liminal_luke

And that belief, my friend, has put you in a Great Pumpkin prison.

I´ve long been interested in Kunlun practice (in an on-and-off way). It´s other name is Yi Gung, which I take to mean development of the Yi function. What it means to work with or develop the yi is a topic that interests me -- so thank you! Any further comments much appreciated.

Whether or not it´s advantageous I don´t know, but it´s for sure interesting. I´m wondering if her feeling sense is especially acute, in the same way that some blind people are extraordinarily sensitive to sound?

One of my favorites, Spring and Fall...by Gerard Manley Hopkins

But some of us come mighty close...

I agree. Thoughts are not necessarily a hindrance, and a silent mind is not a necessity. That´s an advanced position --very Dzogchen -- but nevertheless true. No getting anything past you, is there? I initially struggled with Spotless´s post because he seemed to be making all sorts of assertions and, at the same time, maintaining that they weren´t beliefs. They sure sounded like beliefs to me. Here´s what I think now. For a beginner, it´s more difficult to maintain awareness of presence while thinking. Perhaps that´s why many spiritual traditions focus on quieting the mind. It´s not that thoughts are bad, just that it is harder to be in a state of non-grasping while thinking. Most people who experience the thought "this Bhakti practice is really beneficial" will grab onto that thought in a way that separates them from the practice itself. But perhaps someone whose really stabilized in the experience of Bhakti can experience a thought as just another happening. The thought just bubbles up, maybe it even gets written down in a Daobums post, but nobody attaches to it. There´s nobody separate from the thought whose there to believe in it, Thought happens; thoughts without a thinker. Experienced in the radiant NOW with the same awed awareness normally reserved for a sunset or a kiss.

I believed exactly the same thing Jonesboy, but I think I understand a little more now. Let me try to put my understanding into words, and Spotless can correct me if I´ve got it wrong. Suppose you´ve decided to do a Bhakti devotion practice. You go to a Bhakti retreat, do intensive practice, and experience a moment of intense devotion. In that moment of pure practice you aren´t thinking "Bhakti is a great practice, this is really good for me." Your sense of devotion is so all-encompassing there´s no room left over for that thought. You are completely swept away by the sense of Bhakti. You are in it. Sometime later you might stop and think about the practice. You might say...Gee, this practice is really working, I am really getting benefit. But in the moment that you´ve stopped and made this evaluation, are you still feeling the devotion in the same way? Probably not. You´ve stepped outside of the practice in order to come up with a belief about it. That belief, while it might motivate you to continue the practice at some later time, is actually separating you, however subtly, from the practice itself.

Thanks Spotless! The image of watching the sunset and feeling momentarily swept away (or rather, momentarily stepping outside of belief) and resting in presence, made it clear for me. Well, at least it feels clear. I´m reminded of the Zapchen practice of wow -- consciously entering into a state of awe.

I feel intuitively that you´re really on to something, and want to get it -- but I don´t. How is the statement that "belief is the prison" not itself a belief? Or is it? If you don´t have beliefs, well, how do you believe anything? Maybe faith is like a belief but held really lightly? If your sense of me is that I´d do better just wrestling with this on my own, feel free not to respond. I don´t mean to bog down in hopeless and unuseful philosophizing. I just don´t really get it.

I certainly don´t claim to be more aware than you Brian, but I will say this: Where else but on the Daobums is healing sought and so freely given? SeekerOfHealing must be following some sort of wise internal guidance or he would not have found his way here -- and yes, that is cause for hope.

seizing, releasing the rhythm of the ocean in your body, too

I beg to differ.

The secret of being ultra-smart? Pick ultra-smart parents. Bonus points if they´re also well-educated, reasonably comfortable financially, and interested in your intellectual development. They should be the kind of people who expose you to a lot of learning opportunities early in life -- museums! the trumpet! snorkeling! -- and encourage you to explore whatever tickles you. If this advice is coming too late, you can always dedicate yourself to learning. What you learn may not make you ultra-smart, but it will make you learned. The people on Taobums who seem really smart to me are the ones who know a lot; their posts contain all sorts of obscure but interesting details. They know the things they do because they wanted to know them, and put in the work (usually reading) to satisfy their curiosity. You can too.

How come you never see a Russian doll out on the town? They´re homebodies -- they like to nest.

Almost all of us have ego needs: we want things because having them helps us feel good about ourselves. There is nothing so terrible, in my opinion, about fulfilling these ego needs -- provided you´ve got the cash. When the ego goes shopping for shoes, it doesn´t settle for sneakers; no, the ego wants those fancy smancy Monolo Blahniks from Neiman Marcus. When the ego goes to school, a local community college won´t do; the ego wants Harvard. And when the ego wants to develop spiritually it doesn´t sign up for a tai chi class or attend a free lecture on Buddhist meditation. That wouldn´t be good enough. The ego wants to have a private audience with a sparkly chi gung "master" with supernatural powers. Like I say, expensive.

