manitou

The only thing I'd add here is that your amend to Outi was one of the easier ones because she appreciated the apologies. This is a good starting place. Any fears we may have have come from a very long time ago, though. These old dynamics are the snowballs that have been getting bigger as they roll down the hill; they can be huge distortions, and yet appear 'normal' to us, because we lived through it and made it just fine....didn't everybody? And these are the ones that are the hardest to make because they hurt the most, and usually involves someone who has treated us unfairly. But making amends to these people (perhaps for our retaliation?) are the very ones that do the most good. This is why the recovery process involves going back through one's life - don Juan Mateus had Carlos do the same, if you recall from the Casteneda series. He had him 'recapitulate his life' and find those dynamic junctions that needed attention, amend, or reconstruction in some way. It would be wonderful if it were enough to just see our negative behavior pattern and then intellectually make the change. But it doesn't seem to work that way. The peacock (pride) will always raise its head if it isn't tamed. So will the pig. Or the snake. Or the monkey. Taming it involves more than making an intellectual decision to change. Of course this is part of it, but to really bring it into the physical realm, some physical steps must be introduced. At least this has been my experience over a relatively long period of time.

I think this is a wonderful statement. There's an equivalency here to Karma Yoga, as opposed to Bhakti (?) Yoga or Gnani Yoga. This is the Yoga of living life. To infuse every moment with enlightenment; not because you're out there hollering the answers (because everyone else thinks they have the answers too and therefore a head-butting contest would ensue) but you essentially become the model of the Tao -or... the Sage in action. Probably more specifically non-action. I think the word 'enlightenment' alone connotates being enlightened of something. My thinking is that we are 'enlightened' of any religious structure because we have found the essence at our own foundation, once we've done the inner cultivation. I think we're enlightened of having to react through the lens of ego, the Great Distorter, because we've taken the steps to tame and subjugate that when needed. Or the word 'enlightened' can also connotate 'infused with light'. The infusion of light would equate to the infusion of love for life and all things sentient. Personally, I think we're all just a projector for 'It', and when we keep the lens clean, the movie comes out very clearly.

Steve, your brain must have been smmmokin'!! after all that pondering. At this point in my life, my guess would be that enlightenment is the combination of knowing Who You Truly Are (as accomplished by self-realization), combined with loss of structure, combined with trusting the Universe that things are truly going of their own accord, combined with Love for the Oneness of everything and everybody.

This is probably true of most. But there are exceptions - specifically those who have to go the whole 12 step route to save our own lives. The personal inventory (the acceptance of our human failings) is only the first part. Then we have to tell those human failings to another (a nice ego smasher); and those who actually go further than this get to the amends step. Which is a mo-fo, if you'll pardon my French. Many who just make it to step 4 or 5 can't get beyond that; it is so very painful to make the kind of amends that I did to my dad. But that was the one that went the deepest and was contorting me the most over the years. I was brought up to be the first son, and I was a little girl. The trick is to do it not expecting anything but abuse in return. But having the courage to do it anyway, because the harder it is to do, the more value it has to you, not them. In the case of the amends to my dad, as someone mentioned, it may have done nothing at all for him. (actually, though, I'm pretty sure it did). But it did everything for me. It took an act of courage at some psychic level. In fact, it was probably the biggest clarity distorter of all; the pushed-down, tightly wound rage I think I felt for him just under the skin all my life. And it certainly reflected in the men I chose in my life; they all had a quality that left me feeling like the other shoe was about to drop and I was about to get crunched. That was the comfort level that I had established for myself. So, considering something like an amend, as painful as it will be, may be just the thing that we need. If we feel any residual anger or loathing for those in our past, it does nothing but warp our current clarity. The psychic lens is not a clean one. As to the question about my mom, Steve - I never made one to her because she was such a non-factor in my life. Other than shuffling me over to dad. But what I do now is call her daily (she's in a retirement home) and make sure she laughs at least once a day. I don't particularly like the woman - if she wasn't my mother I wouldnt' have a thing to do with her - but I guess the daily call is a bit of an 'amend' there as well. Sometimes an amend can just be changed behavior. I just think the amend process is pretty powerful stuff.

