Differences between dualism and non-dualism

[C T]

5 minutes ago, steve said:

 

This reminds me of the Six Vajra Verses which summarize the view, path, and fruition of dzogchen.

 

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This pithy verse greatly impacted my motivation to practice very early on in my path. 

Measureless reverence for its profundity. _/\_ 

 

[steve]

Everything changes, that is one of the fundamental teachings in Buddhism. Non-dual realization, once established, does not depart but that does not violate the teaching of impermanence.

[C T]

5 minutes ago, steve said:

Everything changes, that is one of the fundamental teachings in Buddhism. Non-dual realization, once established, does not depart but that does not violate the teaching of impermanence.

 

Indeed. The recognition of mind essence is something thats etched in the mindstream permanently, like experiencing the taste of citrus once and its never forgotten, or placing a few salt crystals on the tongue will engender knowledge of the taste of all the oceans in the world. Yet, there are those who adamantly & vehemently set seriously challenging tasks for themselves involving the quest to taste the essence of as many oceans as possible in order to verify that the nature of salt crystals is saltiness. These are the folks that is dedicated to taking the long way home - they believe there's no short cut to emancipation - that reward must be accompanied by strenuous outputs. This is what sickness of effort in the 6 Vajra Verses point to, imo. Its based off the mistaken view (possibly duped by ego constructs) that we have all the time in the world when in fact death can happen at any time. At that point, all the siddhis in one's possession, and all those other things that one has exerted enormous energy and sacrifices to master, instantaneously transforms into a strong karmic burden for rebirth in samsara. 

 

 

[manitou]

1 hour ago, liminal_luke said:

 

Not having experienced nondual awakening, it's possible that I'm not the best person to speak to this question but this is the Bums and I love to speculate.  I'm guessing that a great deal can change when the nondual perspective is stabilized: shifted perceptions leading to shifted psychology leading, at times, to shifted physiology.  I'm struck, for instance, by the easy, accepting way some Bums who I believe have experienced nondual awakening have dealt with challenges in their lives (memory loss, chronic pain).

 

 

Everything becomes easy.  All of the above -- shifted psychology, shifted perceptions, shifted physiology.  Nothing really matters in a relative sense any more, because it's all one big happening,  happening now.  No one gets your goat when you're in the non-dual state because the realization is there that the other person is You, and if you were brought up with the very same conditioning, you would be acting in the very same way.  When the realization occurs that there is not an entity floating around in space that runs things, that the intelligence that we're part of is running it communally and , indeed, it's already happened so what's to worry about?  All these very subtle things merge together and shift one's attitude to more of an 'Eh..' perspective.

 

Not to say that disengaging is where we are meant to stay.  It's not, or we wouldn't be having this strange world experience.  But the choice is now yours as to whether to buy into it or not.  You can go 'high or low' at will.  If ego has been diminished, you can love your brother as yourself, and everyone on the face of the earth is your brother.  With ego still fully integrated, you are pulled unwillingly to and fro, anything or anybody can push your buttons.  But the removal (to the greatest degree possible, we have to retain enough to stay out of oncoming traffic) of the ego enables us to be compassionate to absolutely everybody, and to make way fewer judgments.  Judgments are realized as the dividing force that they are; and with division comes ego reinforcement.  Which is not a desirable thing if one is looking to self-realize.  (Please lay off the New Age comments, 3Bob)

 

Even traveling is different.  There is suddenly an awareness that you are at 'home' anywhere in the world you decide to place yourself.  It makes no difference whether you are physically here or there.  There is something inside you which is fixed, which is ageless, and which realizes that you will die on your expiration date and everybody has one.  So what's to worry about?

 

Realizing that the world situation as it currently stands, although 'horrible' (seemingly) has already happened, and we're just playing catch-up and watching it unfold within the constraints of time.  Planetary rotation.  The event has already come and gone.  And to realize that all of this is happening because for some strange reason It just wants to 'return to itself' within the margins of physicality.  Why?  I haven't a clue.  But it's waiting for us to figure this out within each and every one of us.  That We are It.  We are the Wizard behind the curtain, as Stirling would say.

