Gaia Community: Sean's Blog

This is the best path and the best teacher

http://seanomlor.gaia.com — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 19:29:54 GMT

Being a bit of a spiritual forum geek, I often get to observe various “whose path / technique / teacher is better” arguments. Patiently reading each side, at some point I can’t help feel that my understanding of the most important thing is very different than what I am seeing represented by most participants. I admit, sometimes I find myself smiling and feeling, humbly, like I am watching children play fight with big colorful toys in a park sandbox. Or ultra-serious film students, berets prefectly cocked, arguing over who is the best French director of “all time”. What concerns me is that, unlike fun threads on, say, choosing deodorant or debating nutrition, in these threads some poor souls invariably imagine this stuff has a higher claim on anything to do with the Tao. Of course on some level it does, as everything in our experience is inseparable from the Tao. But beyond that … well, my felt sense is that there are deeply flawed assumptions going on here.

I like what Wayfarer on TTB said recently about how something crucial really goes awry when we strive beyond our given capacities. My preferred frame is that, in every single moment, each of us is one hundred percent enough, one hundred percent free, one hundred percent loved and getting exactly what we want down to the very last detail. This perfection includes all of the ways we convince ourselves otherwise and play unpleasant games with our freedom. A particularly unpleasant game is to believe there is anything fundamentally missing from what you truly are in any moment. And then how much more amplified is this unpleasantness, this disconnection from Truth, when this game is magnified — when the game says that not only is there somewhere to go other than here, but we must to travel to the other side of the world, be celibate for a quarter year, pay thousands of dollars, learn secret techniques, submit to Masters, shock people with elite chi and all before “level four”. All of this, of course, way before one is permitted to breathe the air of Truth that is already the very fiber of our Being. WTF? It’s like dying of thirst while in a beautiful freshwater lake, and then deciding you need to swim vigorously toward a mirage of water you are hallucinating as a rare and priceless magic-wine. Just drink the fucking water! The Way puts banana peels in the path of elitism, ties the shoelaces of qigong fetishists, giggles at a concept of tommorow and is at home for everyone right now. Young, old, lazy, rich, beautiful, brilliant, stupid. Seeking and expecting to find anything fundamentally different than what is available in the moment is a dis-ease. Our egos think there is a to-do-list for enlightenment because we are terrified at just relaxing into and being swallowed by the fullness of emptiness in this very moment.

All of us really, have probably created spectacular to-do-lists of our own before “then get enlightened” even shows up. Just a few more things to do first. But awakening happens in spite of ourselves, not as a result of a perfect formula. There is no fucking formula! The Guru is within you. Awakening is a sort of happy accident, and all the “best” technique in the world can do is make you accident prone. It’s up to you to finally trip up and fall. I really, sincerely hope our paths finally crack each of us wide open from all this nonsense and we can smile and realize that there are little old white ladies on crutches hobbling home from church that know the same exact undisturbed Truth that brilliant, mathemetically sophisticated Kabbalists are seeing and that perhaps Taoist human immortals from afar are embodying and on and on. I believe there are thousands and thousands of enlightened humans, most of them quite ordinary without any draw to teach.

The most fantastic path is The Way which is moving us Now. Anything that obscures that clarity disconnects us from Truth. PLEASE, follow your bliss. If it takes you to the Post Office for work everyday, or to this teacher down the street, or that teacher in a remote cave in China, or wherever! But find a higher vibration if for one second you feel the least bit bad that where you are at right this second lacks anything fundamental, that your path is somehow wrong because it doesn’t have pretty mandalas like so and so path or doesn’t develop cool X-Men powers like this other path. It’s not True. Every step of the Way is about what feels the highest, deepest, most important, most loving, most free to you. Could it be any other way?

Sean

“The heart of our [Taoist] view is the human relationship with Nature. When we self-reflect as human beings, we discover that being human is nothing extra-ordinary and, even more importantly, we discover that our existence doesn’t need to be repaired, fixed, or reunited with Nature. It is immutably part of Nature. It’s no use to imitate saints or act in a way premature to your own experience. Simply remain in your experience and feel its real quality. This is the path of immortality. In the West we are extreme idealists, expecting too much and in a constant state of failure because of it. We aspire and hope and fail. When we reflect and discover our own energetic reality, we can see that everything we do has transmission, has energetic effect. We needn’t struggle to be good rather than real, to remain young rather than growing old, to avoid making mistakes. The only point is to appreciate our actions in their largest context, without measuring them or looking beyond them to something better.” - Liu Ming

Tags: spirituality, cultivation, nonduality, enlightenment

Enlightenment and Evolution

http://seanomlor.gaia.com — Fri, 06 Oct 2006 12:05:33 GMT

Enlightenment and Evolution! It's another angle on an Emptiness and Form conversation.

