manitou

Sun - I wish you were 'somewhere in Ohio' instead of 'somewhere in Balkan'. I think you would be a very nice person to have as a friend.

Because this is one of the few places where people understand me. The Tao (or my Castaneda leanings) are the most important things in my life. Without these two I can't imagine the mundane existence of how I used to think, the things I did. The Tao Bums is where I find like-minded people - they're not that easy to find in the middle of the bible belt. I truly am grateful that you're here. I love you, TB's.

I'm exhausted. Taking such a foray into the left brain really does me in.

Thanks for the link to the Wei Wu Wei page - so awesome and so pertinent. There is no doubt you are earnestly trying to internalize all this - the focus on humility is the most important, I think. Wonderful writings -

I have often wondered why this is so. I am currently equating this with vibrations. (I know elsewhere in the writings it lauds standing here like a blank-eyed calf and not looking for the reason). But looking for the reason is just too much fun - otherwise, why are we here on this forum? Vibrational energy. A newborn baby would send out no vibrational energy that would be anything but pure - no contrivance, no agenda. Maybe it's the interaction of vibrational energy that determines the setting for interrelation with each other. I've never been really comfortable in a room full of people. If I am not mindful of the Tao, I will walk into that room and bounce all over the place in bizarre snippets of conversation that leave me exhausted and unsatisfied. If I go into the room in the state of Do Nothing, being mindful of the Tao, the conversations come to me and it seems to soften the egoistic edge I would normally have with me in a state of non-mindfulness. The other day I was sitting on the floor meditating. I was in the void. My dog happened to walk slowly by and it was the oddest thing: it seemed like I felt the molecules from her passing through my body, like little tingly specks of light. It almost felt like a frisbee going through my body. The point I'm making is that I was putting out a much different vibration in meditation than if I were just sitting there eating a cookie. Maybe I was putting out a vibrational field that didn't conflict at all with her vibrational field and my field yielded to it when she came walking by. Maybe a baby's vibrational field generates no karma (or cause and effect) until it starts to be "instructed" away from its original way of being.

Actually, I think we are the same creature. The creature that breathes and 'thinks it knows' everything is the same entity that lives in both of us. It's that warm place that feels like home. It's the same creature that dwells in everyone and in every animal, plant, rock and tree. It's, like, really huge. The reason I know this is because if something hurts you it will make tears come to your eyes. If something hurts me it will make tears come to my eyes. If something is wonderful tears well up in my eyes, as they do yours. If something crosses your ego you will predictibly lash out, as I do unless I've tempered it not to do so. If you see a small cute fuzzy puppy your heart swells with love - as mine does. The proofs to me are in the physical manifestations, the tears, the anger, the love. The same critter lives inside all of us and reacts the same way in all of us. I know this won't measure up to anybody's standard at all - any realizations I've had are of the self-realized variety. I merely fell in love with a book a long time ago. The entity can be tempered, I just don't think it's just done by jamming more data in.

My thoughts here are that a taoist ultimately becomes capable of bending the light.

It's becoming apparent to me that you may not be familiar with the concept of wu-wei.

Well, I accept that I may not know what you're talking about when you say right view. I didn't come up along Buddhist lines. my only point is within the I AM consciousness comes the realization that I am you and you are me. I AM the mountain and the earth and the cosmos. Maybe right view means something else to me - didn't realize it was a codified Buddhist concept. I merely love the TTC with my whole heart. If there's more whoop-de-do coming because I get to find a new structure later (yours, for example), then I look forward to visiting the magic realms and having my enlightenment assured, as you say.

I love the discussion about the 'right view'. I think this equates to the view we're left with after a lot of inner work has been done. A person can't have a right view when they're meditating and then go out and pillage and plunder between meditations. It is a totally different perspective and way of looking at the world, one which involves less judgement and more loving. But I take a little exception to your minimizing the I AM consciousness. Personally, the I AM consciousness came after many years of cultivating the right view. (It also meshed after repeatedly reading The Impersonal Life, by Anonymous). How can you possibly say that the I AM consciousness is a springboard for a right view consciousness? I AM. What does that really mean? It merely means We Are God. It is our collective consciousness that is the moving force in the world, perhaps in the universe. There is no Being out there directing traffic. The I AM consciousness is very much the way of the Tao. It presupposes that we have access to the electromagnetics and physical attributes of the earth in order to create and affect the changes we want, whether in healing or situational resolution. In order to achieve use of these forces we must align ourselves with the 'right view'. If you are finding other views in an out-of-body way through your meditations, then perhaps these can be equated to shamanic journeys of the mind which touch on the physical as well. Your structural assembly about how It can be reached is valid for your mindset and your background. You may believe you can 'see' how the rest of us are laboring in the lower planes because of your perspective. But please understand that we all believe we are sitting on a perch that is the 'right view'...that's the nature of our egos. Please consider that true enlightment may just be crawling through and transcending all the structure.

Seems l ike the more we talk about structure of different systems the more we get away from the Tao.

