. 

 

Your definitions of 'feminist' and 'empowerment' and 'spiritual' are all rather critical to that sentence having any meaning. Lots of definitions I can think of, would cause it to make no sense.

 

The obvious nature of women slips by you. I'd say you're very ignorant who promote females in place of power.

 

I'm not sure who "you" is (someone on this thread, or the generalization). Guess I'd need to know definitions for the 'obvious nature of women' and 'places of power' for that to make sense as well.

[redcairo]

Humor: I actually just had a memory that I probably blocked out LOL --

 

Many many eons ago, I was hired by a CEO as a troubleshooter in a small incredibly complex R&D business. The VP was an attorney who had spent 8 years making everything as obfuscated and dependent on him as possible, so that is mostly what I was dealing with; he was a rich boy schooled overseas. He was also a massive cultist in the Maharishi movement, and everything filtered through that.

 

Because he was about as organized as a three year old in some ways (confusingly, given the man had a law degree), I spent some of my time doing work I certainly didn't have to, setting up for him a large convenient filing system he could swivel his chair back to for ease. His messy work indirectly impacted mine so I figured it was worth it. What I failed to consider was that because I had been willing to do what in his eyes was secretarial work, and worse, "for him," at that point in his eyes I became "his secretary." But I hadn't got the psychic memo about my new demotion to existing solely to be his servant, which was sure to become a problem...

 

So I walk back into his office one day later -- 1 day! -- with some reports in my hand, which I have just noticed he literally made up off the top of his head and gave the accountants, to ask him about this. And I nearly trip and fall because there are folders, contents spilling everywhere, all over the floor of his office, as if he was a toddler and had literally thrown them everywhere, rather than put a single one back in a file drawer, or even stack them somewhere. As I I look around me in horror he says flippantly, "Oh... file those."

 

I stood there with my mouth open in utter awe at his chutzpah, on several levels actually, when he turns back and sees the look on my face and taking a cue from his favorite cult and its philosophies, says to me -- I can't believe I didn't kill him -- "Really, you should understand that as a woman, it should be an HONOR to serve."

 

Now, it's not that a good chunk of effort in martial arts and more had not made me able to reduce him to the whimpering pile of bones he deserved to be at that moment. It's that I grew up in mid-southern coastal California and I honest to god had never met someone so arrogant in my life and my brain was having a genuinely hard time wrapping around it AT ALL. I just stood there staring at him in agog silence, until I turned around quietly and went back to my office. It was actually so offensive there was just not a single thing I could say or do that was appropriately matched to it that wouldn't send me to jail.

 

The punch line comes about a week later, when our primary investor, a brilliant self-made insanely rich man, takes out the CEO and VP to dinner. The CEO is griping because of things I have showed him, and the VP is defending himself mostly by dissing me. Thinking that he is going to make a friend of the "manly-man" who is this WWII fighter-pilot now-rich guy (this is circa 1991), the VP tells the whole story of the above. This leads to utter agog silence on the part of the CEO and investor, both of whom reacted exactly like I did to it, followed by the investor telling him that had he been me, he would have beat the shit out of him and then got a new job. LOL! It didn't win him any points at all, and eventually the guy was fired.

 

But, and this kinda brings the story back to yin/yang and the real world:

 

I am, in fact, 'service.' Whether it is in the workplace or the home or in various hobbies and projecs I'm involved with, service is generally my primary underlying drive. I in fact *do* consider it an honor to serve and despite that I've had to be independent and competent my entire life, usually in any situation where a man is present I happily let him lead, talk, whatever, not out of demure shyness or subservience, simply because I don't feel compelled to do otherwise.

 

I adore men, I mean adore them completely beyond what is even rational I'm pretty sure, so I tend to find their stepping forward to be the decisive ones, strong ones, problem solvers, a charming thing I appreciate watching, probably the same way men appreciate watching a pretty woman walk past. 

