Sahaj Nath

your 10 years experience should be more than enough to give you the confidence that you'll fair well, so the fact that you're asking sort of suggests to me that you might live in your head a bit.

this may seem a bit obvious, but...

don't overthink it. 

part of putting your whole heart into it (as roger recommended) has to mean letting your head go. YOU ARE NOT YOUR THOUGHTS. no matter how neurotic the mind might become, it's just noise. energy. set it free.

the vast majority of failures i've seen are from people experiencing too much physical pain, and people too invested in/identified with their stories. 

just show up. no expectations. and never stop showing up. day by day. breath by breath. 

Master of Wuji Hundun Qigong, the system from which i derived my first name on this message board: Hundun. his teachings were a powerful force in my life, both in practice and in principle. 

received a message the other day that he passed away on July 12th. he was 107 years old. 

no doubt his legacy will live on for generations to come, blessing those who are fortunate enough to learn his ways and unlock the keys. 

farewell to a master who continuously celebrated the elegance within the chaos. 

when i saw her name, i knew immediately that she had passed. she and i had some great conversations over the years. i respected her a great deal. i'll be sure to reach out to her tonight.

thanks for letting us know, Dainin. 

Hi Sahaj

hi!

sorry it took me a while to get back to you. had stuff to do. 

When we enter 2nd tier, we start to understand AQAL and the equality of all the perspectives that AQAL contains.  Prior to this we are incapable of seeing the equality, we prioritise one of the quadrants and try to understand everything with reference to the one quadrant (Wilber calls this 'flatlanding' and it the hallmark of first tier thinking)

hm... no matter how many times i read your first post or this one, i don't see a description of what 2nd tier thinking actually is. that's why i was hoping you'd be able to point me to a source that supports your interpretation. also, i don't think you understand what flatland is, either. i think you are posing an interesting question, but i can't access it because the terms you're using to express it don't fit. i believe that YOU understand what you're talking about, but i can't seem to get there. so...

allow me to offer some descriptions of 2nd tier cognition and flatlining. 

2nd tier cognition marks a departure from the focus on needs based on deficiency, i.e., "i'm missing/lacking something; i need to acquire it," to a focus on the need to express, give, teach, serve, etc., based on one's fullness or completeness, i.e., "i am whole and at peace within myself; i can't wait to share whatever i can with the world." the 2nd tier cognizer has little-to-no fear, and doesn't compete or feel threatened by the other value systems. the 2nd tier appreciates the beauty in each of them.

you mentioned people wrongly convincing themselves that they've attained that integral stage of consciousness. that would most likely happen among the postmodern/pluralistic cognizers. they can appreciate that all value systems are relative and would be quick to defend those on the lower end, BUT, they tend to have a hard time accepting & dealing with the modern/materialist cognizers, who are closer to them than all the others below! the moderns see those beneath as inferior, weak, broken, whatever. and they see the postmodern as a bunch of pc hippies with irrational idealism. the postmoderns see the moderns as opportunistic, materialistic, heartless, and closed minded. the tension and disdain is evidence that the integral stage hasn't yet been realized. 

you tried to describe it in terms of quadrants and lines which just muddied everything up for me. and the equality of all perspectives is not something Wilber believes or supports in the slightest. he lambasts that attitude all the time because most folks who express that attitude think that they are being enlightened. just watch the video i linked in my last post. he and Surya Das touch on it and how it has this leveling effect where mediocrity rules and there is no space left for excellence, and other stuff. he gets into it deeper in other places, tho. 

now, onto flatlanding. 

rather than write an unnecessarily long explanation, i'm just going to copy/paste from A Brief History of Everything. it's a tiny clip and it's freely available online, so it should be an issue to share it here:

 

Ken Wilber: We all know the downsides of the merely Ascending path: it can be very puritanical and oppressive. It tends to deny and devalue and even repress the body, the senses, life, Earth, sexuality, and so forth. 

