Sahaj Nath

a piece i wrote back in '07 in the 'Contributed Articles' section. flows pretty well with the OP's intent, methinks.

more than any other facet of one's practice, the genuine quality of self that one brings to their practice is the greatest deciding factor of whether or not authentic development will continue. there are thousands of techniques designed to accomplish common ends. most of them work. enough so that i feel fairly comfortable stating that, in general, all of them work. the tools of cultivation are plenty, but without a quality understanding of one's own being in terms of presence and motive, how can one expect to use the tools effectively?

here in the materialist west we seem to have a hard time coming to terms with the fact that it is WE who use the tools; the tools do not use us. meaning that the tools may vary in efficiency, but even mediocre or bad tools can be used effectively if one possesses quality understanding. the beginning stage of practice should be geared toward refining this necessary quality. quickly moving past this foundation is one way to ensure that the highest stages will never be realized in this lifetime. one NEVER moves past the foundation! i should repeat this point: one NEVER moves past the foundation. it's not linear progression; it can't be. everything we seek is already here, right now. NOW is the only place where anything can ever be. this accounts for why devastatingly profound awakenings happen periodically to novices and non-practitioners, and often DON'T happen to seasoned practitioners even after decades of practice.


if you live the vast majority of your life treating each moment as means to an end, it doesn't matter much what you practice. you're lost. and if you choose to remain in that state of (un)consciousness, it will likely take an external circumstance, such as a tragedy or a near-death experience, to shake you up enough to even begin the process of opening your eyes. sometimes it's an experience immense beauty that triggers it, but not as often.

for the person who bypasses the majority of life as a mere means to an end, awakening only happens by accident. the best that they can hope for is that their practices will somehow make them more accident prone.


breathe deep. embrace the simplicity of now. do it this very moment, as you read this. do it now. and most importantly, never stop doing it! THIS is essential to cultivation and evolution. it's a state which one strives to make a permanent condition. one never stops breathing deep. one never stops living and moving and being in the present moment. now is all there it. now is all there ever is. everything that has ever occurred, or ever will occur, can only occur in the now.

through this understanding each breath becomes a universe unto itself. each moment of relaxation becomes a whole and complete healing. nothing is wasted. nothing is ignored or denied. this is the true state of cultivation, and it is also the state that one works to acquire until it simply IS. this is radical presence, and there can be now wakefulness, no evolution, and no high level of development, without it.

every action is a ritual. every motion is a dance. every thought and emotion is an entity that either nourishes or depletes us. on a more subtle level we begin to understand that the constant flux of energy (within us and around us) creates as well as destroys. all phenomenon contains both. but the profound simplicity of radical presence entrains us to harmonious resonance with each breath, in each moment.


if one were to understand only this in one's lifetime, one would not have lived in vain.



hsing is both form and force. it has no direct translation in english. but it can be understood. one of the many basic principles that can be derived from the notion of hsing qi is that energy follows thought. the unconscious state is one of reckless, toxic thinking habits.

breathe deep. settle down. keep it simple. if you're always in the past or in the future, if you're seldom or never right here, right now,

you're wasting precious time...

i think i just might turn out for this. i'll definitely keep it in mind for the coming months.

might even be willing to workshop a little, exchange some teachings/practices.

if i do attend, i promise to play nice.

i think Castaneda is a fraud. and i think his books had a tremendous impact on a lot of people's lives and inspired them to ultimately become the serious cultivators that they are today, and because of that, they will always give him far more credit than he deserves.

he stole from anthropologists and pulled some pieces almost verbatim from their texts. his teachings were far from mainstream, but they were available through the works of people like Alexandra David-Neel, Joseph J. Weed, Rudolf Steiner, Aliester Crowley, and many others. (i'm not saying that he stole from each one of these people; i'm saying that these peoples' works were available at the time that castaneda wrote his books, and they offer the same principles.) the specifics that made his teachings unique were most likely fabrications, and the principles that gave those teachings any merit were stolen from elsewhere.

