Bindi

I could quote from any number of texts, but I don't personally know, as I haven't arrived at bliss yet, and I've had no information regarding beyond bliss. Rainbowvein had a suggestion about what might be beyond bliss.

When joy/bliss arrives will be soon enough to know what comes next

I read the story of a woman whose daughter had been taken and brutally murdered, she was a devout Christian who obviously went through hell, and after much grief and time she found a deep and abiding peace that she said she wouldn't have found in the normal course of things. But she also said that she would prefer her daughter back to the peace she had found. This was decades ago, but I always remember it as a particularly poignant story.

"Typically, the freedom and peace comes first and the bliss a little later." Many years ago, I had a taste of 'peace', I found my way from feeling particularly miserable to feeling the peace stage for a day, as a contrast it was incredibly nice, it was like a jack hammer being turned off, and the silence that ensued was wonderful. I remember at the end of that day my normal thinking process finally resumed, and I could almost see the words as I thought them float into the emptiness, and start to pile up there. Not long after, I was back to normal but thankfully the jack hammer didn't turn on again As for joy, that was in a dream, when the pool filled up with clear water after flushing all the mud from out the pipes beneath the pool, I caught a branch overhanging the pool as I wasn't to stay in the water, and as I came up out of the water, I started laughing and felt 'joy'. Water in dreams = emotions, and this dream really explains my path, working through and clearing emotions, and then having to rise above even the clear emotions, which must lead to joy

Hi thelerner, Are you saying that you believe 'the last supper' to have been Jesus saying the normal Jewish prayer over the bread and wine, with no mention of it being his body and blood, or for the remission of sins etc. That this is all later overlay, by non Jews, or Christians with Jewish heritage? That really does make sense to me.

Darkness and light are evocative words in Hebrew. Darkness evokes everything that is anti-God: the wicked, judgment, death. Light is the first of the Creator's works, manifesting the divine operation in a world that is darkness and chaos without it. While light is not itself divine, it is often used metaphorically for life, salvation, the commandments, and the divine presence of God. http://www.biblestudytools.com/dictionary/light/ Light is used as a metaphor. 1. metaphor [ ˈmetəˌfôr, -fər ] NOUN noun: metaphor • plural noun: metaphors a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action to which it is not literally applicable: “light” is not a secret reference to light bodies, though people will always see what they want to see, and hear what they want to hear.

If you had left it as this question, I very probably would have had nothing to say. But there is no mention of light here, at all. Ascension yes. Light no. But to see this as referring to light bodies is your interpretation, it doesn't specify that Jesus was a light body at any stage of his life. And again this is from John anyway, and his take is decidedly more enigmatic than the synoptics. "The symbolism of John's gospel while it is probably the most evocative of any in the New Testament, is also provocative. The language of John's gospel is intentionally antagonistic at times toward Jewish tradition and toward Jewish sensitivities. The idea of the Passover of course is very Jewish but John tends to turn some of those ideas in a much sharper way against Jewish tradition. At one point in John 6 Jesus says, "Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood you will have no life in you." But the idea of drinking blood is absolutely abhorrent to Jewish dietary regulations. So the very language and the symbolism that is so rich within John's gospel also has a decidedly political tone to it in terms of the evolving relationship between Jews and Christians. John's gospel is witness to a Christianity that's moving farther and father away from Jewish tradition. And in fact it's seeing Jewish tradition often as actually hostile to the Christian movement."

In John, but as mentioned earlier John is not one of the synoptic gospels, and his is the furthest in time from the actual life of Jesus. Paul saying Christ in you doesn't refer to light, and once again Paul came along after the life of Jesus, though he highly influenced Christianity nonetheless. If you post these many verses of Jesus being the manifestation of light they can be considered one by one, generalising doesn't cut it. In your quote "In the Christian tradition and esoteric Judaism it is called "the resurrection body" and "the glorified body." St. Paul called it "the celestial body" or "spiritual body." This doesn't support the notion that Christianity embraces the concept of light bodies. I don't deny that other traditions might, I am specifically saying that Christianity doesn't support this view, despite the single reference from John.

as·cen·sion (ə-sĕn′shən) n. 1. The act or process of ascending; ascent. 2. Astronomy The rising of a star above the horizon. 3. In Christianity, the bodily rising of Jesus into heaven on the 40th day after his resurrection Light bodies might be a part of Bon or Dzogchen tradition, and there is Daoist reference to light bodies, but why do you try to use biblical Christianity to falsely support your personal agenda?

I had SQL server error problems this morning as well, I couldn't load the TDB site at all, I tried loading another site and there was no problem. An hour later and after shutting down my computer it was fine again. The SQL message said it was my problem, not TDB's, but it's only ever happens for this site for some reason.

The eight of the eighth? A secret club? Sensational news

In my personal experience, I saw a red cap (which I understand to be my Kundalini cap), and my mother saw a red blinking eye waking up (root chakra), after I had converted my jing energy and brought it up to the MDT, and not before. I believe the MDT is associated with Qi, so experientially, for myself, I do equate awakening kundalini energy with Qi, very specifically. And in another personal experience, I had a dream of a snake forcefully striking the back of my neck where it joins the head, it kept striking without venom until I realised that it was just physically obstructed there and wanted to pass, and that I just needed to drop my head forward to allow it to pass. This is clearly kundalini symbolism, which in Daoist terms I believe would be referred to as the Jade pillow, and to allow Qi to pass the head needs to come forward, and also the neck can be tapped at this point to allow the energy to pass through. So again, there seems to be a strong similarity between Daoism and kundalini terminology in my experience. I would find it hard to not notice these similarities, and once noticed, I would find it even harder to ignore them. The similarities are interesting to me.

