liminal_luke

A Chinese Rorshack test?

Thanks! I`m enrolled in the moment in Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche`s dream yoga course so your reflections seem very timely.

Yeah, I dunno. It`s possible, I suppose, that the system is everything he says it is. But the obstacle these days to spiritual success is not lack of amazing teachings; it`s lack of amazing discipline on the part of students to follow the teachings. Right off the top of my head, here`s three places to get what I`m betting would turn out to be mind-boggling spiritual assistance. (1) Our very own Spotless has offered much wisdom about awakening. Deligently followed, I think it would work. (2) Awaken has offered to teach people freely who are willing to keep spiritual journals. (Or at least this is my understanding.) (3) Steve recently provided information about free "Pith Instructions" on Dzogchen by Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche. You`re welcome.

I used to say that if nobody died in a book -- and preferably a violent death -- I didn`t want to read it. Recently however, I received a recommendation to confine my reading to more heartwarming, inspiring material. This makes sense to me. All that killing makes for exciting drama, but at what cost to my psyche? So anyway...any recommendations for beautifully written, heartwarming fiction? Author recommendations? I`d also be interested in essays. Thanks!

Dogs are protective and companionable -- perfect for me. There might be such a thing as too many dogs, but there can never be too many dog stories.

I`m reminded of an image you posted some years ago, Taomeow, the one of an Israeli soldier with a gun doing his knitting; this video upsets expectations in a similar way -- my expectations, anyway. Here`s a young muscular tattooed black guy and instead of rap we get this beautiful violin. I should get out more.

Learning to get really, really comfortable in the body you have is probably just as difficult a feat -- and so much more likely to end on a happy note (the grass being always greener and all that).

I thought that Off-Grid and Fuxi were created to at least partially solve these problems. Everything related to "retention" gets dumped in Fuxi, everything political in Off-Grid. Regular off-topic should be limited to discussions of bird baths and solar eclipses, nothing X-rated or likely to raise political hackles. Isn`t this the way it already is? If not, I suggest that it should be.

Hi Steve, I`m a little late to the Dream Yoga party, and just started listening to the free recordings now. Also considering enrolling myself in the Glidewing workshop coming up in a few days. Perhaps you have an opinion: Is the workshop likely to provide something more than I would get simply by listening to these recordings on Facebook?

Oh boy. I think you have a point Cheya and plead guilty. Humor can be used to wonderful effect and I don`t think anything official should be done to discourage it, but not every thread needs to turn into open mike night at the comedy club. The best humor, in my opinion, doesn`t veer off the topic at all. It`s possible to write something funny which illuminates a topic rather than distracts from it -- harder to do than say just making fun of somebody, but possible.

Or you could take the two approaches and just mix them up so you`ve got a little bit of both in each growthful bite. Every moment of acceptance tinged with the effort to improve; every effort to improve tinged with acceptance. Works for me.

eehh...on second thought...

a notebook to write in a friend to talk to a forest to walk in being OK with how things are slowness

How do major mental disorders like schizophrenia and bipolar mix with meditation? I don`t think there are any easy answers. People with all sorts of conditions have both healed themselves and gotten a whole lot worse with meditation. Remember SFJane (I think her handle was) who healed herself from bipolar doing hours and hours of Bruce Francis style meditation a day? She wrote a book about it, not sure the title.

Pissing off a Black Dragon is never a good idea, especially when said Black Dragon is more or less ethically comfortable with revenge.

Fascinating. I think I`ve read stillness-movement people using that phrasing but didn`t realize what it referred to.

Thanks! The word quantum came to mind because my shiatsu teacher, Lindy Ferringo, was herself a student of Pauline Sasaki, founder of a bodywork style she named "quantum shiatsu." I like the word "presence" to describe the kind of integration and groundedness a person needs to have to make quantum healing wizardry happen. When a person has truly developed presence, little details like physical location no longer matter so much. If we can be truly present in this particular place and time, the place and time where we conventionally appear to be, we can be present anywhere and everywhere. Or at least I think so.

This reminds me of something a shiatsu teacher told me about her evolving understanding of qi and meridians. She said she used to think that the qi "flowed" in the meridians, but no longer held that view. At the time her comment made no sense to me, but I think I`m getting closer to understanding. The conventional worldview is that if something is over here and goes over there it has to pass through the intervening space. So if, for instance, a healer wanted to heat up a client she`d have to first heat herself up and then get close to the client so the heat could travel to the other person. How interesting that this isn`t what happens! I`m tempted to use the word "quantum" right now even though I haven`t the slightest clue what that word really means. Since I`ve quoted Brian, I`ll hold back on the pseudo-scientific analogies and instead talk about oneness consciousness. From the point of view of a sufficiently unified conscience, maybe energy doesn`t need to travel through anywhere. There`s no pipeline. It can simply show up wherever it`s directed without regard to the usual constrants of time and space. If any of this makes sense...