the only known and undisputed teacher of carlos castaneda is Howard Lee. Howard Lee is legit, although i don't know about the stuff he's teaching these days. http://thetaobums.com/topic/21417-top-5-20112012/?p=306080

Castaneda did try to convince Lee to call his cultivation teachings "qigong sorcery," "taoist sorcery," or "chinese sorcery." he was prepared to focus on Lee as the master of masters in his writings so long as Lee would acknowledge Castaneda as his most gifted student. and from there, they would travel the western world teaching their system. but Lee didn't sign on.

this was from a conversation with some of his long-time students. at the time i didn't even know who Castaneda was, but they were expressing their disdain for american new age "nonsense," and providing me with context for why Lee didn't think much of my reiki training.

that's all i got.

Juliank and C T,

Right on!

no need to repeat what the two of you have already articulated.

personally, i really like how easy and uncomplicated my external life is, given the complexity and weightiness of my inner world. been single for 7 years now. i really love doing whatever the hell i want whenever i want without having to check in with anyone. on a whim i can go to the mountains or river, or just unplug and be on private retreat right here in my own home. in my last serious relationship, i had to stop spending nights along the river because she couldn't understand it and believed that i must be seeing some other woman. even thinking about it right now makes my stomach tense up a little bit.

even on my laziest days, i spend more time in cultivation than most folks who work a full-time job. the freedom is priceless. and quite honestly, i've never experienced a high in a relationship that could compete with the joy of deep spiritual communion. my goal has never been bliss, but if ever i am in need of that comfort, the divine is easily accessible.

hermits and monastics are not living miserable lives. but so many people who are in relationships are unhappy or unsatisfied to great extents. some folks truly belong in family life, but many people just don't know what else to do. they're lost, and family life is just their port in the storm.

"The reason normal people got wives and kids and hobbies, whatever, that's because they don't got that one thing that hits them that hard and that true. I got music; you got this. The thing you think about all the time, the thing that keeps you south of normal. Yeah, makes us great, makes us the best. All we miss out on is everything else."

--House: Season 1. "DNR"

So... i guess it's just me then.

i attended one of his first seminars back in either '97 or '98. at the time my body was still shorted out from the transmission i received from Howard Lee the year prior. i could no longer perceive or project energy from any place except my hands. everything else was shut down, burnt out, and i thought it was permanent.

my mother heard about him on some conspiracy theory radio talk show, and she brought it to my attention. back then i knew very little about anything, and i didn't know the difference between new age fluff and authentic spiritual teachings. lucky me, i guess, because that seminar turned everything around for me.

back then he didn't have a big program as he does now. he even said that what he had to offer didn't take more than an hour to transfer to everyone, but he made it two-day program because people wouldn't really value it otherwise. so he told a lot of stories that were just filling time, and he had us practice on each other. most of the women there seemed to be crushing on him, but i got the distinct feeling that he wasn't into women. truth be told, had he come out about his sexuality, he would not have attracted nearly as many students. it's a shame, really. but then again, i don't know definitively what his orientation is, i just remember all the awkwardness in the seminar from clingy women, and how he seemed to light up more around the fellas.

anywho, the lessons were pretty much bogus. everything of value could have been said in 20 minutes, yet the seminar ran for 2 days. and there was a lot of new agey belief stuff that didn't help one way or another. but the energy itself was legit. it was a much more gentle energy than what i had been working with, so a part of me felt like it was a step down, but pains and fevers and the feeling that my entire body was short-circuited... all that was healed by the time i went home. my relationship to the energy was very different. i didn't feel like i had the ability to boss it around like i had prior to master lee. but i was able to feel the presence of trees and people again. i was able to perceive beyond myself without the need to use my hands again. all in all, it was very good for me.

basically, anything you can say about his new agey-ness is probably true, and had i discovered him today, i never would have looked twice. but meeting him helped me in a pretty big way, so i remain grateful that he's out there doing what he's doing.

oh, i should probably add that it was only after receiving the reconnection that i started to have people twitching, shaking, and moving spontaneously when i worked on them.