The Descending path, on the other hand, reminds us that Spirit can be joyously found in body, sex, Earth, life, vitality, and diversity. But the Descending path, in and by itself, has its own limitations. If there is no transcendence at all, then there is no way to rise above the merely sensory; no way to find a deeper, wider, higher connection between us and all sentient beings. We are merely confined to the sensory surfaces, the superficial facades, which separate us much more than join and unite us. Without some sort of transcendence or Ascent, we have only the Descended world, which can be shallow, alienated, and fragmented.

 

Q: You call the merely Descended world “flatland.”

 

KW: Flatland, yes. We moderns and postmoderns live almost entirely within this purely Descended grid, this flat and faded world of endless sensory forms, this superficial world of drab and dreary surfaces. Whether with capitalism or Marxism, industrialism or ecopsychology, patriarchal science or ecofeminism—in most cases, our God, our Goddess, is one we can register with our senses, see with our eyes, wrap with feelings, worship with sensations, a God we can sink our teeth into, and that exhausts its form. 

Whether or not we consider ourselves spiritual, we flatlanders worship at the altar of the merely Descended God, the sensory Goddess, the sensational world, the monochrome world of simple location, the world you can put your finger on. Nothing higher or deeper for us than the God that is clunking around in our visual field.

so what he's describing is not about being stuck in one quadrant. i don't even know how that would be possible, given what quadrants are. he's talking very specifically about being stuck in materiality, where the only thing we recognize as real is what we can access with our five senses. 

"Flatland, the idea that the sensory and empirical and material world is the only world there is."

--Ken Wilber

It is a revelation because all the words you have heard spoken or read have had to 'assume' one of the quadrants in order to be a coherant, sensible statement.  Then, out of nowhere, we suddenly see that all the words are provisional only and cannto capture the actual truth.

 

We must have apprehended some sort of higher truth if we are to realise that words cannot describe it.  Until this point we work on the assumption that words can and do capture the truth and so therefore argue passionately for w´hatever position we believe in.

this doesn't make any sense at all to me. what are the quadrants? 1st, 2nd, & 3rd person perspective. you get the 4 by splitting the 3rd person into sigular and plural. 1=subjective, 2=intersubjective, 3=objective, 4=interobjective.  the subjectives deal with our interior whereas the objectives deal with the exterior, so maybe there's something in THAT that you were going for.  but reading is ALWAYS a 2nd or 3rd person event. a letter to you might be considered 2nd person as an intersubjective dialog. a general story or informative literature is 3rd person. you may experience their impact on you as very personal (1st person), and you might consider implications for society (4th quadrant), but those types of things have NOTHING to do with cognitive development in the way that we're addressing it. 

again, i think you know what you're trying to talk about; i just think you're using the wrong words and concepts to do it. and until you can clarify what you mean without all the confusing jargon, i can't grasp it. 

i hope that was fair and not too critical. 

My recollection is that emotional maturity was one of the most important lines of development in his system, which is why he prescribed psychological methods and shadow work alongside meditation. I never got the impression that he was far along that line himself, just my impression from hearing his interviews and reading his words, for example he would talk about hiring prostitutes to practice Tantra and would release pictures of himself shirtless to the internet. 

actually, there really is no "most important line" in the Integral system. i'm not trying to just be argumentative here, and i'm not picking a fight. what i'm trying to get across is about understanding what integral really is. it's a map of human potential and an aid for human evolution. psych methods aren't so much prescribed as they are INCLUDED, his argument being that deep understanding of the psychological landscape is perhaps the greatest contribution of the western world to human development. it's included because there are things revealed through psych techniques that don't come up with mere introspection. so it's important, but NOT in the sense that without it integral doesn't work. it's important because we now have a map that puts the contributions of western psych on the table in a way that makes sense with everything else. just looking at its placement betters our understanding of the whole. for instance, Genpo's flaws is a good example. folks would argue that Genpo couldn't be evolved if he's still hung up on sex. the intergral framework would suggest that sexual maturity is one underdeveloped line, but that doesn't prevent a person from being highly evolved in a number of other lines. so it doesn't just explain Genpo, it explains any number of recognized masters who were sexist, racist, what have you. those flaws don't necessarily invalidate their enlightenment because the knowledge and techniques necessary to grow those traits effectively have never been part of the spiritual training. now that it can be, spiritual development should arguably be for accessible to more people and go more smoothly, if not also more quickly. 

