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Enlightenment, the end of the spiritual path. I also want to live a skilful life that helps make the lives of others easier as opposed to being a burden.

I practice because I can, and it helps keep the mirror of my mind clean from the proverbial red dust of this world.

One

I practice for good health by improving my respiratory system to breathe better. It is only good for health other than longevity. However, longevity might come with the package. I rather die on my feet than lying in bed with trauma.

I was just thinking ... clothes horse and fire ... can we use this???

Someone asked me this question about a year ago and, without thinking much about it, what came out was... I am practicing for my death. It sort of surprised me, and them as well. My practice has become mostly informal, meaning not just on the cushion but in my day to day life, as often and consistently as possible. It's wonderful to sit in a quite, comfortable room and practice but if my practice is not there for me when I am challenged and stressed, when I am suffering; if it is not enriching my life, and the lives of those around me in the moment, making me more kind, flexible, resilient, resourceful, creative... what is the point? (that is a rhetorical question, I am only speaking for myself - everyone has their own path and objectives). So my point is that I continue to practice so that I can be supported to show up fully in my life and to be able to access and bring all available resources to any and every given situation to the best of my ability. Death is likely to present the biggest challenge in my life. How to let go of everything I have, everything and everyone I've known, and everything that I am? And how to do it without too much suffering for myself and for those around me? Of course, it's nice to say things like - I am God, I am the universe, I am the non-local awareness, Buddha, the Nature of Mind. I am birthless, deathless... I have no fear of death. But they are all words... the test comes when there is extreme pain, illness, when the body and mind are close to the end and loved ones are waiting and suffering. What will it be like then? I watched my father die not too long ago and there was so much pain, so much fear. It was excruciating for him and those around him in the last few days. Wouldn't it be interesting to navigate that with some peace, some confidence, some equanimity and directly experience that transition and what lies beyond with as much clarity as possible? Rather than be heavily drugged and hooked up to all sorts of high tech garbage? I think so... at the moment. And of course, circumstances may change my mind when it's my turn. Time will tell! In the tradition I follow, it's said that we should be able to bring all life's experiences onto the path. Life itself becomes the practice. So for me, at this moment, practice really has no endpoint, I guess I can say I am practicing to live and to die.

@liminal_luke Well that proves it then, Chinese astrology is hogwash. @ChiDragon no worries, no hurry. The horse will get extra time next year this time. Seriously, work done by volunteers must not be hurried along but appreciated. Thanks Luke.

Say what you like about astrological omens, but I guess I´m just not that fired up.

I am no longer practicing, but actualizing enlightenment. One can actualize enlightenment by dropping all contrived thoughts, ideas, and practices. From the viewpoint of awareness it can be seen that all appearances in consciousness, including the "self", thoughts, and other worldly phenomena arise and When you practice in this way even the walled-in concept of enlightenment drops away.

There’s no need to apologize but I think that people who read the threads benefit from being able to follow the conversation. If you delete posts it makes it very hard to follow what’s going on and also less interesting/ enjoyable. Perhaps if you post something and later change your mind, you could self quote the post and make a comment/ correction.

Nungali can’t reply because he is currently manifesting in my living room.

I dreamed you were going to delete that.

You take a leap of faith assuming that Laitg himself has the capabilities he claims. Put a claim to the test, the classic is ‘appear in my lounge room’ for people who claim special talents. But other tests might be better. Why would anyone just believe a claim without it being substantiated, unless you’re buying a bridge for sale?

Throwing away scientific ‘stories’ Is not necessarily wise. The Dalai Lama, a fairly respected Buddhist, is quite interested in science - I think reality is more interesting and more nuanced than just letting all stories go.

The problem is Lairg, you expect others have the same capabilities as you. You ask things of others like "see where the white light goes" or "go back on the timeline" not realising that just because you can do these meta-physical experiments doesn't mean everyone else can, so your method becomes less like a helpful person saying things and more like a guy just saying odd things.