I am speaking to the ability to do by not-doing which is what the Sage can do. You're speaking of the individual phenomena that occurs, the physical manifestation. True maturation of the kundalini gifts goes beyond just the individual; it involves sorcery. Kundalini is a mean to an end. You are focused on the means.

you should have asked me for clarification. admittedly, my post could have been interpreted a number of ways, but you didn't give me nearly enough credit with your interpretation. it's all good, though.

my point is not to highlight the phenomenon being displayed, because what is being displayed is NOT an expression of the fully matured, unobstructed kundalini. the point is that the phenomenon that is displayed is arising out of non-doing. when the spiritual practitioner is fully mature and K is fully expressed without obstruction, the physical phenomenon will manifest as the natural flow of life, and right action will arise effortlessly of its own accord. however, such action will STILL be arising out of a state of non-doing, and not some list of behavior patterns that can be determined beforehand. there's no assumption of control of outcome, yet what comes out is backed by the momentum of nature itself.

what i'm suggesting is that wu wei is more a condition than it is an idea. what you have expressed so far is wu wei as merely an idea, alongsinde different acts and contrivances that you've decided can be rationalized under that idea. that's not any wu wei that i'm familiar with.

i think true wu-wei, when it's fully matured and unobstructed looks closer to THIS than anything you seem to be imagining.

i think you might be missing the point. on one level you are correct that meditation & spiritual practice are not akin to some kind of fantasy vacation, but on the other hand, the imagery does function as an apt metaphor of the vastness, beauty, peace, and clarity of the meditative mind.

i don't think it's so wrong to associate meditation practice in this way, especially if it gets more people to explore it.

Do you mean the trademarked Whole Body Breathing method of Anna Coy, or simply the Buddha's Satipatthana Sutta: “As you breathe in, breathe in through the whole body; as you breathe out, breathe out through the whole body” ?

um... the Buddha's method, i guess. we start with breathing at the feet and work our way up to the top of the head, and then maintain a full-body awareness, feeling the body expand and contract as if itwere a sponge afloat in a sea of energy.

i have to second Soaring Crane's recommendation of Healing Promise of Qi. it's an incredible book with theory, structure, and practice. lots of exercises to try out that are totally safe.

also, spring forest qigong is really good and really simple. i think i might be in the minority around here because i don't practice small universe and i've never encouraged any of my students to practice it. i think it's easy to get unpleasant side-effects once you've got a strong flow of qi going. and i just don't find it necessary. if your practice is solid, the small universe will become apparent without any need to focus any effort on it. remember the advice of Harmonious Emptiness above. it's good advice.

i personally think whole body breathing is a superior practice. plus, it's a whole lot safer and easier to get right.

easy.

1.) Healing Promise of Qi by Roger Jahnke.

2.) Qigong Empowerment by Shou-Yu Liang and Wn-Cheng Wu

3.) The Essence of Internal Martial Arts, Vols 1 & 2 by Jerry Alan Johnson

as far as a single book that has it all... it really depends on what you're looking for and what you consider to be intermediate-to-advanced.

i value principles over techniques, so a book like Qigong Empowerment isn't quite as good to me as Healing Promise of Qi is. Johnson's books have a good blend of both, but the info is martial oriented.

HI Hundun, nice to see you here, last time I saw you say here you mentioned how rare it is that you can be bothered to post on any threads here, nothing here is of any interest to you really...so, thanks for dropping by on this important forum issue, which a lot of very regular posters who are part of this community are hoping to discuss meaningfully..so.....

 

can I just get this straight.. I have two questions I am unclear on:

 

1.you are saying you advocate preserving record of peoples correspondences.. against their will.