 

 

 

Edited June 20, 2022 by manitou

[manitou]

16 hours ago, old3bob said:

more power to women's obliques, which happen to be dualistic...

 

 

And just when did you start spying on me and my twin, old man?

[liminal_luke]

12 minutes ago, manitou said:

 

Everything becomes easy.  

 

 

You make it sound so appealing -- I just might try it!

[old3bob]

 

The Upanishads (recounted from Self Realized Rishi's) point to an eternal, non-changing, non-dualistic Brahman/Atman....which I'd say does not mean in any way that the soul body does not change and evolve after Self- Realization.   (or another way of saying it is that the soul realizes that its Soul is Brahman yet it still evolves which is another subject for debate among various schools)

Edited June 20, 2022 by old3bob

[old3bob]

47 minutes ago, manitou said:

 

 

And just when did you start spying on me and my twin, old man?

 

please don't kick my ass, I couldn't help myself...

[dwai]

Wrt the topic of “wholeness” - it is misunderstood imho. Wholeness wrt the atman/Brahman implies completeness or fullness. It is never incomplete, or deficient, so there is no “need” or “want” associated with it. This fullness (or completeness , aka purnam) is another way to consider its nature as “existence” or “being” (Sat). The completeness is also wrt awareness - chit  (it is awareness itself, because without it, how can it be complete?). This so all wrt peace/joy - ananda (because being existence itself, and awareness itself, it is also peace/love/joy  itself. Thus from it come the qualities of love, peace, goodness, joy. What we experience as pain, sorrow, misery, chaos in the dualistic sense is due to the obscuration or “apparent deficiency”  (in the mind) of our true nature. Realize the true nature and there is no longer any deficiency, hence what is, is “fullness”.

 

That is not to say that the nondual seeker wants “wholeness”. That is rather the only quest (whether they know it or not) of every person who thinks of themselves as dualistic beings. That’s why people chase after pleasure/happiness/wealth, etc, shun pain/sorrow/misery etc. This path of seeking (more/better) is called the path of pravritti (or multiplication). That was the path of the “normal” person. They would uphold the “good”, shun/avoid the “bad” and progress up the spiritual ladder one life at a time. 
 

The path that nondual schools teach is that of reduction (nivritti).  So one doesn’t seek to fulfill whatever is deficient by acquiring more. It is done by letting go, at more level than one. Letting go of me/mine, letting go of “us and them”. Letting go of identifixation (on personality).
 

With this letting go, comes a falling “inward”, from the object-enthralled sensory mind to a mind that is falling into progressively deeper layers of stillness and clarity. 

Edited June 20, 2022 by dwai

[Mark Foote]

17 hours ago, steve said:

 

We can blaze our own paths but, as you point out that can be fraught with obstacles and complications, many of which can be avoided or ameliorated with expert guidance.

 

 

A thing that amazes me is that more people don't read the classics, as a check against their own assumptions.  

At the same time, I will allow that at least at first, that feels like drinking from a fire hose.  Maybe in the case of Zen, a fire hose without any water coming out.

 

Quote

 

My tradition advocates investigating directly and non-conceptually our present condition, what is actually going on for us in this and every moment. It does not teach us to separate things into categories and create conceptual distinctions like this is emotion and that is mental. It does not put a non-dual objective somewhere out there that we work toward. It does not tell us that emotions and thoughts are illusory and to be avoided in any way. We work with and toward our self, through that emotion and thought, through whatever we are experiencing, directly and without conceptual elaboration. ...

 

... The primary teaching is that nothing is lacking or excluded,  not our mundane experience, not our subtle body, everything is spontaneously perfected in that connection. 

 

 

First, I know the impact of emotions can vary from one individual to another.  I have a friend who has confessed to me that she feels emotions very strongly, and has had to make it a practice in her life to be aware that she's wired that way, and stay calm.

She jokes that I'm on the spectrum (autistic), and I reply she's borderline (personality disorder).  Whatever the case, we seem to have grown up to be functioning adults.  More or less!