A lot of people here on daobums, myself included, do spiritual practises. But I have to ask... what are you practicing for? Ill answer for my self first, as is polite. Well, I dont really practise, but I am supposed to. By that I mean, I have been told/adviced to do certain practises by quite a lot of people. Some of them, truth be told, strike me as truly illuminated beings. I also has experimental evidence that the process does indeed work (for me). However, I am also very "obsternasig," in lack of a good sounding english word. So I let google translate that very funny sounding word, and it chose "cheesy nosed." So I dont really practise regulary. Hope that make sense. (the main practise of my cult is chanting the mahamantra) (also obstinate is the correct translation it seems, but ill let cheesy nose stay)

They fear this Animal. Well for starters: "Quod es fui quod sum eris" That is "what you are, I was; what I am, you will be." So nothing to fear because WE ALL BECOME A FIRE HORSE starting on 17 February this year and ending on 5 February 2027. Likewise on 2020 and the fear the Metal Rat brought along (pandemic). Humanity lived in fear that year. Rat = Water = Kidney and associated emotion Fear. The Horse is Fire = Heart = Wisdom = Joy Time to look within your Heart and resolve blockages in the organ and associated meridian of energy (unresolved chronic anger, resentment, hatred, restlessness, palpitations, insomnia...) The Horse is the only Animal that entails complete change and transformation, which is a wonderful thing. There will be a new YOU emerging after the Year is over. Enjoy the Fire Horse.

ONE PS IMMHO The color blends in with the landscape is much better.

TWO

Female dragon. Avalokitesvara/Guanyin has a Dragon Female Companion (and is the Great Bodhisattva of the Western Pure Land).

@Nintendao Guanyin 觀音 (guan1 yin1) = 觀 陰 (guan1 yin1) female outlook on life. 氣 功 (qi4 gong1) = 導 引 (dao3 yin3) = 道 陰 (dao4 yin1) the female way. There is some evidence old Chinese did not use tones.

Thanks yes that’s true yes that’s the right way to do it, and I will keep it in mind. Thanks for the feedback.

I thought this article on health during the Fire Horse year was interesting. Chinese Medicine Doctor's Guide for the Year of the Horse

Plasma My interesset in the natural sciences is very limited, but I recently heard about a fourth state of matter (beyond liquid, frozen and gas) called plasma, that apperantly consistutes 99.9% of this universe of ours. To me, this belongs in stranger things as it is very strange to me. Q: I am considering opening a thread about this in the section where the rabbits go and explore, in hope to learn more about this. Is this of interest, and do someone here have a good understanding of plasma?

My ambition is to be a heavenly cow.

I realised my stupidity. I forgot I want to just let CD's views exiist in parallel to mine.

That cat in you pfp looks like it has a good head to pat.

who is supplying the ectoplasm, and is it organic non-gmo?

Hi Apech, it was me that deleted my posts. Not in any way the doing of CD. And I agree with you that I should "Think first and post after." My apologies, and I will try to do better.

I never had any ambition, I went with the flow and found what I found.

'' ... 5. And the infant grew strong; yet its strength was in its weakness; and though to look at it from before was to look upon a man-child, from behind it was a little girl with golden hair. N ow, when the child wished to tempt a maid he faced and approached her; and when the child wished to tempt a man she turned her back on him and fled. 4. But one day the child met, at the self-same hour, Love; and the man, seeing a woman, approached her eagerly, and the woman, seeing a man, fled, so that he might capture her. Thus it came about that the child met the child and wondered, not knowing that the child had lost the child. So it was that they walked side by side. 3. Then that part of the child that was man loved and lusted for that part of the child that was woman; and each knew not that each was the other, and felt that they were two and yet one, nevertheless one and yet two. And when one said: “Who art thou?” the other answered at the self-same moment: “Who am I?” - from Liber ΘΕΣΑΥΡΟΥ ΕΙΔΩΛΩΝ by General J. F. C. ( Boney) Fuller ; ( he painted as well )

I agree that Mantak Chia sexual practices is more of a trouble than a solution. Generally, Chia is OK, just not his sexual part. Porn is an addiction and you should address it as such. If you can't find a solution yourself, go to a doctor who specializes in addictions.

Don't be like that, Lairg! To me, the things you talk about are like dreams, but as Bindi points out dreams can piece together images in a way that has significance outside of dreams.

To find some balance and sanity in this crazy world we live in.

If you read the Heart Sutra from the perspective of realization it is as clean and clear as a mountain stream. I don't know of any non-dual expression that is more concise and to the point. Another in the same league (IMO) is the Tsin Tsin Ming by Tseng T'san, not written by the Buddha but rather a Ch'an patriarch much much later. Dharma is being penned by living beings every day, all over the world. It isn't important if the Buddha said it, or if the guy that runs the hardware store down the street said it. There have been countless enlightened beings since the Buddha, all Buddhas themselves. They walk the streets of your town, tip their hats, and frequent the aformentioned hardware store to see their dharma brother. Even their simple kindness and patience is dharma.

