rideforever

I have some experiences, I have done 1 x 10day, 2 x 7 day, and several weekends. I can recommend the I.M.C UK as a very high quality place where you would be comfortable well-looked after but also learn very high quality practice and in a group of mature practitioners. And meditation centres are like this, each one is different. I have been to a centre in the Goenka organisation in the UK but found it poor. I found a monastic centre in Wales which is part of the Triratna community which is also exceptional and has knowledgeable monks there. Goenka's 10 days (1 hr day) of instruction is available on youtube and you can put it on your ipod and listen. It is good quality instruction, however in the Goenka style I believe they do 3 days Samatha and 7 days Vipassana. Whereas in the IMC they do 5 and 5 which I believe is preferable. Samatha in my opinion is the priority and on its own can produce awakening. One must always remember to become sensitive diligent ardent patient and persistent at the practice, but certainly one must not be robotic, it is about love of truth and of discovery of self, don't be busy being a robot. Awareness is not a lazer beam that you use to occupy yourself so you suffer left, one must feel what one is, and take the risk of insight. How might one prepare ? It is very good to learn how to sit, comfortably, always comfortably. This takes several sessions looking at different postures on youtube and trying different cushions, leg positions and heights and so on. It is good to have experience, it does take a few sessions trying different positions 10 mins each. Do not force some rigid position, this is the wrong attitude. It is also good to do butterfly exercise with legs (sort of flapping the knees) and king pigeon asana, these things open up the hips, although if you are not relaxed it won't help. Double lotus is not important to meditation practice at all. Personally I can use Burmese or Perfect Pose or Seiza, but not the lotuses. Next thing is to relax your breathing, your body and becoming one with the breathing. Gentle simply practice. And learn how to sit and be very relaxed but still supported, it is good to learn to do this without any meditation practice going on,. These two things will prepare you. Also you can let go of meat and noise in the few days preceding. It is beneficial to go to several evenings or day retreats or non-silent weekend retreats where you can become accustomed to the schedule of a centre, many offer introductory evenings and weekends. I think it might be a bit much to arrive for the first time and be silent for 10 days .... it's unnecessary. Better to go and relax, chat, cook, meditate and just be part of it, it's great. Perhaps you will get more from this then a sort of vipassana-sledgehammer.

I can pose some questions, serious questions that merit some time. 1. What is the means through which one knows one is in thought-free-awareness ? 2. What is the means through which thought-free-awareness is lost ? 3. What is the origin of intelligence ? 4. What is the relationship between thought-free-awareness and the physical body and what is the meaning and implication of all experiencers seemingly have a physical body ? 5. Is thought-free-awareness localized to a certain area of the body ? 6. Do objects actually exist ? What does it mean when one person describes an "object" ?

The idea that "I" will manifest my desires .... is totally contradictory to the teachings of the major teachers on this planet who say that you must struggle and fight and study and practice and only then will you transform your own self into the real being. Manifesting things is about what you have, or the experiences you have. Spirituality is about what you are, and becoming your true self. Clearly the manifesting people are just self-centered emotional gratifiers who have very low intelligence and sincerity. They have heard that realisation is a bliss, and so they wish to gain that bliss without doing any work for it. Whether the universe gives you something or not, is not the point .... spirituality speaking. How will it profit you to own the whole world when you have no idea who you are and live in a fake dream of pleasures. A human being is complex on the inside with many parts, conscious, subconscious, older, newer, awake, asleep, physical emotional intellectual spriitual, relative and absolute. So many parts, and for most it's just a disastrous dump site. And so when they try to manifest something .... who inside them is manifesting ? One part of them wants A, another part of them wants B, another part of them want C .... no wonder they don't "get what they want". Getting what you want is a result of being a whole integrated spiritual being, which is a long journey requiring much struggle and work. And the conditions of life here with alternating joy and pain are what we need. Destiny is again something outside of you, what will I get in the future. It is not a spiritual question. spiritual question is how can I bring myself into existence.

Really struggling with this today, do not want to generate any karma at all .... but finding it hard. For instance going for a Shiatsu session on Thursday and I know the guy is going to give me the whole bloody "tell me your history" crap form which will take half and hour and mean not a hell of a lot. Why doesn't he just email me the goddam thing. They all do this. I think it's more about the pretence of creating "trust" and repeat customers. In other words they are using my money in order to help themselves. F**** And I don't want to be negative, but you know many of the things in this world are completely negative .... the whole world is a lie, and people lie, their whole lives are a fearful lie ... and somewhere they know it. Okay, breathe. Om mane padme hum ... Om mane padme hum ... I would just like to apologise if this posting has caused anyone any discomfort, and will try to heal my wounds and unhappy actions that caused it. May you be well. Okay, I am thinking that people on this planet are simply not in very good shape, and if you judge them or fault find with them and what they say they are doing and so on ... it's going to be very negative. Better to think in TTC terms of natural force .... like the wind and rain and earth and the flow of things ... see people as in the river flowing ... and when they speak and so on it's confusing ... so sort of disregard it, without blame.