A wonderful paragraph on how decisions affect aliveness. This is a delicate balance between action and non-action. Often times my decision is to Do Nothing. And by the way, I really don't think I'm the monalisa of whatevah. It was just a picture I took while holding the camera pointed at my face while I was still in my jammies. "Whatevah" wasn't what I was thinking.

When you refer to We, I guess we're talking about the world community. What would a historian see - better yet, a visitor from outer or inner space? The first thing they would notice is whether mankind had figured out how to share the wealth in a reasonable fashion amongst all the world citizens, or whether greed kept the wealth clumped up in tiny little circles like a frog in a blender. They would have to observe the quality of life of the very least of the citizens to evaluate the heart of the whole. I'm afraid we wouldn't score very highly if this fellow comes soon..... (And then there's the whole ecology thing.)

Hi Moonbar - You know, I was kind of talking out of my butt when I said that, about Constantine. I've just always 'heard' that (starting with a philosophy class in college). I believe it's true. I do have a copy of the Nag Hammadi in the preface and let me quote a paragraph for you, though it doesn't mention Constantine: "In 367 (AD), Athanasius, the orthodox patriarch of Alexandria, wrote an Easter letter to be read in all the monasteries of Egypt, calling upon them to eliminate from their libraries apocryphal writings; in the letter he listed those books that were to be included as acceptable--the oldest extant list of the twenty-seven books in the New Testament. It has been suggested that the Nag Hammadi codices were among the books that had to be excluded but were buried for safekeeping in a sealed jar by those who valued them." As far as more directly linking this to Constantine, you might want to do some googling.

This really does put us on the horns of an enema. One would have to look at the intent that the author of the tome had, as to what agenda he was pushing. If the author regarded himself as an expert, then his ego would be clouding his vision. But would a seriously humble person have been able to do what it took to write down and disseminate his own inner knowledge? The Nazarene wasn't an author. Gautama wasn't an author, to my knowledge. In order for pure truth to be written down, it would have to come out of humility. By the nature of this, others would most likely be the ones writing down their perception of what the seriously humble person was thinking or wanting to teach. I'm thinking all these things are guideposts. They will only carry us so far. The rest is a process of self-realization that is between you and the life force, whatever name you want to give it.

Hi Vaj - we're talking about a different place of I AM. The place I'm talking about is the place that is formless, once you've made your way through the form of Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, or Hinduism. Your suggestion to study up isn't how the place is found. Maybe stop studying for a while, Vaj.

Straw Dog - Your definition feels true. Perhaps the definition is best seen in retrospect. And by that measure, I feel okay. I feel like I do try to do the highest thing at any given moment. It makes me a little misty to know that I have been a person who has been possessed of wonderful artistic talents, and yet never been capable of getting it together enough to market them well. I've never been able to stay on any given course for very long, and for that my family regards me as a bit of a flake. (Actually, I'm crying a little as I write this)... When one gets to the point in life where you realize you haven't fulfilled even a fraction of the potential that is yours, it's an eye-opener. But I guess that's the purpose of all this. Perhaps it's not too very important to fulfill all the potential 'stuff', but rather to find one's feet placed on a spiritual path that embraces the very fact that I haven't been able to fill my potential. I know very well that this is the nature of things. To come to the end of my rope in some areas, to embrace the Do-Nothing of the Tao in a deeper way. I've been embracing the Tao for 20 years, and yet the entrenching continues on...There are ways I can surrender more, to stay in the valley more, to love more, to judge less. Shit.

A bit off topic, but have you ever read anything about the Nazarene being an Essene? I think his folks were Essenses, rather than Philistine or Saducee. The Essenes were the shamanic clan of the Jews. I'm not sure they would have been satisfied seeing their God as a divine light. It was more wrapped up in nature. My personal belief is that the Nazarene, if indeed there is any truth to his life or any of his acts, was a shaman. He learned to manipulate energy big time. Maybe he was one who helped break the glass ceiling for the rest of us.

What does a daoist actually do? I would say in the true sense of the word, what constitutes a daoist is their learned ability to Do Nothing, wu-wei. The kind of do-nothing that is virtually impossible to teach to someone until and unless the internal work has been done in the student. the kind of wu-wei that can remain calm in the midst of a storm and KNOW in his heart that everything is right on schedule. The kind of wu-wei that feels no fear because it Understands that things are manifesting as the life force seems to want it to manifest. Or the kind of wu-wei that knows that Doing Nothing, when engaged, is the most expedient way to affect change in an unwanted situation; only the light is being bent from a distance far removed from the problem and very subtle, so that people cannot see it unless they have the Eyes to See It. In order to have the eyes to see it, we must be capable of reaching that place of wu-wei where the perspective can be realized. Wu-wei cannot be realized until we become a clear channel for spirit (life force) to either take the highest action or Do Nothing on what's already being done. This is impossible to put into words. Maybe I should cut my losses here....

From what everyone is describing here, it sounds like we...are...god.