Avoid gurus, follow plants.

[ChiForce]

What is the mind cultivation?  LOL LOL...  Don't you know...is to break through the first Skandha, FORM.  I can say that in 99% of the cases, that's how the Kundalini energy rising is experienced.   

[Kubba]

Just cuorious ... pros and cons ...  

 

Show me any good teacher who avoided gurus. Good does not mean famous.

Show me any healthy human who takes substances (and dont tell me that hoffman lived for 101 years and was taking LSD).

Adi Da said once that average human wants to be intxicated this or that way, weather it is alcohol or some altered states of consciousness.

[Ish]

-

Edited April 4, 2018 by Ish

[silent thunder]

Teacher.  Guru.  Drug.  Entheogen.  Breath.  Plant.  Stone.  Crystal.  Human.  Animal.  Reptile.  Algae.  Fish.

 

I can't conceive of a single thing in our entire universal environment, nor a process, or organ within my body, nor a dream or thought stream of 'my mind' that is not a guru.  In fact, to me, there is no separation of teacher and student.  There is just relationship.

 

I no longer perceive teacher/student, guru/follower.  I experience relationships.  Either I participate, or withdraw. 

 

Our human culture of late seems so obsessed with teachers and teaching.  Particularly of becoming a teacher.  In the West it seems a plague of the mindset of needing to 'teach what I know' to everyone around me, particularly after having some impacting experience.  I need to teach you something.  You need to learn something.  There is this assumption that my experience must be distributed to the larger masses.  I'm a great teacher.  You're a great teacher... so and so is a bad teacher.

 

what a load of b.s. that all is to me where I am now...  there is no thing and no one to me now, who isn't a teacher and student simultaneously. 

 

There is life.  Of which, we are all an integral participant.  How aware we are of that process... determines much.

 

The level of my participation in an active relationship will dictate how I define and what I call teacher and what I will derive from the process of being in the presence of anything.  To sit under a tree for an afternoon and watch the wind blow the grass, the birds hunting insects, the ants disassembling a grasshopper corpse and the bees bringing life to everything around them... very instructive for me, if I'm participating, but who is the teacher? 

 

More and more, I sense that the only guru is within and it is not a thing, it is a process.

 

I have in the traditional sense, been a teacher.   I had 'information' that I offered to others in a formal setting.  Whether or not the 'student's learned, I had no control.  In reality, I offered of myself and if they were inclined to enter actively into the relationship, the participants, perhaps gained or lost something within their experience that could be defined as beneficial, or useless.

 

But to strictly define me, or anyone as the teacher is an obtuse and clumsy oversimplification, it's lazy.  There was not a single instance of this traditional process of me being 'the teacher' where I myself did not learn.

 

As for substances.  All 'things' have medicine.  They have within the very vibration of their essence, in their nature, lessons that I may derive if I am inclined to seek, or listen, or simply participate in a relationship with them.  Crystals are powerful teachers in this sense for me right now. 

 

The whole 'drugs are bad... mm'kay' mentality is pedantic to me of late.  It's usually an indicator of someone's lack of experience, a projection of social programming.  Herbs, plants, fungi, entheogens have tremendous and powerful medicine that can impart potent lessons when we enter into a relationship with them.  How those relationships affect us is part of the process called life.  Not all of life is pleasant.  Not all lessons I have learned were fun, but even the unpleasant lessons were helpful.  It is just as helpful to learn what I am not.

 

Anything that affects an effect can be classified as having a drug-like quality. 

 

Breath is by far the most potent guru/student relationship I have and is hands down the most potent drug I have ever encountered.  Adjusting and altering my breath rate and depth/shallowness has induced states far more powerful than any 'traditional drug' I have ingested or smoked.

 

Quiet observation I would classify as my second most potent guru. 

 

Just to sit and open up to what is around...

 

student/teacher/drug/medicine/beneficial/harmful... labels of processes and reactions.

 

There is a universe, apparently without, yet experientially as much within. 

All life is a guru, if I'm willing to participate in an active relationship.

Yet, life isn't the same without me, in the process, so who then is the true guru, and who is teaching whom?

