Aetherous

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Posts posted by Aetherous

  1. Posted

    1 minute ago, Yonkon said:

    I assume the teacher has to be met face to face, online will not do, right? I live in a small town, the next big city is pretty far away. I'm probably making excuses right now, but still.. it seems that this is not possible for me right now.

     

    I think online can be fine, so long as the teaching is good. It's not guaranteed that a good spiritual teacher will be in the closest city...we live in a good era, where we can research the best systems worldwide and then choose one.

    • Like 1

  3. Posted

    Sounds like you just need to figure out who you are, what you like and dislike, what you value in life, what you can never accept, etc. It helps if you don't live your life entirely for appeasing yourself, but look toward making the world a better place...think about others just as much as you think about yourself.

    • Like 6

  4. Posted

    2 hours ago, Nungali said:

    I sat in on a conversation similar to this, during my work in refugee relocation. people where being positive ( and they refugees ! )  and it had a religious flavour  to it   but this older woman kept  asking if there was a God, why so much suffering ? She got all the usual answers  but still she persisted, people where getting annoyed with her.

     

    I detected 'something else' so I offered to the group  " perhaps she has suffered more than we realise, to come to this conclusion ?  Do you think that is the case. "

     

    Se hesitated then rolled her shirt cuff up and showed us the inside of her wrist, it had an old faded tatoo of a concentration camp registration number on it .

     

    That shut them up .

     

    Beautiful.

  5. Posted

    2 hours ago, Nungali said:

    "Try as hard as you might, but you can't escape challenging situations. They will happen."

    But, IMO , that is far cry from  " life has screwed with me big time " .

     

    The idea that  " life has screwed with me big time "  is very alien to me .  It might have been thought sometime in the past, when I was indoctrinated with false values . I might have thought that when I was going through the absolute intensity of  2nd Saturn return ( attempt to  seize my land and house by the government resulting in a 2 year supreme court battle and appeal, relationship breakup and denial of seeing children, Ross River fever and arthritic degeneration,  liver problems,  death of three relatives,  a brain embolism ,  a one year wait for a very painful hip replacement ... and I cant remember at the moment all the other stuff !     I could have thought life had turned against me , but I didnt . I just do not have that attitude any more.

     

    You wouldn't be faulted for thinking that "life had turned against you" in those hard times.

    Anyway, I view the bolded part as simply a matter of semantics. To me, the essential meaning is the same between the two quotes. I don't actually view life as a being that acts upon me...to say "life has screwed with me" is truly just a manner of speaking, and saying that I've been through challenging situations. At least this is my understanding based on where I've been raised and how we use the language.

  6. Posted

    30 minutes ago, Jeff said:

    What does everyone think about this first part of the quote...

     

    The pleasure orientation is very important, very powerful, and very basic. If you are not pleasure-oriented, you can’t understand tantra. You have to be pleasure-oriented, because otherwise you are pain- and misery-oriented.

     

    I think of it in terms of something I was taught, in an almost tantra context... There is clinging/grasping, and then there is openness. "Pain and misery oriented" reminded me of the clinging/grasping way of being. When we're enjoying things, we're open.

    • Like 4

  7. Posted

    I think Chogyam Trungpa was considered many to be legitimate and a good source of info, while simultaneously not being good in some other ways. I think this particular quote is legitimate in terms of Tibetan Buddhist theories, but can see how it can be viewed in a satiating base desires context.

    Sometimes it's not good to "throw the baby out with the bathwater", and people who do bad things can have many good qualities. But also, other times you poison your water when using a dirty cup, and spiritual authority figures must be held to a high standard.

    • Like 8

  8. Posted

    Just now, Nungali said:

     

    Nah.  The diff is I never said life fucks you over . I am saying it can nurture you and look after you, if you manage things right .

     

    Thats a FAR cry from thinking life is waiting to fuck you over .

     

    I never said that either.

    To restate what I said in the way that I actually meant it: "Try as hard as you might, but you can't escape challenging situations. They will happen."

    You misread my post...but looking back at it, I guess that's understandable given the way in which it was written. Perhaps if you reread it again, you can see my actual meaning now.

  10. Posted

    In a sense it really is true that awakening is harsh, if "awakening" refers to becoming aware of how the world should/could be, versus how it is. I think on the spiritual path we get an intuitive sense of how things should be...we are the progenitors of human evolution, and the better world comes first within us, then later on as there are more of us and our influence has spread, it arrives outside in the real world as well. If we're not careful, it can be very depressing to constantly be let down by the way of the world.


    Sometimes it's good to take a break from thinking about this stuff, from focusing on other people, and just concentrate on the simple pleasures in life. No use in feeling negative.

    • Like 3

  15. Posted

    4 minutes ago, silent thunder said:

    why do you think the world is so messed up?

    i don't think the world is so messed up.