If I have an emotional reaction to someone or something and it’s a painful emotion or just something I’d prefer not to feel, I will catch myself tightening against it and remind myself to allow myself to fully feel it, so I agree there’s more than just dreams to do this with. The thing about dreams is I see them as a programme that a governing part of myself, some very broad knowledge part of myself, an overarching consciousness, is running over time, designed to undo reactive history at the root, both the historical emotions and stories that have conditioned us. I did identify with the feelings, I did see them as me, but there came a time when I started to shift my primary identification from being my thoughts and emotions to different aspects of myself. From all the information I’ve gathered the thought/emotion level is the paired side channels, the emotional channel going up and the mental channel coming down, creating a circuit. I see it as my consciousness travelling up the emotional channel (which took thirty years or so) and down the mental channel (which took a couple of months), removing all blocks as I went. Completing one circuit of the side channels allowed the consciousness’s of the central channel to activate, and my identification as being my emotional/mental level is diminishing. But in my paradigm though emotions and thoughts dont not drive me like they did, they remain as valid informants giving my whole organism important information. Energy still flows through them, they’re part of my subtle body, but they’re not the governor.

Your method for dream work is very similar to the method in my tradition for working with any experience, including dreams. Just as you recreate and embody the dream in your mind and feelings, we do the same with any experience or person that generates reactivity. These can be very recent experiences, alive in us at this very moment. They can be remote memories, dreams, people who generate reactivity, future worries, any life experience. We turn to the experience if it is active in the moment, or recreate whatever it is we want to work with as vividly as possible in body, speech, and mind. We sit with that for as long as it is fresh and alive. While we don't engage with it intellectually, we are often taken to earlier times and other experiences that may have some connection, often a connection we were not aware of. The one thing that may be a bit different is that we are working with the sense of a "me" who is being affected by the experience rather than hosting the experience itself. It's a very subtle but important difference in our paradigm. And we rest in the stillness, silence, and spaciousness. This is referred to as hosting pain identities. . It's a wonderful and powerful practice and one way we avoid the bypassing that can so easily happen to practitioners.

What is "direct sight"? I have actually trained in some of the Tibetan Buddhist energy and visualization practices, but the visual aspect is imaginative in my experience.

As a science, magic, and mysticism nerd from my teens, in the Sixties,I am pretty good at understanding these things. I mentioned this book on Dao Bums as being both well written and informative back in 2013-4: Physics in Mind a Quantum View of the Brain by Werner R. Loewenstein. You can download a good pdf of it here: https://www.docdroid.net/fURPkT5/physics-in-mind-a-quantum-view-of-the-brain-by-werner-r-loewenstein-pdf As they say, "Try it, you'll like it" I hope that you will find it as good and informative read as I did. ZYD

Part of my method for dream work is to “feel the feeling” after the dream has been interpreted to the best of one’s ability, which I did by recreating the dream in my mind and allowing myself as much as possible to re-enter the feeling created by the dream image. Doing this for decades, slowly getting better at it, allows the full force of a feeling to be experienced over time, and really this is what a fully open emotional channel is. Rumi’s poem captures the work perfectly - The Guest House Rumi Translated by Coleman Barks This being human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor. Welcome and entertain them all! Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture, still, treat each guest honorably. He may be clearing you out for some new delight. The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in. Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.

I propose 2 new categories of study, the science of spirituality and the science of the subtle energy body. It involves mapping the realities of spirituality and the subtle body, and it’s not on an I reckon or I’ve heard basis, but aims to be as close as possible to the scientific method. in this study there can be such a thing as established truth that can be built upon and discussed, competing hypotheses can be presented, and disputes are inevitable and valuable as they directly contribute to an increasing body of knowledge of reality. As an analogy, if someone claims in conversation that the earth is flat, the World Trade Center was an American government false flag operation, or Jewish space lasers caused a hurricane, can we call these positions out, or do we have to respect individual beliefs?