[RiverSnake]

 

 

Breath is by far the most potent guru/student relationship I have and is hands down the most potent drug I have ever encountered.  Adjusting and altering my breath rate and depth/shallowness has induced states far more powerful than any 'traditional drug' I have ingested or smoked.

 

 

 

Hey Silent would you be able to elaborate on this?

[silent thunder]

Sure, anything to avoid doing my taxes...

 

In one experience with Pranayama, a few minutes into the process, I realized my face was buzzing.  It was dramatic and very intense.  Similar to, but much more intense than the feeling when you have a limb that is going to sleep, only this was not leading to numbness.  As the initial shock receded, I reminded myself not to get attached to the sensations and to just let go of my attention to my face and go back into the breath.

 

The moment I dropped the attention on my face, my entire body lit up with the most intense buzzing it had ever experienced.  I felt weightless, as if floating and the level of energy flowing through my body felt as if I had been plugged into 220v of pure blissful electricity, not the jolting, painful, joint separating type that happens with true electrocution.

 

Being utterly unable to separate from the attachment to these powerful sensations, I focused on the voice of person leading the process and slowly the abiding all over body buzz gave way to... me suddenly coming back to consciousness.  As I became aware again of being conscious, I immediately wondered how long I had been unconscious.  I wondered if I'd fallen asleep, but knew that wasn't the case as we had transitioned from lying flat on our backs, to being propped up on our elbows and staring forward toward our feet.  I assume now, that I had gone out of body again and simply did not retain the memory of it, but perhaps it was merely the shutting down of the conscious process in lieu of the process.  I don't know and it really doesn't matter.

 

At this point the all over body buzz had given way to a mild body tingle, deep relaxation and still a feeling of having no real mass or body weight.  The next thing I became aware of and what probably drew my consciousness back was a strong, pulsing, magnetic seeming vibration in my liver.  This pulse coincided with my heartbeat, had a palpable internal sound associated with it and was orgasmic in a new way, being simultaneously deceptively intense while very mild.  This continued to the conclusion of the process.

 

Upon the conclusion of the exercise and my sitting up and going into stillness, I became aware of an overwhelming, intense heat in my lower back, centered around the Mingmen point.  It felt as if there were a basketball/volleyball sized circle of coals under my skin, emanating heat from that point.  It was very comforting to my body, yet felt so intense at one point that it caused my rational mind alarm.  The thought, 'can I burn myself with this?  will my shirt burst into flames?' landed on my thought pond briefly.

 

For the next hour or so, perhaps longer as the rest of the class moved on, I simply sat, unable, or unwilling to separate too much from my body awareness.  There were intermittent flows of energy throughout various meridians and organs.  The bottoms of my feet would suddenly erupt as if they had been subjected to, or plugged into raw electrical current.   Whirling heat cycles in the chest and abdomen, vibrations and magnetic pulses.  The sensations of air and liquid flowing under my skin out my hands, and then back in up my arms into the head space. 

 

Two weeks later, I attended another, much smaller class sponsored by the same group and was pleased to see the woman who had been lying next to me during the experience.  When I shared how intense my experience was and asked her how her experience was, she regaled me with her rather terrifying experience of being in a very blissful state of confusion at one point, only to suddenly realize that she was staring at the roof of the building we were all lying in, from several hundred feet above it.  She had never done any formal breath training or even meditation.  She was a nurse attending this conference for the required learning credits and was a materialist, prior to the experience. 

 

We can go for weeks without food, days without water, but only minutes without breath. 

Breath is one of the quickest inroads to affecting conscious states and body awareness in my experience.

It's one potent drug.

[ChiForce]

Hold on to you seats people for what I am about to write on...   If you think the use of psychedelic drugs is essential to your cultivation process and enlightenment, can you stop using them....and to continue on your path and to advance further.  Do you get withdrawals?  If the answer is no..hold that thought.

 

I am sure some of you have read the Tibetan Book of the Dead in which it explains the death bardo experiences and, if you haven't been able to realize rigpa while still alive, you can still be liberated in your bardo.