 

I think there is an element of yang that amounts to charisma, the kind that makes yin WANT to be yin and WANT to be support and service and that sort of thing. I think there are deficiencies in yang energy which will cause the opposite effect. This should not be projected upon the yin, as if for example a woman who is greatly yang behavior is just lost -- I am highly yang in great part because I've had to be, but put me around good yang in men and I am suddenly the absolute opposite.

[Arya]

Just don't marry. Easily solved.

Thanks, I'll take your advice.

 

You seem wise.

[Daeluin]

Daeluin,

 

I had a meditative experience that your words brought to mind. You were talking about the yin opening up, and would yang cloud or pollute it (I really, really dislike that latter concept) for example.

 

In the med I had met this guy who was all these funky colors that were constantly shifting - striped, dotted, and so on. Later I was more thoughtful and focused with him. He had said at one point that he was "integration."

 

Me: But if you’re integration, shouldn’t you be like… white or black or brown, some blend-result?  My guide suggested this is actually something I fundamentally misunderstood, and that affected my own 'allowing vulnerability.' 

 

True integration does not change the nature of energy in that way, he says. If it did, it would be removing the one energy and replacing it with another. True integration merely provides all the energy. You can then distribute this throughout your experience however you choose.

 

I think if yang were to so-called pollute yin it would not be that the yang was the problem, it would be that the yin had insufficient integrity to hold its own through the integration.

 

*

 

I agree. Often, a highly developed person will be invisible in some way, and what we see is only on the surface, perhaps what they want us to see. So long as they remain interacting with us through bodies and words and energetic shapes, and so long as that is what we are looking for, that is probably what we are going to see.

 

 

There was a shaman in Zheng named Jixian who could discern whether people would live or die, survive or perish. He knew how long their lives would be and what turns their fortunes would take, giving the exact year, month, week, and date for each event like some kind of god. When the people of Zheng caught sight of him, they would turn and run. Liezi went to see him, and his mind became quite intoxicated. He returned and told Huzi about it, saying, "I used to  think your Course was the ultimate, but now I see that there is something beyond it."

 

Huzi said, "I have only finished showing you its outward ornament, not yet its inner reality. Have you really mastered this Course? A multitude of hens with no rooster can produce no chicks. You use the Course to browbeat the world, insisting that people believe in it. Because you try to control others, you have allowed yourself to be controlled. That is why this man was able to read your fortune on your face. Bring him here, and I will show myself to him."

 

The next day, Liezi brought the shaman to see Huzi. He came out and said to Liezi, "Alas! Your master is as good as dead! That is not a living being in there! He has at most a few weeks left. I saw something very strange in him, something resembling wet ashes."

 

Liezi went in, his collar drenched with tears, and reported these words to Huzi. Huzi said, "Just now I showed him the patterns of the earth, sprouting forth without any strenuous rumblings and without straightening themselves out. He must have seen in me the incipient impulse of the Virtuosity that blocks everything out. Try bringing him again."

 

The next day, Liezi brought the shaman once more. He came out and said, "Your master is lucky to have met me! He's recovering; there are healthy signs of life! I could see his blockage moving into balance."

 

Liezi went in and reported this to HUzi, who said, "Just now I showed him Heaven's soil. Impervious to both names and realities, renown and profit, the incipient impulse nonetheless comes forth from the heels. He must have seen in me the incipient impulse of all that flourishes. Try bringing him again."

 

The next day, he brought the shaman yet again to see Huzi. He came out and told Liezi, "Your master is an incoherent mess, I have no way to read his face. Have him get himself together, then I'll come back to do a reading."

 

Liezi went in and reported this to Huzi, who said, "Just now I showed him the vast gushing surge in which no one thing wins out. He must have seen in me the incipient impulse that balances all energies. The frothing of a salamander's swirl is the reservoir. The frothing of still water is the reservoir. The frothing of flowing water is the reservoir. The reservoir has nine names, nine aspects, and I have showin him three of them. Try bringing him again."

 

The next day, Liezi brought him to see Huzi again. But before the shaman had even come to a halt before him, he lost control of himself and bolted out the door. Huzi said, "Go after him!" But Liezi could not catch up with him. He returned and reported to Huzi, "He's gone! I cannot catch him!"

