Bindi

If someone wants to interact with the I ching it seems like a good idea to respect it, but if its meaningless to someone I would say they can have any attitude towards it that they like. Same with other 'sacred' texts, should they all be respected, or can one have a critical opinion about any or all of them? The Koran comes to mind, Salman Rushdie was stabbed because he disrespected the author of that text. I think we have the right to disrespect any religious or spiritual text that we want to in the interests of critical thinking.

Diamond also claims “We were all once children, and still have that child dwelling within us. But most adults are quite unaware of this.” Why and how would people go about engaging with this inner child that they’re not even aware of, but which nonetheless dictates their behaviour?

歷觀五臟視節度，六腑修治潔如素，虛無自然道之故。物有自然事不煩，垂拱無為身體安，虛無之居在幃問，寂寞曠 然口不言，恬淡無欲游德園，清爭香潔玉女存，修德明達道之門。 Contemplate each of the Five Viscera and see them as revenue. Cultivate and heal the Six Mansions like cleaning pure silk. The strength of the Tao is in the Void and Naturally-Just-So. All things have the Naturally-Just-So, the Tao is never vexed. It is non-action that surrounds and bequeaths the giving of ease to the self and body. A curtain is situated at the chamber leading to the Void. Remain solitary and silent so the mouth does not speak. Cultivate harmony by standing alone in the True Person’s Palace. Roam about without desire in the Garden of Virtue, a cheerful peace. With fragrant incense cleanse and purify before the Jade Maidens. At the gate of Spiritual Penetrations cultivate Bright Virtue. - Olson Then, one can vividly observe the five viscera and see their terms of continence. When the six receptacles are kept well-nurtured, they are as clean as white silk. Void, Inaction and Nature are Tao’s old chums. When beings and things are kept according to Nature, there will be no trouble. If one keeps inaction as a high arch does, one’s body will be free from troubles. The living of void and inaction is right behind the curtain. When one is quiet, detached, silent, simple, contented and without any desires, One can enjoy leisurely tours of the Garden of Te, Virtues, Where it is clean, quiet and fragrant, and the Jade lady will come. Cultivating and understanding Te, the Virtues, is the gate to Tao. - Huang Observe five solid organs, to learn their mutual interaction and rhythm. Six offices manage repair and cleanliness, so they are like white silk. Void is the nature of the strength of Tao. Substantial is the nature of the sobriety of Tao. Non-action with a firm resolution makes the body relaxed and the mind concentrated. Find the void behind the curtain of the residences of bright spirit. Do not interact and talk without need, so your city wall is upright and Qi doesn’t leak, However maintain independence and harmony with the world at the same time, In a stance of a True Man. Achieve inner peace and accomplish external things without effort, enjoying the Garden of Virtue. Clear and fragrant the passage before the entry of the Jade Girl. Cultivate virtue to avoid distractions in your Primordial spirit manifestation. - Archangelis and Lanying

“Your inner child and you aren’t exactly two, but you aren’t exactly one, either. You influence each other.” The commentators quote from Thich Nhat Than at 9.00 minutes in the video below. The inner child as ‘sub-personality’, a more personalised entity than the ‘subconscious’. Many must question if this notion of a discrete sub-personality is necessary, but having sought my inner child for decades, without realising fully that this was what I was doing, I concur with Thich Nhat Than that: “It’s our life’s work to stop, notice, and listen to this child. We cannot reach our destiny without healing the inner child’s pain and transforming their sadness, fear or anger. https://insighttimer.com/blog/inner-child-meaning-noticing-healing-freeing/ It’s a fundamental requirement, and I’d say it’s even more fundamental than Thich Nhat Than is expressing. To my mind, re-establishing the inner child in its rightful place in our subtle body system is in fact the culmination of inner alchemy, and the only possible authentic resolution to the dilemma each human finds within themselves.

Sure, removed, my apologies. I think when talking about ‘bliss’ there are many different versions of bliss, to make a sweeping negative statement about bliss because of your particular experience whatever that might be might be throwing the baby out with the bath water.

One can show evidence of all the signs that are expected in a particular method, because that is what the particular method is designed to actualise, but this isn’t an overall proof of anything, it merely proves that by following a particular method particular signs can be expected. How would one know whether any of these signs are actually valuable in an ultimate reality? 3bob suggests the small voice within, but that hasn’t been very effective for the people in death cults, or suicide bombers for example. Belief systems can override the small voice within, and not just in obvious cases, but in less obvious cases as well. How would you know whether you’re following a belief system and it’s method or working towards ultimate truth?

Contentment to me will always be something settled for, not the ultimate prize. From Yogapedia: If the left and the right are properly ordered, and the above and below can come together and consciousness be established there, then I’d reckon sat-chit-ananda would be a real possibility. My journey hasn’t ended yet in acceptance of what is, because what is internally as it is right now isn’t as good as it gets. To be content in this moment is to accept what is less than ideal within.