 

Second, there's a part of Gautama's teaching that took me years to appreciate, and that is the practice of mindfulness.  Of course, attempts have been made here in the West to extract a working component of mindfulness that can be applied outside of the framework of the teaching, like "Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction"--that extract matches up pretty well with "whatever we are experiencing, directly and without conceptual elaboration."

 

I did not recognize initially that there were two mindfulness practices in the sermons, the first in satipathana, and a second in anapanasati.  I started reading the sermons with Majjhima Nikaya (middle length sayings) and finished with Samyuta Nikaya (the connected discourses), so I didn't see that it was anapanasati that was Gautama's way of life until late.

I can see where MBSR might come out of satipathana, which is broader and more comprehensive than anapanasati.  It's only taken another 25 years for me to see why Gautama would recommend the practice in anapanasati as a way of living, instead of urging the monks and nuns on in their pursuit of the cessation of habit and volition in feeling and perceiving.  Certainly, he didn't exclude that cessation as a part of anapanasati, since he only speaks of "cessation" and not the particular cessation, but odds are it was the cessation of action of the body that he drew upon in his daily living.

I won't argue that each specific element isn't "spontaneously perfected in that connection", but I would point out that there is a constant juxtaposition of the comprehensive or "whole" and the particular in Gautama's description of the states of concentration (meditation).  Here's his description of the first concentration:
 

… as a handy bathman or attendant might strew bath-powder in some copper basin and, gradually sprinkling water, knead it together so that the bath-ball gathered up the moisture, became enveloped in moisture and saturated both in and out, but did not ooze moisture; even so (one) steeps, drenches, fills and suffuses this body with zest and ease, born of solitude, so that there is not one particle of the body that is not pervaded by this lone-born zest and ease.

 

(AN III 25-28, Pali Text Society Vol. III pg 18-19)

 

That kind of juxtaposition continues in his description of each of the first four states of concentration--here it is again in the fourth, which I've quoted before:

Again, a (person), putting away ease… enters and abides in the fourth musing; seated, (one) suffuses (one’s) body with purity by the pureness of (one’s) mind so that there is not one particle of the body that is not pervaded with purity by the pureness of (one’s) mind. … just as a (person) might sit with (their) head swathed in a clean cloth; even so (one) sits suffusing (their) body with purity…

 

(Ibid)

 

How is that possible, to realize a "one-pointedness of mind" that has no object, that is as though in open space, and yet Gautama speaks of "not one particle of the body that is not pervaded..."?  Why I love the Pali Text Society translations--"not one particle of the body that is not pervaded...", so whatever part might enter into the experience of one-pointedness of mind, can be found to be so pervaded.

 

 

Edited June 20, 2022 by Mark Foote

[Bindi]

5 hours ago, liminal_luke said:

 

Not having experienced nondual awakening, it's possible that I'm not the best person to speak to this question but this is the Bums and I love to speculate.  I'm guessing that a great deal can change when the nondual perspective is stabilized: shifted perceptions leading to shifted psychology leading, at times, to shifted physiology.  I'm struck, for instance, by the easy, accepting way some Bums who I believe have experienced nondual awakening have dealt with challenges in their lives (memory loss, chronic pain).

Like I said previously, no “physical and subtle body health and new abilities”, just a different reaction to memory loss and chronic pain through a changed perspective. Memory doesn’t improve, and physical health doesn’t improve, and the subtle body doesn’t suddenly start developing in a wuwei kind of way. Psychologically I think there might be reduced anxiety and depression, again from a changed perspective, and fundamentally maybe this is all that people want, because it does seem to ease the suffering that we inevitably have to live with otherwise. 

 

 

 

[liminal_luke]

4 minutes ago, Bindi said:

Like I said previously, no “physical and subtle body health and new abilities”, just a different reaction to memory loss and chronic pain through a changed perspective. Memory doesn’t improve, and physical health doesn’t improve, and the subtle body doesn’t suddenly start developing in a wuwei kind of way. Psychologically I think there might be reduced anxiety and depression, again from a changed perspective, and fundamentally maybe this is all that people want, because it does seem to ease the suffering that we inevitably have to live with otherwise. 