This is true - Wu-Wei necessitates none of these. But it does help the understanding of another who is asking the question to triangulate the picture from a few different perspectives so that he can see the commonality, recognize it, and internalize it. I sure didn't mean to confuse the issue.

Wu-wei, to my understanding, is the result of internalization of the TTC so that we can achieve non-doing. It is an achievement after the internal real self is realized; self-realization, if you will. This is nothing that can be found in a book. This is an inner journey, to get to the point of understanding of non-doing. The same phenomena exists within the Castaneda tradition as well, and probably all other viable traditions. But the attribute of the Sage, which is what we aspire to, is to know ourselves so very well that we are capable of seeing others and other situations very well. After all, we are all One. One goes in through ego (an easy way to do it) and looks for your part in each and every thing that happens in your life. To take responsibility for everything we've said and done, and to make the amends (which tames the ego) to correct the situation. and accepting the fact that we have character defects, and earnestly trying to eliminate them. The non-action part of it is the realization (and Acting on that realization) that the Universe is Love. Or mutual attraction, or the law of positive attraction. That if we 'do nothing' actively to change a dynamic, the highest result will happen on its own. I like to think of it as stopping the juggling act. If we just stop juggling and let all the items fall onto the floor, we can see exactly what we have in front of us. This is one part of wu-wei. Wu-wei is the sorcery part of the Taoist or shamanic tradition. We go to the 'source' (which we realize is really us, after all). We See, if we're capable. That comes after many years of meditation, study, and inner work. I need to practice a type of wu-wei around the house all the time. My other half is a bipolar fellow, sometimes wonderful to live with, sometimes hell. When he is in one of his bipolar snits, I know that trying to fix him or make things better for him only makes it worse. I carry on as if nothing is happening, I speak civilly and kindly to him even when he's being terribly unreasonable, and I just let the Universe take care of him. It always works. I remove my dynamic from the situation, and he ultimately gets through it just fine. Every single thing I do during those periods is not-doing, not judging, being kind, smiling at his insults. I've virtually removed myself from the situation, realizing that what he's manifesting is absolutely necessary for his continued spiritual growth, as strange as that sounds. But in order to not-react in a situation like the above one, I have spent years filing down my own personal 'buttons' so that there are none active for him to push. He is so terribly unreasonable during these periods that a description of some of the things that have happened over the past 28 years would defy belief. Wu-wei is not the same as ignoring a situation. Sure, we can try and ignore situations, but if we haven't done the inner work we won't be able to ignore it for very long; the moment someone sets us off and pushes an old button, there we are acting out our immaturity again, and responding tit for tat. That's the first indication that you are not in a wu-wei state. The inner cultivation is the key here. It turns us into a vacant vessel through which we can manifest the light. And the magic.

You're welcome, friend. Your brother is a pretty hot artist. That's an interesting concept, to seek inspiration and rework another artist's work.

Hi Steve - this may not pertain to you, but I need to throw something in. There is liberation in improving the situation with your folks. Real liberation, although you seem to have plenty of it. My example is this: I was brought up really heavy handed by a 6'4" cop with a belt. Almost daily my mother would say 'just you wait until your father gets home', because maybe I talked back to her or something. And very often I would have to pull down my pants, bare my butt, and dad would wail on me with the strap. This started at age 6. THEN he would make me put my arms around him and tell him that I loved him, right after the whipping. I grew up hating this son of a bitch. When I got to the amends part of the 12 steps of recovery, I realized that my biggest liberation was making amends for all the times I flipped him off, I ran away from home, I called him names....Even Though He Started It. This was the hardest thing I think I've ever had to do - to make amends to him. But I did it because I wanted to stay sober. (Interestingly enough, he capitulated on this amend and made a huge one to me too, which was a tearful and hugging experience for both of us, shortly before he died of a stroke). I am so eternally grateful that I had the opportunity to have that moment with him, because there is no longer that particular baggage to deal with. This may not apply to you at all, cuz maybe you don't have issues with your folks. But I grew up a total rebel, as did many others on this board. I've come to realize that if one is in a state of continual rebellion (as I was all up through my police career too; I was just continuing the tradition, apparently) that we can only exercise one half of our options. We must act out in a rebellious fashion. We're unable to make the choice that Love would have us do because we must act to the opposite. This is the liberation I found - the ability to respond with 100% choice, not 50%. I love the line in Hope Floats with Sandra Bullock......."Childhood is the thing we try to get over for the rest of our lives...."