 

In the death bardo experiences, you don't have a body anymore.  You are dead.  Your consciousness is still wondering and lingering around until the next rebirth.  If you spend your entire spiritual journey relying on drugs, what do you think it would happen to your mind in the death bardo experiences???  You don't have a body anymore.  What good would LSD do for you at this point???  Hehehehe...

 

I would be mighty upset if only during my death bardo experiences I realize the use of psychedelic drugs was never the right path to liberation.  Scary???  Oh yeah....

Edited March 26, 2016 by ChiForce

[silent thunder]

Just breathe mate...

Nothing is wrong in the universe...

 

you are spotless, cannot be shamed, wronged, broken, stained, nor distilled in any fashion.

 

Let go of the fear and simply be.

 

Life is the greatest drug there is and it's utterly, brilliantly, self sustaining and complete.

oh and incidentally, it's a drug

[RiverSnake]

Thanks for sharing your experience Silent. I don't do much Pranayama, but the experiences i've had with have been very intense. Strong exhaling into parts of the body gathers strong bursts of chi to any area it touches in greater durations than any other method i've tried. 

 

I had a similar experience one time of sitting next to a person while i was trying a new meditation technique (not pranayama). I was bursting into pretty intense bliss and the lady whom was sitting next to me in class started to look around and she said that she felt the room moving around her and the floor shifting underneath her feet. Lol. 

[Songtsan]

Pataknjali's sutras mentions the use of 'herbs' for spiritual gain...

 

"Five ways to thin the veil: Five methods are mentioned by which that barrier or veil of ignorance (2.3) is thinned, or eventually removed entirely, allowing Self-realization (1.3) and liberation (4.26). Here's the five ways of thinning the veil: 

1. Birth (janman): Some rare ones are born with a natural ability to drop the veil between the conscious and unconscious. Recall that in sutras 1.19-1.20, two kinds of people were mentioned. First were those who naturally are predisposed by virtue of having attained a high level of experience in a previous life, though that experience was not complete. Second, were those who (like most of us) need to follow a path of faith, energy, memory, concentration, and knowledge. Here, in this part of the sutra, it is simply being acknowledged that some experience beyond the barrier or veil by virtue of birth.
    

2. Herbs (ausadhi): There is said to be an ancient elixir that when ingested, breaks down the barrier. It is also said to be an inner elixir, in the subtle aspect of our own being. At a more surface level, we are all familiar with the way in which various drugs or chemicals break down the barrier between conscious and unconscious. Throughout spiritual and religious history of humanity, herbs have been used responsibly in this way by many cultures. While we are not suggesting drug use here as a means to spirituality, it would not be complete that it not be mentioned as one of the ways people can remove the barrier between conscious and unconscious. In light of herbs as a means of removing the barrier, it is imperative to remember that the foundation principles are of non-attachment and attaining a natural state of stable tranquility (1.12-1.16). The way in which the ancients used such herbs is vastly different from drug abuse and addiction. 

.....etc. etc.

[Nungali]

Hold on to you seats people for what I am about to write on...   If you think the use of psychedelic drugs is essential to your cultivation process and enlightenment, can you stop using them....and to continue on your path and to advance further.  Do you get withdrawals?  If the answer is no..hold that thought.

 

and if the answer is yes ... hold that thought too .  It isnt psychedelics that are known to be the addictive drugs, its the narcotics depressives and stimulants ... a different class altogether  . 

 

besides, I am not claiming that it is essential.    I havent used psychedelics in years and years ... and have no hunger for them. There are also a heap of practices I used to do that I dont anymore ... they 'bedded in' and I live in the experience I gained from them . 

 

If you stop your 'cultivation' do you think all the benefits you got from that practice (if it has been long term and balanced , so far )  will just evaporate ?  

 

or are you 'addicted to practice'  and missing results ? 

 

 

I am sure some of you have read the Tibetan Book of the Dead in which it explains the death bardo experiences and, if you haven't been able to realize rigpa while still alive, you can still be liberated in your bardo.