 

2. Do you often read personal correspondences here, or take part in them?

yes, cat, i did say something similar. my exact words were "first topic in a while that i was actually excited to open and read. "

you seem to have interpreted that comment in a far uglier manner than i had ever intended. i was genuinely excited about the discussion topic and couldn't wait to see where it would go. i don't feel that way very often like i used to back in '07 and '08, and i said as much. sorry if that offended you.

you also seem to saying (by implication) that i'm not a legitimate member of this community because i don't post regularly enough...? i could be wrong, but that's what it seems like you're implying here.

i've been here for 5 years, and i believe that i have made meaningful contributions to the community in written substance, personal assistance, and even financial donation. so yeah, i still say i'm a legitimate member. and i'm quite sure there will be another period in which i am posting/commenting more, it's just not now.

as for your questions:

1.) YES. that's exactly what i'm saying. and as an example my above post starts with the fact that i myself have shown my ass around here on more than one occasion. i say let the record reflect that fact. to me it's an issue of honesty and integrity. and one of the reasons i don't post as often is that i still have an intellectual tendency towards criticism and combativeness, and i'm trying to learn the lesson that tearing things/people down at every turn isn't always the best approach to get at the truth of something. i still really enjoy critical debates, but i also know that i have hurt people here when that wasn't at all my intention, so these days i prefer to shut up and read unless i have something to say that's more constructive than critical. but i am who i am, so i remain silent most days.

2.) when you say "personal correspondence," it sounds like you're talking about PM's. but YES, i do participate in discussions here. by READING them. by pointing out certain discussions to friends. by engaging some of our members through PM or on facebook or in-person. and yes, when i feel moved to, by contributing directly here in the forum.

maybe i'm misreading the tone of your comment, but you seem a bit aggravated by my post. but i AM a member here, and i love what this board represents. being a member here has literally changed my life. and no one can quantify or qualify that in terms of my right to participate in rules discussions.

it's all love. no hard feelings.

there have been times when i have shown my ass on this message board, yet i have never once deleted a post. and i never will.

but sometimes i go back to a post after a day or so and with to correct grammar or structure to add more clarity to the post, and i would still like to be able to do that.

for instance, i made a recent post quoting Mark Griffin, and i wrote verbatim as he spoke it, rather than editing for clarity in the written form. and it wasn't until i went back to make the corrections that i realized the editing feature had been changed.

if there's a problem with abuse and people erasing posts, then i say do what you have to do to preserve the record of correspondences. i'll get over it. but ideally, as someone who never erases posts, i'd like the flexibility of making corrections.

that's all.

"...Consciousness, dividing itself from itself, expressing itself unconsciously. And this has always been the question: What happened? How did it happen? Why did it happen? Meher Baba says it was the arising of a whim. I always found that [to be] a spectacular thing to say. Cause what is a whim? It's something that arose out of nowhere. Whims don't have a reason, they don't have a purpose. If it had an intent, then it wouldn't be a whim, it would be an intention.

i think that's as close to an explanation that we're ever going to get."

--Mark Griffin (from the "Bliss of the Guru" video)

a brief synopsis of Meher Baba's notion of the Whim:

So you're suggesting that everything in the world HAS to happen, regardless? Like "filling the gap in the market" if you will?

 

I've been watching Sam Harris on Youtube talking about free will. Very interesting stuff!

no. what i'm trying to suggest, however crudely, is that our actions and dramas are superficial, and perhaps only a few of them are inevitable. the play and movement of energy/consciousness can manifest itself in innumerable ways. the quality of violent dispersion of embodied lifeforce might be inevitable, but HOW it unfolds in our linear experience is NOT predetermined; it could express itself as the 3rd Reich, or as a science experiment gone awry.

this can be considered on MANY levels. a person is living in a probability stream where he will die violently in one of two ways, and the probable events are set to manifest 4 years apart. a fatal car accident would produce different karmic waves than a fatal shooting, and the energetic (emotional/psychological) difference in impact between the two could create momentum in the flow of probability somewhere else, or could absorb probability from somewhere else.

i'm also suggesting that there's no good or evil in the unfolding of cause and effect. and that the working of karma is very poorly understood by most.

i don't know who Sam Harris is. you should post one of the videos.

first topic in a while that i was actually excited to open and read.

