TheSongsofDistantEarth

The Dao Bums
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Content count

    1,883

  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    3

Posts posted by TheSongsofDistantEarth

  2. Posted

    Like many children, I was enlightened as a young child, then forgot about my being as immediate Awareness when I became an older child and started to identify with my thoughts, experiences, and the world around me.

     

    In my early 20's I experienced a re-living of that Awareness while on psychedelics, and that prompted me to 'remember' Awareness and to start on a path of spiritual pursuit. Now, many years later, I realize that there is nothing to pursue or to realize to become 'enlightened'. Only to live in Awareness, which is what I am learning to do. All the spiritual practices and pursuit of experiences only led to more seeking.

  5. Posted

    I wonder how the bums generally feel about getting OLD. I mean elderly, debilitated, demented. I suppose if I become a Taoist Master, it would be alright, but otherwise it just seems weird and sad getting old. It really gets me when I run into someone I knew from my youth and they are middle-aged now and barely recognizable...(at 53, I don't have any grey hair or receding hairline, so I look pretty much the same as I did). I suspect a lot of us do energy cultivation as 'insurance' against the ravages of aging.

     

    Although I love old people in general, I have had the occasion to spend quite a bit of time lately in 'Old Folks Homes', i.e., nursing homes and assisted living, and there is a gradient of broken-downedness, from functioning people all the way to the living almost-dead. It's very weird to see humans warehoused like they are...I'd rather go out consciously than lose my mind and fade a-w-a-y

  14. Posted

    [quote name='Stigweard' date='03 September 2011 - 08:38 PM' timestamp='1315107516' post='288

     

     

     

    The prayer/invocation Fu Jyeo work on two basic levels. Firstly it is about bringing the mind back to ziran, naturalness or self-so-ness. By engaging these Fu Jyeo with a sincere and focused mind you are reestablish natural pathways and formations of the mind. The quality of the mind determines our thoughts and behavior, and also the quality of our qi body(s).

     

    And yes there is also the aspect of Fu Jyeo that seeks a response from the subtle realms. It assumes the ontology that life extends beyond the small spectrum of perception that we assume is reality. It furthermore assumes that there are subtle beings that "inhabit" these subtler realms either because they are naturally existing there and/or because they once living in the coarser sphere of life and refined their beings to exist there (see discussion on Immortals (Xian Shi)). So some of these Fu Jyeo are about petitioning these subtle beings to come and help with one's cultivation and spiritual progress.

     

     

     

    :D

     

     

    Sounds good to me! How come most of the rational world won't even permit themselves to consider that there is something beyond our limited perception, or what Science is concerned with and can explain.

  15. Posted

    Gurdjieff describes a way of self-develpment where one separates from the false self, sometimes called 'The Way of Blame'. One actually places oneself in a position to look foolish, rather than always trying to feed the ego, all done as a spiritual practice:

     

    "Friends of the false ego are foes of the essence. An essence friend is no flatterer and does not admire the antics of the inner fool. It was well said by the Sufi poet, Jalaluddin Rumi, that the friendship of a fool is like the friendship of a bear. He added, in another story, that even Jesus fled from the fool, saying: "I can make the blind see, the deaf hear, the lame run and raise the dead, but I cannot turn the fool away from his folly." 70) So the practical student of Creative Psychology learns to avoid those people and circumstances which encourage the manifestations of the false ego. Instead, he seeks essence friends whose aims are similar to his own. This does not mean that he lacks compassion or is excessively critical. He is simply a realist who knows his own limitations and does not propose to make a hard task still harder by deliberately fostering his own delusions.

    If a man really wishes to see his false ego, all he need do is to put that entity in a situation in which it looks foolish, contemptible, inept or unsophisticated. To do this deliberately, not as a means of self-punishment or as an excuse for playing the buffoon, requires considerable effort and constitutes an aspect of Outer Theater which is as profitable as it is difficult. The extent to which we identify with the false ego becomes painfully obvious the moment we attempt intentionally to place it in a bad light. The attempt may consist of nothing more than making a naive remark in a company that considers itself sophisticated or intentionally appearing not to know something one should know and actually does. This trick of playing dumber than one is gives insights not only into the structure of one's own false ego but also into the false ego of others, whose reactions (scorn, condescension, polite contempt or tolerant smiling) give a clear indication of where they stand on the scale of being.

    It has been said: "Only a very clever man can intentionally play the role of a fool." Shakespeare knew this. The whole of King Lear is a profound representation of the interplay between false ego and essence. The two aspects of man's psyche are dramatically juxtaposed against a background of storm and catastrophe; the conscious element deliberately plays the role of Fool while the false ego, in the role of the Mad King, struts and declaims in the face of the indifferent tempest, putting the blame for his misfortunes on everything except his own stupidity. Again and again King Lear (King Lear, IV. i, Laurel edition) confronts his mentor, but every time he fails to hear the message.

    LEAH: Dost thou call me fool boy? FOOL: All thy other titles thou hast given away, that thou wast born with."

  16. Posted

    Nothing to Do by Shel Silverstein

     

    Nothing to do?

    Nothing to do?