My error, I should have been more succinct. The wonderful place I refer to is the place of clarity of which you speak. I'm not talking about any wonderful Taoist heaven. It's right here. We're on the same page, CowTao.

The really odd thing about kundalini awakening is when it happens spontaneously because the vessel is 'ready'. This happened to both me and my husband in an auto accident. We had both been very tied up with metaphysics, shamanism, and in my case Taoism.....and had been for years. We were parked behind a car at a signal and I watched the fellow behind us in a big truck coming at us, brakes squealing. He hit us just hard enough to not do too much damage to the car, and no injury to us. The oddest thought came to me as I was watching the truck coming at us in the rear-view mirror: "Why am I manifesting this?" At that time, I knew nothing of manifesting from the inside to the outside. It was just an off-the-wall thing my mind said to me. We both became K-active shortly after that. This just tells me that Kundalini is going to find its way one way or the other; whether someone intentionally spends years trying to raise it, or one spends years readying the vessel for a complete electrical surprise...

I think that folks often overlook the virtues of the Sage during discussions of this nature. He possesses 3 treasures. The reason he possesses 3 treasures is because he's spent a lifetime doing the inner cultivation, much the same as a Buddhist who meditates upon losing attachment. One of the treasures is Love. To have true 'agape' love for everyone and everything; this is not our normal state. This must be arduously cultivated. No judgment. Another treasure is Never Be The First in the World. This seems to go directly to our egos. To not be the 'first' on this forum (or to not have to be 'right'). We play with this problem every day in our discussions. Ego jumps into our threads at the drop of a hat. So the Sage has done the inner cultivation to tame his ego. The third treasure is Never Too Much. This goes directly to balance in everything in our lives; food, sex, booze, whatever. The Dao is like a butterfly landing on a bubble, it's so delicate. The Sage and the Buddhist master have developed the same inner strengths but by different methods. Arguments between Daoists and Buddhists are just plain silly, if you ask me - we all get to the same wonderful place if we're impeccable with the inner work. Otherwise it's just all words.

The more one does the inner cultivation, the more the truth resonates within when it is heard.

I'm an absolute potpourri of everything - brought up Christian, then tripped into the metaphysical. I love what someone above said about Christianity involving no inner cultivation. The last church service I ever attended I heard a very distinct voice in my head say "This Is Dead". I never went back, because I realized that it was. Or at least the Christian church I was attending at the time. A famous old fellow named Manley Hall used to speak in Hollywood CA once a week, on Sundays. Actually, it was more like he'd sit up on a chair on an empty stage and channel for an hour. He sort of freed me from the tight Christian conditioning I'd had as a kid. There's just no right path or wrong path. The Dao is within us, and as such it takes us where it wants us to go. I need one thing at one time, you need another thing at another time. We round ourselves out by picking our communal brains. But there does come a point in time where one has to find the garment that is the correct fit for him. It comes from no one else's book. Just yours.

In a shamanic sense, it seems to work to make friends with everything. Had an interesting discussion with a groundhog the other day. I can't remember the last time I was bit by a mosquito, and I'm here in the woods of Ohio. I have some huge black carpenter bees I talk to, they live over our doors. Maybe the mosquitos are into different body types and smells. The calmness and the lower blood pressure thing mentioned above kind of makes sense to me too.

This chapter has an awful lot of essence to it, if you ask me. First of all, it intimates that we 'naturally' generate vital essence; this seems to go hand in hand with the wu-wei of not-doing; even if we're doing nothing to help a situation get better, just our presence there will mingle our vital essence into the essence of the situation. We need do nothing. It also seems like when the calm is there, energy is not depleted. Where it says that when we have no delusions within us that externally there will be no disasters. This once again says to me that we manifest spirit (Dao) from the inside to the outside. It is the 'I' deep within us. If we have clarified ourselves to the point that there are no more snaggles within us, the perfect energy does flow out. This is the only way this makes sense to me. And, magically, this does keep us from harm. I'm sure we can all come up with instances in our own lives where there were scary near-misses on the freeways, or other instances where by all rights we should have died but didn't. Odd things just happen too often.