The beauty and elegance of the law, at least theoretically, lies in it`s blindness. When justice is meted out according to established principles, and in the same way for everyone, there`s a quality of dispassion. It`s about following procedure, not getting revenge. Because it`s dispassionate, it`s energetially neutral. The prison gaurd and the prisoner can treat each other with respect because they are both just "doing their jobs" in a system that is larger than they are. Revenge is typically motivated by passion: someone did something to me and I am angry. People commonly think that the act of revenge will discharge that passion, returning them to a place of emotional neutrality, it does not. Revenge is unethical first and foremost because it`s contrary to self-interest. Imagine if someone keys your car and to get back at them you key your own car some more. That`s revenge.

My own education hasn`t resulted in what anybody would think of as stunning financial success, but I don`t regret it for a minute. The world is an amazing place and learning about it is worthwhile, even if that learning doesn`t automatically translate into a huge paycheck. Of course, people have to make a living and there`s every reason to be practical and devote oneself to something that will make that possible. I will say however that some of the best learning I`ve done has been on my own. Intelligent self-study trumps classroom learning everytime because then you`re following your own enthusiasm rather than treading down a path provided for you by someone else. It all has to do with a little something I learned about in Psychology 101: intrinsic motivation.

It sounds like revenge sits better with you than it would with me. Perhaps part of your Black Dragon nature? I suppose someone could consider themselves "an instument of the tao" exacting justice like a force of nature. Can something that looks and smells like revenge happen in the natural course of wu-wei action/non-action? Perhaps, though I`d say this is a very high-level calling. Very few people can pull off such a state of consciousness, not to say you`re not one of them. I`d be cautious though. Rather than seeing oneself as a punisher, I`d prefer to focus on just having really super good boundaries. My understanding of boundaries is that it falls under the category of the metal element -- being sharp like a blade, perfectly reflective like a polished mirror. Having firm boundaries has a little bit of the same feeling tone as revenge. There`s the same sense of standing up for yourself, of not letting anybody mess with you, of knowing your worth and refusing to be treated as anything less. It`s a strong dragon-like stance in the world. It`s about self-respect. One more advantage of good boundaries: when you really have them, people instinctively sense it and treat you right. Revenge becomes less necessary because you`re rarely victimized.

I`m more of a hedonist than an ethicist, so I personally prefer to consider revenge in terms of how it feels. Contrary to the impression a person might get watching Hollywood movies, I find that most of the time revenge feels lousy. Well, actually I haven`t really revenged myself so much to know, but I`ve thought about it a lot. I`ve fantasized. My revenge fantasies have a certain dark momentum, but I find that they keep me energetically tethered to a situation I`d rather be free of. For me, revenge fantasies are like doughnuts: they taste good when I`m eating them but give me indigestion. What is revenge like for you? Do you truly enjoy it -- before, during, and after?

I want to join the group but I`m "not the kind of person they are looking for." It`s something of a catch 22, you see. My interest in learning a little bit about Mo Pai, both the nature of the techniques and the likely results of practice, disqualify me. Oh well. I guess I`m doomed to practice some untested and unscientific method like Spring Forest or Stillness-Movement or Flying Phoenix. Thank goodness I still have a few matches around if I need to light a piece of paper on fire or something.

IIlovecoffee, I`ll admit to having a bit of posting fun at your expense, so if your experience on the board truly has been painful I plead guilty. As someone who knows what it`s like to be frustrated, I hope that you can empathize with the frustration of the Bums here who honestly would like to have a reasonable conversation with you and find the way impossibly blocked. You see, you really could talk more about Mo Pai. You won`t but you could. The world would not come crashing down, honest to God. Maybe some people would criticize what you say or not believe it or whatever, but so what. Do you imagine that everyone here agrees with what I have to say? I can tell you for a fact that they don`t. One member considered my views on Islam criminal and said that he thought I should be imprisoned for 25 years. And yet here I am, still a free man, posting away to the delight of some and the chagrin of others, and only slightly the worse for wear.

Oh, if you were really in such pain you`d just leave. Of course the same could be said of myself. I suspect this little dance gives all participants pleasure, and displeasure, in roughly equal measure.