No One calls himself dull and the rest of us benevolent. Luke raises a jaded eyebrow. No introduction and already two dubiously droll assertions. Should be interesting.

Those who are interested in non-pharmaceutical approaches to depression, might like to know about Dr. Kelly Brogan. http://kellybroganmd.com/. She´s a holistic psychiatrist in NYC who practices entirely without prescribing medication. Her book, A mind of Your Own, outlines the lifestyle recommendations she uses with patients to recover from depression and other mental illnesses.

You´re taking about the "chronically mentally ill" and "people with organic problems" as if they were separate groups. I´m not so sure about this distinction. It seems to me that people with serious ongoing mental difficulties. the kind of difficulties that keep them from living functional lives, have organic brain problems. Sometimes these problems are more subtle than a bang on the head, but the brains of people who suffer from, say, major depression are different from those who don´t. (I agree with you that non-destructive, non-chemical methods are under-utilized and often powerful.)

One thing´s for certain: patients should be informed about the effects of these drugs (side and otherwise) and allowed to make decisions for themselves about their own treatment. I don´t know how it is elsewhere, but here in Mexico psychiatrists ask questions and then just get their prescription pads out. There´s no discussion of options, it´s just "take this." My partner was prescribed Haldol, an old-style anti-psychotic. We bought the stuff at a pharmacy after leaving the doctor´s office and then checked it out on the internet at home. Turns out it can cause people to involuntarily stick their tongues out and make other weird movements, a "side-effect" that usually --but not always-- goes away if you stop taking the medication. Anyway, my partner took a single dose and had the worst nightmare of his life. So much for Haldol. Many people believe these medications are over-prescribed and that they do more harm than good. There´s lots of reason to think lifestyle interventions (chiefly diet and exercise) are a much better way to go. Of course, few psychiatric patients have the emotional stamina to say yes to the jogging track and no to chocolate cake. But some people do make these kind of changes in their lives, and they do get better. Still, I´m grateful that these medicines exist. When nothing else was working, they seemed to get my partner and I through some very hard times.

No, actually I was lying in bed thinking of Robert Frost. (His poem, here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/resources/learning/core-poems/detail/44272) Your post reminded me of a Taoist teacher I took some workshops from years ago who claimed that he was sometimes "two places at once." I´m a big believer in impossible sounding things, so I didn´t even blink when he started to go on about "bilocation." Who knows what possibilities open up when we really get, on a cellular level, that who we are is not limited to our physical bodies? It´s one thing to talk about whether or not we are only our bodies; quite another to have experiences that expand our notions of who we think we are. I´d like to discover for myself whether or not bilocation is possible. As fun as it is to debate, at some point ya gotta sit down and breathe. Or at least I do. In the meantime though, I offer this link about the quantum possibilities of being in two places at once: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/einstein-was-right-you-can-be-in-two-places-at-once-2162648.html

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I --

Thought this might be of interest to some: Human brain hard-wired for rural tranquility. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/human-brain-hard-wired-for-rural-tranquillity-8996368.html

Perhaps not, though I like to think your post above is a good start. When the forces that would destroy life gather round, you sound the alarm. You`ve got a forceful way of saying NO to that which is inhuman and cruel. (Maybe it`s a cat thing?) Anyway, I think there`s power in that.

Dust, I quoted you earlier to say that I believe in mind readers and such, but ST`s post reminded me what a powerful concept this last phrase is. My old Tai Chi teacher/ acupuncturist had this quote by Rilke on his desk. “The point of marriage is not to create a quick commonality by tearing down all boundaries; on the contrary, a good marriage is one in which each partner appoints the other to be the guardian of his solitude, and thus they show each other the greatest possible trust. A merging of two people is an impossibility, and where it seems to exist, it is a hemming-in, a mutual consent that robs one party or both parties of their fullest freedom and development. But once the realization is accepted that even between the closest people infinite distances exist, a marvelous living side-by-side can grow up for them, if they succeed in loving the expanse between them, which gives them the possibility of always seeing each other as a whole and before an immense sky.”Rainer Maria Rilke

This hasn`t been my experience. I won`t name names, but I happen to believe there is more than one mind reader active here on Taobums, and ghost whisperers are more commonplace than you might think. Vampire soul attacks are above my pay grade but I wouldn`t be surprised.