Wu-wei is the magic of not doing. Have you ever tried to discuss this little concept with someone who has never studied the Dao? It brings peals of uncontained laughter. My brother, a very smart attorney, looks at me with somewhat disdainful eyes because I have tried to explain this to him. The idea that we 'let' things happen as opposed to 'make' things happen is totally foreign to people. To advance in the Dao is to trust the Universe more and more. I like to think that as bad as things appear to be, there really is a Dao force that knows what it's doing. The funny thing is that there are people like us Dao types, and others, who really are sorcerers of a sort, because we understand the magic of not doing. But nobody else in the world can see it, it seems. My only conjecture on this is that we are intended to be a type of leavening on the bread to make it rise. We are cast about willy nilly all over the earth for a reason, methinks.

Steve F - I just noticed your new avatar. Did you get into a bar fight while I was gone for a while?

Thanks, Kempomaster, for taking the time to tell those stories. I'm really looking forward to the workshop in Springfield.

So I'm sitting here on my rocking chair on my front porch in Ohio; the wind is gently blowing a new storm in, an old storm out. The temperature is about 75 though - one of those wild and unpredictable days that you're never sure what's going to happen next. I hear the trees whispering to me (they surround my little acre of land; most are pines) and the cardinals are singing songs I've never heard them sing before. I put my feet up and opened up a brand new book I just got in from Amazon. Master Zhongxian Wu's 'Seeking the Spirit of the Book of Change'. I opened it and started to read the Foreword, written by a Daniel Reid. My heart stopped at the first sentence. Life is essentially a verb, not a noun. Those combination of words, at that particular moment with the wind blowing just the way it was - it sent me onto a journey where I FELT the changes from moment to moment, felt it in my body, felt it in my mind. I felt the hologram. I felt the mosaic pieces glinting in the sun, as if on a stiff fabric being folded. I don't know why I had to get up from the rocking chair to tell you this. I guess it's because you're the only souls I know that would understand the mindblowing nature of an experience like that, lol. Actually, I'm rather glad you're here. Perhaps the enlightenment we all seek is to trust the change, and know it's not really us skinwalkers doing the changing. It is the force within us, and it knows what it's doing.

Doesn't matter. You understand the template. I stopped going to meetings 5 years ago when I moved to Ohio. My only point, I guess, is that I can't even imagine the identity issues involved with someone you grew with in the womb, even if you have gone your separate ways in life. There must be such good stuff there for examination and amend. If you've done this (which you no doubt have because of your long-term comfort level and continual abstinance), I'll bet the identity liberation was exhilirating. I guess I'd never thought about the twin thing before, so I found myself thinking about it a little. I really didn't intend to ride you, lol.....sorry!

CITE: National Examiner; May 30, 2011 issue Page 36 Folks don't start out as sourpusses - they get grumpy as they age. A new study of 2,000 subjects reveals that grumpiness begins at age 52 and mushrooms as people get older. The least cranky humans are the babies, who laugh an average of 300 times a day. But by the time they've grown into teenagers, the chuckles have plummeted to just six daily. Folks over 60 laugh a sulky 2 1/2 times every 24 hours. And it's no wonder that older men are usually portrayed as grouches - because guys tend to be a lot crabbier than gals. (I do have enough ego left to tell you that I buy these to read articles on the phone to my mother, who has dementia or Alzheimers. Some of these stories are hysterical, and by the time the phone call is over her endolphins are swimming all over the place. If anyone is dealing with someone with dementia, PLEASE consider reading the Examiner or the Globe to them. It'll make their day. The headline on page 37, which I'm just getting to, is ATTACK OF THE 50 FOOT WOMAN STAR FOUND MUMMIFIED IN HOME. Mom should enjoy that, lol) Isn't it wonderful that our original self laughs 300 times a day?

