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Hi Steven:
“At any rate, I’d appreciate your thoughts and/or any further
discussion upon this “aliveness” which you speak of, and moreover,
any sort of eternal carryover beyond this physical form.”
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I would propose Tao Alchemy or cultivation is to bring you to the “Aliveness”, to have a clarity of this, to experience this is your essential nature. Your free will is partly about following things in life to take you away from this, this is mindfulness, this is what you choose to be aware, what you attune too. Alchemy clearly is about your choosing what to be mindful. Everything has unfolding, this Aliveness or Essential Nature does to, it unfolds the realization of what you are not and the old attachments to false beliefs dissolve, clearly to me Alchemy does this too.Lets look at Alchemy. Healing Sounds, Inner Smile help realization you are not your emotions. Then what are we?
Microcosmic Orbit tells us we have an energy body. So we are not just a physical body.
Fusion tells us we can transform our emotions to neutral state, or the yuan state or focusing on this “Aliveness”.
Fusion 2-3 tells us we are not just a Physical Body, Organs and energy but also Spirit. This is to helps us realize our essential nature, clearing away the conditioning, attachments and false beliefs connected to your body, emotions and desires
And on and on.
It seems taoists are about appreciating and enjoying life as it is, savor each moment now, not giving their qi, blood or jing to the future, but living in the enternal now. This seems very hard for many, to accept the fact they have everything they need, there is nothing to add, but maybe things to let go of, to me alchemy assists in that.
I am familiar with most theories of after life, but my understanding of Tao arts is the essential teachings is how we live now, and take care of the now and all else will take care of itself.
Do you feel you are complete? Do you feel you have everything you need to live a complete and fulfilling life. Do you feel you lack nothing?
Smiling in the Tao,
baguaSteven, et al- I thought I’d put this out as it came to me yesterday in the meditation circle I attend on Sunday mornings. These were read by the woman who holds these circles…
“I once believed that the most important task in life was to explain its mysteries. Everything had answers if we could just ask the right questions. That was what I believed until I met BIll Dalton, an old Hopi medicine man whose Indian name was Soloho. He taught me that not every question has an answer and that the lack of an answer does not meant the question was not important to ask. Shortly before his death, Soloho asked me a final riddle. ‘What happens to the light after it becomes dark?” For one of the very few times, he answered the riddle. He said, ‘The darkness becomes its own light.’ ”
-Healing Ceremonies, Carl Hammerschlag, MD and Howard Silverman, MD
Oh great mystery,
dark shining holy one,
let me ride the questions of my heart as the leaves ride the wind in the trees,
seeking nothing but to move with your breath of life
as it whispers through my being,
calling me who kows where.
It is so hard to live without answers…
Cracked earth longing for rain, I search the sky for moisture
and wait for the wet, healing drops of your response.
Help me to trust the shifting realities of light and dark,
the breath of what is.
Help me to put my trust in mystery.-Dorothy Mason, April Module, 2002
As for the rest of this conversation, I am sitting with it all for now.
In the Mystery,
AlexanderExcellent post, Bagua.
I now feel like I have good understanding of
your point of view–much more tangible, and I
can feel the truth somewhat of what you speak.However, I don’t know that I can say that I agree
with it totally though . . .Part of me feels like there is no way of
knowing whether or not this is the only
shot we get at life. Moreover, if
that is indeed the case, then being
vigilant about trying to ensure a more
successful hereafter and investigating *that*
while we have the opportunity, seems prudent.To rephrase:
Focusing completely on being in the present,
being in the NOW, creating a sense of peace
and awareness of identity–even though wonderfully
beautiful and freeing–seems like it risks a tragedy
if it means certain things that would enable a
more conscious and full hereafter are missed.Or to shorten further:
How do you know that you are not limiting your
possibilities by only focusing on the now, and
that maybe there is a better way than whatever
is in the “natural” plan?Ah, I think I’ve come upon the issue . . .
I suppose that this really goes to the root of
Taoism, because the main philosophy here is
to align with the natural flow and to trust in
the lifeforce . . . but to *truly* accept such
a program, involves a complete surrender and
letting go to it which . . .GETTING TO THE ROOT OF THE ROOT . . .
implies a belief that there is no *better* way
than the path that the lifeforce has in “its mind”.So that’s sort of the issue that needs to be better
understood, as it is the true stumbling block here.How do you know that there is “no better way”?
Answering this, and the rest is immediate . . .
In other words, your program would obviously and
unquestionably, be the right program then.S
Nice.
I’ve appreciated discussing these things with you.
