wilfred

funny thing is how there's not actually anything to 'find'.

i'm in the former when it comes to suffering, often things work out that way for beings in order to get them back on the path.

I have to ask you then. How do you think Dawg is going to feel when he reads your post in which you deny his enlightenment based on your opinion? Are you more advanced than he is? Do you think that you hurt his feelings when he asked you not to call him "master" yet you persisted? Did he hurt your feelings deeply?

if he really was enlightened, wouldn't pay it any mind at all.

or maybe he'd use all his insight and come up with another post like this:

http://thedaobums.com/topic/30012-a-path-to-enlightenment/page-9#entry607204

as for the OP, depends how far down the path you are. for many people, being able to feel deeply, even without a great deal of control over emotions and when things are spilling out, is a huge leap from the condition of most in our society. especially if we're talking typical male conditioning. but Chang is right, someone making progress is not going to be much disturbed, their ability to feel empathy and connect is unlikely to generate big external responses very often.

also, there's the factor of how much we're drawing on our sense of acceptance (love) or how much we're getting entangled in other people's energies and/or triggering our own defilements when experiencing emotional outbursts. being physically close to someone seems much more likely to elicit the latter, as there's a lot of interaction between energy fields and we easily lose control of the whole process. 'connecting' to other people's feeling isn't really desirable in that sense.

over here i'm just learning how to feel again, crying a lot as realisations hit home and generally feeling very humbled by the whole experience of detaching from being the centre of the universe. this includes connecting to other energies whether i much like it or not, but for now it's a learning experience. it's always a fine line between being open enough to let things go and getting entangled in other people's stuff. there's quite an art to how you organize your energy field between being open and more closed ('defensive mode') depending on situation/environment, such is the harshness and incoherence present in the modern environment, including other people.

the analogy i hear a lot is 'the mind is a mirror' and therefore a dirty mirror reflects light in a way that creates a distorted image. so, in a way, that image is very much our own creation, through a filter, though we've continuously been aware of the source of the image too. if we concentrate hard enough we can kinda start to see where it was coming from more clearly, though the work in progress is cleaning the mirror.

glad to see you here Richard, hehe!  

yes can feel qi flowing through them, particularly when blockages are loosening and in the hands/arms.

Lovely photo. We got fog. I had a hankering to do a bit of AP a few years ago when I bought the Dob, but I could see how easy it would be to end up as a gear head. Got a few blurred pictures of the Orion Nebula, the rings of Saturn and Juipiters moons by sticking the Camera to the eyepiece, but it really needs one of those fancy camera mounts, or a web cam/laptop/image registration software....and the patience of Jove, a tolerance for cold and no need of sleep.

thanks i'll pass on the compliment. i stand corrected this moon shot was actually just a camera on a tripod - DSLR with some type of zoom lens. you can get really good results with minmal equipment, often almost as good as professional gear with a bit (a lot) of trial and error. that's all my mom ever uses is a DSLR in conjunction with a fairly average telescope on loan from the local astronomy club. she's developed techniques for getting the most out simple setups, here's one through the telescope taken with a point and shoot camera.

my mom has been into the astrophotography for the last several years. here's the moon from the other night from our front yard (through a telescope mind you).

not sure if this is of use to anyone, but thought I would put it out there anyway. as some of you may have seen from my posts, i'm quite interested in the whole tonic herbs thing. have been experimenting with various combinations of herbs/tinctures before bed time and seem to have narrowed it down to a formula that works every time. obviously mileage may vary and you'll need a decent amount of waking lucidity/awareness (namely a meditation practice) as a starting point, as with any method of trying to bring on lucid dreams. nonetheless i've found this to be very effective.

two tinctures:

dragon herbs supreme shen - lead herb asparagus root http://www.dragonherbs.com/prodinfo.asp?number=015

dragon herbs purple reishi http://www.dragonherbs.com/prodinfo.asp?number=039

you'll want about 2:1 reishi to supreme shen. good amount is 1 and 0.5 droppers, ranging up to 2:1 full droppers. for some reason the purple reishi is much more effective at bringing on lucid dreams than the red type. take just before going to bed, happy dreaming!

different for every person depending on consitution.

but generally speaking, i feel like having a lot of fat in ones diet is a good thing. especially if we're talking lots of avocados and coconut oil, olive oil, fat from nuts/seeds. then again, i think lots of protein is also a good thing if you don't overdo heavier meats and also a good amount of carbs, fruit sugars. a really large amount of fat could be hard to break down depending on liver health/bile production.

nice avatar :lol

btw: Im def gonna try this.