I think a distinction David Deida makes between what he calls Function, Flow and Glow is relevant here. Function is about getting healthy in mind, body, emotion and spirit for the sake of being relatively productive in the context you find yourself in. Flow is about polishing the dirt off of the lens of your form so that the Light of Formless can shine through. Glow is, basically, the ultimate reality of Enlightenment, that "you" is a story, all there is and ever was is pure Light.

These distinctions are useful on a few levels.

* They can be seen as stages in life, like Maslow's hierarchy of needs. First we must learn to Function - to walk, speak, read, write, hold a job, to operate in society. When we have our base, we can relax a bit and learn to Flow, to let Love and Art shine through us. Ultimately we are graced with Glow when we discover the reality of our True Nature through Awakening.

* They can be used to tease out the braid of various spiritual practices or approaches that are available in any moment. For example, therapy, healing, exercise tend to fall into Function. Yogic practices, inner alchemy and also true Art are Flow. And again, Glow is the timeless ever-present reality accessible through Grace alone; a happy accident that no technique can ensure. (Adyashanti tirelessly points to This.)

* An extension of this is to think of Function, Flow and Glow as independent lines of development. This can be useful to explain how various, sometimes strange and unexpected combinations of skillfullness can occur. For example, you can be a Yogic genius, and have Light just pouring through you into the world and be totally fucked up on a Functional level, even to the point of being a destructive personality --- this goes back to your Osho thread, and to your dilemna with deranged gurus in general. Same could apply to someone who has realized Glow. It's not a secret that Ramana Maharshi, one of the most brilliant examples of Glow in the last hundred years, was basically bathed and fed by his devotees. If he were born in America, without a support network like exists in India for dysfunctional sages, he might have become the local filthy, traumatized homeless man with the bright eyes sleeping under the bridge.

To tie this more directly into enlightenment and evolution, another way to look at Function, Flow and Glow is as representing the three major life orientations or spiritual thrusts:

Function is Pagan, unity with Earth, grounding, downward and horizontal consciousness. Flow is Transcendental, unity with Heaven, uplifting, upward and vertical consciousness. Glow is Nondual, the unity of Heaven and Earth, circular, spiralling, three dimensional consciousness, the unity of transcendental Emptiness and immanent Form, of Enlightenment and Evolution. This is where I believe the possibility of evolutionary enlightenment and incarnational nonduality exists. I have more thoughts on this but I have to rest for now.

References:
A Seminar on Sexual Yoga, with David Deida
Evolutionary Spirituality. Part 1. Incarnational Nonduality, with Andrew Cohen and Ken Wilber

Tags: evolution, enlightenment, integral, spirituality

Am I New Age or what?

http://seanomlor.gaia.com — Fri, 06 Oct 2006 12:02:41 GMT

In my opinion there is and was really no other choice ever but to mix ‘n match practices and philosophies. Partially because “you” and your thoughts and beliefs are an alchemy of the moment you are in; your history, your culture, your memories, your attitude, the philosophies you’ve been exposed to, your genes, etc. With mass communication nowadays we are all more of a melting pot so syncretism is more apparent. But ancient practices likewise. Including so-called “pure practices”. The Tao Teh Ching did not just jump out of a vacuum. Taoism was mixing and matching elements of Chinese shamanism from the start. Should we try to tease that out? And we could go further back. This gets fun. Trying to find the pure essence of a form. But ultimately you are turned inside out in your search … for true essence is Nameless, no?

The best we can do is intelligently co-create our own Integral Path, which I believe is mostly a matter of getting out of our own Way. :)

Tags: bridge, spirituality, path, integral

Top secret elite mystical ninja masters

http://seanomlor.gaia.com — Fri, 06 Oct 2006 11:55:22 GMT

Personally, I am more drawn to paths that lay most of the details out up front for me. Fuck this inner secrets shit, it’s for geeks. Even if I need a teacher for minor or even major guidance in applying the techniques, give me a thumbnail sketch of what I am getting into. I am too hip on cults to sign up for something without a sense of what it’s about. I can fully accept a layer of secretiveness. Particularly as an effort to maintain the sacredness of particular teachings, rituals, etc. or to protect the group from opression, say, if there are techniques involving fun illicit drugs, yogic sex with porn stars, clowns, midgets … :)