to add a little complexity:

our sense of separation is an illusion, as is our linear experience of time. these two components suggest a lot more creativity to the Grand Play of Consciousness, i.e., we have the flexibility to change our roles & alter our scenes as ego-individuals, and the Play still continues through different actors and/or scenes. it just might be the case that every person has multiple possible destinies with many possible death dates, and our egos sort of choose their own adventure within the over-arching Play.

had Hitler made different choices, another actor, every bit as wrathful and apparently "misguided" would have risen to prominence and decimated a generation of people. or maybe instead those same energies would have been directed into some zealous scientists that would accidentally incinerate a quarter of the Earth, but 50 years later world poverty is eradicated and we're all bickering over a different host of dramas

this is extremely crude, i admit. but to break it all down in detail would just take too damn long. i just think it's worth pondering.

a few thoughts.

the fewer your wants/desires, the freer you are.

the more risk & uncertainty you're willing to accept, the freer you are.

the cheaper you can live, the greater your options.

the creative mind can generate streams of income that minimize or even eliminates the need for employment (especially if you have the above points handled)

i live in Northern Sacramento, but my day-to-day experience is not one of "life in the city." i am able to devote as much time as i like to my studies, explorations, and practices. i made a decision years ago about what matters most to me in life and what i can do without. getting clear on THAT is an important first step. i come across people all the time, some of whom frequent this site, who are in love with the "dream" of the spiritual life, but aren't really willing to risk their comforts. they want all the certainty, safety, and security that secular life promises them, and they don't want any of the burdensome trade-offs that come with acquiring those things.

i put it all on the line. i walked away from from a top college. walked away from professional money. i essentially took a vow of poverty and embraced a radical uncertainty. but i was rich in what truly mattered to me, which is the free time to seek the divine and to explore the deep abyss of my own being (which wasn't always pretty). "time is NOT money. anything lost can be found again, EXCEPT for time wasted."

i only worked enough to make rent and eat. rent was cheap and things didn't always go smoothly. yet my life became richer than it had ever been before because i knew what my priorities were, and i wasn't afraid of the uncertainty & insecurity of living a poor man's life. my only luxuries were my laptop (a hand-me-down gift) and my book addiction. spent my time reading, sitting, practicing forms, and mastering the principles upon which those forms were built. spent my time wandering in deep contemplation, and seeking the audience of different masters.

today i don't work a wage job of any kind. i live in a 4-bedroom house that was given to me by one of my students. my living room is one big practice space, and i've got a huge back yard for practice and for gardening. i had NO IDEA things would work out this way. i sought my life of the spirit with a very sincere reckless abandon, knowing that this life isn't worth living if i don't seek the divine to the fullest.

getting free of the bullshit is relatively easy. getting over ones own fear and neurosis is the hard part.

perhaps it was the hardships of my youth that gave me the courage to do what i did to get where i am. i grew up very poor and was even homeless for a time as a child. so none of that really scared me as an adult, since i've already endured those things at a much more vulnerable stage in my life. the one part that was difficult was letting go of the worldly pursuits in academia. i had made it from nothing to the brass ring as an intellectual. i was being offered "advances" on books & critical essays, and i had the respect of professors, doctors, politicians, and lawyers. i almost traded GOD for the trappings of that world.

maybe some people could have found a balance between the two worlds, but i could not. i'm a very intense person by nature, and such a compromise is incongruent with my very being. so i had to make a choice. and i made it.

i was honestly, in my heart of hearts, willing to sacrifice everything to follow my Truth.

ALL IN.