     

    there may be discomfort

    there may be pain

     

    this does not mean there must, or will be suffering.

    suffering is a crisis of perception

    a product of the storyteller

     

    Sex trafficking of children is one example of something that makes the world incredibly messed up. It seems to me like only a monster would suggest to a victim of such things that suffering is just a product of the story they tell themselves. "There may be discomfort, there may be pain, but you're not really suffering, any suffering is just a product of your mind". Yeah right!

    There are many other things in the world which are incredibly messed up. Extreme poverty. Starvation. A class system which keeps certain people working in literal shit all day every day. Children trained to murder. Mind controlled people. Torture. Slavery. Prostitutes being pimped out. Spouses or children who watched their loved ones commit suicide in front of them. Spousal abuse. Children disappearing from the foster care system entirely. The list goes on, and all of these things are happening at this very moment you're reading this. There are literally thousands of people, at this very moment, experiencing each one of these things.

    But you say, "I don't think the world is so messed up" in the midst of that?


    The portion of the world in which people are mostly unaware of these things, where we live, is admittedly not so messed up, and our neuroses are definitely just a product of our concepts. But we fortunate ones represent a very small percentage of the total human population.

    • Like 2

  16. Posted

    19 minutes ago, silent thunder said:

    speaking written from localized awareness' experience.

    the words chosen convey only what was intended.

    how interpreted, or received is in each other localized awareness and how they respond to stimulus.

     

    the question... 'why do YOU think the world is messed so up?"  was answered.

     

     

    no authority implied, claimed, nor inferred as to the authority of the answer on other localized awareness and how they experience, interpret and thus potentially answer. 

     

    no kinship was offered in the answer, nor was sought an agreeability factor, as nothing is being sold, only shared.

     

    peace

     

    I guess because it was asking for one's personal opinion, that's legitimate. No need to get defensive here, though...my challenge that we expand our awareness outside of our subjective lens into the objective reality, in which most humans suffer immensely (and not just in their minds), wasn't intended to be something taken negatively. I didn't mean to single you out personally; it's just that your post was relevant to this.

  17. Posted

    Just now, silent thunder said:

    I don't...

     

    There may be pain.  There may be discomfort. 

    This does not mean there is suffering.

     

    Suffering is a crisis of perception.

    A product of the storyteller.

     

    I mean, there are also really bad things happening in the world, outside of our immediate perception, too. For most of us on the forum, life is relatively good. Not everyone has it so well, that they can say suffering is just due to perception.

    • Like 3

  18. Posted

    The world is bad because that's what it does. Even if you set your situation up perfectly, let's say having the perfect wife and kids and being really wealthy and healthy...life will still find a way to throw a curveball at you at the worst possible time. For instance, your wife cheats on you; your kid dies; you get a terminal illness; you lose all your money, etc. Try as hard as you might to avoid it, you will still be screwed with.

    Some people think that living on earth is a "school" of training our spirits, and that life's "tests" are our way of learning. Perhaps higher more powerful spirits are like our administrators, ensuring that we're passing our classes.

    Who knows what's really true in that regard...that's just something people speak about. But it is true that life is hard, and the world is messed up. It is very messed up in some ways, and it's partly our responsibility to correct it, as impossible as that seems.

    At the same time, we can look at anything in an overly negative way, or an overly positive way. I'd say the OP is overly negative. There is a lot about life and the world that we can enjoy. If we didn't enjoy it, we wouldn't participate.

    • Like 1

  19. Posted

    Interesting thought, for example, to consider that the foot is the brain of the leg. I like that idea.

    With mudras, I once considered the fingernail to be like the brain of the finger (corresponding to one of the five elements).

    There are similar ideas of one body part correlating with another one, with Dr Tan acupuncture, and bodymapping acupuncture. Also other systems of reflexology and "microsystems".

     

    On 6/12/2019 at 6:50 PM, welkin said:

    Another example is the face. I am theorizing that the eyes, are the nipples, nose is where bottom chest connects with lower rib cage, mouth is indeed belly button.

     

    Those correlations seem pretty spot on to me.

    I think we can test this. If we have pain in a certain area (let's pretend the left wrist is painful), then we can have our theories about what other body areas correlate to it. When we open those other areas, the pain in the left wrist should vanish. Let's say we open up the right ankle to treat the left wrist.

    If it works, then we know our theories might have something to them. If it doesn't work, we should look to other potential areas.

    • Like 1

  24. Posted

    On 6/6/2019 at 12:03 PM, liminal_luke said:

    Thanks for that video Phil.  I´ve just recently started practicing again after a hiatus.  The form shown in the video differs significantly from what I learned from Michael Winn.  Seems like all the modern instructors teach slightly different variants.  Not sure how much it matters in the end.  

     

    It looks quite similar to what the Rubbos taught. I think I prefer their version.