manitou

Your answer is wonderful - thank you! I maintain that it doesn't just stop with what the rulers of old did, though. I think it pertains to the 'tao of human nature' as well. I think that MythMaker was onto something when he said there is no judgment, no right or wrong.

Well hello. You come in disguise

I so agree that the world, in a state of perfect wu-wei, would be kind, gentle, loving. It would follow the beauty of nature to a tee. I do honestly think I have a grasp of the TTC, but I see the other side of it as well. I too am speaking from a philosophical view of the Tao. Would you be kind enough to comment on the Straw Dog phenomenon, as it pertains to this conversation?

If a child is born into the world this is part of nature. As a child's mind develops this is part of nature. When the child becomes a teenager and becomes pregnant this is part of nature. If her developing mind makes a decision, is this not part of nature too? The Tao treats us like straw dogs. This is not to say the Tao is intentionally unkind or ruthless, just that the rain falls equally upon everybody, regardless. I would never have had an abortion at my present state of evolution. But at 17 I thought it was my only decision because my fear of my father. that was my world at the time. If I stepped out of alignment of the Tao prior to having knowledge of the Tao, how does that fit in?

To move to Ohio.

My feeling exactly. Mind is the thing that's living.

I have a calculator. Gimme a little time....

The soul would go back to the Soul Pool and wait until another appropriate circumstance to be born into; appropriate being 'what the soul needs to develop within its karmic cycle'. I don't think that the fact that it was conceived against the will of the mother makes your argument any stronger, Chi. Don't forget, the mother is a divine entity as well, whether she knows it or not.

I come down on this side too because of the straw dog metaphor. Personally, I think we manifest from the inside out and there is nothing 'out there' (other than man-made laws) that cares about it one way or the other. I think it's all between the soul that's doing the aborting and her inner self. I think we're all one huge 'soul' anyway just manifesting in zillions of different people all over the world. I did abort a fetus nearly 50 years ago, an illegal one on my kitchen table with a doctor up from Mexico. At the time, I didn't pay much of an emotional price for it because I was a wild child. My emotions didn't come through on this until I dropped a baby plant and broke the clay pot about 10 years ago. Suddenly I was wracked with tears, on my knees, and crying uncontrollably. The emotions stayed piled up within me for 40 years. I knew at the moment I dropped the plant what the sadness was really about. And yet the Tao has accepted me too and taken me under its wings. I know for a fact that if I had borne that child, I would have brought the child up the same way I was brought up; with a heavy handed leather belt. I knew no different. Today would be a whole different story, the child would have a truly loving mother. I surely don't know the answer to this. It's just an awfully interesting question in this day and age. If the right-wingers get their way and make abortion illegal again, I just feel plenty bad for those young girls who will be spread out on a kitchen table. Because they will.

Aaah. I forgot about that one. Me too.

lol. suck, yes. But unattached? You betcha!

I started channeling several years ago after becoming kundalini active. Sometimes my posts on this forum are channeled, others are not. It is possible if someone has gone through much time and effort learning to get their own distorted views out of the way for the channeling spirit to have full sway. It's a vacancy that can be created within ourselves where nothing comes through but our higher self. (That's my own particular experience; I know others are inhabited by friendly and helpful entities that speak through them, e.g. Flowing Hands)

I don't think there would be anything more satisfying than giving away everything I own to folks who could use it. That would be a joyous last week.

I haven't a clue. Maybe he served fish hors dourves on the loaves and the multitude was happy, lol.

apech - As long as I've got you on the phone - I have another question. In this same book, there is mention of multiplication as it pertains to alchemy. As in.....the roof of Solomon's temple was gilded by the process of multiplication, an alchemical concept apparently. I've read elsewhere that some pyramids were gilded by the process of multiplication. I find this interesting, this multiplication thing - I've been thinking about it lately. Say the Nazarene was an actual historical person, and he actually fed a historical crowd from a basket of one historical fish. The only way he could have done this was by some little known Essene process of multiplication. Or maybe he turned water into wine by multiplication, if a small amount of wine was introduced to a large vat of water. Does this follow with any of your prior studies?