 

Huzi said, "Just now I showed him what I am when not yet emerged from my source -- something empty and serpentine in its twistings, admitting of no understanding of who or what. So he saw it as something endlessly collapsing and scattering, something flowing away with every wave. This is why he fled."

 

That was when Liezi realized he had not yet learned anything. He returned to his home and did not emerge for three years, cooking for his wife, feeding the pigs as if he were serving guests, remaining remote from all endeavors and letting all the chiseled carvings of his character return to an unhewn blockishness. Solitary like a clump of soil, he planted his physical form there in its place, a mass of chaos and confusion. And that is how he remained to the end of his days.

Zhuangzi, Brook Ziporyn

 

I don't know anything official about the Tao. I only have my own experiences and thoughts over the years to go on. But I don't care to think about yin as if it is passive to the point of nearly dead the way it seems like, in writing at least, some do. In fact, quite the opposite. Water is not passive at all, just because it is the opposite of fire. Cold is not passive at all, just because it is the opposite of hot.

 

There is a difference between something which has calm stillness -- even a stoic ever-waiting-ness -- versus something which is "nearly inert." I think the definition of yin has to some degree been messed up by yang minds defining it. Of course I can only go on the brief mentions I see in passing in forums like this as I don't study these topics formally.

 

My problem is I only speak English and I don't think we have words for how I feel about it. All our words tend to be action words, and things-negated words. 

 

I think of yin in myself and things around me at least as "silently inviting" -- there IS an actual force and power there, and it's equal to the yang. It is simply that it almost defines by its nature the truth of the interworlds which is, "Don't force it; seduce it." The force is on the outside. The seduction is a pulling from the inside, but the pulling is not 'manifest,' it's more the zero-point-energy you might say, infinite potential in every mote. it's more like an inherently tempting, innately inspiring thing.

 

I have as much power to pull yang into me, as yang has to push into me, the difference being that when yang does, he's going to think it's his own idea. :-)  Isn't that how it works in real life, too.

 

I like this.

 

I work over the internet remotely, and will often work from a cafe, with people walking past me all the time. When women walk past me I frequently feel a tug, as though if am a magnet and another magnet is moving past me. Sometimes it is weaker or stronger, and it tends to pull on my lower subtle energies. Men are the same, but as though the magnet is pushing the other direction. And of course both push and pull both ways, it is just that I tend to find myself pulled most strongly by the magnetic pull of women.

 

In answer to this, I both deepen my internal receptivity and connection to my center, AND I allow myself to detach from concern over the connection. I know that I am ever connected to everything around me, and should not pretend that I have the capacity to somehow isolate myself. Instead, I minimize the potential extreme of the exchange by increasing my own receptivity and centering.... and then rather than allowing my awareness of the exchange to develop into attachment and potential discomfort or desire for something to change within me, I replace the potential for attachment with trust, and allow the exchange to occur without getting in the way of it.

 

I wonder if this is similar to how you are able to control how much yang you are pulling. From this it sounds like you have a strong grasp over exchanging energy with your environment. But you said the following, so I think I am misunderstanding something.

 

I think in part because in analogy, it mirrors a fairly massive problem I've had all my life. I suspect the issue with "allowing oneself vulnerability" -- allowing yin, for me -- might be more common in our culture than we realize.  It has certainly been the greatest challenge in my life, and has been cyclical for me -- generally causing great angst followed by utter disaster in failure and then the cycle starts over again. I'm pretty much at the death-if-I-fail level now so getting a handle on this would sure be a good thing, and any suggestions are welcome.

[Geof Nanto]

Patriarchy is the best for society.

 

I'd like to remove all the divorce laws immediately and a lot of other laws which favor women overwhelmingly. Then husbands will have more power and ease of mind.

 

No way you can be feminist and 'empower' women if you're the least bit spiritual. The obvious nature of women slips by you. I'd say you're very ignorant who promote females in place of power.