Pranotthana. hmm...

in terms of my own personal experience, i think this concept of pranotthana can be applied to what most people experience during a Reiki attunement. it certainly fits what i experienced in the '90s via attunement to the first two levels of reiki. for some people who are ripe, and for those who find reiki teachers who are unusually strong, the final attunement, the master attunement, CAN trigger a full-on Kundalini awakening. but most often the process initiated is still this pranotthana.

nonetheless i think this helps me to dileniate between reiki and shaktipat.

had i known about kundalini back in the '90s, i would have sworn that my Master attunement awakened my kundalini. i would have been wrong, but the experience at the time was more profound than anything else i knew. when my kundalini was actually triggered, it hurt, scared me, and left me bed-ridden for a week. though the trigger was from a qigong master, my experience was NOTHING like the smoothe unfolding as guided by a true guru.

what troubles me about the article is that a number of times it talks about the kundalini 'awakening and rising to the brain,' as if both happen at the same time. they don't. yet the author insists on glossing over this point and muddies the waters in doing so.

also, i think it should also be acknowledged that not all shaktipat initiations are created equal. shaktipat has become so commonplace here now that its pollution and dilution is inevitable. i received shaktipat every week for a year from a man named Swami ********, and not once did it live up to my experience of reiki back in the '90s. yet, i received shaktipat from Mark Griffin, and it completely transformed my spiritual life after the very first initiation. so it needs to be stated that not all suposed shaktipat gurus are bringing the real juice.

i really like that the article mentions that the attitude of the student towards the guru has a significant effect on the transmission. i wish it had developed that point further to shed light on the power of devotion in the guru-disciple relationship, and the fact that approaching a guru with the attitude of a critic or a tourist will most often limit and obstruct the transmission process.

for those of you who have not seen it yet, Sifu Jenny Lamb's COMPLETE 2011 lecture is now available on youtube.

I'll reply shortly in a PM

what's up wit that? share with the rest of us!

seems like every other year or so Reiki resurfaces as a topic on this forum. there are a number of Reiki topics that deal with the themes in this thread.

as with most topics, i stand with my brother Seth on this one. back when i was new to this message board i had a very negative attitude towad reiki because i had so many silly encounters with practitioners or reiki, EVEN THOUGH MY OWN EXPERIENCE WITH REIKI WAS RATHER REMARKABLE. it took me some time to get to a place where i could actually appreciate what is profound and authentic about reiki without rejecting it based on some very legitimate issues i've had with many communities of practicioners, not to mention the misinformation, fragmentation, and missing pieces in what passes as reiki training today.

here's a thread i posted about reiki a few years ago. it was sort of my piece gesture with reiki in the tao bums community.

http://thetaobums.co...tion-for-reiki/

...not one of them has stepped up to the bat and been investigated and studied like John Chang or Wim Hoff. Who by the way share similar practices in the beginning levels.

 

I am not trying to be a Jack*** by pointing this out. I am just trying to be realistic and honest about the situation.

i appreciate your high standards and critical sensibility. i tend to be the same way. not an easy guy to please.

however, there's something i think you might be missing from the video of Wim Hof that you posted.

to me it was easy. i just went deep.i thought there is a large amount of toxin going in. the immune system will react violently. i have to fight back. and i have to show now what i am capable of. i waited years to show this. i can prove it now, here at the Radbud. and that is what i want.

 

when this is all over, i will cry.

 

 

--is it tough?

 

 

no! but the journey toward this was. to show what i can do. the cynnicism, mockery, doubt, waiting,... more waiting. the doubt and so on.

i think it's a bit unfair and unreasoned to claim that others haven't "stepped up to the bat," especially when Wim Hof HIMSELF expresses what a daunting task it has been for him to find anyone who was willing to take him seriously and investigate his skills. he put his skills on display as a circus act for who knows how long before anyone with credibility took notice. it's such a rare occasion that it moved him to tears.

i had a back-n-forth with Sloppy Zhang a couple of years ago around a very similar issue of verifiable evidence.

http://thetaobums.co...ng/#entry201210

i even offered myself to be investigated by any of the science folks at his University. but he didn't find anyone willing to take it up. i put that on the general culture of cynnicism and mockery that still runs think in the scientific community.

and also, even though the intestigators were said to be scientists, there was nothing really scientific about the investigation that was done on John Chang. they went in with some very basic gadgets available at any Radio Shack and did such a simple and basic investigation that just about anyone on the street could have done it. they got more video footage, yes. but their methods of inquery were pretty weak.

yeah, i got the same red flag saying this is an attack site. the data suggests that it is from one or more of the ads on the site. the site itself is not a host, but rather one or more of the links on the site.

this clip was from his series on cognition. i would tell people often that deep spiritual practice serves as a non-violent revolution of consciousness. this was the first time i ever heard it confirmed or supported in any way.