 

Is nondual awakening a cure-all for every physical ailment?  Obviously not.  Awakened people still get sick and die, at least as far as I know.  But it's inconceivable to me that awakening has no effect on physical health because mental and physical health are intertwined, inseparable even.  Changing perspective is no small feat and often has a huge impact on measurable health outcomes.  You mentioned than awakening might reduce depression.  Well, depression is statistically linked with heart disease: less depression, less heart disease. Makes sense, no?

 

As far as other non-health related abilities go, I'm not sure I'll be able to present an argument you'd find convincing.  Let's just say I wouldn't want to meet up with Dwai in a dark back alley.

 

 

[dwai]

3 minutes ago, liminal_luke said:

 

Is nondual awakening a cure-all for every physical ailment?  Obviously not.  Awakened people still get sick and die, at least as far as I know.  But it's inconceivable to me that awakening has no effect on physical health because mental and physical health are intertwined, inseparable even.  Changing perspective is no small feat and often has a huge impact on measurable health outcomes.  You mentioned than awakening might reduce depression.  Well, depression is statistically linked with heart disease: less depression, less heart disease. Makes sense, no?

very insightful points. I find that there’s a deep relaxation and the system gravitates towards things/activities that don’t disturb the relaxation/equilibrium. These translate to physical and psychological things/patterns etc. 

3 minutes ago, liminal_luke said:

As far as other non-health related abilities go, I'm not sure I'll be able to present an argument you'd find convincing.  Let's just say I wouldn't want to meet up with Dwai in a dark back alley.

 

 

Aw c’mon buddy. I’d only give you friendly hug (er…non-controversial kind, not the non-physical level stuff), buy you a beer, and want to chat with you  

[Bindi]

29 minutes ago, liminal_luke said:

 

Is nondual awakening a cure-all for every physical ailment?  Obviously not.  Awakened people still get sick and die, at least as far as I know.  But it's inconceivable to me that awakening has no effect on physical health because mental and physical health are intertwined, inseparable even.  Changing perspective is no small feat and often has a huge impact on measurable health outcomes.  You mentioned than awakening might reduce depression.  Well, depression is statistically linked with heart disease: less depression, less heart disease. Makes sense, no?
 

 

Yes, makes sense, but you can also find this sort of effect from psychotherapy and cognitive behavioural therapy even nondual therapy if you’re inclined. 

 

Quote

 

As far as other non-health related abilities go, I'm not sure I'll be able to present an argument you'd find convincing.  Let's just say I wouldn't want to meet up with Dwai in a dark back alley.

 

 

Dwai practices some sort of martial art that develops ‘fajin’, this is not a nondual accomplishment. Mostly the nondually awakened wouldn’t have any interest in fighting you, for a whole bunch of nondual reasons. 
 

Quote

One of the most delightful paradoxes is that at the end of the nondual path we realize that we haven’t traveled any distance—that no path has been traversed and that we haven’t attained “anything”. But we also realize that if we hadn’t believed that there was a path and made the effort we have made, we wouldn’t have arrived at the point where we are at. Even though we realize that our struggle and commitment has been pointless, in the absence of this effort we would still be drifting in the illusion that there actually is somewhere to go and something to achieve. Without doing what we didn’t need to do, we wouldn’t realize that we didn’t need to do it.

 

https://www.nondualtraining.com/nonduality-and-therapy-awakening-the-unconditionned-mind/

 

Edited June 20, 2022 by Bindi

[dwai]

4 minutes ago, Bindi said:

 

Yes, makes sense, but you can also find this sort of effect from psychotherapy and cognitive behavioural therapy even nondual therapy if you’re inclined. 

Depends on whether you want the outcome or the cause. 

4 minutes ago, Bindi said:

Dwai practices some sort of martial art that develops ‘fajin’, this is not a nondual accomplishment. Mostly the nondually awakened wouldn’t have any interest in fighting you, for a whole bunch of nondual reasons. 
 

 

FWIW, “fajin” is only a gate which once entered through, will unlock “nondual” realization by preparing the mind (and consequently the subtle body). Once the mind is ready and subjected to the right knowledge, nondual realization will arise like a ripe fruit drops from the branch. 

