caspex

I was reading the Hatha Yoga Pradipika with commentary by Swami Muktibodhananda and found this interesting passage I want to share.

There's gotta be a diamond among all the coal. You have to get your hands dirty sometimes. It seems people here cannot confirm nor refute my post.

I have been studying Vedic Astrology for more than a year. I started out a believer to give it a fair shot and it worked wonders. It was giving me so many answers to my problems and explaining why I am the way I am through my birth chart. But somewhere along the lines I realized that since every placement has so many different predictions it'd be almost impossible for your chart to not relate to your life in some way no matter what. I have a debilitated SUN which explained a lot of my personality as I grew up. But I realized that I also had many moments of confidence and personal strength which would oppose the Sun being debilitated; but because that's what I saw in the chart, I started associating only those experiences and recalling only those memories. If it was exalted I would still relate to it. If it was in any of the other 10 signs I would still relate to it somehow. At some point I realized that the Chart has trapped me into being a particular type of person. Vedic Astrology didn't help me break free of my shortcomings but trap me further. It just seems like a very elaborate system to justify circumstances. But here's the thing, I see the value in it as being a deep categorization of the different archetypes and energy templates of human societal reality. It's a great way to think about and create new characters in a fictional setting by plopping down planets in various houses and interpreting how they would interact with each other if this were the birth chart of the character. It's also great in understand how archetypes interact with each other and also in different aspect of lives. Such as the Sun and Saturn axis and how that same archetype plays into so many different levels of our world. However at the end of the day, I come out thinking that Vedic Astrology as a means to analyze the life of a person is meaningless and counterproductive. Not only that, birth charts probably don't even tell you anything about the life of the native. I can understand planets affecting the world currently but how does that translate over to: "The planets were in an unlucky position when you were born so you're gonna be unfortunate most of your life". Moreover, no matter what I say, it has a counter for it. "Your sun is debilitated but you're still confident in yourself? Well it must be in a good placement in D9 or it must be neechbhanga". "Your Mars is strong but your body is weak? Well the mars must have given you a strong character!" Yeah, and if my body was strong you'd have attributed it to the strong mars, but not when my body is weak. There's always a counter because there are always multiple predictions for any given placement. Now, Having said all that, there's an astrologer called Abhigya Anand who used this very same practice to predict the pandemic in 2020 and also the Bangladesh stuff before it happened. You can find his videos on youtube. Stuff like this really makes me wonder whats true and whats not. Maybe I am missing something. If somebody here is highly experienced in this field it'd be a huge favor if your could clear my doubts. I am open to astrology being real, I have been for many years, but I need proper logic behind why and how it works. I would also like thoughts from the rest of you too as to what you think about this stuff.

Does anyone at least know a good forum where people practice astrology

Check out Dr. K on Puer Aeternus

This series actually helped me realize that being able to hold different factors in your mind to evaluate a problem is really just thinking in multiple dimensions

A brilliant series that helped me imagine the 4th spatial dimension. 3 videos so far.

How do you verify that your kundalini has awakened?

I think a cool movie for anyone interested in the horror aspect of these catacombs is 'As Above So Below (2014)'

Exactly. It feels more like a way to trap yourself in.

Title - Possessed Looking at me with it's terrifying leer creating in me sheer fear oh how terrifying it is calling to me with it's comforting hiss only to snatch all my hopes it makes me cry, it makes me mope I feel it taking away my heart taking all the love away, leaving it dark and cold My chest is an abyss, the abyss is it's abode It makes me do deeds that make me die inside It wants to feed, and kill me inside I want to hide, I want to leave it all There's no one to talk to, no one to call I am going to fall, I am going to fall

will be posting poems here which I write this post is open to replies

Title - It makes you wonder Orange hue with the deep blue Fluffy whites at great heights The giant begins to sink Patient you in a long queue with sight towards the oncoming night calmly begin to think Sharp eyes it flies Swoops down on the ocean's crown catches fish in a blink So keen is the gannet Even then does it know we're part of the sunset?

