Apech

Thank you for that explanation.

Why do you think this state is enlightenment?

You work for the CIA and posted this to distract us from what's really going on???? Am I close?????

BBC website

No its early, Old Kingdom 5th Dynasty ... mastaba of vizier Ptah-hotep east wall ... here is colour version of whole thing: the scene shows people exercising and maybe wrestling etc. As far as I know its unique and I was rather surprised when I found it ... all others I know of show squatting or cross legged.

Two figures in upper register. But I agree with generally this is not a normal posture and I think those two figures are doing exercises rather than actually sitting in full lotus per se.

Move server to outside US? or have they thought of this?

Life, but not as we know it, Jim.

Exoplanets are around every star, study suggests Actually they seem to be saying every star! But that's every kind of planet ... mostly gas giants?

<br><br>Yes, it says the colours are about the age of the stars and what sequence they are in.<br><br>There was another article the other day - which I didn't post which said that nearly all stars are now thought to have planets ... which means a lot of earth type planets out there.<br><br>If only we could boldly go ... that would be exciting ...<br>

Thanks for OP ... very good. I'm not sure, or am still to be convinced that Lao Tzu's advice to a ruler in Ancient China can be taken to resonate directly with modern ideas of anarchism or liberality. Saying 'don't act' to an absolute monarch is a bit different to saying 'don't act' to a democratic government. As a Brit living in Europe I have no direct stake in US politics (although the outcome affects us all of course) but surely the way you choose your candidates means you always get the ones with the big money backers ... and the one's who can pretend to have led blameless lives ... to be cynical even the so called minority alternatives are put there to give an appearance of choice. If someone enters the Whitehouse on the basis of someone else's millions of bucks then you can forget the philosophy and just hope they are a good administrator or manager because that's all they are.

Harlot in Etym. Dictionary : "Used in both positive and pejorative senses by Chaucer; applied in Middle English to jesters, buffoons, jugglers, later to actors." I dodn't know it had that sort of meaning. We could rename this site thetaoharlots. Fullotus, I've read all your stuff (on this thread) ... I'm still not sure how you know you are not projecting all this in your own mind. I don't mean you are insincere ... I just mean how do you know what the other person, the woman, is feeling? have you ever tried this with a willing partner to test what is happening? A.

Yes it does. Please list the other screen names you use on here.

*** Moderator Message *** Just to be clear Bowowtao is not being asked to give his real name ... just to make it clear to other posters that he uses several screen names and a proxy server to disguise this fact. *** Mod Message ends ***

*** Moderator Message *** User Bowowtao over the last few days you have posted from IP addresses in the Netherlands, Czech republic, Sweden and Russia. You either have a very fast mode of transport or you are using a proxy server. In other words you are hiding your identity. I think this is dishonest and breaks trust with other users on here. We the moderators know who you are, so I think others users should also. Please discontinue this practice. I'm giving this chance to be honest with everyone else. If you don't take it you will be banned. *** Mode Message Ends ****

This is the defn, of Gen. Dis. This is Off Topic Both are equally valid ... but there is less moderation in Off Topic. General Discussion for spiritual thought and practice and Off Topic for everything else. That's it.

Have a look here Stoicism Daoism discussion

Hi, There was a long discussion a couple of years ago about Taoism/Stoicism ... I'm not expert myself but a lot of people saw similarities. If you try the search function you might find it.

*** Mod Message *** I merged the two topics with the same title and OP as both had responses. *** Mod Message End ***

I was told this by a qi gong teacher ... it was to do with maintaining the energy of the practice.

We don't usually erase accounts - just stop posting.

The key Egyptian text themselves ... Book of the Dead, Pyramid Texts and so on are descriptions of 'internal' energy practices ... but you have to work hard to decipher them. Many people claim Egyptian practices but I have never come across an authentic teacher or group. Of course historically with the rise of Christianity there was an attempt to obliterate the ancient teachings and they were 'hidden' in alchemy and the hermetic tradition which has absorbed influences from kabbalah and other sources a to become something else.