LOVE THIS!

Today I have just had the most massively intense blissful tingling sensation all over my body. Every hair on my body was standing up for at least 20 minutes non-stop. There seemed to be no source of the energy but I noticed that the sensation was MUCH more pronounced in both of my shoulder blades. I'm not sure what is going on because this was even more stronger than my initial shaktipat nine months ago.

I was at work, and it's fortunate that I work in my own area, or my colleagues would have thought I was mad !

I'm not sure which way to turn now. My mind is in turmoil. I have been attracted lately to bhakti-yoga, especially Krsna Conciousness, but their teachings don't have any focus on kundalini or shakti.

Any suggestions anyone ?

devotional practice can be a powerful stabilizing force. Bhakti yoga is a mainstay in Shaivism.

my first recommendation would be to find a Master/Guru. someone whom you can love, trust, and put faith in. someone who is NOT just some information resource that you take from. the mandala of the Master/Guru is very healing and nurturing. you'll be able to process all of that turmoil at a much more manageable pace. and in fact, some of it you won't even notice as the Guru and the Lineage clears a lot of the garbage for you.

since your awakening came from interaction with the presence of Gabriel Cousens, i suggest that you seek out a master whose lineage flows from Baba Muktananda and/or Bhagawan Nityananda. as per your own experience, distance is no object for the spiritual transmission, so it's perfectly fine if your teacher lives hundreds or even thousands of miles away.

if this doesn't quite flow with you...

my next recommendation would be to develop a regular, consistent practice that includes:

1.) chanting/singing words of devotion. any tradition that speaks to you will work. even gospel. this can also include

worship/prostrations to an image or object representative of a being for whom you have the highest regard

2.) vigorous exercise in the form of shaking, running, kickboxing, or all of the above. something cathartic where you can work out stagnant energy and you are free to go nuts.

3.) harmony exercise in the form of yoga/qigong, or daily walks in nature where you allow yourself to be absorbed in your environment with an air of gratitude.

4.) meditation. keep it simple. vipassana, zen, water method.

5.) selfless service. this can be just about anything, even work, but something wherein you benefit others without any self-centered gain for you.

6.) journaling, either at the end of the day, prior to meditation, or both. let that be a place where you catalog your daily blessings & express gratitude, and also a place where you dump all your heavy issues. maybe even keep two journals, one for gratitude and one for processing & venting.

so those are my 6 Jewels of spiritual cultivation, regardless of which tradition is being practiced. if you can find a way to engage all 6 (or at least MOST of them) on a daily basis, your process should smooth out, and your overall development should actually accelerate at the same time.

it's a sort of cross-training effect. you'll balance and develop faster in ALL of the areas covered than if you just tried to grind out any one of them alone.

the one area that i didn't mention is diet. that one's on you.

if you make time for cultivation on a regular basis, you shouldn't have to deal with extremes at inappropriate times.

feel free to PM me if you like. i'm happy to help you work it out if you need anything else.

Co$metic and Image Packaging.

 

Example:

Two exact items- but, one costs more than the other, in a fancy store- many people will prefer the more expensive, thinking if it costs more- it must be better...

 

India has the 'stigma'- yogis and all- must work better @ spirit if it is made in India

 

Nag Champa

Mark's all about doing your work right here. he didn't accomplish his sadhana in Varanasi or Geneshpuri; he did it in Oakland! but he's committed to serving the people of Nimboli as a tribute to Bagawan Nityananda, and the holy places ARE very powerful, so there's nothing wrong with a pilgrimage. his Fire Mountain Retreat Center in Nimboli is very, very beautiful, and 100% of the money from the center goes to maintaining the retreat and for charitable works in the area, like the clean water project and education.

check it out!

http://www.hardlight...untain_TMA.html

http://www.tmaseva.org/