 

In the death bardo experiences, you don't have a body anymore.  You are dead.  Your consciousness is still wondering and lingering around until the next rebirth.  If you spend your entire spiritual journey relying on drugs, what do you think it would happen to your mind in the death bardo experiences???  You don't have a body anymore.  What good would LSD do for you at this point???  Hehehehe...

 

Ummmm  .... right dosage and good quality acid puts you in that state to do the practice for what is to come.  Same as the related meditations and ceremonies ;  'practices' .... practicing for the 'real' event  . 

 

I hope you realise what you wrote about, on that bardo, is illusory too ?   This too shall die . It is the 2nd death ... astral death ... although, it can take some time for some , as you say 'lingering' .  

 

Maybe, again, dont be so quick with the LOLs and he he he

 

You seemed to miss the point that here,  good practice is being recommended .... not  just advising people to dope out any which way ! 

 

and I am not advising anyone to do it either ... its just something that happened to me , and I was directed to do it the right way .

 

A bit like the 'other thing that happened to me ,  when  Kargu kama lamas  'got to me' an early age and threw me in (unbeknown by me at the time )  into VERY radical practices .   

 

irresponsible of them ..... or benevolent compassion ?    For a while I thought the first , now I realise the second, and have unending gratitude . ......   but I  dont need to go there everyday and become a monk   ....   I prefer to be my own type of monk ... its quite eclectic ... but gells ..... last Lama I talked to  could 'dig it'.   

 

I would be mighty upset if only during my death bardo experiences I realize the use of psychedelic drugs was never the right path to liberation.  Scary???  Oh yeah....

 

 

Well, it may not be , for you. If you feel that, dont do it .     

[Nungali]

Thanks for sharing your experience Silent. I don't do much Pranayama, but the experiences i've had with have been very intense. Strong exhaling into parts of the body gathers strong bursts of chi to any area it touches in greater durations than any other method i've tried. 

 

I had a similar experience one time of sitting next to a person while i was trying a new meditation technique (not pranayama). I was bursting into pretty intense bliss and the lady whom was sitting next to me in class started to look around and she said that she felt the room moving around her and the floor shifting underneath her feet. Lol. 

 

Great !   Spread it round ! 

 

 

[Nungali]

 

Pataknjali's sutras mentions the use of 'herbs' for spiritual gain...

"Five ways to thin the veil: Five methods are mentioned by which that barrier or veil of ignorance (2.3) is thinned, or eventually removed entirely, allowing Self-realization (1.3) and liberation (4.26). Here's the five ways of thinning the veil: 

1. Birth (janman): Some rare ones are born with a natural ability to drop the veil between the conscious and unconscious. Recall that in sutras 1.19-1.20, two kinds of people were mentioned. First were those who naturally are predisposed by virtue of having attained a high level of experience in a previous life, though that experience was not complete. Second, were those who (like most of us) need to follow a path of faith, energy, memory, concentration, and knowledge. Here, in this part of the sutra, it is simply being acknowledged that some experience beyond the barrier or veil by virtue of birth.

    

2. Herbs (ausadhi): There is said to be an ancient elixir that when ingested, breaks down the barrier. It is also said to be an inner elixir, in the subtle aspect of our own being. At a more surface level, we are all familiar with the way in which various drugs or chemicals break down the barrier between conscious and unconscious. Throughout spiritual and religious history of humanity, herbs have been used responsibly in this way by many cultures. While we are not suggesting drug use here as a means to spirituality, it would not be complete that it not be mentioned as one of the ways people can remove the barrier between conscious and unconscious. In light of herbs as a means of removing the barrier, it is imperative to remember that the foundation principles are of non-attachment and attaining a natural state of stable tranquility (1.12-1.16). The way in which the ancients used such herbs is vastly different from drug abuse and addiction. 

.....etc. etc.

 

 

Then there is the old Vedic  'Soma'   ( not that I recommend it ..... unless you want to go on a Indra warlords ramage against the 'enemy' !  ) 

Edited March 27, 2016 by Nungali

[Gerard]

I thought about psychedelic plants ...  

