energy

[goldisheavy]

So you believe in energy? You want to stimulate it and use it for your own purposes? Well, take a number then, because you're one among many. Only few people go beyond the need for energy cultivation. In case you want to play with energy, just understand the meaning of it, and you won't go wrong.

 

First, what is energy? Energy is defined as ability to cause change. For example, if I raise a brick off the ground, we say this brick has potential energy. This is just straight physics. But it's important to understand this concept, because the language we use to describe phenomena is crucial. So the brick has some potential energy. It means that if conditions change, this energy will be released, and something will change as a result. For example, the brick will begin to accelerate, that's one change. We say the brick acquired kinetic energy. Then the brick hits the ground and it creates a dent in the ground, some sound and a tiny amount of heat. All that change is said to be the result of this potential energy of the upraised brick.

 

This is kind of how we use that word, when we use it intelligently in the Western sense. Another meaning of the word energy is this -- it's a process that would take effort to stop. So for example, if something is flying around the Earth, like say, moon, we say it has a lot of energy stored in its motion. Why do we say that? We say that because we imagine that if we tried to stop the moon, it would take a lot of doing on our part. That's also known as inertia.

 

Now when people want to practice energy, why do they want it? First of all, people don't believe their own intent has direct influence on the appearances. People believe that intent has certain rules or channels along which it flows. For example, I can intend to move my hand, because that's allowed by my deeply ingrained, semi-unconscious belief system about who I am, what is the meaning of me, etc. "Who I am" includes into it understandings such as "what I am capable of", "how I influence the world", "how the world influences me" and so forth. So, for example, I may not believe that I can intend my arm to fly off my body arbitrarily and lift something 300 meters away from my body. That's against the rules.

 

And yet... people somehow still believe that something is possible that's not completely described by the conventional physics. They figure (wrongly) that like with other things, it's got to follow its own rules. So instead of trying to understand if the physics rules are true or not, or if they are habits of mind, people enthusiastically set out looking for these rules. And many many teachers are only happy to oblige. They say, "yes, I know the subtle rules... I know how you can achieve all kinds of uncommon and unconventional results using secret/subtle energy". And they tell you a story. There are many many stories. They are all different, but the stories that come from Eurasia tend to be similar (the stories in the Americas are very different, for example, and Kaballist view is at least somewhat different, if not very). The idea is that energy has to rise to the head and sometimes even out of the head and beyond. Another idea is that energy must move around, if it's blocked, it piles up and hurts. So without any critical thinking people enthusiastically rush forward, like madmen, to get their energy to rise quickly to the head! Or to get it moving around! OR ELSE!

 

But if you study the nature of phenomena, invariable you will have to understand, eventually, that phenomena are empty of essence. In other words, that at the ultimate level nothing makes phenomena what they are, not even causes and conditions, that ultimately phenomena are inscrutable for the reason of there being nothing guaranteeing the stability of identities. And identities without stability are useless, ultimately. Because if the same identity means various things over time, even as you pronounce the sentence, by the time you're finished pronouncing it, its meaning is not the same as when you have started saying it. That's the implication of instability of identities.

 

So when it comes to energy practice, the implication is that energy is not substantially real, nor is any other sensation. It's like a vision, or like a dream, or like the sunset seen by a blind man, or like the beautiful violins herd by the deaf, like the fur on the tortoise, or like the rabbit's horn.

 

So, if you don't take energy seriously, and if you don't depend on it for anything of substance, if you just do it for fun and coolness and self-expression, then it becomes safe. Still, you need to check your beliefs first. For example, do you believe that energy has inertia? If yes, and most people do believe that, then do you realize that if you summon energy in your spine, it will take equal amount of work to get rid of it later when you discover you don't enjoy the sensation and that you've not been made wiser or more impressive by it? If you realize it, great!

 

In order to check your beliefs, look at how you act, not at how you talk. If you say you believe that there is no such thing as inertia, but you act as if there is, you believe that there is. Belief is how you ACTUALLY LIVE your life and not how you talk. So to know what you believe, check what you ACTUALLY DO in real life. Don't lie to yourself, be honest, but do keep an open mind. Today's truth can become tomorrow's lie.

