manitou

Hi Osalina - so glad you're here. Welcome; what a wonderful addition you are going to be. So nice to hear you mention the child's mind... As a child.

I for one really appreciate your bringing that up. Cannabis (indica) is important to me as well for PTSD. But I must also say that it has greatly expanded my thought process as well. The brain seems to establish pathways at a much more dynamic rate than when I'm not using it. I wish the liquor lobby would just go jump over a cliff and let us smoke what comes up out of the ground, for god's sake.

Dwai - When I started to read your post, I chuckled because I realized how very much like Carlos Casteneda and don Juan that sounded like. then, next paragraph, I realized it was Castaneda and don Juan.. Yes. Preconceptions. Looking at the shadows rather than the leaves. Staring into a pond with your eyes slightly fuzzied and making no judgments about what we're seeing. Placing no values on each item, each item is as important or unimportant as the next. It occured to me the other day as I was driving (I wish these things would happen when I was walking, it would be safer) just how much of what we think we see is our conclusion. I conclude that this tree is further than that tree, and that's why it appears higher on the horizon. right there I put a preconception on it; my prior experience as a human being (and as an artist) that distance is a fixed quantity in the linear world. But the world don Juan was trying to teach to Carlos was non-linear, the world where things don't follow logically. don Juan had a hard time with Carlos because of his extremely fine tuned and rigid left brain, the organizational anthropoligist. Copious quantities of drugs were used on Carlos at the beginning to shake that loose, to see exactly what it is that you're talking about; the ability to suspend prior knowledge of what we think we know in order to stop the march of (the illusion of) time and be here in the present. I find that the most wonderful thing is that all Masters, regardless of their tradition, seem to end up in the same place. Wu-wei, Power of Silence, Peace that Passeth Understanding, the Eagles' Eminations.....what a wonderful confirmation to those of us who take the path seriously that even though it seems crazy at times...even though people laugh constantly and don't understand why we live life as we do....in my case, even to the point of an alienated family who understands upward mobility but not inner peace. Our conversations are short and empty. The Tao, if it were not laughed at, wouldn't be the Tao. What a riotous cosmic joke this all is. When we get to the point where all we care about is merger with the One, or god, or brahma, or the Void....this is the point where the craziness really starts affecting our lives; where we find that we have to put our money where our mouth is; that it's not just a philosophical exercise after all, like it was in the beginning. It's something that we're supposed to wear...that's the point. And each of us has a garment of our own making, once we've assembled all the pattern pieces together. But this is the part where the rest of the world doesn't understand us, either. Maybe that's why this website is gold to people who really want to go the distance. Fellow souls doing the same. don Juan also reminded Carlos that shaman's (or masters of any sort, I would think)walk a very fine line between sanity and insanity. Boy, can I relate to that one

I'll bet there's a world of nuances on all the different translations, too, on the Do-Nothing, Not-Doing, or No need to do anything. I have found that wu-wei is vital to daily life, when it comes to decisions where I don't know which way to go. When I find myself asking what to do, I immediately answer myself. Do nothing. Let the dynamic in play continue. Sit here on the fence and watch it. When approached, always respond in the most loving fashion appropriate to the situation. When I use this with relationships, with any type of decision that isn't screamingly obvious to me....this works as well here too. For anything, it seems. It truly is sorcery. Things shake out magically.

Beautiful, Marbles.

I vote for this is one of the best threads ever. Okay Stosh - you took the photo Your Way. Certainly that isn't the first picture you've taken, ever? I'm sitting here trying to figure out your clue. Your Way. The only thing I can think of is that maybe you are taking photos of things, mundane things, as they actually are? That you are finding the beauty in the mundane, the Oneness of all of it? the idea behind the object? Please put me out of my misery here. I must know. It's my detective nature.

CHAPTER 21 As for the life of all human beings: The heavens brings forth their vital essence, The earth brings forth their bodies. These two combine to make a person. When they are in harmony there is vitality; When they are not in harmony there is no vitality. If we examine the Way of harmonizing them, Its essentials are no visible, Its signs are not numerous. Just let a balanced and aligned (breathing) fill your chest And it will swirl and blend with your mind, This confers longevity. When joy and anger are not limited, You should make a plan (to limit them). Restrict the five sense-desires; Cast away these dual misfortunes. Be not joyous, be nor angry, Just let a balanced and aligned (breathing) fill your chest.

I've been noticing a few posts about calcification of the pineal gland lately - I know nothing about this. How does this manifest in us and what do we notice?