Signs of progress are so dependent on which path is followed, and these signs can be ultimately meaningless in the greater scheme of things. How would one know?

Traditions which refer to them are Yoga’s Shiva and Shakti, Sufi’s lover and beloved, Daoisms Hun and Po. To me, literally energies that start from the soles of the feet and travel upwards, and cloud like energy that descends and enters in from above. Undeniably a “pleasurable feeling which doesn’t impinge on the mind” because it is heart based.

What I have noticed in a general sense is that both committed Christians and Sufis seem to accept pain and suffering, I see this as tilling the ground in which bliss may develop, it also may not. I see these certain Christians and Sufis as seeking ‘God’ anyway, not bliss, bliss is more just a byproduct. My own personal view would be that bliss is related to ‘earth’ and ‘heaven’ energies converging in the heart, nothing to do with being free. Energies are freed to flow, they just do their thing, and as a consequence the heart can start to develop, and it feels blissful because it is being filled with the energies that it has been starved of, but which are its birthright.

Bliss isn’t the problem, the system that they followed is the problem. On the other hand some Sufi’s know about bliss, some Christians know about bliss, and maybe some tantrics, though their systems are highly likely to be flawed as well and probably not worth following. Tell a Sufi to stop seeking God and I reckon they’d run you out of town.

Can there also be as many translations of any given word, so that it can come to reflect whatever one personally feels and knows? There actually are clear definitions of ananda - Ananda Definition & Meaning | Dictionary.com ananda [ ah-n uhn-d uh ] noun Hinduism. perfect bliss. Compare Sat-cit-ananda. Origin of ananda From the Sanskrit prefix ānanda- joy, happiness Ananda refers to the deeper and timeless dimension of happiness, not just a higher degree of the joys that we normally experience in life. To infer that it means anything else is misleading. Bliss may not be your aim or dwai’s, but bliss exists nonetheless for some who have discovered this within themselves as a perfect and permanent experience.

Contentment is a poor substitute for bliss… Ruined in the tavern of love we can taste the intoxicating wine of His presence. This is when the bliss begins. At the beginning it may come as a gentle lover’s foreplay, like butterfly wings at the edge of the heart, but in this gentle touch the whole of oneself is saturated with love, a love that runs through the body and soul, in which nothing is excluded. Then one is really reborn, reborn in love, in the deep knowing of one’s true nature and the love that is present in oneself and in everything. Later the states of bliss deepen and intensify, become almost painful and one wonders how the body can bear it, and yet it continues, sometimes for hours. Sweetness, intoxication, drunkenness, these are the words the Sufi uses to describe such states: the ecstasy of love: What is the nature of this bliss? In the moments of intoxication one does not know, one does not care, there is no mind, no self, just the currents of love that have taken one away from everything one knows into a different world, a world without difficulties or conflict, in which everything is alive with love. And in these states the heart can grow and expand, until the heart is everything, the call of every bird, the taste of every tear. https://goldensufi.org/divine-intoxication-rumi/

Very nice 3bob, it makes me think I read Gibran far too long ago, when I knew hardly anything. “If you could hear the whispering of the dream” reminds me of one of my favourite lines from one of my favourite texts, “When the green immortal spirit passes over and communicates with me, there is a distant echo.” There’s something that I do want to hear and see, and it’s not emptiness, and it’s not a void, and it’s not even primordial space, its more akin to spirit pointing to the actualising of spirit within my body.

I’ve got to say how I understand the three channels and how to work with them is entirely peculiar to me, but I’m happy to put forward my thoughts on them. Give or take the two main side channels are the dual ones, one side being male, and one side being female, the Ardhanarishvara figure (below) is a graphic demonstration of this, as is the yin/yang symbol. Where I differ is in equating the female side with emotions and water, and the male side with thoughts and air. So for me, to work on clearing the two main side channels is as straightforward as working with emotional ‘mud’ and it’s concomitant stuck thoughts. On a more subtle level this allows water to flow in the female channel and air to flow in the male channel. Opening these channels took me decades, but I think that work is mostly done for me. What happens in the central channel and other channels in the legs and arms is far more esoteric, and doesn’t really mean anything or make sense or is even needed to know until a lot of initial work with the two side channels and the lower dantian is done.

I like what you are saying about sexual love, emotive love and aesthetic love being associated with the central channel where it intersects with the dantians, though I’m not quite sure what you mean by ‘aesthetic’ love exactly. I think there is some sort of subtle ‘seed’ that has to travel from the LDT up to the MDT and then the UDT that in a sense has to be fully realised and transformed in each of these centres, and this ever broadening of ‘love’ is a fundamental part of the journey. edit to add: Christianity has ‘Agape’ as the highest love, “the love that is of and from God, whose very nature is love itself…it is His nature to love and He must be true to His nature.”