 

Energy is moved by intent. So understand intent! How does intent work with regard to your own body and the world? First, the intent, within its scope, is miraculous. It works without the "how". For example I move my hands spontaneously. Sure, my movements are constrained by certain rules, but within the allowed freedoms, the movement is spontaneous. Which is to say, I don't produce intent to produce intent to move my hand. It's not a two step process. I don't even want to move it before I move it! I move it AS I want to move it. It's instant. Within the scope of intent the manifestation is instant, without rules, without steps, without explanations, without procedures of any kind. I call it the no-how (as a play on "know-how"). The true know-how is a no-how. So why do people spend so much effort on skills?

 

That's because outside the scope of intent, things work according to rules. For example, if I want a certain change in the outside world, I must pull a lever, for example. My hand will, within its constraint, move miraculously, and I don't need to worry about that. But as I want to affect further change, I must interface through the self-imposed rules. The lever won't move itself unless I push it with my hand. Why not?

 

Because that's how I set up the scope of my intent. Intent, intentionally, fractures itself into "within my intent and outside my intent". It can also intentionally de-fracture itself. When it does so, you won't need to follow any rules for any manifestation, because all manifestation will become like your body, and will move naturally, without you making special effort at it, as you wish.

 

But people cannot believe that! So they work at energy.

 

They think if they can project energy from their hands, they can heal or kill and so on. This is better than what physics allows, so it's like a tiny step forward in freedom.

 

But understand the roots of your intent! Meditate on what it means to intend something. First, is intent yours or not or neither? Does intent have a start and a stop? Does intent have a boundary? How is the boundary maintained? Can it be proven? How? When you think this, slowly and quietly, feel it with your whole being. Move your hand as you contemplate. Touch the surfaces of things. Move objects. Watch intent. Does it have beginning or end? In what sense is it yours? In what sense is it not yours? Where is the boundary? What holds the rules? How do you know what is miraculous and what is normal? Or for that matter, how do you know what is normal and what is just rare? Don't just think. Feel. Reflect. Observe. Be.

 

I just scratched the surface, but to summarize:

 

Understand the nature of phenomena.

 

Understand your own intent.

 

Don't take anything too seriously.

 

Don't become obsessed. Your health is not that precious. One good way to lose one's health is to become obsessed about it. Your life is not that precious. If you have to stay alive at any cost, that's the ticket to hell. Hell beings exist in conditions that would kill any being on this planet in a split second, but they don't die. Why not? They suffer greatly and yet what would kill you in .0001 second, doesn't kill the hell being. Why not? BECAUSE hell being CLINGS TO LIFE AND REFUSES TO DIE, no matter that their life is TRASH. They say, "I want to live, no matter what it means, even if it means my eyes are being gouged out." And the Universe, the mind, is happy to deliver, because at the ultimate level there is no good or bad. You want it? OK, you got it. No problem. There is no moral judgment from the Dao. If you want a seeming eternity of pain, you can enact it for yourself. If you want a seeming eternity of bliss, that's also possible. Just visions! Like having a good dream or having a bad dream is still a dream.

 

To live happy you must be willing to die at the drop of a hat. Die early, die often. Die to the bad life. You have to be very very fragile. If you are very strong and robust, you will sustain a LOT of suffering before you die. But if you a fragile, even a tiny inconvenience will remove your field of attention from the phenomena that's causing the incongruence. So see? Sometimes being strong means being a moron. There is nothing to be proud of if you are strong. I am very strong, but I am not proud of my strength. It means I suffer unnecessarily and make trouble for myself. I don't have the strength to be intentionally weak. Lalalala....

 

Energy practice is a dream. You're not moving anything. There is no spoon. The rules you're working with are empty. If you keep this in mind, and just use basic common sense, it will be safe. Start of slowly, and if you don't like how things are evolving, just stop. What kills people is STUBBORNNESS. Like the person will get a bad sensation, but THE GURU SAID THIS IS THE WAY, and so the person will disregard their own body and mind and will rape himself or herself until they can't even live, and THEN they will consider that maybe they are wrong and the Guru is also wrong. But not until then. People have incredible pigheadness like that. They'll do the wrong thing until it kills them, and sometimes even when they are dying, they don't attribute their bad condition to the thing that's killing them, but blame everything around them.