Yes, but one can have one hell of an argument! DaoBums for the win!

oh heck - I used to have a lot flying, swimming and surfing dreams that were far out! The flying ones started out with short jumps which I extended in my dreams to longer and longer jumps which then turned into flying, and as long as I had a fair amount of energy I didn't have to land or sometimes end up crashing into the ground. Alas, after being a blue collar working stiff for decades I've been having a lot dreams of my old job and fellow workers. (btw, the being late to work ones are stressful since the company could fire people for that, but I'm relieved when I wake and remember that I'm retired )

The synchronicity of the DaoBums provides... a brief description of working with the tsa, lung, and thigles in the Bön tradition, recently posted on FB by a young practitioner from Menri monastery in Himachal Pradesh for any curious -

Agreed, one mistake is to take it as a goal, per se, another to consider it a separate state. While it is a valuable skill to cultivate, once there is some level of success and stability it should no longer be treated as final goal. It is more of a tool. The goal becomes total integration in all states of human experience. For sure the method is prone to abstraction and disconnection. This is why expert guidance and a close relationship with a lineage and teacher are so important. I very much agree. The work must address everything in human experience, from the coarsest to the most subtle. There is work at each level. In the dzogchen tradition I follow, every formal practice session includes elements from sutra, tantra, and dzogchen. At a minimum prayers, energetic cleansing, and guru yoga. In life, one must attend to the physical body, the subtle body, and mind's nature. I think it is a mistake to fault mahamudra or dzogchen, per se. The fault lies with the teacher and/or the practitioner. That is where misleading and misunderstanding occur. In these vehicles, there is a common tendency to conflate the practitioner with the inherent perfection of the primordially pure essence. It is not surprising, given that this is the very essence of the practitioner herself. It is my contention that in the living being, there is never complete and perfect union with / resting in pristine consciousness. Any experience we have of "that" is actually an experience of the release of an obstacle that was previously limiting our openness, our spaciousness, our warmth in some way. This is in part because in life we are always limited by our human form and in part because what we are pointing to in these teachings is not "a state" of any sort in the way we can envision what that means. We remain human and it is the human mind that experiences and recollects the release of limitations as some special state. That in and of itself is a bit of an error. Yes, there can be a lot of talk, particularly by anonymous folks online and in teaching sessions especially when beginner and intermediate practitioners are involved, but the talk and study are released and become less interesting as the path is understood. There was a time when I couldn't get enough of reading and listening to the teachings. I would read before, during, and after work, and on the weekends. I would listen to recordings whenever driving. Now these rarely hold my attention any longer. It is the resting and the integration that are most fascinating and engaging for the most part.

My own view is that spiritual planes are more important than the physical. Each to their own I won't bother you guys again

if you’re told that spaciousness and stillness is what we should be looking for, and you find spaciousness and stillness, then you can think you have arrived at what you believe to be the destination. But what if this as a destination is more like a model of consciousness, and as with all models they fray at the edges, and new comprehension of consciousness dawns. You believe your achievement is absolute, but it might be as primitive one day as the belief that rain gods needed to be sacrificed to to cause rain. You are working within the model you believe in, but in the future that model might have advanced significantly. From my perspective your model is incomplete because it doesn’t create flow in the subtle nadi’s, ie. the side channels and the central channel, it doesn’t activate chakras, it doesn’t build dantians, it seems mind based as opposed to subtle body based. My end point is direct seeing, resting upon one’s subtle body reality, of measurable, ascertainable things, within all levels of the body.

I think the images that are used in dreams are very much based on conditioning and experience, but the plot of dreams is the objective part, I have found that dreams mirror the state of our psyche, subtle body and physical body without our subjective sense of our selves interfering. For instance ten people see a movie about a boat, a few of them have a dream of a boat, and all of those write it off as just the movie affecting them. But in each dream the boat does something different, one boat sinks, one loses its steering, one is moved by waves running parallel to the shore, one is speeding along a river. I see dreams as an incredible resource, but they come without an operators manual, at this point I think some of us are trying to write that manual. I’ve been at it for forty years so far, and I’ve found it to be a fascinating journey into all the levels of me. The objective reality I’m referring to is this objective mirror, the dream plot is delivered to my conscious mind without interference from my conscious mind. This is the most objective I can be about the nature of my own reality, which is what I’ve chosen to examine.

never thought this post would also have so many legs or words like "syncategorematic" which I'm still not all that clear about even after looking it up... ;-)

I will try to help here ... he is saying 'truth' ( alone ) is syncategorematic . :)