 

The problem is that you won't get wisdom and develop morality with their use. It's cheating, like a quick opening of the window and seeing what's outside. Very much like:

 

1. Lewis Caroll and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, a tale about soul searching and enlightenment. Brilliant book.

 

2. William Blake and The Marriage of Heaven and Hell:

 

"If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.

For man has closed himself up till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern."

 

Pretty much what is experienced once delusion is conquered, the last fetter.

 

Maybe both authors played with power plants but did they reach the final goal? I doubt it. It's not that easy to get out of samsara.

[Nungali]

Lewis Caroll was a coke freak . not into psychedelics !   

 

Psychedelics didnt really hit modern Euro culture until Crowley came back from Mexico with mushroom juice and began synthesising it himself   (until Park Davis copied his effort, after Crowley visited their factory as a fellow 'chemist' , he then adopted their version as a superior product )  and gave some to Aldous Huxley  to try out. 

 

and then there was the great 'experimental accident' some years later ;

 

[steve]

I don't think working with plants is cheating if done properly.

The effects they have on us primarily seem to be in shaking us up, breaking our habitual thought patterns and conditioning. They open us to new possibilities. They are not essential but can be a powerful aid.

 

At some point, however, we must take up the gauntlet and do the work on ourselves and on our own.

This part of the process requires clarity and sobriety. 

As I wrote in the recent thread on Emptiness vs Visualizations, IMO there are two important aspects of spiritual cultivation.

First is the development of concentration, second is the realization of insight. 

Both are equally important in progressive and stable development. 

 

The plants can help with the insight piece, IMO.

That said, they can also be a distraction and, in vulnerable individuals, quite destructive.

Meditation is equally effective, slower, and safer. 

[steve]

Lewis Caroll was a coke freak . not into psychedelics !   

 

Is there any solid evidence of this?

I've heard rumors about both opium and cocaine but I've never seen anything to substantiate either.

He did have a thing for young girls and there is circumstantial evidence that he may have been a pedophile - https://news.artnet.com/art-world/was-lewis-carroll-a-pedophile-his-photographs-suggest-so-237222

[Geof Nanto]

I don't think working with plants is cheating if done properly.

The effects they have on us primarily seem to be in shaking us up, breaking our habitual thought patterns and conditioning. They open us to new possibilities. They are not essential but can be a powerful aid.

 

At some point, however, we must take up the gauntlet and do the work on ourselves and on our own.

This part of the process requires clarity and sobriety. 

As I wrote in the recent thread on Emptiness vs Visualizations, IMO there are two important aspects of spiritual cultivation.

First is the development of concentration, second is the realization of insight. 

Both are equally important in progressive and stable development. 

 

The plants can help with the insight piece, IMO.

That said, they can also be a distraction and, in vulnerable individuals, quite destructive.

Meditation is equally effective, slower, and safer. 

 

I agree with this except for the final sentence, ".Meditation is equally effective, slower, and safer." I suspect that meditation alone is not enough for most of us because we are so deeply conditioned by the materialism and logic of contemporary society. I know for me I needed many powerful and traumatic experiences to break through my conditioning. (I note that you came to meditation after your earlier experiences with psychedelics.)

 

The topic of Lewis Carroll is an interesting one. (I liked Nungali's above post for the excellent video rather than his Carroll comments.) I've previously posted about Carroll here...

 

http://www.thedaobums.com/topic/39242-the-tao-bums-off-topic-random-philosophy-thread/?p=655623

 

I'm wary of emotive labels like 'paedophile'. As I see it, there's an element of puritanical regression at play with people afraid of their own shadows, leading to a tendency for witch hunts..... but a complex topic with many possible perspectives. I wrote a little about it here.....

 

http://www.thedaobums.com/topic/39242-the-tao-bums-off-topic-random-philosophy-thread/?p=655858 

 

I note that Gerald wrote: "Lewis Carroll and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, a tale about soul searching and enlightenment." At first I dismissed his comment as fanciful, but on further consideration it has validity. From a spiritual perspective, such powerful feelings unleash the potential for both destruction and growth.

 

Anything can be a path, even a demon.

Anything can be a demon, even a path.