 

So listen to yourself. Listen to your body and mind and feelings. Pay attention. Respect yourself. Don't saddle yourself with something just because someone else said it was good. Inspect it. Is it good for you? Then do it. But don't do it based on mere hearsay.

Edited May 13, 2009 by goldisheavy

[SmallFrameGrandUltimateFist]

"Your health is not that precious. One good way to lose one's health is to become obsessed about it. Your life is not that precious. If you have to stay alive at any cost, that's the ticket to hell."

 

I think I understand what you mean, but the way you say it is not accurate to me, health is not important? How can we practice the way if we are unhealthy, your life is not that precious? how can we practice the way if we are dead.

Understand that throwing away yourself as if you had no value is easy, anyone can do this, if your saying the will to live and survive is not important then I cannot agree. The very nature of life is to survive and propagate, Tao is the way of nature, to be reckless with your life and health is not the way of the Tao. I used to think this way. But now I realize that is the easy way, a cowards way. One of the tao must handle their affairs take care of responsibilities and develop themselves early on so that they may retire from society and be free of things in a responsible manner. No matter who you think you are you must have parents do you not owe them your very life ? Would a true immortal tell you to ignore taking care of them in their old age and sickness, would they say oh it's ok abandon them cause your special. I think not. What of a family too many people these days think that they should not have a family because of their special knowledge of the Tao, nonsense. I say the opposite you should foster a great clan of Great and Good people bring them into the world and bathe them in the light of the Tao early on so that they may go forth and benefit the world. To act as if your life is meaningless is selfish, because no matter what there is certainly someone somewhere that needs you.

[Aetherous]

Gold,

 

When people talk about energy practices, they're not talking about physics or different laws of energy. They're mostly talking about the electromagnetic and expanding awareness sensation that comes with the integration of consciousness and the physical body.

 

You are right that people should listen to their bodies instead of blindly following orders when things seem to be going bad. That can really cause damage.

 

However...stop thinking you know it all, man! It makes for really boring reading.

[SiliconValley]

It makes for really boring reading.

 

That which lacks soul is boring like the corpse!

[Iyoiyo]

Gold,

 

When people talk about energy practices, they're not talking about physics or different laws of energy. They're mostly talking about the electromagnetic and expanding awareness sensation that comes with the integration of consciousness and the physical body.

 

You are right that people should listen to their bodies instead of blindly following orders when things seem to be going bad. That can really cause damage.

 

However...stop thinking you know it all, man! It makes for really boring reading.

 

He knows he doesn't know it all-- But in a way, you know, there isn't that much to know, and that's the whole point. Also, you say when people talk about energy practices they aren't talking about physics etc, etc, but I don't think that's a refutation. It's true, but not in the helpful way I think you think it is.

 

People "talking about energy practices" should, pardon me, realize that all energy is the same on some level. A physics novice takes Speed=distance/time and acceleration=(final speed-initial speed)/time to completely different things, and memorize two different equations. However, someone farther along will realize that one, these rules aren't actually true and only work in very limited situations, two, that they are fragments of more complete rules, and that those more complete rules have actually been the same rule all along (a=dV/dT). And that rule too is just a smaller part of something else. It's the same with these "different" concepts of energy, and I think this is what gold was trying to get across.

Edited May 13, 2009 by Iyoiyo

[Aetherous]

Yeah, concepts...

[Yoda]

To live happy you must be willing to die at the drop of a hat. Die early, die often. Die to the bad life. You have to be very very fragile. If you are very strong and robust, you will sustain a LOT of suffering before you die. But if you a fragile, even a tiny inconvenience will remove your field of attention from the phenomena that's causing the incongruence.

 

GIH,

 

Awesome!

 

But how do you do that?

 

Your pal,

Yoda

[freeform]

GIH,

 

One thing that I enjoy about people is their curiosity.

 

You seem to lack any curiosity.

 

A good story-teller watches his audience and learns from them... you only seem to 'talk'.

