Jetsun

The people i feel sorry for are all the economic migrants who often spend a lot of time and money and sometimes even risking their lives trying to come to the West, believing it is some kind of utopian paradise. They are going to be sorely disappointed after spending some time here.

Yes. The mainstream media in India is heavily indoctrinated with an anti-Hindu mindset. Till this present government got elected in a clear majority, this was far more rampant. The current government is formed by the primarily Hindu middle-classs party known as the BJP (which has been called a right wing extreme nationalist party by this same media who hate Hinduism) - and is therefore more sympathetic.

I know that Modi goes to see Amma from time to time and gets help and advice from her sometimes. He must be on the right track and if not she will put him right.

By nearly all current indicators European style socialism is the best system, in terms of happiness, education, health, economy, wellbeing and harmony with the environment it scores top most of the time.

Some psychological cases such as some psychosis are actually immune disorders http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/38220610

Some are also caused by paracites, which is pretty scary

How about realising that you are the creator, rather than a creator ? Seems more like the height to me

If he's charging $2000 for his course i doubt he really gets it yet.

I am on week 2 of the Presence Process by Michael Brown. I like it, it's not easy but it is specifically meant for digesting emotional content and integrating the psyche to bring the emotional body into a state of maturity.

I have gone very deep in spiritually in recent years but have discovered that doing so doesn't necessarily mean emotional integration and integrity, it can even leave you more imbalanced, so this Presence Process feels like an important aspect to me at the moment.

The USA has always been really big on nationalism, I always found it strange that when I lived there as a child I had to swear an oath to the flag every morning. But now I kind of understand when you have a young nation of immigrants you need to push and forge a national identity to promote unity, at least when the nation is just emerging. I would say these days there is less need for it though and people are getting a more mature attitude around it rather than becoming more nationalistic.

But I do consider the USA an Obligarchy, which is basically set up and run for a tiny majority, who use tools like promoting nationalism and fear of migrants for their own agenda.

There are different levels to healing but fundamentally I would say the main method is just to be with your issues and fears without trying to get rid of them. For some that means breathing with them, or others just sitting with them patiently with curiosity and attention. It is always presence which heals, but only a certain quality of open non-aggressive presence or awareness.

Most issues relate to childhood parts and what such consciousness usually needs is loving acceptance to integrate, trying to get rid or even heal some of these parts just makes them resist more strongly. So just be with them in the way your parents or caretakers failed to do so.

You repressed yourself too much, the more repression the more what is repressed builds up and the more energy required to keep it down, until you get cut off from your vitality and aliveness.

My advice would be regular cardio exercise, the deep breathing from that will force the breath to stimulate your lower chakras and bring them back to life, but also you need to reframe your sexuality into a healthy place so when you feel sexual energy don't drive it away focus on the healthy feelings such as intimacy and mutual pleasure. Focus on healthy relationships with others

Seems like another religious tradition which thinks we have to transcend this human plane rather than embrace it, ie it is rooted in avoidance. 

Imagine how crap life would be without food, sex or beer 

Personally I think the idea that you need empowerment from a specific empowered Lama in order to gain enlightenment is a corruption of Buddhism, one designed to keep people subservient to a ruling class. The Pali scriptures are more about taking self responsibility for your own enlightenment, while the later turnings may have created faster methods that doesn't mean that there also wasn't corruptions.

1- Tolle is talking about the truth and peace, which doesn't necessarily have anything to do with being successful in the world or being spiritually successful, in one sense he is talking about spiritual poverty. So the majority of spiritual and self help books aren't talking about the same subject or even same world as Tolle. So pursue which ever one you are interested in and resonates with you, don't expect them to align with one another.

2- Mindfulness creates a kind of internal split and separation into two things - the observer and the observed, whereas in the now there is no separation. Mindfulness can be a useful tool for some to loosen identification with mind and body, but to really be in the now means letting go of Mindfulness as well.

