Everything

I'm sorry, maybe I wash too harsh to say that this society is that bad. There's always room for improvement, ofcourse! We should take it step by step. Its not an uncertainty to say that your chair doesn't exist. It doesn't change your chair. It doesn't change reality. It just attacks that deeply rooted believe that this manifest reality is objective. You can still experience it. Isn't that what you're here for? To experience the chair, to interact with this reality, to make decisions, to learn and to evolve towards love. You are here to evolve your soul not these materials. Evolve the material, the manifest, and you get nothing. The manifest is nothing. If you don't agree with me, you must ask your self how certain you are of your own believe that the manifest is objective. Actually try to put it in words with evidence from personal experience. You don't have to tell it to me, analyze your own personal evidence and experience of this reality as objective. I can't show you God either, I can only TRY and help you discover it for yourself. You are the only teacher in this. Ask people of death and they become scared and sad. Who are you? Your body? Do you feel pain when you are hungry? I do... Are you more afraid of pain then of God? I do sometimes, am working on it... People are so egoistic that they make themselves more important then God in their minds! I've done it myself aswell... Not talking about you by the way. Most people in general. If you're more spiritual then most people, you will be willing to walk the right path without fear. When you don't know the right path, there is no sin in your shortcomings. I suggest you find out and don't just wonder about butterflies. Actually analyze it, do your own research, analyze your self and other people in perspectives, make conclusions, keep developing your understanding and evolve it. Try to find God. The Way is very VERY subtle. You will not easily recognize it, thats for sure. Its not a road of brown sand running trough a green land. "The Way" is a metaphor itself. TTC goes so far as to say that you can actually not experience it! You can only receive subtle hints at its existance, I'm sure of this. You can weave your life around the way. The Tao is the most important tool and metaphor in our lifes. Dao ke Dao, Fei Chang Dao. Don't go about spreading lies about this reality. We are not God to speak about truth and objective reality. As soon as the word leaves our mouth it is a lie. Be humble towards God, this is the most important thing. Don't associate anything with God. No worldy thing can replace God. He is the sovereign and He alone. It doesn't matter who is higher in spirituality or who is lower. The thing that matters is that you're on the path. You have your own signs. Do you think that we can only live on logical terms? We have to be sensitive aswell. When you try to serve God, you will be tested. If you're lazy, you will be challenged to activate. If you're impulsive, your patience will be tested. In the end, you will see how the struggles are very significant in your life. Wandering about life being a butterfly isn't good or bad. If your Way leads you to this, this is the very core purpose of your life. Don't worry about life passing away! Have infinite patience in achieving your purpose. God loves the patience. Don't wine about struggles too much either. Infact, invite struggles. For me, getting trough them couragiously and patiently has ment much. Your efforts on walking the Way in this life will not go to waste. You will be rewarded for it. Not your ego, but your very soul/spirit/Consciousness will evolve. This is what I believe. You serve God by walking the Way.

Its all a matter of perspective. Other people are also conscious of the chair. The chair is in that moment being rendered to them. There is also historical consistency. When you remember a chair being somewhere, the probability of it staying there reaches a peak. Also taking a picture of the chair will collapse the wave function. Does this make the chair more fake? No. Discovering this doesn't take away your chair. It just takes away the believe of an objective reality. There is no objective reality. The chair can not be understood because there is no chair. Thus we do not worship material. The chair is virtual. Maybe persistent ilusion is a harsh thing to say, because we are here to evolve our conscioussness trough this virtual reality. As long as you or anyone else is conscious of the chair, it will be there. There is no doubt about that. We depend on this persistent ilusion, but we should not forget our purpose here. The universe perceives itself trough our eyes. As we perceive, we create at the same time. The way we collect data differs from other animals. A little insect might not capture the information of a chair as we do it. Nonetheless, it might become conscious of the shape of the chair. Here's an example: Two people live in a house, isolated from the world and technology. No contact whatsoever. They have a room with a green bed and two chairs that weigh 20 kilo grams each. As the two people leave their house one day a lion eats them both. During this time, only insects have beens going about this house. Flying trough it and collecting data and making decisions. The insects live here generation after generation, all agreeing on the shapes of the house as it was left by the two people. The shape has not been altered. Not much at all. The shape is being rendered constantly to these insects who have been collectively conscious of the shapes within the house all this time. A wanderer comes to this, now abandoned, house and he discovers a red bed and two chairs that weigh 15 kilograms each. How come? When the two people died, their collected information became unavailable. The insect coulden't observe the diffrence between a red and green bed, so it could have been both. The insect caught the shape of the chairs, but not its material and weight. The diffrence between a 15kilograms and 20kg chair was not consciously perceivable to these insects. Some believe that even when no consciousness of the chair exists, it is still being rendered. Which is not the case. It is a self evolving system. There is a memory of the chair and there is probability of the chair. We determine together the probability. No need to render everything constantly. If the chair were a constant truth, there would be no more point in this reality. It would collapse into a single chair. People would bow down to this chair and merge with it. There is defenitely a memory of the chair. The information is constantly being stored, but that doesn't make history unchangable. Especially if the stored information was useless to the evolving system(our reality). When no wisdom is being passed on from generation after generation, the wisdom becomes lost. The universal Conscioussness(God, whatever you name it) is the sovereign. He helps us to evolve towards love. If we try to ingage into sorcercery for egoic reasons, it backfires. We can however ask of it with our intention to change the probability of some little uncertainty just to open our eyes. Only if done with the right intention, in the name of love. The person who has some bad conscience written on his mind can find it hard to even become conscious of God. It requires one to forgive oneself first, let go of doubt and experience God. There is no harm in trying and having an open mind about this. There are many uncertain things in our lives. For me personaly, I intended to turn on a light by mind. It didn't work. I went out of the room and the power of my keyboard was turned on as I came back, even though I clearly recalled it being off. The funny thing is, I never recorded it so this history is still a probability. I took it as a sign, because this keyboard didn't turn itself on for years untill I intended it to do so. For me this is a huge sin, so I immediatly asked god for forgiveness and expressed my gratitude. I do not wish to engage in sorcery, or any magical stuff for that matter. That is the way of ego, and it comes with lessons for those who choose that path.