Do read the Nag Hammadi gospels - yes, he goes much more into individual enlightenment throughout. He talks more about the 'I Am' consciousness. It's quite a read. I agree on the 'watered down' aspect of anything translated. This is why it's best to read many translations and triangulate your own wisdom from it - because every translator starts from the starting point of his own understanding. A less enlightened translator will produce a less enlightened product. Certainly we must include the new testament in that as well, being translated from sanskrit or coptic? The only thing that would omit Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John from the translation problem would be to wish to believe that the bible is direct revelation from the Source. Are you prepared to say that?

I just had another thought. Apech, I was re-reading your analysis of this same quotation about adaptation, and you turned your thoughts to alchemy. I recently read a very metaphysical alchemical treatise, but I can't remember who the author was. It may have been Manley Hall in his Secret Teachings of All Ages. He (or whosever it was) is of the opinion that in order to master the physical alchemy, one must master self first, inner alchemy. Is this your understanding as well? Does a person have no chance in hell of transmuting lead into gold before he transmutes his inner self into gold as well?

"And just as all things proceed from the One, meditated by the One, so all things are born from this one thing by adaptation" Adaptation. When cells start to divide in a fetus, all cells are the same. It is by adaptation from generations past and future function that the cells, when they are developing in different parts of the embryo, that the appearance of the cell changes. Cells that line up to be bone turn into bone cells; cells for the heart; cells for the blood, cells for everything. But they all started out JUST THE SAME. This is done by adaptation. I think this is just sheer magic. As it's all actually happening here and now, adaptation would be an illusion. It's just that here and now takes its sweet time.

Rebelbodda said: "The truth is that the Pope and other higher Vatican clergy, the British Royalty, Rockefellers, Rothschilds and other elite rich have been practising the art of meditation, enlightenment and spiritual cultivation for thousands of years. They then used their spiritual power to amass trillions of dollars and political control over the masses." This might be oxymoronic. I agree with you that the Vatican et al has spirited away many of the teachings of enlightenment; but a truly Enlightened one wouldn't have it in his heart to keep it all for himself and not give it freely to others. This is not enlightenment. This is merely protecting the path to enlightenment from others. And I fully agree - they did it. The Nag Hammadi scriptures are a stark example because the words of Jesus pertain to enlightenment, not the watered down stuff in Matthew Mark Luke & John.

That's weird. I just bought Blofield's Kuan Yin book too because I found a gorgeous Dragonware china tea set in W. Virginia at a junk shop and discovered that the entities contained on the tea set were Kuan Yin and the two boddhisatvas / warriors that guard her. I'm 'into this stuff' because I think I was born being into this stuff. I've been a seeker all my life, even when 'seeking' meant seeking comfort in the bottom of a bottle of scotch. Even then, I was seeking. Once the alcoholism was cast aside, the true destination was intuited and followed up upon. Is there ever really total satisfaction if you are a seeker? Isn't this what keeps us coming back to these discussions year after year with each other? at some point it becomes less about 'seeking' and more about 'living it'.

Character. (As in 'character is what you do when no one is looking')

Can you pick a lumbar vertebrae and stay focused on that? Funny you mention skeletons. There was a point in time that when my husband and I were making love we would both 'visualize' skeletons, unintentionally, laying on top of each other. This would usually bring giggles and ruin the session. This happened for a short period of time, then went away. We figured it was just a shamanic thing. Maybe the two types of meditations are not in sync?