 

I was feeling a little overwhelmed with so many feelings arising from comments on this topic; nothing clear or simple enough to write about. Then I read this comment and I laughed. 

[ilumairen]

I was feeling a little overwhelmed with so many feelings arising from comments on this topic; nothing clear or simple enough to write about. Then I read this comment and I laughed. 

 

I love the moment that laughter just bubbles up to the surface.

[Daeluin]

From a different perspective, I ponder on the idea of a key and a lock. The key is yang and the lock is yin, hidden within. I can't open the door without the key.

 

Often I am pulled more toward those who dress to show their external bodily shape. So I wonder if, for someone with my low level of discernment, their yang is catching my yang and showing me the key to how their yang flows into their yin, so my yang can follow along. Those who dress without showing the shape of their body seem more mysterious to me. This also is true of men who show their bodily shapes, I am much more aware of the projection of their external presence.

 

So many layers.

 

In a way, to tie this into the OP, I have the experience of being strongly drawn out of myself, and an experience of the results not being very beneficial. And so when I sense myself being drawn from my center, I am afraid of it. My above post explains how I've come to respond to this without fear and control, but with acceptance AND greater centering.

 

And I wonder how it must feel to be isolated in a realm so vastly different - where your yang (mental structuring) has no sense or ability to shape itself into a key that fits into the yin that surrounds in every direction. Perhaps wilhelm was able to create a new key, and yet that still remained completely incomparable to the other key, to the western realm. For the Major, perhaps there was no development of a key, and thus the fear of exceeding one's measure and being dragged to the other side.

[Geof Nanto]

So many layers.

 

......Perhaps wilhelm was able to create a new key, and yet that still remained completely incomparable to the other key, to the western realm. For the Major, perhaps there was no development of a key, and thus the fear of exceeding one's measure and being dragged to the other side.

 

I read this a little differently. I thought the major was actually more aware on this level than Wilhelm, and thus knew to protect himself from something that could potentially destroy his image of himself as powerful and superior. I found his perspective nuanced and insightful. To my mind, Wilhelm was exactly the sort of person who, "for the Major the weak spot is to be found in the most sensitive, often the finest people - and moreover, in their finest feelings. It is there that India seeks them out and pulls them over into what the Major called the other dimension." Wilhelm wrote of his encounter with ancient Chinese wisdom in the person Lao Nai-hsuan, "Under his experienced guidance I wandered entranced through this strange and yet familiar world."  

 

Wilhelm comes across to me as an amazing person; someone I'd relate to. Whereas the major I'd find intellectually interesting yet too yang, too bounded to hold my feelings. Someone like him would unintentionally stunt by ability to fully be who I am.  

 

Like Wilhelm, I've followed my feelings as if entranced, heedless of losing myself. And lose myself I did. I've been 'destroyed' by my engagement with life....destroyed and remade with much help. 

Edited December 22, 2015 by Yueya

[ilumairen]

Like Wilhelm, I've followed my feelings as if entranced, heedless of losing myself. And lose myself I did. I've been 'destroyed' by my engagement with life....destroyed and remade with much help. 

 

Over and over again for me, and yet the 'heart - beyond mere sentimentality' still leads me in my dance of life.

[Daeluin]

Ah, yes. I said the Major developed no key, but I was mistaken. He does seem to have had something to fear, that was much bigger than himself. Yet he also was able to find the boundary from which he could love this "realm of yin" without becoming so soft to lose himself in it.

 

I agree about finding the Major as very yang, very rigid. I feel that perhaps he used this fear to maintain guard over his strength. And in protecting himself from becoming soft, he also likely prevented many meaningful exchanges.

 

I feel the western realm in general is very afraid of death by transformation. Perhaps validly so when faced with that which might so easily wipe away one's existence. And yet this is to deny the potential transformation has for one to be reborn cleansed and even more awake, aware, and whole than one had previously been.