 

 

For me, you epitomise my mind - thinking it knows everything - master of the universe - a simple change of its incredibly narrow awareness changes the entire world. Not a bad thing - just an observation of its/your tendencies.

 

For some of us - 'energy' is not an idea or a belief. For some of us we can feel it happening and we notice that. Just as you can feel your breathing happening and you watch that.

 

A teacher is not just an information source (well - it is for the mind)... a teacher is a relationship on many levels. For the mind anything other than the information is useless... seems the case with you...

 

When I read your stuff my mind engages, my heart feels hollow and my 'being' disappears. I have to take a moment to go back to 3D again. Disconcerting. But an interesting experience...

[Mokona]

Hi Gold,

 

I'd like to say that rules exist beyond anything I have contemplated or made a belief. I've sent Reiki attunements to people who venehemtly disbelieve in energy and after sending that energy to a person felt it come back to me, almost as if it was being pushed away.

Many of the effects I have had happen without my knowing or expections, or even intent. Mostly, if you have ever tried to effect someone using energy yourself you may notice that cause and effect will teach you so much more than "just thinking"

May I suggest diving right in to a practice that moves "energy" and practicing energy movement and techniques apun others? There is so much we don't know, but what I do know is that through the process of healing energy i've helped many others. In direct ways, that I even did not expect.

The universe must have decided that I have good karma, becuase I've been given so much on the 'spiritual side' that sometimes I take it for granted.

 

Conceptualizing energy techniques can allow people to do very advanced techniques long before they actually do any energy work. A friend of mine was intelligent as yourself and managed just that. Maybe that comes from being a scientist with a love of Reiki and meditation? Dunno!

Also, my charge has dropped significantly since my transfer to a battalion - I lost alot of concetration and time to practice, but if you ever want me to send you energy or something for you to experiment with I would be willing. I don't have any "rules" that mean you have to pay me, or we have to be in a formal setting. I just follow my heart.

 

Good luck.

[forestofsouls]

I'd like to say that rules exist beyond anything I have contemplated or made a belief. I've sent Reiki attunements to people who venehemtly disbelieve in energy and after sending that energy to a person felt it come back to me, almost as if it was being pushed away.

Many of the effects I have had happen without my knowing or expections, or even intent. Mostly, if you have ever tried to effect someone using energy yourself you may notice that cause and effect will teach you so much more than "just thinking"

 

How do you affect other people? I would be curious to learn more about that.

[goldisheavy]

GIH,

 

Awesome!

 

But how do you do that?

 

Your pal,

Yoda

 

The process is easy to understand. People cling to life due to their beliefs about life. Beliefs like:

 

I enjoy this experience and I believe this experience has an end. + I don't want enjoyment to end. = I am afraid of death.

 

So the approach is to dismantle or to soften up that formula above.

 

First, do you really enjoy this experience as much as you think you do? Examine the bad things in life. Are they enjoyable? Buddha advocated this approach when he asked people to consider impermanence of things and to take it further, he asked men to consider the bodies of women to be rotten corpses. Why? Because that's a technique that undoes one's attraction to a thing. It's not that the corpses are literally rotting, but if you look closely on the human body, it's not that clean or pretty. You notice it has sweat, oil, zits, etc... it gets sick, it sticks from time to time, etc... when you give mind to this, you don't think the body is as great as you once thought.

 

Same thing with other aspects. Is society great? Look at it. There are things we enjoy, but also, much misery exists because of the society. Etc.

 

Ultimately I don't think there is an objective way to determine whether life is good or not. The point of all this is to approach one's life in as honest way as possible, taking in the fullness of it, and not just the good things as many people tend to do. Not for all, but for many people, when this is done, much of luster of life goes away. Life is still good, but not SO GOOD that one's has to cling to it AT ALL COSTS. That's the key point. The zealotry about the value of life goes away. So one has a sense of basic goodness but can't be in all honesty a zealot about it, because one has given mind to the bad things in life too and knows that dying is a wash, and not a net loss as one once thought (prior to contemplation).

 

Second step is to soften the second part of the formula. Is there an END? What does it mean to have an end? This should be investigated. The eventual result, for which you shouldn't take my word, is that one comes to understand that all ends and beginnings are illusions of mind. Nothing truly begins. Nothing truly ends.