They’ve been highly enlightening.In fact, I think I’ve come to root of the root of the
underlying issue that’s been bothering me with the
whole eternal aspect in the sidebar. Check out the
end of my latest response to bagua . . .In fact, let me quote something you said–which at the
time was not what I was thinking about, but now
after the fact in a related discussion, it became relevant.In a different context, you stated:
“There is an inherent distrust of the process of life
in a question like this. The life force knows
what it’s doing. It has the whole picture in mind. ”Can we explore this further?
How do you know, that there is not a better plan, than
the one that is currently laid out for you by the
intelligence of the lifeforce?That might sound ridiculous, but I’m dead serious here.
How do you know that through experiences in physicality
that circumstances are now such that the model
presented by the lifeforce is no longer optimal.Complete trust and surrender implies an implicit
understanding that there can be no better way.Moreover, aren’t the higher level alchemy methods
in some sense designed to SUBVERT the natural flow?After all, according to the “shen scattering theory”,
then the natural flow leads to annihilation, and
the alchemical methods of trying to glue together
the shen is an attempt to subvert the natural flow.Best,
StevenHi Steven:
“GETTING TO THE ROOT OF THE ROOT . . .
implies a belief that there is no *better* way
than the path that the lifeforce has in “its mind”.So that’s sort of the issue that needs to be better
understood, as it is the true stumbling block here.How do you know that there is “no better way”?
Answering this, and the rest is immediate . . .
In other words, your program would obviously and
unquestionably, be the right program then.”
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What I am trying to do is to offer a view of what Nei Gong does, trying to express it in to open way, not in a way that could lead to rigidity. Everything I have been saying is inside the alchemy, its just how one views what is happening, i offer a view from my experience.What I am saying is regardless of the proper cultivation it does no matter which approach you take, there is no right way or better way, the goal is the same. You will practice what you resonate with at the time and hopefully be happy with it, if you can do that you already are quite achieved. I think each person will persue what they think is the right way and no one can stop that, but as many of the past say, when you give it the pursuit, you realize its all here right now. Many of us have to go through much to realize this.
The dynamic of better or worse way, right or wrong is transcended, that model only exists from a dualistic or polarized state.
The lifeforce is not only the mind it is everything, and we are this lifeforce. There is no disintegration of the ego or heart of soul, there is an understanding of what they are, this comes from understanding your true nature. If One Clouds methods or Sitting Mediation of the many variations take you there it does not matter.
The right program is what you are doing now and I hope you give it everything you got, and feel confident you will find what you seek and I feel confident you will realize its what you have had all along. We are both individual and part of the whole, we need to realize both sides of this, they are inseparable, in this way we become open to the collective and can access much of what occurs in the universe, much of the veils and filters dissolve. Sort of like getting past the firewall or taking it down.
Smiling in the Tao,
baguaDon Juan said that in my dealings with the inorganic beings, I had followed the rule so well that he feared devastating consequences. He thought that the unavoidable reaction on the part of the inorganic beings was going to be an attempt to keep me in their world.
“Don’t you think that you are exaggerating, don Juan?” I asked. I could not believe that the picture was as bleak as he was painting it.
“I am not exaggerating at all,” he said, in a dry serious tone.
“You’ll see. The inorganic beings don’t let anyone go, not without a real fight.”
“But what makes you think they want me?”
“They’ve already shown you too many things. Do you really believe that they are going to all this trouble just to entertain themselves?”
-CARLOS CASTANEDA, The Art of DreamingCANCER. Cells which have escaped normal controls regulating growth and division, producing clones of dividing daughter cells which invade adjacent tissues and may interfere with their activities. Some cancer cells express self-antigens normally only expressed early in the development, and so can be detected by T cells. Despite a normal oxygen uptake, cancer cells tend to use several times the normal glucose requirement. In vertebrates they produce lactic acid under aerobic conditions. This places a burden on the liver etc.
-Penguin Reference: Dictionary of BIOLOGYThus I have heard (as the Buddhist scriptures start) that Mr. Castaneda (CA=Carlos Aranha=coitus a…) died because of liver cancer and I personally have impression that he was well acquinted with such ‘energetic facts’ which seem to rule in the realm of Daoist practices (Dao vs. Taotl). What comes to this Atlantean tradition I’m more inclined towards Mexico (I have been only once in Tulum but I preferred the nearby biosfera de Sian Kan)not Egypt… and well yes those certain sculptures in Tula are called Atlanteans…
If this message is cold and insensitive it’s simply because I’m clearly somewhere in the very perimeter what comes to Healing Tao USA. It’s difficult and also simply sentimental to regret somebody whom you haven’t known personally.
Mika K
Welcome back Ladies and Gentlemen to your favorite game show and intergalactic spiritual past-time, where we swoon and sigh over the One Most High:
ASK A TAO IMMORTAL!