[Daeluin]

I feel the western realm in general is very afraid of death by transformation. Perhaps validly so when faced with that which might so easily wipe away one's existence. And yet this is to deny the potential transformation has for one to be reborn cleansed and even more awake, aware, and whole than one had previously been.

 

Again and again it all comes back to balance. When yang balances with yin, either within or without, there is no need for destruction to occur. It is when yang faces overwhelming yin, or yin faces overwhelming yang, that it seems one puts up a wall to prevent the transformation from one to the other to occur, and in thus breaking the cycle, attaches to one or the other out of fear.

 

Yet as long as one is able to maintain proper balance of the cycling yin and yang within, one can adapt to sharing what is within appropriately with what is in one's environment without becoming afraid of becoming lost in the exchange - because the internal cycling is so much more central and powerful, that when healthy and cultivated, it is difficult for anything to disrupt it.

 

The problem is likely that many of us have had this natural cycling damaged early in our lives, and repairing what measures its momentum in years and decades is not easily done, though it might be.

[Geof Nanto]

Ah, yes. I said the Major developed no key, but I was mistaken. He does seem to have had something to fear, that was much bigger than himself. Yet he also was able to find the boundary from which he could love this "realm of yin" without becoming so soft to lose himself in it.

 

I agree about finding the Major as very yang, very rigid. I feel that perhaps he used this fear to maintain guard over his strength. And in protecting himself from becoming soft, he also likely prevented many meaningful exchanges.

 

I feel the western realm in general is very afraid of death by transformation. Perhaps validly so when faced with that which might so easily wipe away one's existence. And yet this is to deny the potential transformation has for one to be reborn cleansed and even more awake, aware, and whole than one had previously been.

 

Exactly.

 

This is the natural process of transformation that, for some very few of us, is followed to its extremes. It's the pattern Jung identified within himself and amongst his patients. He thought he had found something new - and this unsettled him because he considered anything without ancient roots as likely pathological. Hence he was elated to find parallels both in the obscure works of Western alchemy and, thanks to Wilhelm, in the greater clarity of Chinese alchemy.

 

Unfortunately - and this is something redcairo has made very clear - knowing the theory can actually inhibit our ability to spontaneously live the experience. Everyone is different and change happens for all of us in unique ways appropriate to our situation.  The theory comes after, and at its best, can only identify patterns and stages common to all but exactly applicable to no one . Of course these concepts are potentially useful; they're powerful tools, but only if used wisely. And for me any wisdom I have has been hard won and come slowly. 

Edited December 22, 2015 by Yueya

[redcairo]

 

all the chiseled carvings of his character return to an unhewn blockishness

 

I like that line a lot.

 

When I was young (a teen) and had a very... um, challenging life as I'm sure many have, I once wrote that most people seemed faceted to me. Like a crystal or gem. You might see the facets they grew with, lovely but very specific and often chipped, broken and dirty. Or you might see the facets that their adaptations to reality had given them, cut and sanded to match the form society expects, and you can tell by the "shift" in them when their perspective, locked inside that crystal, has shifted to a different facet suddenly. The light falls differently for them now and they see themselves and everything else in a variant way.

 

I said that I believed that I was more rounded, like a river rock made smooth. That I was still everything inside but I could be anything I chose to be, without the planes of pressure having made me into one thing or another. This was wrong; I thought far too much of myself, ha, I am still nowhere near there. But what I was trying to think through was simply the concept of "living intentionally." Being aware enough of who you are that when you have other people go past you, you can truly feel who they are, because your own shape is not in the way.

 

In meditative work, when dealing with the symbol of energy in people, you first have to separate "the primary from the secondary" as my 3rd of 4 calls it, which to them means the energy that is inherent to the focus of that-identity, vs. the energy that they are "carrying" -- usually for me, if I am meditating on them. In visualization it usually comes through like I am separating a shadowy ghost of sorts and the 'them' remaining is the solar body (I mean that clear white-light soft nearly-angelic-ish thing, they wear humans like suits. They are their own level of Being/entity) and that is what I work with; the rest I clean up and suck back up into my solar plexus chakra as it is mine. That's just a meditative model though. There is really no way to see anybody as they are, of course. Humans are dynamics. We're all verbs. We experience the "energetic interaction between" our dynamics and that is what we "see" as "them" and their behavior. So we change ourselves, we change them, because we're half the equation. Of course it's easier to accept that when someone is not incredibly irritating.