3 - it's not possible to be disconnected from the source, although if that is how it feels it is pretty close to being a reality. Probably the reason why you felt a lot in your first meditation sessions is because you had beginners mind, had no expectations and were open, after that the mind takes over, we close up and we struggle, which is pretty much inevitable and happens to everyone to some extent. But everyone has different sensitivity to energy, depending on a lot of factors.

There is a state beyond ego which very few seem to achieve. For example:

 

In the case of Sri Ramana, the ego ended in the experience in Madurai, and from that moment onwards, Sri Ramana says there was no change in his experience. That is consistent with Sri Ramana’s description of Sahaja Samadhi.

 

The case if Sri Nisargadatta is quite different.

 

Sri Nisargadatta continued until the end of his life to describe the changes that were occurring. For example he said that previously he thought he was free of the ‘I am the body’ identification but that now he could see that some had remained, etc.

 

In Sahaja Samadhi there is no longer an entity that can undergo changes in the level of ‘I am the body’ identification and there is no longer an entity that can go on learning about itself and there are no parts in the Self so that one part can be revealed to another part.

 

Thus the state that Sri Ramana Maharshi was in is called Sahaja Samadhi. The state that Sri Nisargadatta was in and out of and in and out of is called kevala samadhi.

 

Also Sri Nisargadatta had the view that after Self-Realization there is an endless journey of discovering oneself. Both these are consistent with those who go in and out of kevala Samadhi. However those descriptions are completely inconsistent with Sahaja Samadhi.

 

http://albigen.com/uarelove/sahaja.htm

The vast majority of people are like Nisargadatta, they have major shifts of awakening which deepen and widen over time. Even if fundamentally he has seen through the illusion there can be all kinds of pockets of self and self based conditioning remaining within the system to work through and wake up, which is a life long process. This is the way I see it in just about all the awake teachers and people I have met. Ramana is the exception rather than the rule and even he needed 3 years after his shift to adapt and settle into it where he went to live alone in a cave.

Who helped Buddha? Who helped Ramana? It seems to me the ones who went the furthest were the least helped.

But at the end it wasn't their own efforts which moved them over, the Buddha and Ramana didn't even wake up... something else woke up through them , the same thing in both.

So the help isn't going to be necisarrily from another separate being, but from being itself, waking itself up. As ourselves as ego we simply won't take the last step as it is too annhilatory , something else has to come in.

One might look at Eckhart Tolle quite differently than with the idea that he just woke up spontaneously. Invariably one wakes up at some stop gap in the frequencies of ones karma - in other words - at some point the noise of it stops - the inertia is not - and Awakening occurs. This is often the case in tiring of ones own karmic frequency - the self made illusion that is your karma.

 

Eckhart thought of suicide frequently - it was this very thinking and considerable heat that had him question the one thinking it. And he Awoke.

 

Regarding Vasanas - we tend to put them in neat packages that are well labeled - but they are often very fine thin inertia's - deep within - and they have created both deep furrows and infinitesimally fine circuitry. Practice prior to Awakening does allow for many to fall away - and it can create the habit of seeing them. The siddhis are latched onto before and often after Awakening - previous experience in this is invaluable.

 

Often healing powers, many so called magical powers, seeing - these are part and parcel to growth - but however much people give lip service to the idea that these should not be allowed to "hold one back" - they very slyly clothe one with the patina of their powers and without knowing it - the relatively newly Awakened will 99% of the time consider their "position" far far far far far higher than it is.

 

it is in the increasing understanding that we know nothing that the onion peels away time after time as we continue to transform. The bodies continue to refine in the grace of stillness and gratitude. This occurs far beyond the awareness of most that have Awakened.

Eckhart did turn around and question his own existence, yet thousands of others have done this and not awakened. What is the difference between them? Some could call it randomness or grace.