Stosh darling - is your avatar a parkerhouse roll?

Interesting, Informer. I don't know if you participated in our recent thread about earth music (I think maybe you did?). Your video on the 3rd eye numinous accord is similar to that thread in that once again, the underlying chord is the key of B. There may be nothing to do one with the other, but I noticed on a recent walk that honeybees drone in the key of B. The next day I noticed that all the other squaking, squeaking, and buzzing beasts were all expressing in some variation of the key of B; whether it be a 5th, or a 3rd; (those beasties which I could actually assign a viable note to). But the fact remained that on that particular day, there was a beautiful harmonious B chord which included all the participants, whether flying or crawling. I wonder if one relates to the other? Possibly not, because someone else chimed in (maybe you?) that in the European zones the earth music is in a different key - maybe G? Can't remember at the moment.... So after listening to that sustained chord in the vid, has my terciary optical device been realigned in some way?

By concentrating your vital breath as if numinous, The myriad things will all be contained within you. Can you concentrate? Can you unite with them? Can you not resort to divining by tortoise or milfoil Yet know bad and good fortune? Can you stop? Can you cease? Can you not seek it in others, Yet attain it within yourself? You think and think about it And think still further about it. You think, yet still cannot penetrate it. While the ghostly and numinous will penetrate it, It is not due to the power of the ghostly and numinous, But to the utmost refinement of your essential vital breath. When the four limbs are aligned And the blood and vital breath are tranquil, Unify your awareness, concentrate your mind, Then your eyes and ears will not be over-stimulated. And even the far-off will seem close at hand.

"While the ghostly and numinous penetrate it, it is not due to the power of the ghostly and numinous..." It seems to me, too, that the ghostly and numinous spoken of here are those that possess the third eye. Ghostly and numinous = transparent, free of personality contortion, free of attaching entanglements. I'm not sure I see the warning in this, as it is exactly the life illusion that we want to penetrate. When we've gotten down to the Essence in our self-inquiry/anatta, this is where the two halves merge, in my experience. Our Self-Realization merges with The Words of Others. Love, unconditional love, becomes more the order of the day. In order to utilize the 3rd eye (which I call triangulating, because it feels just like you're out in space with a huge protractor or something and can see dynamics and angles that weren't visible previous to the 3rd eye development) I think we need to do the clearing out process first. Really nice post, Informer...

Between Beauty and Ugliness, how much difference is there? If it has black spots in its eyes it's god or whatever anyway, so all is beauty. No judgments necessary, just seeing the Void in the eyes, the little black spot in the eyes. All One. But illusions to decide to keep? How about the one where we're all separate?

On second thought, where's the fun without the stifingly convoluted debates? Jeez, Bob.

You're such a shamanic little puppy....

Very nice, don Vedo. I just don't think there's an owners manual for the K-stuff. Relaxation and acceptance seem to be the key for integrating the weirdness. I currently have hot compressed energy periodically escaping from my ears right now. I think my head is about to explode, actually. Kind of like that Weird Al Yankovich underwater scene in that old movie. But the specific weirdnesses seem to pass in their own time, and then it's just a question of being more comfortable and integrated until the next weirdness makes its appearance. What a trip this is. what a luxury it is to have a place to communicate these odd things to those who understand.

I think this indicates a deep dynamic going on in your life where you are feeling loss of voice, loss of projected power, loss of how you are perceived by others? It's my understanding that we manifest from the inside to the outside, due to who we really Are. Sometimes, asking ourselves, 'why am I manifesting this' will bring answers other than 'why is this happening to me?' The same could be said of your K awakening; You are manifesting that, it's not being imposed on you from above; you are ready to manifest it and become something Other than what you have been to this point. To develop the third eye does involve internal work, but this is combined with physical phenomena! This is an easy go-in for you - figure out why you're manifesting that blockage in your chakra. Your body is talking to you and trying to tell you something. Only when you see the root causes and take full responsibility for your part in the situation can you effect the change that You, the true You inside you, are trying to make. It wants to manifest through you; it wants to manifest Love within you; it wants you to love all others as yourself. The K-awakening is just the beginning for us; the brain will continue to search for the truth of its own Being, and the heart will assent when the answers are heard. You will get to the point where nothing will bother you any more, as you will realize that all things are One and therefore, there is no good or bad. The rain falls equally on all; we are but straw ceremonial dogs, as it says in the TTC. But we learn, if we do the work that is required, that we never need be a victim again; that there is no situation in life that can't be handled by Not-Doing, by letting all things take their own rise and their own fall. Kundalini awakening gets our attention. It's almost like when Don Juan Mateus had to give Carlos Casteneda copious quantities of drugs to shake him out of his left-brain regimented way of thinking, before Carlos could start to grasp the things in mysticism that don't align logically. And none of this stuff really does align logically, once the process starts. with increased Awareness comes the awareness of increased Synchronicity, which sort of throws everything you've ever been lead to believe out of sync. It is truly the world of Here Now. Castaneda would call this the Separate Reality. It's the sorcery of Taoism, of mystic Christianity; certainly there is a wu-wei counterpart within every tradition, as it seems that every master ultimately gets to the same place, regardless of the path taken. IMO.