I am also not a fan of the “it’s secret so you don’t hurt yourself” card. I assume a certain almost magical quality to naive sincerity. Even a worthless technique done in the right spirit is better than the perfect method done for the wrong reasons. Hurting oneself is an act of ignorance, of unconsciousness. And we are already doing this in every moment! Ask the Buddhists, they will tell you. But it’s this thread of nearly foolish sincerity that guides us IMO. It’s a very personal thing. My Taoist teacher Liu Ming tells me human beings can not even consciously kill themselves. Taoists believe suicide is a case of unresolved ancestral qi. In effect, an enraged demonic ancestor killing you with your own hands. Whoah. But to find a place of sincerity, where you consciously want to become a more evolved being, or even just want to have more fun, genuinely, to get in touch with the tiniest sliver of intuition, and follow this thread of bliss, even if there is a big pile of karmic crud on top of it, well I believe this is the whole path. It’s when picking a flower for your lover is as powerful a qigong as flying to China and meeting a new super advanced teacher.

It’s so simple. We can have a blast concocting elaborate rituals, learning to shoot qi balls, flying … it could all even be part of our evolution. And Still there Is Silence the whole Way. Debating over a hierarchy of spiritual advancement is bizarre. There is no hierarchy. Evolution and progress are a function of time. What is Timeless? Nothing. Silence. And there is literally Nothing but Now. That’s it. Now you are reading this. So this is That. Maybe you will be cooking later. That will be It. Completely and totally It. Maybe you will be in China with an extraordinary human being. That will be It. Up and down, moods change, your memories shift, round and round. What remains still? Can you see?

Honestly I only catch a glimpse myself. :p But how it feels! It’s surely Truth.

I am aware that traditionally the Chinese sages were highly secretive. So it’s possible that taking Taoism “all the way” requires a deeper embrace of this feature of the path. I’ll stay a bum as long as I can though. Really many paths from all culture’s including the West have been traditionally structured in a way many today would consider shockingly secretive, exclusive and elitist. For all number of reasons, good and bad. I think it’s intriguing to meet people who are completely sold that their gurus and sifus are the cream of the crop. It’s always the same too. No one is left like them. They are the only authentic teacher in the tradition left. There are only two enlightened beings left on the planet, and their teacher is one of them. Honestly, I would be curious to meet these fellows and their teachers. But I can never shake feeling they are projecting a decent amount of their own love outward as more objective features of the world than they really are. When you have powerful experiences with someone it can be like that though. For example, I can say with certainty that having sex with my girlfriend Lezlie is way way more high level than with ordinary women. She has many secret powers I have never seen demonstrated before. Only read about in books of legends. I consider it very unfortunate that none of you, my poor readership, will ever be enlightened in this secret and powerful qigong, but it’s an elite path reserved for only one man. hhhaah… Oh man, I crack myself up.

So anyway, my Taoist teacher Liu Ming is the best. Cream of the crop I tell ya. He teaches zuowang, “sitting in forgetfullness”, an emptiness meditation basically indistinguishable from zazen. Later I believe he introduces alchemical meditations, but in a similar spirit that he teaches cooking clases and Taoist astrology; useful details to enrich the core process of embracing the ordinary that is engaged through zuowang. Honestly, does it need to be fundamentally more complex than this? Is there really so much more room for “irony and missteps” intrinsic to so-called “spiritual practice” than that which is inherent in any moment in life?

Tags: spirituality, taoism, mysticism, nonduality, religion, integral

The Microcosmic Pendulum

http://seanomlor.gaia.com — Fri, 06 Oct 2006 11:08:13 GMT

A recent topic on The Tao Bums, Yogani On Spinal Breathing And The Microcosmic Orbit inspired me to alter my twice daily spinal breathing practice for the last few weeks to include the front channel. But I really did not want to lose the delicious doubling back on the spinal nerve, so I created a sort of ping pong table out of the MCO. Here is an animation I created to illustrate.

I call it, the The Microcosmic Pendulum. :) My experience so far is that going up and down the front channel like this is very soothing. I'm already noticing a cooling, emotionally softening effect. Maybe I can get some of this trapped heat out of my eyes and stop being so damn argumentative. Another report in a few weeks.