Beautiful words, but something tells me you are trying far too hard ... and that underlying it could be a denial of what you are. What good is peace bliss or joy, to the true self ? Those who talk of such things do not really understand. The true self is mysterious, it offers no explanation except its presence, has no sens of which peace or bliss or joy, because they are like nutella smeared on top. And the true self only wants one thing .... to have no shields on top. I have seen many times that people with beautiful words, but you look inside and they are built as a sort of shield because they reject themselves deep inside, and it's become a habit they use with the reject what they are in side. Often they use very beautiful words indeed, too beautiful and something is not right about that picture. As for Law of Attraction, only somebody who is whole can be reflected by the universe, if not the different parts of the being will be reflected differently and the effect spoiled.

https://www.rt.com/news/447178-germany-spiegel-reporter-fabricated-news/

If you can't tell that you are higher than a starfish then you have problems. There is a time to not treat philosophy as an entertainment of words.

This is just a stage, later the recognition of the subject within the subject because a new locus. Subject-locus-recognition require no objects.

Humans are higher than chimpanzees, if that's what you mean. And chimpanzees higher than starfish. But none of them is conscious, there manifestation is entirely mechanical, material and perishes with the material. Conscious is when you look at yourself in the mirror and recognize who you actually are, rather than your collective mechanical identity. There is something inside you that is not inside others, and is not of this world. All humans "recognize" themselves in the mirror, it's just that what they recognize is a collective identity and their recognition is just an act. Humans are great actors. Around the Buddha many humans arrived and played the new game of being Buddhist, or of being awakened, or spiritual .... what great new games for the imitating monkeys to play. Buddha was not like them, he had something inside he that was not inside others. He was not acting. The imitating nature of human beings, coupled withe terror of being one few who is not imitating, leads to great confusion false dawns false wisdom false teachings and deep suffering of humans. Maya, meaning illusions, deceit, magic, pretense. And in this soup, many that have potential are lost. Which leads to certain conclusions about what one needs to do.

Philosophy is about preparing to live. What you do or say or realise, is not very important. Whether you do so mechanically - that is the question. Perhaps the true definition of evil is selling your soul. But even saying such things belies the situation a human finds himself in ... at this low level of consciousness that humans live in the chance to awaken seems to be exceptionally small, talking about what you think or want or believe is quite irrelevant .... it's all imaginary. Just like the pronoucements politicians make every day, with full confidence, that never materialise. Stand back and witness the strangeness of it, as if in a play with all the actors having forgotten their acting. And within, hidden from sight, buried collectively ... is the truth of suffering. A world of people all lying about who and what they are ... in fact most human activity is to suppress the soul within, out of fear that one will be punished for have already done so for so long.

Fake News or Fake Society ? I read the Guardian lost 2/3rds of it's paper readers in 10 years. It changed it's broadsheet format first to mid-sized (Berliner), then down to tabloid size to save costs. Also got rid of any journalists that cost money, went on line. Now the Guardian has a very successful online dating website probably making more money that the newspaper. And so how does Guardian respond ? Sensationalism. After Gore Vidal died, who is there left who cares for .... thought ? In the 1900s art gallery owners realised that waiting 20 years for an artist to be ready after training in the atelier ... it just takes too long to make big money. Better to turn a urinal upside down, smear it with elephant dung and sell for $1 Million. And so on. Domesticated animals lose 50% of their brain mass. They don't need it. And they don't need real news. What has been long understood by spiritual teachers is that the human level of consciousness is quite terrifying, and painful, exactly half way between savage and angel, and depending on the season (yuga) the humans will either lobotomise themselves or behead children in order to feel better. What is degeneration ? One idea is that the human being is very powerful, able to simultaneously transform many energies, of mind heart and body. Compare that to a fern, with its simple energy transformation. If you have a family business owner, a butcher or chcolatierre, many decisions have to be made by the family. Father, brother, uncle, niece, all working together organising many things. And family businesses tend to discover unique qualities. Cocoa beans from a specially fertile plantation in Ecuador. Or Chocolate presses that are made of Brass because it tastes better. All the people in this picture have much fertile work to do. In comes Kraft, the corporation. Buys up the "brand", and moves manufacturing to its factories. Every year the shareholders demand 5% more profit, so the brass presses are discarded for steel, the Ecuadorian ingredients binned for palm oil. The culture that these products represent is destroyed, a material loss for mankind. And the jobs are lost too. All that is left is stacking wharehouses and pressing buttons on machinery. People who do not live well develop new diseases. Cancer, immune disorders, mental health, obesity. Ill through and through. The newspapers are afraid of criticizing corporate rule, after all they are run on advertising and so drip fed by big business. Some stand up to the corporations, write articles about them, by the advertising dries up and they fold. New professions and industries arrive to "explain it away". Words words words words. After a time, like in Rome, it is difficult to find a single person who you can trust to tell the truth. Some people feel something is wrong something terribly terribly wrong. Fortunately for those courageous, there are other ways.