[liminal_luke]

5 minutes ago, Bindi said:

Dwai practices some sort of martial art that develops ‘fajin’, this is not a nondual accomplishment. Mostly the nondually awakened wouldn’t have any interest in fighting you, for a whole bunch of nondual reasons. 

 

 

When most people imagine siddhis they think of levitation or time travel or walking through walls.  But the ability to remain calm and unprovoked in circumstances that would incite most to violence? I think that's where the real juice is.  

[Bindi]

5 minutes ago, dwai said:

Depends on whether you want the outcome or the cause. 

FWIW, “fajin” is only a gate which once entered through, will unlock “nondual” realization by preparing the mind (and consequently the subtle body). Once the mind is ready and subjected to the right knowledge, nondual realization will arise like a ripe fruit drops from the branch. 

That’s the first I’ve ever heard that fajin unlocks nondual realisation. Fajin: To “issue or discharge power explosively or refining the explosive power” “transfer[ing] qi from dantian towards the limb or body part (e.g. shoulder, head, hip) that will perform the technique with explosive force”. 
 

There is undeniably a certain sort of subtle body development in developing fajin, but is there anyone else other than your teacher perhaps who links fajin with nondual realisation? 

[Bindi]

4 minutes ago, liminal_luke said:

 

When most people imagine siddhis they think of levitation or time travel or walking through walls.  But the ability to remain calm and unprovoked in circumstances that would incite most to violence? I think that's where the real juice is.  

Each to their own, I wish you all the best in finding what is important to you. 

[steve]

 

Quote

Second, there's a part of Gautama's teaching that took me years to appreciate, and that is the practice of mindfulness.  Of course, attempts have been made here in the West to extract a working component of mindfulness that can be applied outside of the framework of the teaching, like "Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction"--that extract matches up pretty well with "whatever we are experiencing, directly and without conceptual elaboration."

Since we’re discussing dual and non-dual approaches I’ll mention that there’s a distinct difference between mindfulness and abiding in the Nature of Mind or, as Norbu Rinpoche would say, contemplation. Although much of what Shakyamuni said seems to imply that everything he does comes form the base, the essence, from my limited readings and understanding. And I acknowledge I’m no Buddhist scholar.

 

Quote

I can see where MBSR might come out of satipathana, which is broader and more comprehensive than anapanasati.  It's only taken another 25 years for me to see why Gautama would recommend the practice in anapanasati as a way of living, instead of urging the monks and nuns on in their pursuit of the cessation of habit and volition in feeling and perceiving.  Certainly, he didn't exclude that cessation as a part of anapanasati, since he only speaks of "cessation" and not the particular cessation, but odds are it was the cessation of action of the body that he drew upon in his daily living.

I won't argue that each specific element isn't "spontaneously perfected in that connection", but I would point out that there is a constant juxtaposition of the comprehensive or "whole" and the particular in Gautama's description of the states of concentration (meditation).  Here's his description of the first concentration:
 

… as a handy bathman or attendant might strew bath-powder in some copper basin and, gradually sprinkling water, knead it together so that the bath-ball gathered up the moisture, became enveloped in moisture and saturated both in and out, but did not ooze moisture; even so (one) steeps, drenches, fills and suffuses this body with zest and ease, born of solitude, so that there is not one particle of the body that is not pervaded by this lone-born zest and ease.

 

(AN III 25-28, Pali Text Society Vol. III pg 18-19)

 

That kind of juxtaposition continues in his description of each of the first four states of concentration--here it is again in the fourth, which I've quoted before:

Again, a (person), putting away ease… enters and abides in the fourth musing; seated, (one) suffuses (one’s) body with purity by the pureness of (one’s) mind so that there is not one particle of the body that is not pervaded with purity by the pureness of (one’s) mind. … just as a (person) might sit with (their) head swathed in a clean cloth; even so (one) sits suffusing (their) body with purity…

 

(Ibid)

 

How is that possible, to realize a "one-pointedness of mind" that has no object, that is as though in open space, and yet Gautama speaks of "not one particle of the body that is not pervaded..."?  Why I love the Pali Text Society translations--"not one particle of the body that is not pervaded...", so whatever part might enter into the experience of one-pointedness of mind, can be found to be so pervaded.