Tags: yoga, bliss, meditation, taoism, alchemy, subtle body

Your True Purpose Is Always Effortless!

http://seanomlor.gaia.com — Fri, 06 Oct 2006 11:37:04 GMT

Via Finding True Magic Newsletter

Do you get it? Do you understand why your true purpose is effortless? It is effortless because it is true – true meaning in accord with every aspect of your being so there is no space left over for struggle.

When we are struggling we are actually fighting against our true purpose with conditioned fear based thinking. When you relax into yourself breath by breath with kindness and gratitude, you discover the natural movement of life-as-you is the fullness of your true purpose. Right effort, not struggle, is made in the service of this natural effortless arising of "you" as life's purpose.

Therefore right effort is effortless in the sense that it is delightful to make effort that is inspired with the joy of being, free of fearful judgment and struggle.

Do you understand? Practice relaxing into yourself so attentively that you begin to feel life moving you in your true direction. The practice will include dismissing judgmental thoughts like, "what will they think of me."

Tags: effortless, wu wei, purpose

Was Jesus a Taoist?

http://seanomlor.gaia.com — Fri, 06 Oct 2006 11:35:50 GMT

Via The Teachings of Jesus blogspot.

Let me begin by asking this question: Did Jesus of Nazareth hold a philosophy compatible to Lao Tzu’s Taoism? The foundation question that must be asked before asking if Jesus lived by a “Taoist” philosophy, is to ask if Jesus was a “Christian” in belief and practice. This question probably evokes laughter from some, and others would exclaim with contempt, “Of course he was! The Christian Religion is founded on Jesus and his teachings!” I beg to adamantly differ with you. Read the rest

So was Jesus a Taoist? Well, I might say his teachings are more resonant with what we know of Taoism than they are of what has become of religious Christianity.

Tags: taoism, christianity, jesus

Shaking, Bouncing, Swaying, Writhing, Convulsing

http://seanomlor.gaia.com — Fri, 06 Oct 2006 11:13:00 GMT

Todd on The Tao Bums has rekindled my interest in shaking qigong, or in this case more accurately bouncing qigong. I really got a lot out of Michael Winn’s spontaneous “shaking the tree” practice found on one of his Chi Kung Fundamentals videos, but never did it routinely. Also, I realize in retrospect I was imposing a preference for flailing about wildly in all directions and I had a sort of strange hidden desire to suddenly tap into some kind of latent genius dynamic twisting, twirling, leaping qigong form buried in my nervous system. Pffft. :) When that wouldn’t happen in 5 minutes I got bored. heh. But the way Todd taught me is a lot more like a simple meditation. Basically you just bounce vertically up and down and pay attention. That’s it. Sometimes I am still drawn to throw in a little twisting or undulating, but the core practice is just the bounce. It’s great because you can do it for as little or as long as you want. I’m just going to tack on a few minutes of bouncing before my AYP meditations.

Sp I did a little more research today and found a cool variation. The Tantric Tailbone Piledrive! :) Check it out:

Via Umaa Tantra

[…F]irst place your mind in your tailbone, and try to “feel” from those nerves. Then…

For skeletal shaking, do *not* swing the tailbone forward and backward, which increases fluidity, not solidity (those pelvic tilts or “tucks”are a totally different exercise, used to open up the sacrum).

Instead, the knees joints do not move horizontally as they bend. They stay in the same place. To get the right feeling and motion, stand and place your toes and knees up against a wall in front of you, and raise and lower your butt a few inches, keeping the knees touching the wall as you bend them. Now bring yourself off the wall and move the same way during the exercise.

Think of your spine like a heavy pile driver, going deep into the earth as you accelerate your tailbone downwards a few inches, stopping suddenly while keeping the body loose and relaxed, so that it feels like your bone marrow keeps traveling downward through the bones for an instant.

Breathe deeply and naturally throughout, and recover upwards with minimal acceleration after each downward drop. The spine stays perpendicular to the ground at all times (no “forward-backward “humping” motion).

…

I’m also inspired to finally pick up Jan Fries book, Seidways: Shaking Swaying Serpent Mysteries which details the practice of shamanic convulsive trances as a powerful tool for self-transformation. (I really enjoyed his other book Visual Magick.)

Tags: yoga, magick, qigong, meditation, healing, taoism, tantra, shamanism

Whole-Body Female Orgasms

http://seanomlor.gaia.com — Fri, 06 Oct 2006 11:31:22 GMT

I recently checked out a DVD by Stephane Hemon called “Intro To Female Ejaculation”.