i don't think you're wrong that some immaturity is present. in terms of personality types, INTPs are the weakest in the realm of emotional maturity, and i'm fairly certain Wilber is an INTP. incidentally, so am i, and yes, emotional maturity is easily my weakest trait. but being integrally informed doesn't mean i techniques to conquer that. it means i understand where my limitations are, and i can do some things to try and get stronger there, but more importantly it means i recognize my weakness and include that understanding in my decision making and recognize the need for compensation. like, i love psych theories, but i'd be an idiot to be a therapist. great teacher maybe, but not a therapist. weak example, but i'm just trying to make it simple and clear. 

I don't want to derail this thread too much but there is a ton of stuff on the web about Ali Da anyone can look up, Wilber goes on to call Ali Da a "fuck up" after he hears about what goes on at his ashram. And I doubt you will find a single ordained Buddhist who recognises Big Mind as a new turning of the Dharma, that term is usually reserved for a few select exceptional masters throughout history, the method didn't seem to help Genpo Merzel himself that much 

pretty sure i've read all the stuff on the web, about Adi Da, but i've also actually studied Adi Da. too many people have dismissed his work without ever even looking into it. it makes sense to go with the consensus on general matters, but not when it comes to esoteric ones. btw, is there a reason you keep calling him Ali? doesn't offend me or anything, just curious. but i feel like you're playing kind of loose with the details. my take on Wilber's feelings about Da come from Wilber himself, not to mention the fact that a number of his close integral friends were devotees, like Terry Patten. and others of his friends were disciples of Chogyam Trungpa. they are no strangers to flawed masters over there. so the fact that he used the words "fuck up" doesn't provide any clarity at all, unless you can establish that he was expressing outrage and was losing his temper, which i'm certain wasn't the case. more likely he was just being flippant & cheeky. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlLn77LLQ3M

Genpo's reputation is in the trash now, so i won't try to argue otherwise. but "from Wilber's perspective," Genpo's work to integrate western techniques of psychology into traditional zen was bold and meant to be a pivotal move for western dharma. but yes, it failed. not because what he created was a failure, but because he was behaving scandalously and the buddhist community can't afford to associate with that kind of moral failing. it's zero tolerance nowadays, and good on them for it!  

But the main point about these guys I was trying to make is that they were all endorsed as modern Western Integral masters and all of them showed themselves up to be not particularly developed along some of Wilbers lines. So where are the examples of Integral development? 

i get what you're saying, but i think you're fundamentally misunderstanding what integral is. no one stands as example of expertise in every or even most lines. that was never the point. the point was about inclusion of all knowledge and a deeper understanding of what we can do and how we can do it, which will ultimately give rise to new approaches. 

EDITED:

for clarification and grammar. i'm also re-posting the video i had originally embedded. was that erased deliberately by a moderator? 

Second-tier thinking seems to be a perspective that transcends all the usual dichotomies: inner and outer, individual vs collective.  So it takes something very real seeming like say, the body, and describes as nothing more than a version of reality.  Our physicality is just one of a number of lenses that we use to talk about reality.

 

For starters, do peope think that this a view that can be simpy taught.  It has seemed to me that the human mind will naturally revert to one of the lines of one of the quadrants and that when people imagine they are being integral, they are probably not at all.

 

Like for me, being integral requires a huge amount of intellectual, emotional and spiritual development.  Like I my case, I'm aware that I am integral cognitively, but not practically or emotionally.  

 

So I wonder whether Wilber's movement, and all the courses and all the disciplines are probably a bit of an illusion?

 

What do we think?

from where are you getting this understanding of 2nd tier thinking? i read your first paragraph a number of times, and i honestly just don't completely get it. the concept of 2nd tier thinking is derived from cognitive psych (which is why i mentioned those other thinkers with which i am familiar), but your explanation of it's meaning seems completely divorced from its intended context. in other words, i'm not sure that your pondering really has anything to do with 1st vs 2nd tier consciousness. 

it's possible that you're referencing some newer material of Wilber's that i know nothing about, but before i dive in, i need some clarity here. where does this definition come from, generally speaking? 

also, what do you mean by "one of the lines of one of the quadrants"? the lines don't at all belong to, nor are they bound by any particular quadrant. and a line is not a quality of thinking or a cognitive level, so they wouldn't be very relevant to your query at all, as far as i understand them. so if you don't mind, as best as you can, could you please clarify your meaning regarding these?

i'd love to share my thoughts, but i'm somewhat confused at the moment. 