Funny question: would it not even help just putting a finger on the grounding in the socket for a little while as well ?

sorry no idea. this book is worth reading for background theory/context on what is going on

http://www.amazon.com/Earthing-Most-Important-Health-Discovery/dp/1591202833

sleeping outdoors/camping is best as you get the full range of earth's frequencies interacting with the body. but using an earthing sheet is a LOT better than a standard indoors sleep. also worth getting a cheap socket tester from ebay to make sure your socket(s) are properly grounded. not sure about the other products as sleeping stuff the main thing, goes without saying to get outdoor time during the day.

and if you have a wireless router in your property, turn it off at night, always.

peace

i sleep on an earthing sheet https://www.earthing.com/

never woke up feeling tired or unrefreshed again.

cool on the tonic herbs!

hello and welcome

your query on buddhist 'liberation' sounds like a potential thread, sure plenty would be able to weigh in on that one

good examples of how you can effect things from within the lucid dream state here. particularly being able to meet the darker, repressed side our ourselves with equanimity.

The kind of practices I am curious about are not lucid dreaming focused. Lucid dreaming has little utility in my view as it is just more thinking/ imagining.

 

I am asking more about cultivation in alignment with qigong/neigong/meditation practices.  How to enliven the shen-qi-jing, so to speak, through sleep practices. Even though it happens already, how to utilize it consciously and improve the quality of the process.

 

Something more along those lines.

what if you were to do cultivation work from within the dream, meditation etc? from what i've read it's possible to reach deeper into the subconscious here and dissolve blockages, let go of things, which is ultimately the aim of our cultivation anyway. you need a lot of lucidity for this though.

a big problem is the snapshot nature of scanning things on the internet and the ease at which we can have pretty much whatever we want at the click of our fingertips is leading to a breakdown of our concentration faculty. the instant gratification issue is a big problem for people's ability to have patience, tolerance. we're in our own little worlds so much that many are losing their connection to reality, let alone what truly matters.

i believe the term 'awakened' has been trivialized to apply to a much wider group of people that it should do, at least in terms of what we're talking about here - it's meaning in eastern traditions. it's not something that can be broken down into words, but meeting realized teachers can shed light on the issue. as in it is a thing and the people who have got there may possess certain abilities.

when you hear of spontaneous awakenings, i believe people experience something profound, often a sample of the full awakened experience. this is enough to shift their perceptions, state of mind/consciousness to a siginificant degree, where the ground of awareness becomes much more obvious, but this is not likely to be full-on enlightenment. in buddhist terms people may have broken into the stream, or it could be something else altogether.

found a new groovy song today

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCitYOAp-N4

depends who you're asking and the context. in the ones i'm most familiar with (theravada/tibetan buddhism) the two terms are very much interchangeable, at least in my understanding. one can have a temporary awakening or sample the awakened experience, but enlightenment involves entering into this state on a permanent basis. for this to happen all defilements/past karmic charge must be eradicated through insight/wisdom and reaching perfect equanimity, which ultimately comes about by living virtuously and cultivating concentration, seeing there is no grounds for mental afflictions - grasping or rejecting. full realization of impermanence. no walk in the park, probably not within the reach of many in this lifetime, not because it's not possible but because of the size of the task at hand. there seem to be different paths that ultimately converge at the end point of 'enlightenment', some may use our relationship to basic ground or 'clear light' to break down hindrances whereas others need to work more systematically through their blockages to make best progress. i'm in the systematic camp, having plenty of awareness but lots of blockages to work through to increase equanimity.

one thing is for sure is that it's probably not worth worrying about until you're much further down the path of purification and that the best teaching is not found in books or literature. it seems like people are liable to go in circles for decades, even a lifetime without someone pointing the way. nobody ever gets enlightened by wanting to be enlightened. i guess i'm interested but i'm curious like that and like some context to things. and the kundalini stuff seems to be a bum steer, at least in the systems i'm aware of. energetic flows are something that open up by themselves as the groundwork is done and the system is open enough. that's a whole other topic and the body needs to be sufficiently conditioned to handle the current that starts to run through it.

w.

welcome and...

BOO!

Maybe not a religion in the usual sense, but defines exactly what religion is and should be in my view. 

Someone once said - religion is an individual's inner search for truth, everything else is politics.

Unfortunately, even Buddhism can get bogged down in ritual and politics.

unfortunately most the discussion around it on the internet is exactly this.