I think this forum is yin and yang. There are people who are loving by nature and those who are contentious by nature. We all have the capacity to be both. I think this is part of our inner cultivation, how we "anonymously" treat each other through a computer screen. If someone is chronically nasty, that is a window into that persons soul. That's just where they are at this time, and has a ways to go before developing the 3 Treasures. The Treasure we seem to be talking about here is: Never be the first in the world. (Lin Yutang's translation). As far as I can see, this goes directly to our egos, our need to be right, to be first, to be the winner. The great Cosmic Sense of Humor gave us that, we're stuck with it. But the inner work tames it so that if we stay in the Here and Now we can choose to react exactly as we want, without the distortion of ego. I don't think we talk enough about real inner work on this forum. There are many templates for the work: but in my opinion, in order to get to the place of balance that we all seek, it must involve searching out our negative qualities; if we're getting angry on this forum all the time, it's because we still have buttons which are capable of being pushed, and with regularity they are guaranteed to be pushed in these discussions. And I think the best templates are also those that include making amends for the wrongs we have done in our life. This is a ridiculously humbling (and sometimes humiliating) experience. But it is this very thing, the pain of admitting a mistake, that brings us to any real understanding of humility. The sage does have humility. The hardest ones for me to make were to my father - in my mind he 'started' all the bad feelings by the thrashings with a leather belt across my young bare behind. But in order for me to find what I was looking for, I had to make amends to him for the things I did in retalitation, like running away, not obeying him, etc. The thought of making amends to him was so repugnant, I nearly gagged on my words. But the amazing thing is that he capitulated when I didn't expect him to.....he actually apologized to me afterwards for being too heavy-handed. Today I realize that we're all just victims of victims. He was just giving me what had been given to him. I can honestly say that I actually do now feel some love for the memory of that man, and I realize that some of my greatest strength was from him and because of him. We come and we go from the Tao Bums. I've left before because someone stepped on my ego and it ticked me off and I just signed off for a while. I always seem to come back, though - there just aren't that many places that you can find discussions of this calibre. It just has its ups and downs, that's all....and I'm a proponent of let's love each other and help each other evolve upwards.

Well, that's what us girls are good at. More words.

I know what you mean about the gentleness thing. But the way I look at it, one of the 3 Treasures of the sage is Love. So if one is to ever become as the sage, love would be incorporated into all his actions. Love means very different things in different situations. But it's always the high road. Sometimes it just means not flipping someone off in traffic. I think this is the biggest and hardest part of our inner cultivation - to develop Love in the face of all the violence we see and hear about, and particularly to try and try to react in a loving way even when the aggravations get ridiculous. This daily practice is the real essence, in my opinion. Love can only be attained by non-judgment, the kind of love the sage has. He may not even divide things into violent and non-violent, I don't know. Maybe violence isn't a Good or Bad thing. Maybe it's just an Is thing. This sounds crazy, but back when I was a working 'dick' (pardon the old cop coming out in me) after years of investigating sex crimes and homicides, I started actually talking to the rapists or child molesters that were in custody - either because someone in patrol snagged them, or because my partner and I made the arrest. Of course, I would always have to read them their rights and do a regular interrogation. But often times the perp would not waive his rights and not want to talk about the crime. After I'd been working sex crimes for about 10 years, something inside me changed. I started sticking around, even if they didn't waive their rights, and see if they wanted to talk about other things. Anything. The result of the conversation was usually that we achieved a meeting of the minds; a meeting in which I would at least try to plant a seed; a seed that could grow and give him a glimmer of hope that he didn't have to live his life that way. Of course, any of this wasn't used in court, it was just a personal thing I started doing. I actually got a payoff some years later when I ran into a rapist I'd thrown in jail and he'd gone to prison for a few years. He was a short latino man, teardrop tattoo under the eye, you've got the picture. He was one nasty dude, as were all the males in his family. But I actually ran into him at an AA meeting. Not just ran into him, we actually happened to be standing next to each other and holding hands while saying the Serenity prayer. He recognized me first, and I was absolutely astounded when he reminded me who he was. I couldn't believe it. But the point is, that he told me that something about what we'd been talking about (when I arrested him) led him to seek out AA meetings in prison. When I realized it was him, we embraced tightly, and for for than a few seconds. I wish I could say that story had a happy ending, but about a year later I heard he was shot robbing a liquor store. But something a little softer and gentler was born inside him, even though he wasn't able to keep it. His death made me cry.

The Tao of Physics was quite an eye opener for me as well. Beautiful. And the whole Castaneda thing.....oh dear. I love it. You are one polite gentleman, Mr. F. Greatly appreciated by me, at least, on this forum.