I think if you look at Wilber himself he imagines himself to be integral, but I don't see much evidence for it, I see little evidence of much ego maturity and a lot of insecurity. I see someone who periodically recommends Guru's as being examples of modern advanced Integral devlopment, but almost without fail they eventually get revealed as abusers or immature.

 i'm not so sure that "maturity" is a fair measure of someone functioning at the integral level. and i'm not so sure the mere presence of insecurity equates to a LOT of insecurity. you may not like this argument, but much of what you see in Wilber's character might actually be a result of his genuine openness; he's not burning tons of energy trying to hide his shortcomings the way that most people automatically do.

his entire integral movement is all the evidence necessary for Ken Wilber to be considered integral. the core principle that everyone is right and, therefore, must be included. that no system is clever enough to produce 100% error, and so we include all that is good, beautiful, true, instead of rejecting entire areas because some of it was wrong. THAT, isn't just some cool idea he came up with; it's also a reflection of the space he's thinking from, how he's experiencing the world.  

He early on endorsed Ali Da Samaraj as a great master, but when the reports of abuse come out he retracts his support; then he says Zen teacher Gempo Merzel is turning a new wheel of the Dharma, who is later exposed as sleeping with his students; Wilber always heavily endorsed Andrew Cohen as a perfect example of Integral development, but recently Andrew wrote an open letter saying that he lacks the maturity to be a teacher any more and was using spirituality to hide from his issues. So clearly Wilber lacks practical judgement and examples of people in the real world who actually fit into his model. 

the way i see it, Adi Da IS a great master. or was, i should say. and while Wilber did write an essay distancing himself a bit from Da, he NEVER denounced him or came out against him. i own Da's major books and every DVD his community has produced. his lectures and satsangs are absolutely brilliant. as for the "reports of abuse," what are we talking about? some taboo & otherwise unconventional sexual practices that some of the members couldn't handle. serious tantric exercises that were only ever meant for a select few with the fortitude to benefit from them. Da's only real crime was the crime of hubris in thinking he could disseminate such highly restricted practices to such a large segment of the community. i don't doubt that some of the people who left were psychologically hurt by what took place, but even more people were healed and psychologically benefited from it. the advance stuff has some real dangers, but we can't let some television expose be the final word on something they knew nothing about. there were no children abused in Da's community. he wasn't just out there abusing his authority. he wasn't perfect, but there was a real method to his madness. but tabloids focused on the madness because that's what sells and that's all that conventional folks can understand.

as for Genpo, as far as Wilber's work is concerned, he DID turn a new wheel of the Dharma by fully integrating methods of western psych to peel apart the layers of the ego through the Big Mind process. his sexual indiscretions aren't relevant to the efficacy of the techniques he developed. Wilber once called Genpo "a deeply DECENT human being, which (incidentally) is much harder than being enlightened." well, Wilber got the decency thing wrong for sure, but let's not throw out what he got right. 

now, Andrew Cohen. i never dug that guy. very little redeeming about him as a Guru; but as a philosopher, he's contributed some brilliant insights to what they describe as evolutionary enlightenment. Andrew's greatest contribution IMO, is that he had a ruthlessly critical eye that could expose inconsistencies & absurdities in a way that doesn't come natural for Wilber. so as a colleague in a brain trust, i get it. but otherwise, not so much.

please change my username to:

Sahaj Nath

thank you.

go ahead and discuss it! post your questions or ponderings or whatever. i'm pretty familiar with ken wilber's work, as well as the theories of maslow, kohlberg, carol gilligan, and clare graves, which are relevant to the topic of cognitive development.

don't know if i can answer what's on your mind, but i'd very much like to know what it is.  