 

His description in this last portion is very much in accordance with what dzogchen teachings refer to as unboundedness in meditation, the union of space and clarity, resting in the essence or nature of mind. One-pointedness can describe the non-distracted aspect of the practitioner’s awareness, open space can refer to the aspect of spaciousness in one’s heart, one’s core, which is pervasive, leading to the sense of unboundedness. Also important to mention this would be considered nothing more than a meditative experience, nyams, nothing to get attached to but a good sign. Although, full disclosure, I got very attached to this for a long time after it happened to me and it became an obstacle.

 

edited to add - and that’s just one possibility, not intending to sound authoritative 

[steve]

43 minutes ago, Bindi said:

Yes, makes sense, but you can also find this sort of effect from psychotherapy and cognitive behavioural therapy even nondual therapy if you’re inclined. 

 

Wonderful to see this quote from TS Elliott’s Four Quartets on their homepage. I know nothing about their services but they’ve got good taste in poets. He sounds like my teacher. I don’t recall this little gem and am glad to be reunited. I need to read the Quartets again.

 

In order to arrive at what you do not know
You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance. In order to possess what you do not possess,
You must go by the way of dispossession. In order to arrive at what you are not,
You must go through the way in which you are not.
And what you do not know is the only thing you know
And what you own is what you do not own
And where you are is where you are not.

T.S. Elliot (1963)

[dwai]

1 minute ago, Bindi said:

That’s the first I’ve ever heard that fajin unlocks nondual realisation. Fajin: To “issue or discharge power explosively or refining the explosive power” “transfer[ing] qi from dantian towards the limb or body part (e.g. shoulder, head, hip) that will perform the technique with explosive force”. 
 

There is undeniably a certain sort of subtle body development in developing fajin, but is there anyone else other than your teacher perhaps who links fajin with nondual realisation? 

Pretty much anyone who connects the daoist internal martial arts with spiritual daoism.

 

Imho this is how it works for IMA practitioners  —

 

level 1 - connecting full body mass with release of power (all the physicalists will stop here). 

level 2 - mobilizing internal fluid power through the fascial web. This is a mechanical exercise one can develop learning to relax/release tension in the body to tap into the fascial web’s elastic mechanism. 

level 3 - learning to apply the yin/yang interplay at the weiqi field level. There is the recognition of the field beyond the physical body (aka subtle body). This is where things get interesting.

 

level 4 - the “surface” field. This is where the awareness of the larger field of energy beyond the “individual field” arises. This naturally leads to the realization of the oneness of all material as a field of energy, arising from the interplay of yin and yang. Here there is no self. Only harmonizing with the field. 
 

level 5 - this is when realization that there neither “self” nor “other”, only the field/dao. The individual and the dao are non-different. Such people will never be in opposition to anything/anyone/any circumstance. This is the nondual level. 
 

Add a good set of wisdom teachings to this mix and nondual realization will happen faster.
 

The problem is that most people are skeptical that such a thing could ever happen.  Of those that are not entirely skeptical, most cannot dedicate themselves to the practice long enough to get to the next stage. Of those that do, for most, their own conditioning blocks them. For a rare few, they can trust their teacher and their intuition enough to persevere. Such people will come across a genuine teacher who can show them the next level, and so on. 
 

The reason why these paths are so difficult is not because they hide some complex secrets and methods, but because people don’t develop enough self introspection and awareness to get out of their own ways usually. Doubts, uncertainty, fear, prejudice, all result of prior conditioning get in the way. 

 

 

[manitou]

56 minutes ago, liminal_luke said:

But it's inconceivable to me that awakening has no effect on physical health because mental and physical health are intertwined, inseparable even.

 

 

I don't doubt that most everybody here would agree that it's all Mind.  I think that science, specifically quantum physics, is walking up the same hill on a different and is in the process of meeting philosophy, such as we talk about here; what the mystics have known for millenia.   If this is the case, that it's all Mind and that developing our wakefulness is why we're here to begin with, it does stand to reason to me that we do manifest, from the inside to the outside, our physical ailments.  Where it gets woo-woo is when it seems that we manifest accidents or living conditions to bring about a particular physical state of affairs; but that very state of affairs (and the remedy) is the very thing that we need in order to bring about the needed conditions that the I Am inside of us 'wants' for our completion.  For our total integration, which would include mind and body.