I agree with everything you've said, but my understanding is that that whole process of refining and transforming and rising is with awakened kundaini. I see releasing kundalini as being the final part of the process, which should in no way harm after the whole awakening process is complete, when not just her influence or her energy but her whole self rises...something like that.

I agree, not-weird, and with very few bells and whistles. Now being awake, that might be something else altogether

From what I can gather, Qi might be equivalent to awakened kundalini, but released kundalini is a whole different ball game, that's like high voltage electricity. Probably kundalini can be awakened to different degrees in different people.

You might find some useful information at the kundalinicare.com website.

I was with a good friend the only time I tried mushrooms, I was being fairly enthusiastic about all the colours, and asked if she could see them, she said wryly "Yeah, depression in technicolour". She was a funny one (funny ha ha), though she was going through a bad patch at the time.

Just taking things back to the concrete level which I like to work on, I’d like to throw in some thoughts about ida and pingala. I’ve been a bit confused about ida and pingala for a couple of weeks, and I’ve started figuring out the issue after looking into it. My issue was that though ida and pingala are associated with feminine/soft(Ida) and masculine/strong(pingala) qualities respectively, yet my first hand information about them was that they were both female. So what I have found out is that there is another division in Hinduism that explains this, and that is the concept of odic and actinic forces. Ida and Pingala are both odic forces = dense and heavy and of the material world. I think they are both yin in this sense, but yin is divided into Ida - the feeling current, associated with the moon, and pingala - the intellectual current, associated with the sun. For myself, and this seems to be in line with Hindu thought, these dense yin energies need to be brought higher chakra by chakra and merged with the sushumna channel (which is actinic - actinic force is the pure life force coming from the central source deep within, throughout the nerve system) at certain chakra levels. The sahasrara chakra, the ajna chakra, and the vishuddha chakra are primarily actinic force centers. The anahata chakra, which allows us to look out into the external world and within to the internal areas, is primarily a mixture of actinic force and odic force called actinodic. The lower three chakras -- manipura, svadhishthana and muladhara -- are primarily odic force chakras - they are the forces that make up the physical world.

Jeff, I don't know what you mean by 'eternalistic'?

I have looked into the non astral dreams of avid astral travellers, and find as the previous poster mentioned that their non astral dreams do suggest that most people use astral travel to "fly around and indulge in fantasies", often taking their sleeping and dream state to be a ticket to a personal fairground. Sometimes people believe that they are making spiritual progress while astral travelling, but their non astral dreams suggest that where they think they see the ocean, they are in reality trapped in an artificially constructed pool, with the ocean on the other side of the pool walls, and no way to get to it astrally. My overall feeling is that astral travel tends to involve ego, being under the control of the monkey mind.

I'm contemplating non attachment at the moment, and this is where I've got to so far, I'd like some feedback on this though. Non attachment, I gather, is the basis of Buddhism. The place to carry out non attachment, as far as I can see, is in the heart. This idea is from a dream where I am in a warm room with a fire in the fireplace before non attachment is attempted. Non attachment from what? Keeping it really simple here, from desire (or desires, more generally?). What about anger? I am perceiving something more than non attachment? I suspect that anger needs to be completely extinguished, not just detached from? And lastly, can anyone tell me if there is a Taoist equivalent to non attachment, and to extinguishing anger?

Has anyone had any experience in charging from trees to add extra energy into their healing? I've done it occasionally up till now, and it has had the effect of making the healing charge a bit stronger, but the last couple of times the extra tree energy has made the healing energy uncomfortable (to the person receiving the healing). The thing is, that's not necessarily bad in itself, because I can place my hands further away, and the overwhelming energy is reduced, but I'm left wondering is it better not to charge with tree energy in the first place, or can this energy add something, as long as I adjust for it? Also, the feeing of it being too strong for the person did leave after a few minutes, but she had to hit/massage the area for a while to relieve it first. Any comments regarding with this would be helpful.

Thanks for this overview, and I really appreciate your great quote from Dudjom Rinpoche regarding the various paths. It allows me to follow my perception, and go directly to the Mahayana path

I tried charging with a beautiful willow this morning, and did do a healing with that energy to test the yin/yang difference, and indeed it was much softer, no negative effects, possibly a gentle increase in energy. This willow is one that I've always thought was beautiful, but I had never put two and two together before to consider that I might therefore be drawn towards it. It had a root above ground, and in fact I charged with my hands on the root, and I could definitely feel the energy in my hands. Before the healing though, I asked my mother to 'see' the energy in my body, and she saw the root of the tree turn into a small white wooden sled which was carved into a curl in the front, which glided smoothly up to my throat and stopped there where a guard was on duty standing next to a doorway. She didn't see any further than this. I see the white sled as being yin energy, as well as the smooth motion. I also found it interesting to see how my body reacted to tree energy, though it wasn't conclusive.

Could you explain the difference between night and day practice?