Yes, that’s right, we’re back and you’re all looking particularly beautiful today on planet…*psst…which planet are we on today?* [earth.]… *Right! Earth! And what a gorgeous little mud-ball it is!
We’ll let’s introduce ouselves to today’s contestants…
First we have a retired samurai from sixteenth centrury Japan, Ato, let’s give Ato a round of applause!
*APPLAUSE*
Well Ato, did you have any trouble getting to the show today?
“No, not really… I merely kept my feet warm, my head cool, and meditated on my third eye for 40 years in a cave in the mountains.”
That’s just super! Our second contestant is the spirit of a particularly advanced slab of granite hailing from one of the free-love rock’n’ roll colonies in the earth’s upper mantle. Great to have you with us, how’s the sex back at the free-love colony these days?
“We like to take it slow.”
No kidding! Well, we hope you can keep up with the show today. Finally, we have an earnest-looking young man from..is this right…the surface of the earth in 2009?
“Yes, that’s right.”
Well, an early riser you must be! Up with the sun every morning, are you?
“Yeah, sometimes, to meditate.”
Well, that’s just super! Now let’s get right to it shall we. Today we have the rare and titilatingly unlikely pleasure of welcoming Lao Tzu himself to our studio as today’s guest Immortal on ASK A TAO IMMORTAL! But first this word from our sponsors:
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Welcome back, gentle-beings, to your favorite game show ASK A TAO IMMORTAL!
For those of you new to the show I’ll briefly explain how the game works:
Our three contestants will each ask our special guest Immortal questions and then try desperately to digest the answers! At the end of the show, we check to see which contestants are grinning like milk-filled babies, and which ones are wiping vomit off their shoes! Let’s begin!
Slab of Granite, you won the three-sided coin toss, so your question manifests first!
“Honored Tao Immortal, I’m just a slab of granite, and over the past few million years I have very very gradually become aware of having very very very gradually become ever so slightly warmer with shame over my feeling somewhat boring compared to more complex and faster-vibrating objects around me. Is this OK?”
()()()It’s OK.()()()
*Ato, your turn!*
“Blessed One, I have seen much violence and misery in only a single lifetime. Humanity seems like, well, a complete mess. Sometimes it’s really very depressing. Is this, you know, from a broader viewpoint…OK?”
()()()It’s OK.()()()
Your turn, Early-riser!
“Mr. Tzu, I study physics and we were going over the stronger anthropic principle, you know, that only in a universe where human life could exist can the physical laws of the universe be observed, and, aside from how crassly anthropocentric it is in light of the cornucopic preponderance of life forms in the universe, I started thinking about how if things like the relative strength of gravity and electro-magnetism, and the magnitude of the quantum Strong Force, and the balance of light and dark matter in the universe, and I started to freak out, because if even one of these structural elements of the physical universe were to somehow change even a little, the universe and life as we know it would change drastically, probably obliterating every aspect of the physical universe with which we’ve become familiar. What I’m trying to say is that it has come to my attention that the laws of physics *could* change, and I’m freaking out a little. So, as far as the laws of physics go, is everything, like, OK?”
()()()Everything’s OK.()()()
“Really?”
()()()Really.()()()
We’re running ot of time, folks. I think we’ve got just enough time for a few short questions for our Immortal. Let’s make it snappy people!
Ato?
“What about death?”
()()()It’s fine.()()()
Slab of Granite?
“Too many earthquakes?”
()()()No such thing.()()()
Early-Riser?
“What about human freewill?”
…
…
…()()()What do you think?()()()
“I think It’s fine.”
()()()
()()()
()()()Well, with a wink and a smile our Immortal has disappeared, which signals the end of today’s show! Tune in tomorrow when a Pre-Socratic Greek, a comet, and a Shetland Pony grill the Mayan Moon Goddess on ASK A TAO IMMORTAL!!!
Chris,
I’m using term soul here in taoist sense of “ling”, which holds simultaneously the five shen/xin AND both aspects of soul – heaven and earth agents. I see it as medium for communication or go-between Yuan jing-ch[-shen. Novak correctly identifies in my opionion that thr soul is split. why is a deeper question.Not to worry about sentimentality – we are here to learn from our experiences.
Carlos worked on the Dark Side, and was taken by them, I believe, part of the lineage he signed up for and promoted. As described by his followers, stuck in the mid-planes, engaged in endless spiritual war.
I agree with you, all cancers share some elemental process in common, they take over as the lesser self loses control of all it terrain.
but both the heart-mind and the soul may have very different relationships to the elemental process. So all deats are not the same, eventho the external diagnosis appears similar.
-michael
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