"Buddha nature" is often described in terms of three qualities: boundless wisdom, infinite capability, and immeasurable loving-kindness and compassion. If this is true, and Mind is equivalent to this, then I agree that it means much more than that which thinks. Since I’m a hopeless case I’d break up the above mentioned three qualities into the fully realised potential of pingala, Ida and Sushumna respectively.

Removing a single proton from the nucleus of a mercury atom transforms it into gold, thus the ability to manipulate atoms at a quantum level would be all that is needed for external alchemy to become a reality. Not a car to a chair, but it would be an interesting demonstration of some sort of quantum ability.

Compare the above to this: Bhagawan Sri Ramana Maharshi (B) taught that the heart, not the head, is the true seat of Consciousness; but by this he did not mean the physical organ at the left side of the chest but the heart at the right, and by 'consciousness' he did not mean thought but pure awareness or sense of being. He had found this from his own experience to be the centre of spiritual awareness and then found his experience confirmed in some ancient texts.When his devotees were instructed to concentrate on the heart, it was this spiritual heart on the right that was referred to; and they also found it the centre of an actual, almost physical vibration of awareness. However, he would also speak of the Heart as equivalent to the Self and remind them that in truth it is not in the body at all, but is spaceless. https://www.speakingtree.in/blog/sri-ramana-maharshi-on-heart Ramana also refers to awareness, but it’s centre is within the body, the ‘spiritual heart’ as opposed to the head, which can be felt as an almost physical vibration. He goes on to say it is spaceeless, though it’s hard to square that with ‘almost physical vibration’ and an exact location. Maybe nonduality 😱 But then I just now come across this from Wikipedia: Dzogchen texts also describe how rigpa is connected to the energy body. Dzogchen tantras explain that rigpa can be located in the center of the human body, in the heart centre. The Realms and Transformations of Sound Tantra states: "The jewel present within the heart in the center of one’s body is great pristine consciousness."[21] Furthermore, the Self-Arisen Vidyā Tantra states: I have the idea that what is important is centred within us, and that it is important to establish it first within as the source, before identifying with everything ‘out there’ and maybe missing what’s ‘in here’.

When I read something from the nondual traditions for example dzogchen. Below is an explanation of ‘mind-itself’, I understand it’s not mundane mind, but it still seems mind based if the word gnosis or even awareness can be applied to it. Dzogchen theory focuses above all on mind-itself, which is seen as a primordially pure, empty, and luminous gnosis (yeshe) or awareness (rigpa), which must be distinguished from unenlightened “ordinary” mind (sem). Awareness is not only the true nature of each individual sentient being but the very source and substance—in Yogacara terms, the foundation (alaya)—of the cosmos itself. Rigpa is conventionally divisible into essence, nature, and compassionate energy, and includes within it all of samsara and nirvana. Beginninglessly pure mind-itself is captured symbolically in the figure of the primordial buddha Samantabhadra (luminosity) and his consort, Samantabhadri (emptiness). https://www.lionsroar.com/empty-pure-luminous-mind-in-dzogchen-and-mahamudra/

@Apech, you suggested earlier that "mind" equals mind plus spirit, but it still seems to be limited to specifically 'mental consciousness' when I read it in a text.

From what I can gather things are not reliable and constant on the quantum level but when it comes to visible things they are. If quantum reality can be manipulated, maybe a car can become a chair.

If sound is vibrations, then the falling tree certainly does make a sound, because it produces vibrations in the air. Even if there’s no person or other animal around to hear the sound, a recorder with a microphone could certainly record those vibrations—as sound. Another definition is that sound is the sensation we experience when our ears detect those vibrations and send information about those vibrations to the brain. In other words, by this second definition, sound is what we hear, i.e., the perception in our brains. So if sound is what we hear, and no one is around to hear the tree fall, then it doesn’t make a sound! That’s opposite to the answer we had earlier. Which answer is correct? Here’s how to know: When someone asks you, “If a tree falls in a forest, and there’s no one around to hear it, does it make a sound,” first ask, What do you mean by sound? Define sound! Once you hear the definition they’re using, you’ll know the answer. If they say that sound is vibrations in the air, then the answer is yes! If they say that sound is only what a person hears, then the answer is no. https://www.nsta.org/q-if-tree-falls-forest-and-theres-no-one-around-hear-it-does-it-make-sound

In a sense the linked article proves what I was saying earlier to manitou, one can find just about anything to support their view, doesn’t mean it’s right. And you are drawn to those papers and wisdom traditions that confirm your own view/experience. So you are trusting your experience and it’s confirmation to be the truth. Statistically speaking, what you believe to be true is more likely to be one part of the elephant.