On the surface some might judge Stephane to be a part of the “pick up artist” (PUA) scene or even just a downright chauvanist. But I really like Stephane. He is totally different than the pick up crowd. He has been there though and is very familiar with the language which he uses it sometimes. But he is reframing all of it. He actually reminds me of David Deida, although Stephane is a bit more rough around the edges, especially his sense of humor.

I really welcome post-conventional men like them talking about male-essenced (yang) issues. I think it’s sorely needed. Many of us guys have already gone through the growing pains of evolving upward from what we saw as the “typical macho jerks”. We’ve been thinking of the “other side” (sometimes more than our own), we’ve been getting in touch with the feminine, gone through the sensitivity training, read feminism, etc. But at some point I think these lessons have been integrated more or less and there is a next step. A time to move past the watered down sense of equality that has become so PC and embrace the truer polarity of one’s nature … be it more yin or more yang, or in some cases maybe more naturally just neutral. Guys like Stephane and David Deida can at first glance remind people of pre-conventional macho jerks, sometimes they even talk and act similar, but they are just embodying their strong yang nature.

A lack of a concept for this “next step” is a big monkey wrench in the evolution of gender roles/relations. “Macho jerks” looking for role models will most likely not look to feminized conventional men and so stay pre-conventional until they hit the bottom of the control issues and misogyny that breeds in them from being left by dozens of women for being such selfish assholes. This could be smoothed out if they had guys like Stephane in their life. He can come off just as macho and tough and talks dirty about women and has a really hot girlfriend that is apparently really submissive in a preconventional way (only apparently) but he talks about all this “unconditional love and chakras shit …. Hmmm… but maybe chicks dig this stuff?” So they go and pick up a book on chakras and suddenly they are reading all of this sensitive material and evolving to the conventional level and then postconventional more rapidly.

Then there are already conventional men without these roles models … similar thing … hit bottom at trying to be so nice and pleasing and everything equal and sooo in touch with yin that women are completely bored with them or bitchy women take advantage of them. So they get frustrated and angry and attempt to retreat back to the macho jerk role, which is impossible because they’re more evolved than that. I can’t tell you how many times I see this one, it’s really a painful conflict to witness.

So, my experiences with this DVD so far. Well, the thing I was most impressed with, besides Stephane’s girlfriiend Ghita’s beauty and breathtaking orgasms, was how dead-on Stephane shows you exactly where the deepest tension spots on a woman’s body are. I’ve been giving my girlfriend Lezlie massages ever since and it’s like magic, every spot, exactly as he shows, I can feel SO much tension there and Lezlie is screaming. Well, she was. Now things are smoothing out nicely. And the more I massage her I am actually noticing clear visual changes in her posture, and even body shape … not to mention her stress levels.

I have only just barely tried the technique he shows to make a woman ejaculation, called “yang fingers”. I am still just pushing the massage angle, but naturally I’m curious to see if I can take this process the whole way. :)

Go here to see an embedded preview of Stephane’s DVD, to save you the step of downloading it. (Not work safe by a long shot! Well, heh, depending on where you work anyway)

Bottom line: I’m very pleased with this DVD and plan to pick up more of Stephane’s material.

Tags: bliss, healing, tantra, sex, evolution

Global-mind-shift

http://seanomlor.gaia.com — Fri, 06 Oct 2006 11:16:49 GMT

Via global-mindshift.org

"What is a mind shift and why do we need to make one?

How can we build a better future for all of us? That's the fundamental question of our time. Today we are discovering it will require a global mind shift if we are to provide an answer adequate to our current situation. Take a look at the current presentation. You'll learn why the old ways of dealing with our current situation no longer work. More importantly, you'll discover there is a mind shift taking place today that provides the larger perspective we need to answer the age old questions.

Where am I? Who am I? What am I to do?"

Lezlie and I just watched the first part, step 1, "get a bigger perspective". Pretty enjoyable. Cool art in the background of the video, I found Brian Swimme to be engaging and I definitely learned some things I didn't know. I'm curious about his perspective on evolution though ... he spoke many times of life "inventing" things, like photosynthesis, sex, eyes, etc. My understanding is that the mainstream field of evolutionary science considers this a naive view and that the, perhaps bleaker, reality is that new "features" are basically the result of "what doesn't die". In other words, the giraffe didn't grow a long neck to reach the high leaves, giraffes with short necks all died. The "invent a longer neck" story of course sounds better though and I'm curious if/how it's grounded in some new empirical findings. Maybe I'll pick up his book.