 

and will often work from a cafe, with people walking past me all the time. [...] I frequently feel a tug, as though if am a magnet and another magnet is moving past me

 

When very young (about 18) I temporarily had a 3rd job working in a fairly nice movie theatre. I would stand at the podium between where the paths split off, taking people's tickets and directing them. After a while I realized that I had developed a curious form of both-genders gaydar. It was especially strong with men, perhaps because I have always been very attuned to men.

 

(I actually suspect there is a small and pervasive degree of stockholm syndrome wound into this, culturally not just for me, and because it's a positive feeling or result this is overlooked as the source, but that is an entirely separate subject.)

 

Basically I would feel in my lowest chakras the impact of them -- perhaps their maleness as my body perceived it -- and then a turning. As if our bodies encountered each other, sampled each others' energy, and then their body went, "Ew yuck, a girl!" and I felt the shift in them. The only thing this insight ever got me was disappointed at how many good looking guys are gay, ha. This happened sometimes when I had my side or back turned and had not even had a chance to see them yet, so I came to think it was the body's "bio-electric" field, not other subtle physical tells one might get visually.

 

I never had any feelings like this bother me though. I mean I've never felt threatened or even overly moved by it. Whenever things have felt strong for me physically in some 'esoteric' way I just imagine that I am like color and wind just blows through me, or that I am like a thin jellyfish and everything else is water that just washes through me without bothering me. Anytime I have tried to 'block' sensations from others it's been a disaster, as if the very concept of my being solid and blocking something itself sets up predestined failure.

 

From this it sounds like you have a strong grasp over exchanging energy with your environment. But you said the following, so I think I am misunderstanding something.

 

Well, I guess there must be a lot more to the full development of a person than ability to exchange energy with the environment. I've had a long term problem, still working on it in meditative ways, of accepting or allowing love, vulnerability (that's the word my internal identities use), and so on. I feel it and see it, I'm shown it constantly by a whole inner world of characters trying to save my ass, but so far I just don't know how to fix it.

 

A long time ago when I was only about 16, in one of my songs I wrote this line:

 

It will be clear someday

Why the price gets higher every time you pay

 

And for some reason that line has always had a lot of ineffable meaning to me. It seems to be really proving itself out at this point in my life. Like there is a sort of development curve, and the farther along you get, the higher the penalty for issues unresolved, for integrity unmet, for denial unavoided. Of course many of these things by their very nature seem vague. They're probably not vague -- everything is clear really -- it's more likely that they're so overwhelmingly obvious that I can't see them because they've completely taken over my field of vision. But the end result is the same.

 

It is basically a crux of decision related to HGA. It isn't just a simple and gradual thing, at least not for me. It's been filled with massive cognitive dissonance, and a point where clearly one has to let go and allow -- I suspect it is recognizing that it is not part of me but rather, I am part of that. Intellectually it's easy. In practice it's another story.

 

(It's kind of a positive-not-negative version of a portion of experience I once had that occultist friends, on reading it, later told me was 'The Abyss.')

 

nothing clear or simple enough to write about

 

I love that the world is so straightforward for some people. I think I miss that!

 

"for the Major the weak spot is to be found in the most sensitive, often the finest people - and moreover, in their finest feelings. It is there that India seeks them out and pulls them over into what the Major called the other dimension."

 

What I like best is the subtle irony of what went unrecognized in all this. That the reason she (India) tempted the finest elements in the finest people is because the culture they were from had nutritionally starved them of these energies.