It seems that in the end they all end up in Enlightenment, if the path is followed to the best of one's ability with love and good intention at the forefront. Any prejudices which arise are the unresolved issues of the prejudicee and the prejudicer. I don't think the Dalai Lama would respond to any sort of prejudice against his ancestry with anything but love. If you read any of the great western metaphysicians, Manley Hall, Helena Blavatsky, Harold Percival, even Mary Baker Eddy - these are enlightened ones who followed their own path up - Manley Hall through Masonry up to the 33rd degree, but also a scholar of all comparative religion - it seems that the Intelligent Undercurrent (or Tao) will certainly guide the path of any sincere seeker,regardless of where in the world they were born. Some of us have been on this forum for years and don't subscribe to the Ism part of the Tao-ness. Once we transcend the particular structure we were born into (usually Christianity if in the west), then it leads to the same place of no-structure which is shared by the other 'isms', once that structure is transcended. My Intelligent Undercurrent had me happen upon a copy of the Tao Te Ching at a yard sale years ago. I fell in love with it, that's all. That's why I'm here. The trick is to Practice what we've Learned throughout all the ism-ness and discard the structures, as I see it. The enlightenment will be found there. The discarding isn't done through distaste, just a condensation of the essence of what the Ism is saying, but a loss of the surrounding fables and 'have-to's'.

"In truth, certainly, and without doubt whatever is below is like that which is above, and whatever is above is like that this is below, to accomplish the miracles of one thing." How can it be said better than this? It's hard to separate in our minds that 'above' and 'below' are not two physically different places. It's all One. We have 'above' and 'below' contained within us; our lower selves and our upper selves. Our higher self, the One. The same One that you have in you. So, it also seems to be saying that in order to perform miracles or things extraordinary, the two must be fully merged to accomplish this. We must know exactly Who We Are. There is a healing thread going in General Discussion and it addresses the 'mindset' that we use to achieve healing ('miracles') in ourselves or others. We dance around it, unable to quite put our fingers on it. How do we actually go about merging the upper with the lower? Certainly the more meditative mindset we can stay in....it becomes a question of Awareness, that's all. But in order to get to the Awareness of Clarity, which is prevented by our own inner glarls getting in the way, one needs to develop a type of 'christ consciousness' where we can stand apart from ourselves and see ourselves in our own state of twistedness from the input we've received from birth; then it becomes necessary to mindfully unravel our gnarls, no matter how painful or humiliating that may be. It is then that clarity can be achieved, and to "accomplish the miracles of one thing."

I just happened onto this thread. Wow. There is so much to comment on, this conversation could go on for years. First of all, Apeche, your introduction and description of the history of The Emerald Tablet is astounding. What I read is a combined interplay of your own self-realization with your head knowledge on the subject. I applaud you for your knowledge and your realization. Your comment about technology advancing in times of stress, war, or change....how true this sounds. and how very Modern Day it is for our society to see this as 'backwards' because man was living in sync with the land, with the elements, and that 'no new technology' was created. It seems as though the totality of human development has been geared to how to get away from the elements, how to insulate ourselves from the weather and from each other. When one takes the outlier overview and grasps the reality of this tendency throughout the generations, then how terrible would it be for our worldly economy and lifestyle to suddenly collapse? (Jeez, I'll probably have the FBI at my house tomorrow) Sure, many would not survive. But, to put it as a Christian might say it, perhaps this is the time for the "meek to inherit the earth". It sure seems like that's what's happening sometimes - The Arab spring, the lower and middle classes rising up everywhere to try and upend the ridiculous disparity of what our society is today; those that have everything and those that have nothing. It can't go on like this. As to your comments of the Nag Hammadi - I'm on my second reading of those scriptures. Surely your statement is spot on when you say 'Indeed hermeticism is really the answer to those who ask what happened to the wisdom of the ancient world when the new age of Christianity effectively wiped out the old religion and closed all the temples. To me, this is the point of the Nag Hammadi scriptures. The books that were spirited away contain many other gospels; the gospel of James, of Thomas (referred to as Jesus' twin!...or maybe that was James, it was one of the two). The point of the words of Jesus in all of these scriptures is not Hey! Worship me! Only through me can you get there! Don't forget to celebrate my birthday this december!. Rather, his words instruct the individual how to attain individual enlightenment! He talks mainly of self-realization. This was not what the Church of Rome was interested in spreading to the citizenry. Better they're kept in line by a guilt structure like Christianity. Again, thank you Apeche. I didn't even realize this little corner was here. Wow.