Is our way of life really a better one then the simple way of life? This is our life. We live in city's with many people: WARNING, THIS VIDEO INVOLVES DISTURBING IMAGES. If you doubt, please do not watch this. Its about how a toddler was ran over and many people ignored the toddler, because of the self. Tell me, what force is stronger then unity and love. What purpose is bigger then unity and love? In chapter 81 he says it again. To be without self. This is the way of life. In this life we are all in competition. The heavens way is to win without doing harm. The way of the wise one is to win without competition. We have to work together and cooperate to evolve further. When your crave for temporary excitement is in the way, then you are blocking the way.

That you sense your chair to be supporting you does not make take away the fact that it is a virtual chair. When you look away, its no longer there. When you look at it, its there again. Its all probability. The chair itself is not even a constant and solid truth or object. When you look at the edges of the chair, it is not a straigth unchanging line. It is a moving wave of probability. There's always mystery in everything. Nothing is 100% certain. Not even when you collect data from this chair with the best technological tools of observation available to us in our current day and age.

No problem. The chapter didn't mention any dates in this idealist vision. Not very realistic to my mind either. Just like a round world was not realistic to people living on a flat world. The funny thing is that the world was actually flat before someone discovered it to be round. Reality is an illusion, a persistent one.

Before the period of The Warring State, I'm sure the people rode their "wagons". People had plenty reasons to explore the lands back then! I'm sure alot of sloths prefered to stick with the known, but I know that it is during these periods where great thinkers arise to think their way into trouble. If everything is set on map, what reason is there to explore? This also seems to hint at the future and not the past. Even if it is not a prediction, I'm sure that Lao Tzu was not talking about the past either. Perhaps it is just an ideal image of a perfect society. I think its a pretty good ideal. I also think that the peaceful people of past that dissapeared never had much armor and weapons. They coulden't even use them properly if they did have some. I don't think that ch 80 talking about busy people either. Non where to go, living with customs. All having enough food. Anyone can give me the text in original language of line of ch. 80 that say the people working on the lands? My translation doesn't mention any of it.

A small village has fewer people. Within the village there are machines that can work ten to a thousand times harder than man. But they are not needed. Sounds like abondened factory's. Did they have machine's of such power back then? That sounds even more like a prophecy then mine translation, hehe.

I know allot of people don't like the word prophecy, because they relate it to "messages being communicated to the prophet." They naturally assume that the messages are communicated by some fantasy person, which I don't. When I think of prophecy, I think of a wise man who knows his histroy and thus can predict the future. A historian can predict certain events that are coming up. A prophet can have acces to even deeper wisdom of the most ancient and prophecise the obvious to us oblivious people. A prophecy is then the prediction that came out of an infinitely complex model based on images and visions that contain a infinite words each. The model is abstracted directly from experience and doesn't have to be filtered trough some language like mathematics or english. Only the prediction becomes translated. The model can also be translated, but becomes abstract when it is done so. It is up to us to see the complexity behind the translation of the taoist model. When we do move away from this abstract text and find its roots, we should be able to trace the roots to the flower come to a similar conclusion like that of ch. 80.