Society today is sport. That is the problem.

There is glorifying of war. And three is glorifying of the "terribleness" of war. There is glorifying of the "ordinary life", 2.4 children and a dog. Western life today is overbalanced in the later, and it loses its meaning and value. Something must change, and is changing. In the Bhagavad Gita it says that you must fight. Why ? It is simply a recognition of the need to grow, and that refusing to participate because you are in love with easy-life-ideas is a mistake. Mankind is quite far from not needing conflict, and that is why there is conflict. And yes it is an ugly picture with many casualties, but so it goes for those born in the sewer. Here, if you do not fight there will be even worse. Can you fight your way through holding virtue and not taking it personally ?

Did you consider the possibility that you are not alive, and that that might not be the correct approach !

It's common for soldiers being back in civies to feel bereft of any real responsibility or action in domesticated life, or camaraderie or purpose. Pleasure only goes so far. But yes everything has a price.

That's nice, but it doesn't sound like the stars are processioning around you quite yet. My understanding is that the universe reflects the entirety of your being, large part being unconscious, and so in order for more law of attraction to manifest the work of integrating / healing / cultivating all the many parts of the being has to be accomplished. Otherwise you are a jumble of several different parts each attracting their own stuff.

And how has these things affected your life in terms of money and relationships career and so on.

True, I have read many accounts by soldiers, and still I feel they have the sense of really living, even through the hell. Big things happen big lessons big pain. My feeling is that civilian life, domesticated life, may in fact be soul destroying and useless, and frankly a big lie. It's just insincere, quiet safe but a lie, a big lie. And to succumb is to lose your soul. And the other thing is, when you are "on a mission", when you act-will-do, then it's like you fly, you barely notice the "bad things". In fact all the negativity and moaning that is so much part of modern society, what it really means is that people don't feel they are alive, they have far too much time. As for "finding a cause you are passionate about" ... well it's all just vomit, in this insincere society. Even worse that industry. Without the soul anything that is done, no matter how safe or "passionate", is just a lie, a lie upon a lie. And then death comes and puts an end to ... nothing. All opportunities were forsaken from the beginning. And I have the feeling that this is simply the truth of things, like it or not, comfortable or not. Next door are some very upstanding parents, looking after their children, working hard and so on. I wish them well. But sometimes I observe them ... how much reality is in the parents or the children. Is it just one act, from beginning to end, all fake and more fake. Isn't the whole theatre designed to prevent feeling the truth. Sometimes in a nowhere place, someone catches your eyes, truth to truth, in the middle of an as-if-world, a world of people not quite ready for world. Best to pretend it ain't true, most of the time.

What indications are there that Gurdjieff lost it ?

Yes there is, and the taoist way is to go through nature as a gateway into the internal, from 5 elements, to yin-yang, to the one, to the abyss. Outward cultivation is only preliminary until you merge with that stage of manifestation, and from their return inwards. But anyway, people tend to end up in their heads with words, that's my point.

Truth about banking

In society people are busy or they are calm. But neither of these is what the TTC or spirituality in general is about. If you read the word constancy and you try to pick out society something that seems calm ... well that's not what it means. TTC is written by a being in a state of self-realisation. Spiritual peace, or in this case constancy, is only possible by a complete change in your being, which is what spirituality is about.

Your understanding of peace as you describe it here is not that of the TTC, it is of society. Society is either busy or withdrawn. But is all contained within its ignorance. Neither business or withdrawal from society demands anything of you at all. TTC points to a different world, and from that different world different things are seen.

For most people, nothing. They neither arrive, nor do they depart. The only thing that happens to them is pride in ignorance.