A lot of concept in that small paragraph. Seems to me that atheism is so very close to enlightenment. If we look at atheism as being the same as transcending all structure, then it would hold that a state of atheism must first be realized before we can truly see. Or hear. If we're still caught up in structure of any kind mentally, then our vision is hampered; our thoughts are preconceived and we'll reject any thoughts that don't coincide with our preconceptions. The Room Where All Paths Meet. All of It and None of It, at the same time. My personal view is that to go from atheism to enlightenment, all that is needed is inner work (to rid oneself of fixated ego and to question one's own motives daily) so that the vision is truly clear. Inner work combined with agape or unconditional Love toward all others, realizing that 'we are that other person' and there really is no separation at all. In order to get to the point of true agape love, again it takes inner work to remove our selfishnesses. And then, my guess is that it's still a lifetime process, even after that achievement. Our human personalities still remain with us, and it's the Catch-22 that we seem to have been born into. Or, more accurately...manifested.

Hi Mike, I'd like to chime in in agreement with Seth Ananda - your experience sounds very much like my own spontaneous kundalini awakening - totally unexpected and unasked for. But something inside you must have been ready for the onset, whether you were actively in a studying mode or not. You obviously understand much - this seems like the perfect time for the merger of your upper awareness and your lower energy dynamics. This has been going on in me for about 7 years. My guess is that your third eye will develop as some of the symptoms merge together and become a little less bothersome. I've learned to live with the constant electrical activity; now it just Dwells within; if there's a dynamic within my subtle or energy body that needs addressed, the hot electrical energy will physically move to the chakra that needs cleared out of blockage; perhaps the throat chakra or the heart chakra, depending on what's going on in my life at the time. It'll sit there and 'do what it does' in its mysterious way to work on what needs to be worked on within my own character. I've noticed that it will always be working for your own improvement, in a character sense. Sometimes when the electrical activity gets to be too much, I'll go and lay face-down in the grass (it's lush where I live). This seems to help greatly, to allow the energy to drain down into the earth. Grounding, just like an electrical appliance. It works to a good degree. Very best wishes to you, as you go through this...

Moderator - could this please go in Pinned Topics? Riding the Ox. This is an expression I've known about for years and I've certainly seen it in Taoist art. I've always assumed it referred to the perfect balance it would take to actually ride an ox, unlike a horse. Funny shaped animal. But it occurred to me the other day that there is a different way of seeing Riding the Ox - and it jumped out at me because I'm at such a crossroads in my own life. An ox is probably not the most intelligent of animals, and to Ride the Ox would certainly mean to let the Ox take you wherever it wants to go. The only way one could enjoy riding the Ox would be to totally surrender to it. To let it take you wherever it wants to take you, because to try to get it to bend to our wills would be ridiculous. This is just like life, in its optimal form. Let it take us where it wants to take us, One day at a Time. Such a foolish way to live life, by all world standards. How can we possibly develop (or unearth) the wonder of a child, the naive foolishness of living life this way, and still get along? How can we possibly get along without our own machinations about tomorrow's fears - will the mortgage be met? will my daughter graduate from school? We build these mental and physical structure to insulate us from Tomorrow - our inherent fear. Yes, we meditate on the Oneness, and everything actually being Here and Now. We know this with our brains, we've read it through the words of others. But to actually put this into play in our mundane lives - to take it out of the theoretical and bring it into the physical - doesn't this seem to be the ultimate goal? Putting our money where our mouth is, as I see it. I haven't a clue as to how to kick this off. I'd love to see this thread grow from the inside to the outside - with small incidents from our lives, and trying to merge the beautiful wisdom of any of the tomes that we have come to love. Maybe if someone is at a place in their life where one passage from a book is particularly important to their own struggle at the moment, that could be the very thing we focus on. Maybe we can help each other get through these obstacles; to be there to bounce ideas off of; to really learn to Walk like we Talk. No whiners allowed. Just folks that are serious.