Steel drops feather dances

The prince imitates the sun what is glow to sunshine?

holy shit it's happening

Shift your expertise from code work to AI prompt making and other such technologies. Set time aside to brush up on the skills you want to keep. Don't let your mind become lazy just change what it engages with. It would be irrational to run on foot when you have a car, but since you won't be getting any exercise that way, you gotta start hitting the gym to keep your muscle. In Phaedrus, Socrates recounts a myth where the egyption God Theuth invents writing claiming it will improve memory. King Thamus rejects this by saying it will weaken memory because people will rely on external marks instead of their own minds. He says it's only an 'appearance of wisdom'. This problem is really old. Time and time again people face it and time and time again those who survive prove the existence of only one solution, the adoption of the new technology. The only difference seems to me is that writing wasn't something that was owned by another person, unlike AI. If they take away your AI you would suddenly be helpless. So instead of rejecting AI, spending time figuring out how to host your own seems worth it.

Mesomal because we need something in between optimal and pessimal

You need to advance materially and achieve the material. This will teach your ego its own ins and out, its weaknesses and its strength. You have to tread the normal path of growth and ego development. Think of it like this, most humans beings develop a strong ego and are not that aware by default. They eventually figure out, if at all, the importance of spirituality and work their way up. Rarer are those humans who despite developing an ego, are aware enough to access heightened states of consciousness very young. Even rarer are those humans who are born with extreme awareness and their ego stands naturally defeated in front of the light of their awareness. You fall in the type of human who had enough awareness to achieve these awakened states young but not enough wisdom to fully transcend the ego. You're just like a normal human being when it comes to ego. You have to develop it naturally until it withers away. If you try to bypass this mastery work through psychedelics you will eventually hit a wall you won't be able to pass. This problem is one of deep work and I don't think psychedelics are the solution. You need deep personal work to get this over with and it will take years. You are talking embodiment after all. You will suffer from spiritual ego much more than somebody who got into this work later in life. Psychedelics can show you new peaks but you still have to climb the mountain. In my opinion, seeing new peaks before you embody the ones you know currently is detrimental to spiritual growth. Ask climbers and they'll tell you to look only at the very next hold and how to climb one more step, instead of looking all the way up, because then you'd be demotivated seeing how high you have yet to climb. It takes years to fully understand who you(as an ego) are. All of your likes and dislikes, tendencies, strengths and shortcomings. Learning to accept the shortcomings and utilizing the strengths. That's a game entirely different from understand who you(as god) are. There's a chance, if you started having awakenings young, that you never fully developed a fleshed out identity. If that's the case you'll need to do that first. Right now you probably have crazy ego-backlashes after staying in awakened state for an extended period of time. For example being extremely irritable or anxious after coming down from an awakened state. Enlightenment in the sense Buddha or other enlightened masters embodied is something much beyond simply being in an awakened state of no-self or God. They had mastered their egos and their minds, their senses and their emotions. It's only then can your physical, mental and emotional body truly become a vessel for the divine.

Buddha is said to have slept like 4 hours per night. I think it's the mind integrating everything to keep reality coherent. Highly spiritual beings are able to do much of the job while awake and therefore end up requiring less sleep. I think you can reduce your sleep naturally by eating sattvic food, taking almost no stress and being in an awakened state of consciousness alongside not too excessive physical activity.

A lot of people also get into spirituality due to needing a form of escape or other such low reasons, yet the ego ultimately ends up annihilating itself as the pursuit of escape turns into pursuit of spiritual ego which in turn converts into a pursuit of truth. The reasons for why someone typically begins the path doesn't devalue that path's ability to grant awakening. The community around it may be unconscious but so is the case for much of mainstream spirituality and even this forum as well. It doesn't mean that the practice of martial arts itself causes that unconsciousness. I do admit that those who find lasting success in martial arts are usually those who did it out of egoic reasons because for most only ego can provide the kind of obsession and persistence needed to get good. But maybe the goal is never to get good but to understand one's body in a way that produces a realization of self. I am not entirely sure as this is not my path but I won't dismiss its value. Sure, I think psychedelics is the best path because it directly addresses and removes that unconsciousness once you take it, but you can see how much devilry exists even in those communities, you can't blame martial arts.