Tags: cosmology, integral, ecology, evolution

Jing retention 101

http://seanomlor.gaia.com — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 08:52:34 GMT

I think most men with at least some level of energetic sensitivity eventually come to discern the energy drain that occurs with ejaculation. It's not all that mysterious. Top level athletes are often well aware of it and will avoid sex before a performance. Napoleon Hill talked about it in the wildly successful "Think and Grow Rich". And really, any guy who pays attention can notice. I even heard Adam Corola on the radio once describing it. He called it the "fire in our belly", a kind of tension that motivates us out of bed and into the world. Get laid or masturbate too much and you mysteriously find yourself tired, sitting around in your pajamas at noon playing video games.

In esoteric Taoism, Yoga, Buddhism and many other traditions this sexual energy is consciously cultivated. Ejaculation is minimized or avoided altogether so that one has the energy necessary to invest in the spiritual path. This is called "jing retention" by modern Taoists. In the last few years, hanging out with Taoists and Yogis, this issue of jing retention comes up quite often with the men. It can be a pretty charged topic too, especially when you have guys experimenting with nonejaculatory Tantric sex. Tensions can start to build up. Emotions intensify. Hijinks ensue.

Well I've found something that is working for me, so I will share.

I have found that a consistent twice daily practice of breathing up and down the spine for at least 5 minutes followed by an emptiness meditation of at least 10 minutes is crucial for success with jing retention.

As a result of this rain or shine practice, retention is becoming more and more of a non-issue for me. I can easily go one or two actively sexual months without anything that feels like uncomfortable pressure (and the spinal breathing increases my sensitivity to and awareness of pressure). I have increased energy and often notice pleasant sensations that feel like pockets of blissful empty space opening throughout my whole body. But if I so much as skip three or four days of my practice, I can clearly feel the pressure building.

I think of this process as working with the sexual energy early on, before it gets too hot. The energy is newborn, it's still light and fresh and innocent. It can be gently massaged and coaxed and expanded into the other energy centers. When it's hot it's too difficult and most likely even dangerous to try to work with. By the time you have sex it's way too late, you are just "riding your attainments", as I like to say. The best you can do in my opinion is relax. Hot sexual energy already wants too much to do something or have something done to it. To cultivate with this energy requires a gentle return to the original space of unknowing, the foolish naive wisdom of desirelessness stumbled upon through the Taoist meditation of sitting and forgetting and other emptiness meditations.

The problem, as I see it, with, say, Mantak Chia's material (besides other theoretical issues), is the lack of emphasis on consistently applying the fundamentals. I think many come to Taoist alchemy initially through Chia's popular sex books. Then even if they "backtrack" to the fundamentals, it's like they are just swallowing brussel sprouts to get to the dessert. It doesn't work like that. Put 5+ minutes of close-eyed, seated microcosmic orbit, followed by 10+ minutes of inner smile at the unshakeable core of a twice daily meditation practice, and expand slowly from there is my advice. You will be having incredible Taoist sex in no time.

Tags: sex, taoism, taoist alchemy, meditation, cultivation

What do you know?

http://seanomlor.gaia.com — Fri, 14 Jul 2006 01:48:50 GMT

Via To Live the Truth, A Weekend Inquiry with Adyashanti. Inspired me enough to transcribe it. Enjoy.

"As Ramana used to say, let what comes come, let what goes go, find out what remains. Awareness needs no contrast. Awareness is.

What have you been forever?

The best way to find out is to be still and let it discover itself. Just be still and let it discover itself. There is no trick. If I could hand out the trick of awakening, if I could get like the five step plan, that'd be great. I'd love to have one. I know a lot of people, most teachers have some sort of five step plan, ten step plan, two step plan. I don't have a plan. I've never seen a plan that works, even very often. Right? There isn't really a plan, because it just doesn't work that way.

This is my invitation. To be still and let that which is awake within you remember itself. Allow it to remember itself. Don't think you are wrong because you can't do it with your will. That's what's right. You can't do it with your will. It remembers itself by itself. The less you struggle, the easier it is for consciousness to reveal itself. Struggle makes it very difficult, because it ties up consciousness in this process called struggle.