Edited December 22, 2015 by redcairo

[redcairo]

Oh -- can I just add to that last line --

 

That this is beautifully summed up by that movie "Chocolat"

 

And Alfred Molina was not only fabulous in that but is a hilarious analogy to a lot of the energy I see around this forum, too. So sincere! Trying so very hard to reign it in and do what is good and right! So utterly doomed as a result LOL!

Edited December 22, 2015 by redcairo

[Geof Nanto]

I think in part because in analogy, it mirrors a fairly massive problem I've had all my life. I suspect the issue with "allowing oneself vulnerability" -- allowing yin, for me -- might be more common in our culture than we realize.  It has certainly been the greatest challenge in my life, and has been cyclical for me -- generally causing great angst followed by utter disaster in failure and then the cycle starts over again. I'm pretty much at the death-if-I-fail level now so getting a handle on this would sure be a good thing, and any suggestions are welcome.

 

"Oh -- can I just add to that last line --

 

That this is beautifully summed up by that movie "Chocolat"

 

And Alfred Molina was not only fabulous in that but is a hilarious analogy to a lot of the energy I see around this forum, too. So sincere! Trying so very hard to reign it in and do what is good and right! So utterly doomed as a result LOL!"

 

 

Perhaps making a comment like this is a way of preserving invulnerbility? Just a possiblity; I could well be wrong!

[Geof Nanto]

What I like best is the subtle irony of what went unrecognized in all this. That the reason she (India) tempted the finest elements in the finest people is because the culture they were from had nutritionally starved them of these energies.

 

 

Very true. But such one-sidedness is what has given our Western culture its dynamism, its yang strength. If everything was in balance there'd be stagnation. There can be no flow of energy without polarity. (Note how this also applies to consciousness; hence some polarity of opinion is necessary in discussions such as this one for it to meaningfully proceed.)

 

However, as Daoist theory makes abundantly clear, any one-sidedness will eventually lead to reversal. Our Western culture is slowly losing its ability to suppress "the other side". We need to rediscover our yin strength. 

 

 

 

 

Edited December 22, 2015 by Yueya

[redcairo]

Perhaps, thanks.

 

There can be no flow of energy without polarity. 

 

My crown chakra once showed me something where (to drastically reduce things here) if we were ever truly balanced with 'Truth' our spin would be absolutely straight up and down -- still in place -- and to the body that actually meant death. That it was the being slightly out of balance with 'Truth' that was the reason we were here, that actually kept our tall torus spinning and moving around. 

 

But: the detail that there must be polarity doesn't necessarily mean there has to be a LOT of it, of course. I think it would be possible for a small offset to allow a lovely culture. ...in theory.

 

any one-sidedness will eventually lead to reversal

 

The dynamic of 10 of wands (oppression in thoth tarot) was interesting I thought -- and I think it actually comes in here, when we consider that in order to favor any one energy above another we must basically oppress/suppress/repress the other. A little excerpt from the middle of my med on that one;

 

I closed my eyes, and I saw this thing like a board break. Then another thing broke. “The breaking,” I said. “The dynamic, not the forms.” The world around me erupted into a thousand kinds of things-breaking. I leaped into the sky, froze everything below [...] 

“Why breaking?” I say out loud to the arch. “The card is oppression.”

“The end-result,” I heard. “Something or someone always breaks, eventually.” I had in my head ‘examples’. It could be someone’s will. It could be the reverse — a people’s patience — causing a backlash. It could be the ability of a ‘system’ (e.g. totalitarianism) to uphold without collapsing in on itself.

Everywhere I looked I got these “conceptual understandings” that almost seemed to come with a sense of space and time as well, of how oppression “if unobstructed” would as a natural end-result, break something. Sometimes the thing that broke destroyed the oppression, sometimes it made it stronger.

 

Maybe the only real answer is a sort of yin-yang "rolling trade" of what energy is dominant.

Edited December 23, 2015 by redcairo

[dawei]

I know.... really 'off-topic'... but this seems to beg the question... Isn't the point of the topic really ... 

 

No fear of the Feminine 

 

or actually... we truly need to ...

 

Fear the Feminine 

 

Too many great nuisances 

[Daeluin]

Yueya, I found your first page of posts really interesting.