Don't mistake the model for what is being modeled though. In general, model complexity involves a trade-off between simplicity and accuracy of the model. The thing being modelled is infinitely complex, but the simplification or modelling provides us comfort. When you fear to be in discomfort, uncertainty or fear, you tend to seek more models and will depend on them more and more. It is better to experience, which can be drawn from infinitely, and create your own models. The process of creating a model is even more interesting than the model itself.

If fear is a survival instinct, the fear of fear is anxiety? You can trigger fear when objects approach you at high speeds. You can trigger anxiety by worrying about objects approaching you at high speeds. I never experienced instinctual fear of fear though. Anxiety is more like a choice in my opinion. To worry or not to worry of fear.

Tools of war for troop or batallion? Could be tanks, bombs, planes, whatever. When there is abundance, free food, etc. Who needs transportation like cars and the like? Technology might transport the food or make it available right where we are. No need to travel far and waste the time of your life. No more thick populations, finaly no more city life where people live unnatural and like rats. Not to mention that back in those time it was impossible to hear chickens and dogs from nation to nation. I assume it was custom there to put huge walls and isolate themselves. How ideal would it be for city's to stay connected trough technology, yet never deal with eachother in person and never have any direct influence on eachother. A true utopia Wether an african owning a chicken in Africa or an American owning a dog in America, they are diffrent yet have no need to change eachother.

Isn't that a prophecy?

Could you give me a link?

This video is allot more interesting in my opinion: It conveys the experience of catching god. Very symbolic , very emotional and rich film and music. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dS-jLM75xuU

Indeed. I should be talking about the alignment of mind and body. Not energy mind and physical mind, hehe. Well, the mind is not even there actually. Mind is all, and the body is mind. I really suck at talking about these stuff. I guess the only way I can stay sane is to seperate the brain and the body as two seperate things. Then we have the spiritual self, the energy body. This is like my consciosness. I can do everything with my energy body, the physical body seems to follow it. Sometimes not so good though. Well, I hope you guys kinda understand what I mean.

That standing still issue is some way of trying to explain the inability of my mind to focus, but from the body's perspective instead of mind. Never had Tai Chi lessons. Heard about it recently and noticed that I could use the benefits if I could achieve them. In the past I tried standing still like a tree, gave up real soon on that. Simply because physical excersize got me more fit. I didn't understand back then that standing still was the actual excersize itself. Got a book recommended for tai chi, I'm going to download it again soon. iPhone update deleted all my ebooks. I read to visualize floating balloons supporting you in diffrent places of the body, as you do the standing like a tree posture excersizes, to release any unnecesary tension in your muscles. Isn't the goal to keep tension to a minimum?

When I get my mind out of the way, it feels great for physical tasks or emotional tasks. For intellectual tasks I sometimes need physical effort guided by emotion in order to have Intellectual progression. Do you mean that for intellectual tasks we also need to get our minds out of the way? If so, what do you mean with mind? Ego?

Go with what?

Haha, exactly. Great way to put it. I had a similar issue. You can't really solve these kinda things by thinking about them in the same way over and over again. Work on yourself. Your spirituality. Eventually you will understand that you're getting angry over nothing. You have to be the example if you wish to change others. This will work itself out if you focus on changing yourself. If you have a problem with feeling anger, work on that! Don't try to solve your anger issues trough her. Anger is a dangerous energy. Learn to get along with it. Get to know it. You must be responsible for your anger once you have created it within you. You can also observe and see how you trigger anger. Try to patientl analyze. Writing it down here on the forums is a great way to contemplate it. It is a good start.

I'm not sure, but I think that the enlightened beings help construct the world as they live in it. The people who are not enlightened live within that structure that is provided for them. This structure is the frame of reference which allows them to learn and make room for more people to move towards enlightenment. Its kinda broad to word it like that. Isn't that kinda the core of it?