Realisation and energy work are the same thing.  The student who sees with his wisdom that he is not trapped in time and space, will feel the same truth in his body.  He will feel unbounded; the pleasure of liberation will be felt as a pleasure that cannot be contained by the body.

 

Mooji's error is that he is seeing things only from the witness state, where all things are meaningless and passing phenomena.  He relegates energetic experience as being more of the 'story' when in actual fact the energy work is itself the liberation.

 

The opposite error is to turn energy work into a 'technique'.  Practice X will cause effect Y, where Y= realisation.  

 

Both these errors are dualitic in nature.  Mooji's dualism is relegating everything energetic to the category 'mere phenomenon'.  It is what happens when you use your mind too much and interpret everything according to the way the witness sees.   Damakos's student's error is in splitting the unsplitable into two components and seeing causal relations between them.

 

Intellectual realisation and felt (energetic) realisation are the same thing, viewed from different modalities.  An electrical storm looks like flashes of lighting to the eye, and crashes of sound to the ear.  But we do not say that lighting causes thunder, or vice versa

 

Energy work only looks like mere phenomena when viewed from the mind.  Energy work only 'causes' realisation for those who aren't using the mind enough.

 

Get the balance right, and you will see that Mooji and Damakos are saying the exact same thing!

some really important insights in this post. points that are almost always overlooked and completely lost on the overly academic and the overly religious alike. you should consider reworking this into a stand-alone thread. 

i would have greatly benefited from a conversation with you two years ago.

No one has done anything wrong, no one needs to apologize.  It sounds like you have a bit of a thin skin, though.

i used to have a reputation for being harsh and overly confrontational. i'm trying to be a better person these days. but i still know sniping when i see it. your attitude in that post was both perplexing and unwarranted.

Really??   Heres a quote from your comment, the part I was responding to:

 

 

So I guess what you are saying is that the 32 year old student who processed at the level of a 7th or 8th grader - was progressing fine anyways?  You are saying he was inquisitive, but of below average intelligence - but he still progressed with no problems, as any other student?  So then Im wondering - whats the problem?

there's no complaint there about his rate of progress. my complaint was about his belief that self-inquiry was a good fit and the fastest path for him. i think what i'm saying there is very clear. not only did you misinterpret it, but you added a back-handed insult to it as well with the whole "maybe the student isn't the problem" bit.

It seems a bit odd... just your whole line of reasoning is odd to me - from what I understand you are saying that the only quality that makes one suited for self-enquiry is high intelligence, high IQ.  Skipping through everything else - Id disagree with that.  Im going to reiterate my statement above, that inquisitiveness is a good sign for being suited to self-enquiry. 

well, clearly you don't understand, and you're not even trying to. i never said IQ is the only measure, skip everything else. that's an asinine position. not all genius manifests the same way. i said previously that i was pointing to an innate quality of mind, and IQ is a factor, i think the most over-looked factor. i even mentioned "existential depression" as a common affliction for the type of quality of mind that i was pointing to. look up the term. like i said above, look at how often the term is paired with giftedness and then try to understand what i'm saying about quality of mind. it's not about being smarter or knowing more than others; i'm talking about a qualitatively different experience of the world. just like the video clip i posted. did you watch that? did you consider its implications? 

you stated that you were trying to indicate a particular predisposition that's more aligned to self-inquiry than a path like devotion. i didn't misunderstand you. i argued that your "particular predisposition" isn't enough by itself, that innate intelligence has to be a part of that disposition, and i gave an example of a student who has the disposition you outlined, but lacks the IQ.

i've tried to be painfully clear throughout, and it's like you're insisting on misunderstanding me. i don't think i wish to continue this dialog, but you're welcome to have the final word if you like.

Im not sure what prompted you to ride my comment off into another tangent altogether (although I have some theories).  I never said self-inquiry is easy, or that anyone can do it, as long as they are inquisitive.  I was trying to indicate a particular predisposition that is more aligned to it than another path, specifically the devotional one.

i wasn't trying to be nasty. not even a little bit. but somehow i managed to piss you off anyway.... well, go ahead and have a piss then. i didn't join this thread for a sniping session.

and just to respond to your first comment, which seems to be what offended you... my comment is not even close to "riding" yours off into another tangent unless your comment had nothing at all to do with my argument, which was the subject of discussion that revived the thread.

i'd apologize, but i just don't see how i did anything wrong.