Where does your heart lead you? What do you know? What do you know? Follow your heart. There is no prescription for this. We do it or we don't. When you do you find there is a tremendous force to it. Following what you know to be true. See, I can't tell someone, ok, go home, sit such and such hours of meditation a day and it's going to work. Because I know it doesn't work that way. The way it tends to work, follow what's really, actually, authentic within you. And if you don't know what's authentic than find out. Right? Then sit down in a room and find out what's authentic. If takes you two seconds, great. If it takes your two months, great. But find out that authentic place within you, and follow it with all of your heart. That is the most powerful thing within you, within any of us. That is our personal invitation. It guides you in the way no exterior force can guide you. And if it says sit six hours a day than sit six hours a day, and if it says don't bother with it, don't bother with it. And you'll find that force, that still small direction, it's not what this mind wants to do or doesn't want to do is it? It's very different. Do you see? There is nothing wrong with you. It's all there isn't it? It's all there. Everything you need. The direction. Which way to go. What to do or not. It's all there. That's what I have great trust in, because I know everybody has this complete, built in road to their own being.

But let yourself know that this is important. As my teacher's teacher used to say, Suzuki, 'the most important thing is to find out what is the most important thing'. And that sounds like very cliche and very Zen, old guy wisdom. But when you realize that the most important thing is to find out what is the most important thing... and find out how important it actually is to you ... that is what lights the fire. That is what gets through our lethargy, or in some people it's resistance, in some people it's anxiety, in some people they gotta move through fear, everybody's gotta move through something. And it's not a technique that's going to get them to move through it. It's really contacting, with what's the most important thing. What is this life about? What is the one thing that is more important than all the other things that are important? You see what I mean? ... We go through our whole lives, being moved, and we don't really contact this force. Just touching into that has so much power...

And when you really tap into this, it's not the power that makes you just feel extremely anxious, like, "I have got to wake up yesterday!" That's the ego's distortion of that beautiful power. That's the ego sort of turning it into a goal oriented process. But when you really feel it, it's something very powerful, very deep. More important than anything else in this moment. And really not about achieving your mind's idea of something. It's deeper than that. This is what has all the power in it. You contact with that, you don't really need to know what to do anymore."

Namaste,
Sean

Tags: heart, nonduality, adyashanti, advaita

The Taoist Body

http://seanomlor.gaia.com — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 07:52:30 GMT

I recently read The Taoist Body by Kristofer Schipper on the advice of my Taoist teacher Liu Ming. I highly highly recommend that anyone with even a passing interest in Taoism read this book. The Taoist religion is the least understood of the major religions and this is one of a miniscule number of books available in English bridging this gap. According to Ming it's also the best, with Taoism: Growth of a Religion a close second (which I will start soon).

From the book:
"The widespread ignorance concerning Taoism can by no means be imputed to the nature of the Chinese religion as such: until the persecutions that descended on it a century ago and which still go on, it was alive, visible, and acccessible in daily life. Taoism moreover, which can be seen as the most elevated expression of Chinese popular religion, possesses a rich and vast literature comprising more than a thousand works, covering all aspects of its traditions. Rather, this loss of interest on the part of Western scholars is due, I think, to the difficulty in understanding Chinese religion. The very notion of religion as we define it in the West is an obstacle, and a great number of observers have fallen into the trap of failing to see that in a society so dissimilar from ours the religious system must also be very different.

In everyday life, religious activity had no particular name or status, since - as the French sinologist Marcel Granet was fond of pointing out - in China, religion was formerly not distinguished from social activity in general. Even its most distinguished representatives, the Taoist masters, were generally integrated in lay society and enjoyed no special status. In modern times and in imitation of Western culture and its concept of religion as something setting humanity apart from nature, the authorities have applied themselves to the task of classifying and dividing the people, trying in vain to convince the ordinary peasant that he was either a Confucian, a Buddhist, a Taoist, or more recently still - in keeping with the party line - simply "superstitious". In fact, none of this really applies and certainly no ordinary person would call himself a Taoist, since this designation always implies an initiation into the Mysteries, and consequently is even now reserved for the masters, the local sages.

Traditionally, no special term existed to express religious activity. In order to translate our word religion, modern Chinese usage has coined the term tsung-chiao, literally "sectarian doctrine". This may be correct for Islam or Catholicism, but when this term is used for the Chinese popular religion and its highest expression, Taoism - that is to say, a religion which considers itself to be the true bond among all beings without any doctrinal creed, profession of faith, or dogmatism - it can only create misunderstandings.

One may say that it is the absence of definition that constitutes the fundamental characteristic of Chinese religion."

One of the things I really enjoyed in this book was reading about all of the Taoist deities. Taoism has been imported mostly as a philosophy and later as a form of Yoga while it's incredibly rich, almost exhaustive pantheon of gods for nearly anything you can imagine has been so thoroughly neglected that most people (myself included) didn't even associate deities with Taoism at all.