 

So the new formula becomes something like:

 

Life is good, but not good enough to guard it zealously + things have no beginnings and no end = I am not afraid to die.

 

It can't work any other way. You cannot brute force your way to non-fear. Fear is a result of a certain mental structure. That structure has to be either dismantled completely or softened, or more flexibility has to be introduced into it to see real change.

 

If you leave all your basic beliefs in place and just attempt to eliminate the fear, it's like trying to cure the symptom without addressing the cause. It's a self-lie and it doesn't work.

 

How do you affect other people? I would be curious to learn more about that.

 

I want to know how you avoid affecting other people.

[Apech]

GiH,

 

A brilliant piece of writing and analysis.

 

Thank you for taking the time - I enjoyed reading your post immensely (even though I didn't intend to )

 

A.

[goldisheavy]

Hi Gold,

 

I'd like to say that rules exist beyond anything I have contemplated or made a belief.

 

You haven't broken your experience enough then. Contemplation allows to eventually break or morph one's experience of what it means to be oneself so much, that it's like becoming a non-human, at least for a short time. I don't mean "broken" in a literal sense. I might as well say "fixed" or just "changed".

 

Prior to contemplation one naturally believes certain things and naturally disbelieves others. That's normal. That's how the mind works. Mind has a certain disposition or tendency. It agrees with some things more easily than others. It's true that we are taught what to believe by society to a large extent, but also we have internal inclinations and some things we are glad to learn while others we learn slowly or resist learning. So even from a dualistic perspective one should see that not everything comes from society.

 

One's own mind has a certain kind of make up to it. This make up is not always explainable to the public with easy descriptions.

 

You don't have to apply conscious effort to have this kind of "default" make up. So in a sense, you are right. You're right in the sense that you didn't have to work to create these rules that you observe. So you might think since that's the case, these rules exist externally. Consider a case of dreaming. When you dream, dream worlds also have rules. Are they external to the mind? I think even the materialists will easily accept that the dream-world rules are internal to the mind. But then the question arises: if the mind can maintain so vividly and so accurately all these rules, why do we need some substance or physics to explain it? Alternatively, does physics explain just how it is at the time, or does it explain how it can ever be? Most people take our current understanding/descriptions/science to mean "this is how it ever is". They don't think, "This is a visionary experience that's temporarily like this, and can change to a different set of rules at the drop of a hat." These are hidden assumptions. Most people don't voice them and don't even think about such things.

 

The problems comes from thinking that effortless equals non-intentional or extra-intentional. The thought goes, "I don't make anything to make the street appear how it does, therefore, since I don't expend effort on it, it is that way ON ITS OWN, external to me, which is to say, external to the scope of my intent."

 

However if you contemplate intent, you have to understand that if effort is to have any meaning, one must be able to have different degrees of effort, in other words, one must have a continuum of degrees of effort from little effort to a lot, and then effortlessness must be a PART of this continuum and therefore cannot signify anything extra-intentional. Alternatively if effort has no degrees, it loses its meaning. Then it's not a state we can exit or enter. It's a constant. This is not congruent with our, and definitely not with my own experience of exertion. To me effort is something that can gradually build up all the way from effortlessness to maximum exertion where I begin to lose sense of myself (over-exertion which jeopardizes one's identity-integrity, for example bursting a vein from an effort and dying, thus at least temporarily not being able to recognize oneself as one used to shortly previously). Also, if effort is constant, then we cannot conclude that such thing as effortlessness exists, since it's then not detectable as a change in anything, and therefore the state of the street is one of effort too, then again you get to a funny point where you realize that this branch of thinking also leads to the same place. The place of there being nothing extra-intentional.

 

If you go further you can eliminate things being intra-intentional too, etc... and that's the entry into a complete mystery. Then nothing at all can be said at that point. Even if you say "things are spontaneous" that's also not entirely correct from this level of insight. At this point one sees spontaneous and intentional phenomena to be identical in their nature and perhaps hesitates to specify what the difference might be, or comes up with 10 or 10000 seemingly contradicting types of differences, etc., in other words, exhibits an intense freedom of mind.