I am not entirely sure. Bruce Lee seemed a bit spiritual to me and he connected it with this martial arts. Any thoughts on that?

Has it ever happened to you that constant failure hammered you down every time you mustered the courage to gather hope and stand up again? This cycle will eventually lead you to a point where you lose all hope. Hope and purpose are the fuel to your actions. Here stands a choice, either you give up or somehow try again by finding more hope. Many give up, but those who choose to try again usually do not do so because they consciously chose it, but rather because they don't have the option in their psyche to let that go. They have to try again, there's no other choice. It is at this point you realize that up until now your hope was based on external objects. For example: The fruits of your actions, the end goal, inner peace, inner satisfaction, some elaborate worldview on how your actions are meaningful. No matter what it is, as long as your hope is derived from external objects, it'll always give out after X amount of failures. For some it may take 5 failures, for another 10, maybe for someone else it takes 50 failures, and for another a 100. The bigger the task the more failures you'll encounter, and at that point, after 1000s of failures, you'll eventually run out of things to find hope in. If you're lucky you succeed before that happens. If you're not so lucky, you end up feeling hopeless. And because your attachment is deep, you can't let that desire go either. Here a person reaches a very dark place, where they find themselves incapable of both action towards their goals and letting that goal go. So what's the solution? Faith. It is hope turned onto itself. Faith is that state of mind where the source of your hope has no basis. Faith is by design a strange loop. When you have some hope for better times, you would have reasons to explain to another person as to why you believe that. But when you have faith in better times, there's absolutely no basis at all for why you think that. That is a feature. If you're looking for a base, a logic behind it, then it is not faith, you're still searching for hope and purpose. Life is a balancing game between Faith and Doubt. Those who have no Doubt are blind, constantly stumbling into countless traps that life has laid out. Those who have no Faith are too slow to get anywhere and perish. Those who strike the right balance achieve stuff really fast. You simply have faith in yourself, for no reason at all. There was never any need for a reason to believe you can achieve your goals. Many intelligent folk take pride in being able to question and doubt conditions. But that is precisely what holds them back from truly achieving their goals. You cannot achieve self-mastery until you master the mechanics of belief and faith. One needs to be able to embrace uncertainty and the unknown head on, Faith is just that.

@Carl-RichardNever thought about it like that. Have any idea about the same for other stages?

Makes sense although I am not so sure about tying this in with the current state of society so much. I don't think that it is an artificially perpetuated narrative but rather a natural outcome as we shift from villages to civilizations. Moreover, my focus regarding Faith is not about fixing "Do I deserve to live?" or "What do I have to achieve to be able to prove that I deserve to exist?", it's more so about developing confidence in your own way of doing and thinking things. I had been so full of doubt that I constantly looked for validation about my way of doing things just so I know I am not fucking something up. I looked at people with the confidence to dive head first into any situation and it made me scoff at their stupidity "You have no real plan, you can easily fall into traps, there is no basis for your confidence as to why your actions would work." But it still worked for them. In fact I was the stupid one, making plans but never having enough confidence to see it all the way through. Turns out, it's a feature that confidence doesn't have a true basis to it. It's not stupidity but a deep sense of trust in yourself and in the future. This is where bravery stems from as well. My mistake was to think everything needs to have a logical backing behind it. Dialectic is more like a formalized doubt. Instead of aiming that doubt internally you aim it outwards. So there is a difference but not in the way you say it. It's all still a formalized doubting process though. thesis → antithesis → synthesis This process is about creating tension between views and revising them. The moment you acknowledge an antithesis in the hopes of a synthesis, you already acknowledge that your current worldview is incomplete. If there is room for more integration (which there always is) your worldview is provisional and open to revision. That there is an implicit doubt in your worldview, that something could be wrong. You can't pair epistemic certainty "I am not doubting" with Epistemic Incompleteness "I have not integrated its antithesis yet".