I recently remembered that, when I was younger, I used to be able to get into a Focused Trance-like State of Mind very easily. I forgot everything around me and didn't care. I was easily distracted, but was able to return to the trance like state. The only thing stopping me from fully delving into it was the fact that I sometimes coulden't actually hear when someone called my name. In school we would study, sometimes the teacher said something, the whole class looked at me because I was the only one not listening. Since that happened I was always cautious to not over-use it during a class. This thing is very powerful for studying, reading, playing video-games, playing music. It seems like self-hypnosis or something. Some call it an alpha brain state, but that term just seems so broad. So if anyone got any meditations/practices that you advice for improving your ability to get into such a state of mind, I'd very much appreciate it. I always get into the trance state for studying quicker. I would also like to find a practice that talks about deviding my awareness during the trance state, so that I can hover in between the world around me when I need to and quickly return to this trance state when I continue my studying or whatever activity. Also the ability to fully focus my trance state on the activity. You know, the times when you loose track of time and it seems to go by really fast. Very funny, because it actually feels like time travel. Not only am I more effective this way in my study, the time I spend studying seems to go by faster! Everytime you come out of it, it feels like you're in a diffrent time zone. I can already do these things. I just would like to know if there exists any practices that can improve upon these and actually gives me a new set of words to describe the whole process and explore it even further in new ways. I can talk about in terms of "focused trance state" but that just sounds stupid in the ears of many.

I kinda feel that breath meditation calms me down. Makes me tranquil, without thought, mindless, just aware. For example, when I'm angry or sad, it just floats aways. When I'm scared, it just floats away along with all the thought associated with it. When I'm overthinking, a breath meditation calms my mind down towards no thoughts. The breath meditation doesn't supress anything. It makes it even more intense sometimes. In the end, I'm always tranquil after doing breath meditation. Or mindfulness meditation. Sometimes I just do awareness of sensations meditation. They all have this tranquil effect for me. How does this relate to that focused trance state? Is this perhaps the unfocused trance state. If so, would focusing your mind on certain tasks, after reaching the tranquil stage, translate into better results on any given activity? For example, a tranquil mind focused on balancing on a tight rope. Or a tranquil mind focused on martial arts.

When I do get into such a "state of mind" I don't really logically program my brain to go into such a state. It comes natural and goes away naturally. Sometimes I can do it, other times I can't. I don't even know what it exactly is in the first place to actually pick out the best label for this state of mind. I think it's not alpha state, but more like a theta brainwave state. Very relaxed, unaware of outside stimuli, strong visual imagination, dreamy, creative, strong focus, adaptable and flexible, yet persistent focus, in the flow with the unconscious ocean of reality. When I "read" in this state of mind, I don't really read anything. I just see the words, focus on it, yet allow my brain to gently dance around it while focusing my eyes on certain movements. The information being dreamed about. I forget the book and the words, I am only aware of the information. The information comes alive in various forms and shapes. Without putting it into words, it is hard to communicate this. Especially on forums! I didn't develop much psychic abilities. Thus, finding better symbols for these experiences are important for exploring it further. "Focused Trance State" is just a failed attempt. It is an attempt nonetheless. If someone says that it is a "Peanut Butter Jelly Time sensation" I'm very much open for that. It could mean that I've mistaken in my communication of this experience. Speaking too broadly about it wont help anyone understand me either. I have get more specific and less abstract first. When we know exactly what I'm talking about, we can abstract from that into symbols that are worth a thousand words. Before we can do that, we need to talk about this. Unless you disagree with that ofcourse. Some people might think that talking intellectually is never good. I respect that aswell. I won't move on in a sense that we change subjects. I will move on in my perspective of the same subject. This is a constant moving on that needs no mention.

Thanks, I'll try those. Never heard of longevity breathing before.

You guys are talking about over-population problem. This is a problem that is caused by your level of consciousness, in my opinion. When everyone thinks in terms of scarcity, you have people shouting out "over-population!" This fear that is caused by the media. People keep saying "don't believe the media" but no one actually does it. Just believing that everything is scarce actually makes it so! Where did you guys get the idea of overpopulation? Did you actually do research yourself for it? Or did you accept a conclusion based on a research based on the research based on the research of Mr. Nobody Reporter? When everything in this world is run by politics, the media is included in that aswell. You must ask yourself why the kings of the world would want us to talk about overpopulation problems. Also ask yourself what the kings of the world would get out of it when they made food and shelter freely available for everyone. They'd get ignored and become absolute. These problems don't exist. They are mind games, like a child throwing a ball at you. When you take the ball, they have the right to jump on you and rip your head off, because you joined the game. Do you really want to continue this politics conversation? In science, currently the bottom-bitch of the economy, it is said with technological advancement, we coulden't possibly reach overpopulation, never ever. When the economy is sitting on top of scientific progress, it has no room to breath and grow. Infact, scientists are no longer worthy of the name. They have all become businessmen. Now, do you really think there is an overpopulation problem? If you were the worlds largest food company that developed unhealthy cheap food, and you aimed for monopoly, would you market your food by putting up commercials? No, you'd simply finance media that brainwashes people enough to actually support your unhealthy cheap food production that causes all kinds of ill.