Beyond that, teachers who complain about their students not progressing fast enough are always pretty suspect, IMHO.  In other words, maybe the student isn't the problem...

okay, maybe. but neither i nor anyone else in this thread complained about their students not progressing fast enough. i just wanted to express my frustration with the popularity and ubiquity of "self-inquiry" practices and get some feedback and exchanges going.  i think what you just did here is more of a "riding my comment into another tangent altogether" than anything i've said so far.

no, but it sounds like maybe you have.

never really had any interest in meeting the guy, to be honest. i'm just grateful for the inspiration he's given me. both he and Bradford Keeney have had a major impact on my relationship to the internal arts. i would love to thank them both some day, but i'm probably not going to fly somewhere to do it. *shrugs*

the video is basically an advertisement for the Ratu Ashram, which is why it focuses so heavily on transmission. the reason i overtly stated that transmission is not a necessity is simply because far too many people focus on using the perfect or exact technique rather than recognizing that it's an art. as soon as you turn it into an overly specific set of protocols, you're sure to kill the magic.

i recall a couple of years back when some folks were discussing the benefits of "rebounding" here in the general discussion. people seemed to get all caught up in believing that they needed to purchase a trampoline in order to do it right, as if rebounding were somehow uniquely different from just bouncing in place or shaking practice.

so my hope is that people will watch the video and focus more on the parts where it shows how everyone moves differently, where it says that nobody's ever going to come up to you and tell you you're doing it wrong, and where it talks about how YOU are actually HEALING YOURSELF.

the highest technique is to have no technique. to greet each session freshly, allowing the body-mind to express anew. to approach with a sense of wonder or amusement, with no expectation of how it will turn out this time.

OR

just find what's comfortable for you, stick to that, and see how it goes!

wow these folk are taking shaking to the next level! the chi kung warm up (pre-meditation practice) i've been taught has some shaking down in it and i find that part to be immensely useful. helps opening up, bringing the chi online and loosens the charge for people with a lot of stuff coming up. a good shake then refining the energy by bringing it back down to finish the warm up off. will definitely check out the video, makes sense this is an actual practice...

exactly. when i was a student back in the day, i learned shaking as just a part of the warm-up. it was pretty cool when i was able to introduce my master to shaking as its own practice, especially given that it induces spontaneous natural flow movement if you do it long enough. he was kind of blown away by it.

my love of shaking practice is kind of old news at this point, but i finally uploaded the full Ratu Bagus DVD to youtube. it's a difficult DVD to get your hands on, so i figured it was time to go ahead and post it.

maybe it will inspire some folks to give shaking practice a try. these folks shake for 6 hours each day at the ashram, in 2-hour sessions. that's HARD CORE! i don't get down quite like that, but the benefits that they report are beautiful. transmission from a master is always good, but it's not a necessity for this practice.

anywho, here it is. enjoy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBs9yr5tSfE

a friend just sent me this clip. it's so close to what i was trying to express that i began to tear up a little bit as i watched it.

it's not perfect, mind you. but it's SO good!

I don't know, personally in my daily life I get to meet and interact with some of the brightest minds from Cambridge University and just about all of them think they can find their way out of their problems and existential issues with their thinking minds, so in one sense their brilliant minds increase their sense of ego and identity within the mental realm more than the average person as they have been praised for their thinking and intelligence their whole lives. I haven't tried to do any enquiry with them but they have so much self invested in their minds that I doubt many of them really want to discover that the mind is a false king sitting on the throne.