[Songtsan]

Entheogens, etc. can be pivotal in teaching one the nature of delusional thinking. Whole delusional fantasy beliefs can be experienced, and then afterwards negated upon inspection. This is useful in everyday ordinary reality, in that one can then keep in mind the limitation of our electro-chemically mediated experiences as far as giving us a view of 'what is true.' We are always limited, and our belief constructs are only best fit models. I would recommend fast acting and short lived entheogens such as Salvia Divinorum, DMT, etc. to quickly enter and leave the delusional realms and experience the rapid shift that chemistry can bring. Also, disassociatives are great 'cheats' for experiencing what pratyahara is like if done correctly. There are many legal means for such quick entry into the noosphere that exists when senses are withdrawn. you can see the everpresent chaos/insanity which exists in the subconscious...

Edited March 28, 2016 by Songtsan

[Nungali]

Is there any solid evidence of this?

I've heard rumors about both opium and cocaine but I've never seen anything to substantiate either.

He did have a thing for young girls and there is circumstantial evidence that he may have been a pedophile - https://news.artnet.com/art-world/was-lewis-carroll-a-pedophile-his-photographs-suggest-so-237222

 

 

Ewwwwww        

[steve]

I agree with this except for the final sentence, ".Meditation is equally effective, slower, and safer." I suspect that meditation alone is not enough for most of us because we are so deeply conditioned by the materialism and logic of contemporary society. I know for me I needed many powerful and traumatic experiences to break through my conditioning. (I note that you came to meditation after your earlier experiences with psychedelics.)

You are correct that meditation does not work for everyone, nor do plants or synthetic intoxicants. 

In addition to earlier exposure to psychedelics, I will add that there is no question that some breakthroughs I've experienced were also related to powerful traumatic experiences.

 

 

The topic of Lewis Carroll is an interesting one. (I liked Nungali's above post for the excellent video rather than his Carroll comments.) I've previously posted about Carroll here...

 

http://www.thedaobums.com/topic/39242-the-tao-bums-off-topic-random-philosophy-thread/?p=655623

 

I'm wary of emotive labels like 'paedophile'. As I see it, there's an element of puritanical regression at play with people afraid of their own shadows, leading to a tendency for witch hunts..... but a complex topic with many possible perspectives. I wrote a little about it here.....

Few would question the fact that he was obsessed with young girls and took many photos of them, some of which were nude. 

His relationship with the Liddell girls was unusual at best.

To me the label is not unreasonable but I'll leave it at that. 

 

 

 

http://www.thedaobums.com/topic/39242-the-tao-bums-off-topic-random-philosophy-thread/?p=655858 

 

I note that Gerald wrote: "Lewis Carroll and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, a tale about soul searching and enlightenment." At first I dismissed his comment as fanciful, but on further consideration it has validity. From a spiritual perspective, such powerful feelings unleash the potential for both destruction and growth.

 

 

Anything can be a path, even a demon.

Anything can be a demon, even a path.

I like that

[Silent Answers]

Interesting this topic should pop up, I'm heading off to Bali in a couple of hours. There, mushrooms are legal and are treated respectfully as having spititual/medicinal properties. It's been about 4 years since my last heavy trip, and there's really no place better to experience life through the eyes of a fungus.

 

Once having tried something like this, you'll understand it's not something you want to do every day. You have a profound experience (hopefully) that then requires much time to process and reflect on. As long as you can remain in control, not forming a habit of chasing the high, it's a worthwhile experience that everyone should go through.

[MooNiNite]

.

Edited April 2, 2016 by MooNiNite

[子泰]

why plants? why not follow the sky? praise the sun and it's heavenly glory : )

[roger]

My opinion is that plants and animals are the greatest teachers.

 

They're completely natural, entirely one with themselves.

 

They also deal with emotions in a way many teachers of Eastern wisdom suggest- they just let the emotion BE, without trying to control it, and it goes away naturally.

 

They live in the present virtually perfectly.

 

As far as gurus goes, I prefer the terms guide or teacher. "Guru" seems to have a connotation of giving away your power or idolization.