 

Christian Science healers have utilized this very concept since Mary Baker Eddy triangulated all the 'red words of Jesus' in the bible, along with all reported healings.  When the Nazarene said things like 'go and sin no more', I don't think he was talking about the black and white 'sin' that has been wrongfully attached to his words.  I think he knew exactly Who he was, and he knew exactly Who the person he was healing was, too.  He was trying to get them to change their mindset, to think differently about themselves; to realize that their 'sins were forgiven' because of the same conditioning enigma that we all have to live with.  If I grew up with the same conditioning you did, I'd behave the same way.  I believe he was saying that the healee's mental process has been the very thing that has caused the condition, and that they could cut loose of the guilt and manifestations they were carrying, because life is actually a pretty no-fault situation.  There but by the grace of god go I,  getting back to the conditioning question.

 

I have seen dramatic healings done utilizing this very dynamic.  I have seen a young man healed of quadriplegia because of a ceremony changing the life dynamics that had occurred previously.  As seemingly horrible as the boy's causative situation was, the entire process 'healed' not only his body, but a longstanding and nasty dynamic with his father that got in the way of further progress on the life path for either one of them.  I have seen different forms of cancer healed, by one who triangulated the causative dynamic and reversed it with ceremony.  All based on the premise that linear time is not Really a Thing, that the days come and go because of planetary rotation, not because time is a separate entity of its own.  With what I've seen, it would be real hard to convince me that mind isn't the very thing that causes malady.  And the malady is often the very 'tell' that tells the healer what dynamic to look for.

[manitou]

12 minutes ago, steve said:

In order to arrive at what you do not know
You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance. In order to possess what you do not possess,
You must go by the way of dispossession. In order to arrive at what you are not,
You must go through the way in which you are not.
And what you do not know is the only thing you know
And what you own is what you do not own
And where you are is where you are not.

 

 

It always amazes me when the western mind can understand this.  This is so profound it hurts.

[liminal_luke]

31 minutes ago, manitou said:

 

 With what I've seen, it would be real hard to convince me that mind isn't the very thing that causes malady.  And the malady is often the very 'tell' that tells the healer what dynamic to look for.

 

I'll share something I've been going through lately that your words somehow touch upon.  I haven't seen my mom for several years now because of the pandemic.  She's been hesitant to see me because she's worried that I might infect her and her older partner, particularly because I'm unvaccinated.  We talked and I think we are going to see each other this summer but I'll stay at a hotel rather than at her house, meet up mostly outside, wear masks, and forego hugging.  And I get it, I do.  The last thing I want to do is give her or her partner Covid.  But meanwhile my brother and his vaccinated family are seeing her regularly, going maskless, and hugging.

 

Is there scientific justification for my mom to treat me and my brother differently?  Intelligent people can probably disagree on this point but I'll admit that my proverbial panties are somewhat twisted.  I tell my partner all the time that my mom doesn't love me, even though, deep down, I know this is a lie.  But the lizard brain part of me somehow believes this.  

 

Anyway, here's the point.  What if I'm not a victim?  What if the universe and I are dancing a perfect dance and this situation is precisely what I need to take the next step towards being the person I want to be?  Seeing it this way takes the sting out.  

  

Edited June 21, 2022 by liminal_luke

[steve]

3 hours ago, liminal_luke said:

Anyway, here's the point.  What if I'm not a victim?  What if the universe and I are dancing a perfect dance and this situation is precisely what I need to take the next step towards being the person I want to be?  Seeing it this way takes the sting out.  

 

A beautiful thing often happens when the victim isn’t the one engaging and reacting but we trust the openness and full connection to the present moment (the thought experiment I mentioned many pages ago). Something spontaneous can happen and it often proves to be full of warmth and care and makes the most of a situation in unexpected ways. That’s a sign that the practice is working.