 

I guess having an open mind and being inquisitive are qualities often found in high intelligence and education can help break down rigid concepts and views, but I still find it hard to directly correlate intelligence with capacity to do enquiry. Take for example Sri Nisargatta Maharaj, he was pretty much uneducated and considered unremarkable and he says he made such advances spiritually basically because he trusted his Guru, that was it, his Guru said just keep coming back to the "I am" and he trusted him so that is what he did. Why he trusted him so completely I don't know but personally I think such things are more to do with intuition or heart intelligence than anything else. 

fair enough.

i was hoping that you would do a little bit of digging into what existential depression is and how it relates to intelligence. i'm pointing to an innate quality of mind that has nothing, NOTHING to do with education. in fact, more highly gifted young people actually drop out of school than any other group because they're so ill-suited to the rigid, linear structure and the notion of a letter grade incentive. the ones who make it to elite institutions are the few and the lucky. 

so given your example, i don't know enough about Nisargadatta Maharaj yet (just started reading up on him a little while ago), but i would suggest that his master recognized a certain quality of mind for whom such inquiry was a fit. if you can show me that his master gave these same instructions to all of his disciples and many of them awakened, then that would definitely counter what i'm talking about. do you know? guess i'll look it up for myself.

"Keep chasing the I and with any luck you'll end up disappearing up your own ass" - Wayne Liquorman

 

Basically enquiry is just examining what is true, especially on the level of our own beliefs so it can be a gradual unravelling of the mind like with the work of Byron Katie rather than a direct penetration into the "I", which isn't a difficult process but few people are willing unless they are suffering because who wants to see that they are wrong or see that they are living a lie? people would rather do anything to cover up their own untruths because to let go of them can be perceived as a loss and can even be perceived to threaten their existence.

pretty much i agree with this, except for the fact that you still insist on claiming it's not a difficult process. IT IS, PRECISELY for the reason you give right after saying it's not difficult! i like that you ended on "threat to their existence." let me see if i can bring you along with me just a little...

In some ways a simple person is going to have an easier time with enquiry because their mind wont have woven a great deal of elaborate sophisticated concepts and thoughts around their life and identity, so I don't think it has to do with IQ as much as it is to do with being willing and people are only usually really willing when they have nowhere else to go, or they are suffering too much, or they have basically come to an end and the common delusions of life are no longer very convincing, or they have a really deep inner heart longing for the truth.  

 the person with "nowhere else to go" as you just put it, the person suffering in such a way, genuinely, is the person enmeshed in existential depression. but do a search and see just how often existential depression comes up in relation to giftedness or above-average intelligence. the thing about existential depression is that it's not a malfunction of the brain or a chemical imbalance or anything like that. it doesn't respond to anti-depressants. it's actually something right with the brain, but an inability to cope due to one's oblivious and unsupportive environment. this points to the tendency of the gifted to see the naked truth of things in a way that no one else around them does. now this also occurs in people who have experienced sudden loss or traumatic events sometimes, but for the gifted it tends to be a natural part of their developmental cycle.

you can't equate below-average intelligence with simplicity as if it's akin to clarity. have you met a lot of middle school kids with profound clarity and self-awareness? i doubt it. the mind of a young teen is not simple. it's a big ball of confusion, fantasies, identity crisis (the need to find where they fit in), and emotions mistaken for truths. Forrest Gump didn't have very sophisticated concepts about his identity, but as his teacher i wouldn't be in a rush to suggest self-inquiry.

i don't know. you can disregard that last paragraph. what are your thought on the existential depression thing. did i bring you along even a little bit?

EDIT: i guess my claim can be summed up like this: you give me 10 19-year-olds with above-average intelligence and a tendency towards existential depression, and in 5 years i could guide at least half of them to realization with self inquiry as the primary strategy. but give me 50 average or slightly below average folks, and it's very likely that one or fewer will succeed after 10 years of the same process.

i'm gonna leave most of that alone and focus on the one key area that sort of underlies the reason for my commenting in this thread to begin with.

 

Inquisitiveness in general is a great aid to this practice - if you are driven to uncover mysteries, you are well suited to this.  If you are driven to sing songs and hold hands, it may not be as fruitful.