The discussion thread about the un-carved block set me thinking about the Eye of Horus. There is a debate as to whether spiritual work is about refining, forming, intending some purpose or how much it is just returning to a natural un-formed state. Or that is how I would express it. The story of Horus in some ways illustrates this. The Eye of Horus is really his 'being' - his vehicle of experience and/or his ability to see the unobstructed truth, the nature of things and himself. The story of the injury of his eye has many resonant meanings but one is about how this original consciousness which he, and all of us, have in our innocent state, is fragmented. It is injured by Set during the fight between the two for the crown of Egypt. One way in which this fragmentation was represented was in the use of the eye symbol for fractions. Each of the parts of the eye were used for the fractions generated by repeated halving. Thus : 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, 1/32, 1/64. Dividing or splitting in two has in itself some very deep metaphysical meaning. We talk about duality in the separation of observer and the observed and also in qualities of existence, light/dark, positive/negative, male/female, hot/cold and so on. So from division we get a kind of unfolding of the qualities of existence. Comparison becomes possible as does an understanding of the relation between things. Having been injured in this way Horus is of course laid low. There are various stories about how his sight became restored. Some relate to the compassion of the goddess Hathor and others to the wisdom of Thoth. In one set of stories Horus is given the Sons of Horus in repayment for the loss of his whole vision, of his eye. These Sons of Horus are the precursors of what we now know as the four elements. So Horus is given the four elements as a way of analysing reality when his complete and immediate vision, with which he was born is fragmented. Thoth the god of wisdom is a prime agent in the restoration of Horus' eye. He does this in the guise of the great healer/physician. He is said to spit on the eye to heal it. At the same time he is said to gather together the fractions into which the eye had split and put them together into the 'sound' eye, which is also called 'wadjet' or the 'Green One'. In the Osirian story there is an episode where his body is split into pieces and then reassembled by Isis and her sister Nephthys. They find all the pieces except his phallus which has been swallowed by a fish! To restore him in entirety they make a magical penis to replace the lost one. Similarly if you add the fractions which the parts of the eye fall into you get 1/2+1/4+1/8+1/16+1/32+1/64= 63/64. One 1/64 is missing! What does this mean? Well, the 1/64th symbol is the vertical stroke under the eye, which is usually taken as part of the formalised version of the markings on a Falcon. So the missing 1/64th is like this one. This is like the missing phallus of Osiris which is magically restored because all the parts do not make the whole. A cliche though it is we can say "the whole is more than the sum of the parts!" If we understand reality to be something like a field of consciousness, then the fragmentation of Horus' eye will be like the fragmentation of our awareness until we see reality as separate objects in space having little or no relation to each other. From this confused state those of us who have any sensitivity or awareness of their own nature try to find a way back to what we intuit to be our original wholeness. To do this we do have to work. We have to work against the attachment formed to our mistaken view of things and the actions which arise as a result of this. But the goal of our work is in a way our pre-confused state. What saves us is the 'missing' part of the eye. The 1/64th. which represents the original power which precipitated the whole process. What saves us, ironically, is that it was never missing. It is the indwelling consciousness which never leaves us, which is why, having pieced things together we can 'magically' produce the missing part. So for me anyway, both are true. We have to refine, having fallen into confusion, but we already have and always have had the 'missing part'. A.

I'd rather you asked the questions ... I can never answer the ones I come up with .

Hi Scotty, I suppose the easy answer is that its not crazy .... lol ... but I think you have to go back to the shamanic roots for the answer. Human's with animal heads is a common feature of ecstatic visions of shamans in all cultures. So this is the origin ... but the Egyptians also did something very precise and technical with this knowledge so that they could describe very accurately what you might call the workings of power or consciousness. Their imagery is still very powerful today even though people do not really understand it. It has impact and the impact comes from the fact that behind the artwork is a kind of technology of consciousness ... (hope that makes some sense lol ). You are right as I point out above the ankh is obscure but most of the symbols do represent actual objects ... however they often have a significance beyond the object or there may be a phonetic association ... for instance the word for a male sheep ... a ram was 'ba' which was also the word for the 'soul' ... so sometimes the soul of Ra the sun god was shown as a ram. ba = ba. But this was only ok because the ram as a symbol fitted with the idea of the potency of the soul/ba - which actually means a 'luminous form creating entity' ... sometimes the 'ba' was written with a phallus sign for the same reason because the ba is like the divine spark within us. The symbols echo on within each other. So when the Egyptians looked at their art there were thousands of cross references and echoed meanings which are lost to us today. Hope this goes some way to answer your question.