    Put some mustard in your shoe,

    Fill your pockets full of soot,

    Drive a nail into your foot,

    Put some sugar in your hair,

    Place your toys upon the stair,

    Smear some jelly on the latch,

    Eat some mud and strike a match,

    Draw a picture on the wall,

    Roll some marbles down the hall,

    Pour some ink in daddy's cap - -

    Now go upstairs and take a nap.

  18. Posted

    Galantamind

     

    Apparently taking a combination of galantamine (a plant-derived Alzheimer's drug) and choline produces spectacularly vivid lucid dreams. You can order it on Amazon. I will report back with my experiences. Google for more background information.

  20. Posted · Edited by TheSongsofDistantEarth

    I like your topic mewtwo! :D

    My name 'suninmyeyes'is here becouse I love sun so incredible much .

    Having sun in my eyes(especially in the bleak winter when I joined TTB it was such a rarity) and feeling sun conecction with my heart is just so good.One of the best feelings.

    My avatar is Vassilisa the Beutiful,she is a student of Baba Yaga who is in Slavic mythology an old crone/wise woman living alone in the woods.

    The drawing is made by a fantastic Russian artist called Ivan Bilibin.

    Baba Yaga is a very strong archetype for a female wisdom of knowing and being comfortable with life as it is -that is not cherished as much any more.That type of being has been replaced by more musculine logic and aspiring in general.

    With time Baba Yaga archetype has been turned by church (with its god far away somwhere in heaven )into a nasty witch who eats young children as her story is told nowdays.Turned into commodity to say at least .

    Where I grew up kids are told that if theye are naughty they will be taken away by Baba Yaga (old witch that eats children).Unfortunatley people dont understand what deeply awful impact this 'innocent'saying can have in shaping young minds.

    For me Baba Yaga and old way of Slavic womens knowing is very inspiring and connects me to my own natural feminine knowing that is connected with all of life.

     

    I love it! Do you know of the technique called 'sungazing'? There is a Bulgarian teacher named Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov who taught the highest form of Yoga, the Yoga of the Sun (Surya Yoga). The Sun is a conscious being and manifestation of the Godhead, and therefore connecting spiritually with the Sun holds enormous benefits.

     

    My own nickname comes from some music that has guided my life. There is a book by Arthur C. Clark called 'The Songs of Distant Earth', and musician Mike Oldfield did a fantastic album based on this book. The song 'Crystal Clear' on it somehow just contains everything for me.

     

    I discovered Oldfield one night in the 70's at age 17, alone in my bedroom late at night, when music came on that changed my life. It was 'Tubular Bells', the 15 minute long piece written by Oldfield when he too was 17, and he played all the instruments on it. When I heard it, I knew it came from 'somewhere else', was music not of this world. Another subsequent album, 'Ommadawn', was even more astonishing, with an orgasmic spiritual climax that still sends chills down my spine!

     

    Oldfield's music, which he has said does come through him from somewhere else, has been the soundtrack of my life. He had a lot of psychic pain and difficulty in his younger years that somehow opened him up as a channel for this music. I can listen to most things by him endlessly. I would like to have Ommadawn played at my funeral someday. He is now in semi-retirement, he's an elusive chap. But it's not about him, it's about the music for me, and 'The Songs of Distant Earth' carries great meaning for me.

     

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PycZnSWMvi0

     

     

     

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDs_cm1bDWk

  21. Posted

    Robert S. de Ropp, student of G.I. Gurdjieff and author of The Master Game and Warrior's Way, also wrote a book called Self-Completion, from which I quote:

     

    "In their incompleted state human beings thought they were awake when they were really moving about in a state of hypnotized sleep. They thought they had will but they had no real will. They thought they were free but they were really slaves. They thought they had something called "I" but they had no real I, only a multitude of petty selves with different desires and different aims.

    In their state of "waking sleep" humans voyaged from birth to death aboard a ship of fools. The captain was asleep, the steersman was drunk and the navigator had forgotten the aim of the voyage. Any fool on board could push the steersman aside and try to steer the ship. The great human agglomerates that called themselves nations were just as much at the mercy of the fools in their midst as were individual men and women. The technological Titanic, modern society, was proceeding full speed ahead into the fog, but there was no one in control. Under these circumstances it would not be surprising if the vessel hit a rock or an iceberg. The surprising thing was that it stayed afloat at all."

     

    How many selves do I notice? Many. There's my work-self, my home self, my brother self, my 'awkward teenager self' around attractive women self, my sexual self, my warrior self, my fool self. Have you ever experienced 'road rage' and almost done something that later you were really glad you didn't? Who was that directing things before you came back to some more usual version of 'you'? Ever been tongue-tied around an attractive member of the opposite sex? "Where did that come from?" you may wonder afterwards.

     

    Unity of self only comes with awareness and ability to observe one's self dispassionately. It comes from many years of cultivating and working on one's self. It comes with mindfull living in the present moment.

     

    Many people, especially those on a spiritual path delude themselves that they are a single, non-fractured self. I agree with de Ropp. I do live aboard "a ship of fools" that I am becoming aware of. Becoming aware of this is the essential first step in self development.

    • Like 2