 

I think in part because in analogy, it mirrors a fairly massive problem I've had all my life. I suspect the issue with "allowing oneself vulnerability" -- allowing yin, for me -- might be more common in our culture than we realize.  It has certainly been the greatest challenge in my life, and has been cyclical for me -- generally causing great angst followed by utter disaster in failure and then the cycle starts over again. I'm pretty much at the death-if-I-fail level now so getting a handle on this would sure be a good thing, and any suggestions are welcome.

 

At first I had read this as trouble with allowing too much vulnerability... now I'm getting this as difficulty in opening/surrendering - at some level.

 

I don't know anything official about the Tao. I only have my own experiences and thoughts over the years to go on.

 

Have you read the dao de jing? Whenever I do, I find it very ego-humbling, very helpful in surrendering to heavenly guidance.

 

Well, I guess there must be a lot more to the full development of a person than ability to exchange energy with the environment. I've had a long term problem, still working on it in meditative ways, of accepting or allowing love, vulnerability (that's the word my internal identities use), and so on. I feel it and see it, I'm shown it constantly by a whole inner world of characters trying to save my ass, but so far I just don't know how to fix it.

 

 

A long time ago when I was only about 16, in one of my songs I wrote this line:

 

It will be clear someday

Why the price gets higher every time you pay

 

I definitely find the ego to be like this - the more I feed it, the more of a stranglehold it develops on me, and the more courage it takes to get up and do my cultivation work. But the cultivation work dissolves the ego, opens the energy pathways in the body-mind, and facilitates clearing of blockages and sealing of leaks.

 

 

And for some reason that line has always had a lot of ineffable meaning to me. It seems to be really proving itself out at this point in my life. Like there is a sort of development curve, and the farther along you get, the higher the penalty for issues unresolved, for integrity unmet, for denial unavoided. Of course many of these things by their very nature seem vague. They're probably not vague -- everything is clear really -- it's more likely that they're so overwhelmingly obvious that I can't see them because they've completely taken over my field of vision. But the end result is the same.

 

It is basically a crux of decision related to HGA. It isn't just a simple and gradual thing, at least not for me. It's been filled with massive cognitive dissonance, and a point where clearly one has to let go and allow -- I suspect it is recognizing that it is not part of me but rather, I am part of that. Intellectually it's easy. In practice it's another story.

 

(It's kind of a positive-not-negative version of a portion of experience I once had that occultist friends, on reading it, later told me was 'The Abyss.')

 

Clearly you are a wonderfully well-cultivated person, and I don't know what you need.

 

I'll just say that qigong is fairly good at dissolving blockages that can interfere with integration - at many levels. I'd also advise caution, as qigong can easily work at the lower energetic layers, which can potentially disturb one's momentum and foundation of higher layers of energetics.

 

I saw that your location is the Ozarks, and it seems like Michael Lomax runs the Ozarks Institute of Clinical Qigong. Michael is a member of these forums and is highly regarded here. If it isn't trouble, he might be worth speaking with.

[centertime]

I'll just say that qigong is fairly good at dissolving blockages that can interfere with integration - at many levels. I'd also advise caution, as qigong can easily work at the lower energetic layers, which can potentially disturb one's momentum and foundation of higher layers of energetics.

Hi,

 

let me join in... What higher layer of energetics? What makes you think that?

Edited December 25, 2015 by centertime

[Daeluin]

Hi,

 

let me join in... What higher layer of energetics? What makes you think that?

 

Oh I don't know anything. Was just making a guess that HGA might be related to shen gong, and that, while qi gong can work at any layer (jing, qi, shen), it "can easily" change things on layers we aren't accustomed to working on. For someone used to working on the shengong layer, if they started doing some exercise that moved jing around, and this hadn't been done before, it could also effect their shengong work. Of course this might help deepen the shengong work, but it could also change things in unexpected ways.

 

Key words here are can, could, might. Again, I don't know anything, just offered a suggestion.