--if it only it were so easy. we should have glut of enlightened beings walking around here in the West, then. it's not so much that you're wrong completely, but that honest self-assessment is in short supply. this is one of those areas where IQ matters. [and PLEASE don't use this as an opportunity to debate standardized testing!]

as an exaggerated example (by which i mean the example is true, but the truth of it is not limited to this extreme case), i once had an inquisitive student who was 32 years old, but he processed at the level of maybe a 7th or 8th grader. he wasn't "special needs" or anything, but he did possess below-average intelligence. he loved all things mystical and scientific, but he didn't have a talent for either. and guess what he thought his fast track to enlightenment would be? HINT: it wasn't bhakti.

cognitive capacity isn't simply a matter of inquisitiveness, but cognition is ESSENTIAL to the efficacy of self-inquiry.

everyone believes they're on the level, or that it's just a matter of preference. and they will go on believing these things, i guess. so maybe there's no point in discussing it any further.  

-------

 

My post was very specific to the original post:

 

We seekers often spend a great deal of time reading and getting quit specific in all the details but it is our practice that makes us more prone to the accident of awakening. The great shifts are often hindered and walled off by our reading - we end up having to breach the wall of preconceptions we have concocted from our reading.

 

Our teachers try to find the best of the inadequate words they can cobble together in hopes that some may glean the fragments they need to move forward - it is inbetween the words that the message shines.

 

As the big shifts take place in each and every case you will find they are not as you expected - they are far beyond your expectations, far more subtle or far more powerful and alive. Many progressions gain strength in such new ways as to constantly jerk you from your ground and remind you that you know nothing.

 

The simple meditation and breathing and self remembering in the day - this is the practice that puts the turtle in first place most of the other stuff is the rabbit chase.

 

Along the way many high experiences will take place - it is amazing how quickly they are taken for granted as we continue unfolding.

The growth and what you seek is not in the noise of the text but in the heart beat behind it. The perseverance of that beat is in the practice - constantly breaking pattern until pattern is of no value - because it is essentially noise and drops aways to become a faint background static that is then a reality one can step into and out of but no longer an automated happening within a cage of patterns that fit our liking - the liking of the usurper of our lives - our mind.

Amen.

Perhaps the outstretched arms in the prone position is for the purpose of expamding the lungs for inhaling oxygen for the return positions?  Only reason I can think of for including it.

what about the fact that it's just a beautiful expression of reverence & submission. isn't that more important (in this context, at least) than its utility as an exercise component? perhaps it's more an emotional component than a physical one, being that it's a spiritual practice.

Hundun,

 

Love the shaking!  Wondering about a few things.  How long do you recommend shaking for a beginner?  How long do you practice it yourself?  

 

Also wondering whether or not you see it as different from Sifu Jenny Lambs Yi Gong?

 

I´d be grateful for any thoughts.

 

Thanks,

 

Liminal

unless a person has some sort of physical limitations, i would shake for at least 15 minutes. the sessions at my house will go for 20-30 minutes depending on the day, with an additional 15 minutes in Yao Feng Bai Liu (flowing breeze, swaying willows), where we just stand in surrender, allowing the flow of energy to have its way.

i would say that Yi Gong is more like Yao Feng Bai Liu than it is shaking because shaking always starts out with the practitioner deliberately shaking out the body before anything spontaneous arises. with Yi Gong and Yao Feng Bai Liu you can either initiate small movement, or you can simply relax and wait for movement to arise on its own.

i think shaking works as a powerful lead-in to the other two. i practice all three, however.

i think natural flow practices are essential to a true understanding of Wu Wei. it eventually dawns on you that there is no "you." even when not engaged in practice, the body-mind ceases identity and functions without the notion of a self. thoughts, actions, and behaviors arise just as spontaneously as the energized movements of the practices.

i've tasted realization more than once with these methods.

Jox,

you, sir, are a puzzle. such beautiful openness to possibility in this regard; why then such a conventional attitude against something like shaking practice?

First video, she make it just fine, but I would rather stay in the grass ... 

 

Second video, cant help, but reminds me more of some cult group dynamic ...

think of it like sex. when the intensity's real, you're not putting on a pretty face for your partner or the cameras. when you really let go, nothing is contrived.

there are plenty of other practices that don't involve spontaneous natural flow. however, when the kundalini is awake and kicking during practice, it might look like this whether you like it or not. *shrugs*