[goldisheavy]

----

 

So to come back to the safety of energy practice,

 

One should limit the amount of micromangement, because one should see how intent is not something with beginning or end or any kind of boundary. Since this is the case, there is no real unruliness going on and the universe is not fighting you. You're not up against the universe. You then have a vision of wholeness.

 

Without the vision of wholeness what happens is that the person sees their own body as being to some extent outside their intention, and the person starts to fight it. So, for example, the person thinks that the body's make up is making them un-enlightened and that enlightenment is biological or energetical in nature (as opposed to utterly mystical and transcendent). Then the fight begins. Then the person judges their current state: "My body is not good enough... if my biology was better, I would be enlightened by now... but my biology sucks... I need to give it a push." Or, the person thinks this way, "My energy is not good enough. It's not circulating in a healthy manner naturally. I have to give it a little push, or a little encouragement, because if I don't, it will move in ways contrary to my self-interest and contrary to my intent, because I believe intent has to do with effort only, and if something is effortless I am stupidly believing that it's outside intent. So I feel like I need to subtly push or pull on my energy, or otherwise I feel I need to cajole it, and no matter what, leaving it alone is just not good enough."

 

This kind of thinking and the beliefs and assumptions that underpin it are nothing other than PSYCHIC SELF-VIOLENCE. You're being violence to yourself. And when you enact such inner violence to your being, the result can be a disaster.

 

So a safe approach is something like this:

 

"I am naturally whole. There is no boundary between the universe and what I am, between mind and matter, between what's within my intention and what's outside my intention. Since there is no such boundary, without struggling, everything is already perfect." This is the attainment of non-attainment.

 

Once you attain the non-attainment, you then realize, "But without struggle and without violence, I have natural playful tendencies. I like to play. So not for the purpose of enlightenment and not out of any sense of desperation, like being desperate for enlightenment or desperate for an elevated/loftier spiritual status, just out of the sense of easy-going bliss and playfulness, I want to play with my energy." Since there is no violence and no desperation behind this kind of approach, it is safe. Then energy becomes nothing but an ornament of what you are. It's not a mean to achievement, it's a means of beautification, a means of having fun! This removes violence from it and makes it safe.

 

Also, when one realizes the endless and whole nature of intent, one doesn't have to struggle with so many specific instructions for one's own energy! You don't have to tell your energy in very specific terms, tiny step by tiny step where and how to go. Just give your entire being a general direction and TRUST that your entire being is WISE and will spontaneously follow your direction, intelligently, without you having to intervene at a very micromanagement-type level. Energy has its own wisdom. You don't have to treat it like it's dumb.

 

In physics energy is dumb. It can only do basic things and it's not alive in any way. In spirituality energy is not dumb. But if it's not dumb, why do you tell it what you want done in so specific a term? Why do you circulate it in some orbit? Is the orbit your END GOAL, or are you doing the orbit for some higher purpose? What if this higher purpose is better served by another flow? Why are you imposing orbital flow on it? See? So the assumption there is that energy is dumb and not alive and cannot decide what to do intelligently and that its default state is one of harmfulness, and that unless you manage it, it will not be good for you. See?

 

So, to do energy practice safely, either completely don't do it at all. That's the highest level. OR, give broad, general directions, based on the highest wishes, the highest goals and the highest aspirations, and then trust that it will develop itself correctly. This is what it means to unify intent, to make your intent endless. There is no more me vs. universe struggle and this should change how you act, not just how you talk.

 

Many of you Taoist dudes come here and say "I am one with universe". Nice talk. Then you go and practice the micro-orbit. Your practice is saying much louder than your words, "I am not one with the universe... I am different from it, and I have to give it orders on how to behave itself or else it will be no good."

[WhiteTiger]

Gold, I'm sure you've made many understandable once again points like you always do...

 

Although when you really start to experience deep into Taoist teachings you start to learn that You are not playing with energy nor controlling it... You just allow yourself to access what was always supposed to be there until some disorter happened when it wasn't they any longer after birth.

[Mokona]

You haven't broken your experience enough then. Contemplation allows to eventually break or morph one's experience of what it means to be oneself so much, that it's like becoming a non-human, at least for a short time. I don't mean "broken" in a literal sense. I might as well say "fixed" or just "changed".