One of my own teachers says that for a deep permanent awakening to occur one has to be at the end of their karmic journey and be close to working through their last karmic knots, only then will awakening occur as basically there is nowhere else to go. So with Eckhart Tolle he was already close to it when he entered this life and basically had nowhere left to go to try to get away from his suffering, he knew on a soul level that avoidance and suicide don't work , only place left to see through the dream and wake up out of it.

 

There are four main paths of Yoga, to dismiss emphasis on any of these paths as useless is to disregard a persons natural predisposition. Amma's path and beliefs will suit her and the people drawn to her, but her perspective is not going to be valid for all other paths.

 

No matter what branch of yoga you are on you will need some discipline at the beginning and then surrender to divine grace towards the end, even if you are on the intellectual path the more you sweep away concepts and delusions the closer you are brought to surrender. You will never achieve it on your own without help.

none have command over directing divine grace, for if someone did then it would no longer be such....(including a Self realized master)   what one may have command over is getting themselves out of the way so that Spirit can work through them without resistance. 

Yeah, but there is the contradiction that only by complete surrender do you gain mastery.

For example if you see someone like Mother Meera she will touch your temples then look into your eyes, and has enough surrender to the divine to bring down divine light into your system at will, which can undo the densest of your Vasanas or karma knots in a few minutes, which may have taken you lifetimes through your own efforts. Is she commanding divine grace... in a way yes, in a way no. 

I think the circus happens when the non-dual understanding is intellectual, and hasn't been won by hard work. Examining the false self is hard work and cannot involve illusion or delusion if you are to actually progress on the road towards Self-realisation.

I agree with your point about the intellectual. But realisation doesn't have to be won or even be hard work, some people just get spontaneously realised, like Eckhart Tolle. We often equate our regular understanding of cause and effect with the spiritual path, but in reality you don't have to earn it because it is already your nature and can be realised by anyone at any time.

Yet in terms of Vasanas one thing I read Amma say about them is a certain amount of them can be cleared through discipline, which is why most traditional paths and monastic traditions had quite a strict code of discipline. But the rest will only clear with divine grace, so there is nothing you can really do as an ego to remove them except set yourself up in situations where grace is more likely to occur, or get help from those who have some command over directing divine grace.

So then are you saying that it is possible to be a drug addict or an alcoholic and still be a realized jivanmukta?

You have people like Chogyam Trungpa, who was an alcoholic and sexually promiscuous, yet most who knew him said he was highly realised, the video of his death suggests he may have achieved rainbow body also even though he drunk himself to death.

One of the most fundamental personal realisations I have had is that awakening never has to fit in to our minds preconceptions of what it should look like. Yet it is a tricky area as some do use it to excuse all kinds of abusive behaviour.

It's worth bearing in mind that what Ramana or Papaji would say to you as an individual may differ from anything written in the books. Also it is much easier being in the Gurus presence, you start to resonate with their silence, where effort is more likely to interfere rather than help. But really there is a time for effort and a time for no-effort, for one no-effort could be avoidance, for another it could be a letting go.

If you nationalised the healthcare in your country that would probably be a good thing. One of the greatest legacies of the Second World War in the UK is the NHS, which emerged out of a feeling that everyone had a right to be taken care of and not neglected. If the whole country was expected to pull together during times of war then everyone without exception should be looked after with basic health care in peace time. It took at catastrophic war for people to realise it. Sure it's expensive and could be improved and has inefficiencies but in reality it is one of better things about this country.

Good/bad, advantage/disadvantage only make sense from the perspective of ego, otherwise there is just what is. So to have that perspective means there is some degree of ego left, so not complete ego death.

But from the perspective of ego having different degrees of awakening or ego death can create a whole gamut of reactions: terror, catosrophe, stress, depression, bliss, joy, peace, sense of coming home and belonging. Over time the more dramatic level out and you adjust to your new level of being. If you continue on and don't turn back then the more negative reactions are less likely to be prominent.

I think he's doing more meditation now, he used to do about 3 hours a day now he's doing 5. I guess he wants to do as much as he can before death.