Woot! The Swami's words on creation and manifestation are nicely aligned with a book I happen to be re-reading now - the Impersonal Life - probably my 30th reading: What is called Desire in human personalities, is but the necessary Action of My Will pushing forth the epression of My Idea into outer Manifestation or Being. What to you would seem to be in Me a desire for expression, is but the Necessity of My Idea of My Self to Be, or Express Itself. Therefore, every real desire you feel, every desire of your heart, comes from Me and must of necessity sometimes, in some shape or other, be fulfilled. But as I have no Desire, because I AM All Things, once this Idea of expressing My Self in this new condition was born, I had but to think, that is, to concentrate or focus My Attention upon My Idea and Will It to come forth into expression, or, as is told in My other Revelation, to Speak the Creative Word, and at once did the Cosmic Forces of My BE-ing, set in vibration by the concentrating of My Will, proceed to attract the necessary elements from the eternal storehouse of My Mind, and, with My Idea as a nucleus, to combine, form and shape around It these elements into wht is called a thought-form of a planet, filling it with My Life Substance - My Consciousness - and endowing it with all the potentialities of My Being. But this act of thinking produced only a vitalized thought-form of a planet, and its manifestation was still in a nebulous state in the thought realm. From a thought-form, however, the quickening power of the Idea within, with My Will focused upon It, proceeded to mold, fashion and gradually to solidify into material form the various elements of Life Substance; until My Idea finally shone forth in substantial manifestation in the world of visible forms as the planet Earth, a medium ready for living expression, and now capable of both containing and expressing Me.

I'm doing my probably 30th reading of The Impersonal Life. One of those books that says different things each time you read it, because your eyes have evolved. I just came across a wonderful passage, pertaining to manifestation. In the Eternal there is no Time, or Space, or Individuality, and it is only by reason of the phenomenon of Thought being born from the womb of Mind into the world of Matter that the illusions of Time and Space and Individulity occur; the thought, or Creature, acquiring the consciousness of separateness from its Thinker or Creator. So it was then that the first tendency to think yourself as separate from Me was born. The complete consciousness of separation did not become established until long after. In the beginning, when You thus first entered into Earth expression, obeying the impulse I had sent forth through My concentrated Thought, You, one of My Attributes, surrounded or clothed Your Self with My Idea of My Self in expression as the particular Attribute You represented. You being the animating Force of that Idea. In other words, My Idea of My Self expressing that particular Attribute then became the Soul of Your particular expression. But the Idea or Soul is not You, remember, for You are really a part of Me, being My Self in expression through the medium of that particular Attribute. Having clothed Your Self with My Idea, this Idea then, through the necessity of Its be-ing, immediately began to attract to Itself the necessary Thought Substance requisite for the expression of that particular Attribute, and to build and shape it into My Image and Likeness. It thus became a Holy Temple, filled with My living Presence, because inhabited by You, one of My Divine Attributes. This aligns so very well with the TTC, in my opinion. It seems that the journey we're on finally takes us to a place where we realize we really have no individuality at all; that we are only the animated appendage of the Dao, the real Essence of us. And riding the ox in this context is to try and keep this in mind always - that seems to be the challenge. Who we Are and What We're Manifesting. I think we're manifesting Love, if we're doing it right.

How can this be crazy?? It's all vibration, generating from the first word.

Vortex, I hardly know what to say. Your triangulation was incredible. Thank you so much for taking the time to do that. The mountain goat thing makes total sense, particularly at this point in my life. Finding one's own balance, finding one's own strength, one's own food, one's own ledge...it just makes perfect sense. The mountain of poop thing is certainly telling as well. Luckily, that horrible situation resolved nicely. I actually boiled a bunch of Smooth Move tea and threw it down there. Figured it works good for constipation, which is truly what my sewer tank had. The metaphors run rampant. btw, love your new avatar. I could sit and watch it all day.

And Ti would be the 7th note in the scale (assuming C as the starting point), corresponding to the crown chakra as well. I wonder if you zoomed out in space and looked back at the earth in a cross-section, if the colors of the earth as they emit from the center don't also follow the colors of the chakra? Red on the very inside, the base chakra? Ultra-violet out in the upper atmosphere? I wonder if European bees buzz in G?