Here is a fascinating blurb on the Taoist conception of humans, demons and gods:
"Ordinary people thus have no need for their souls to be saved, given that true salvation occurs in the natural course of things. As we have seen, the aid of the gods results in a debt to be repaid and expiated. If all goes well, a person owes nothing to the gods, nor will he become a god himself. Indeed the pantheon's origin lies in the extraordinary, in the accidental.
...
The God of the Hearth is supposed to have been a man who committed suicide by leaping into a kitchen fire; and the Earth God, a brave servant who died of the cold in order to protect his mistress. In popular legends, none of the gods has died of natural causes; the have all either been executed, or have committed suicide, or died virgins - a terrible fate. Thus, by definition, they are all ku-hun, orphan souls. Normally, among the ku-hun, virgins who - like Ma-tsu - died young without fulfilling their female destiny are especially feared, for they have their maternal power intact and ready to avenge themselves. And according to the normal scheme of things, Lord Kuan or Mr. Kuo ought to have become fearsome demons.

What then is the difference between a demon and god? Honestly speaking, there is no ontological distinction between them, only a difference of spiritual power. If Mr. Kuo had been an ordinary man, his violent death would have made of him a common demon, one of many. But his moral strength, the determination and intensity of his devotion as a perfect servant, enabled him to transcend his humble position. The spiritual power of his souls was no longer that of a simple person who died a violent death, but that of a god.
...
The road to sainthood is long. The concentration of one's vital forces, maintained through self-perfection, makes one a formidable demon becfore one becomes a gentle and beneficial power. The career of each being, as carefully codified by the Taoist masters, leads from the status of minor local spirit, even from the spirit of a stone or a plant, to the summits of the heavens where spiritual strength becomes astral. All the same, those higher beings are capable of wordly feelings. Despite her elevated position, Ma-tsu still remains subject to her own whims, and Lord Kuan, who is just as illustrious since he is a Celestial Emperor, remains capable of turning his anger on those who fail to respect him. The demoniacal character of the minor gods is clearer still and is expressed in their iconography itself.

As long as they are gods, these beings remain subject to the rule of time. No investiture, not even a stellar one, lasts forever, for everything that has a beginning also has an end, and to concentration correspond dispersal and diffusion, which are the priveleged actions of the Tao."

Tags: religion, taoism, gods, demons

Why don’t Zen teachers talk about qi?

http://seanomlor.gaia.com — Sun, 09 Jul 2006 08:13:04 GMT

My guess is because Zen is an attempt to focus almost as exclusively as possible on the everpresent stillness and inherent emptiness of all form, no matter how subtle or gross that form may be. From this perspective qi flow is not fundamentally unlike any movement of form … blood flow, taking a walk, cooking breakfast, sleeping. It’s all still “the world of manifestation”.

Not to say that qi flow cannot be presented with perhaps equally skillfull means though. When qi is framed as movement itself, as thoughts, desires, perceptions, emotions, etc., all an endless flow of qi that will never be finished and simultaneously the question “what is Silently Aware of movement?” is held until the separation between the imagination of yourself and That Which Is Aware falls away, then we have a spiritual path and not just healthful qi exercises. Not that there is anything wrong with healthful qi exercises of course.

Recently I was surprised to hear a Zen teacher, Cheri Huber, speak about energy flow like this on WIE Unbound although I don’t remember her ever saying qi outright she did mention chakras.

Tags: buddhism, zen, alchemy, nondualism, qi

The Great Perfection

http://seanomlor.gaia.com — Sun, 09 Jul 2006 08:14:35 GMT

Even our mind making distinctions is a part of this Great Perfection, not separate from it.

And even what is truly truly evil and that we must always reject as such is part of this Great Perfection.

And even this apparent sense of being lost and ignorant and in the dark, and having to seek a Truth we initially imagine is separate only to finally awaken to enlightenment, which is paradoxically a simple noticing of what was there all along; every step of this whole process is part of the Great Perfection.

Tags: nondualism

Stillness and movement arise

http://seanomlor.gaia.com — Sun, 09 Jul 2006 08:13:42 GMT

Allow stillness cultivation into the core of your practice and also allow whatever to arise to arise.

Sometimes, like in springtime, what arises will be juicy, alchemy.

Other times, just the simple “ordinary” living of life. Chopping wood, carrying water.

Sometimes an odd blend of both. Chopping wood, carrying a steaming cauldron.

Tags: buddhism, meditation, taoism, alchemy, nonduality, cultivation