 

Prior to contemplation one naturally believes certain things and naturally disbelieves others. That's normal. That's how the mind works. Mind has a certain disposition or tendency. It agrees with some things more easily than others. It's true that we are taught what to believe by society to a large extent, but also we have internal inclinations and some things we are glad to learn while others we learn slowly or resist learning. So even from a dualistic perspective one should see that not everything comes from society.

 

One's own mind has a certain kind of make up to it. This make up is not always explainable to the public with easy descriptions.

 

You don't have to apply conscious effort to have this kind of "default" make up. So in a sense, you are right. You're right in the sense that you didn't have to work to create these rules that you observe. So you might think since that's the case, these rules exist externally. Consider a case of dreaming. When you dream, dream worlds also have rules. Are they external to the mind? I think even the materialists will easily accept that the dream-world rules are internal to the mind. But then the question arises: if the mind can maintain so vividly and so accurately all these rules, why do we need some substance or physics to explain it? Alternatively, does physics explain just how it is at the time, or does it explain how it can ever be? Most people take our current understanding/descriptions/science to mean "this is how it ever is". They don't think, "This is a visionary experience that's temporarily like this, and can change to a different set of rules at the drop of a hat." These are hidden assumptions. Most people don't voice them and don't even think about such things.

 

The problems comes from thinking that effortless equals non-intentional or extra-intentional. The thought goes, "I don't make anything to make the street appear how it does, therefore, since I don't expend effort on it, it is that way ON ITS OWN, external to me, which is to say, external to the scope of my intent."

 

However if you contemplate intent, you have to understand that if effort is to have any meaning, one must be able to have different degrees of effort, in other words, one must have a continuum of degrees of effort from little effort to a lot, and then effortlessness must be a PART of this continuum and therefore cannot signify anything extra-intentional. Alternatively if effort has no degrees, it loses its meaning. Then it's not a state we can exit or enter. It's a constant. This is not congruent with our, and definitely not with my own experience of exertion. To me effort is something that can gradually build up all the way from effortlessness to maximum exertion where I begin to lose sense of myself (over-exertion which jeopardizes one's identity-integrity, for example bursting a vein from an effort and dying, thus at least temporarily not being able to recognize oneself as one used to shortly previously). Also, if effort is constant, then we cannot conclude that such thing as effortlessness exists, since it's then not detectable as a change in anything, and therefore the state of the street is one of effort too, then again you get to a funny point where you realize that this branch of thinking also leads to the same place. The place of there being nothing extra-intentional.

 

If you go further you can eliminate things being intra-intentional too, etc... and that's the entry into a complete mystery. Then nothing at all can be said at that point. Even if you say "things are spontaneous" that's also not entirely correct from this level of insight. At this point one sees spontaneous and intentional phenomena to be identical in their nature and perhaps hesitates to specify what the difference might be, or comes up with 10 or 10000 seemingly contradicting types of differences, etc., in other words, exhibits an intense freedom of mind.

 

 

I think you just explained things nearly the same way I was taught but with different words. I work with soul mirroring and introspection when I can handle looking myself in the mirror, reflect on my efforts and the outcome, what caused what..

More or less things seem to work better for me when I give up control but keep the intent in mind. Either its just teaching the body to constantly breath with the diaphram or to work with a meditation where the body is hollow, and full of light. Energy is pulled through both sides of the nose to the base where a fire develops and heat rises up the spine. The more it becomes as if someone else is doing it, and automatic I experience more effects. That is not to say that forceful directed thought has no effect.

I can contact people accidently by "pinging" them just by thinking about them, but those who know how to listen will only know I'm speaking to them unless I concentrate on them.

 

 

"But without struggle and without violence, I have natural playful tendencies. I like to play.

 

Cutting out the frustration and making it joyful and playful as you mentioned is important and I find that my friends and I find it easier to do energy anything when in such a mood. Even when it comes to spiritual communication or channeling.

Laughter often comes from contact with higher energy. I like that.

 

A friend of mine describes some of this as letting go of resistance. We resist when we can just let go, and it comes naturally.