Jordan of the Shire

There are practical embodiment practices for this, and you don't need to live in a monastery or renunciate worldly life to experience this. I think there's a sort of romanticizing of the monk. Monk life is easier for the practice because you don't have worldly responsibilities, you're whole life is practice. But the practice of seeing through the illusion can be done whether you're sitting in a cave in tibet or talking to your mother. Enlightenment has different meanings to different people. To me there are stages to it. When we are talking about these things I'm also holding space for the validity of multiple perspectives. I hear you about not wanting to re-attach yourself to strivings to be desire-less, and to play Clark Kent. What I'm saying has less to do with being desire-less and being able to choose to go with or not with your desire. I'm more referring to self-control. Because I think there is an excess too in denying humanity, as with going with our desires. It's like what are we here to do? This is a beautiful experience. We can penetrate the veil and see the not-self nature of things ... but then what ... well it's all love then. But that's not for sure either. We have humanity that fluxuates. And this can make experience better or worse. The philosophy I like is that full enlightenment is not just realizing that we have a view of things as being god and we are avatars of this experience, therefore anything goes and we can act anyway we choose because nothing matters. I think this is a form of spiritual bypassing. The philosophy (and lets get to the bones - the practice I like) is choosing what to focus on and empower, such that it nourishes my tissues, brings radiance to the awareness, and benefits the people around me. I'll have to watch the relativism series by Leo again because he goes into great depth about the traps and layers of understanding. Pretty cool stuff anyways. I'm laughing at myself for starting my response like this ... so robotic hahaha I perceive there may be a claim here that implies I am "a non-monk claims to be wanting to transcend the Earthly embodiment." Just to make it clear , this is an embodiment experience for me with transcendence in mind - but, this is also a playful experience on the basis that I think everyone is a little bit crazy and that nobody really knows whats going on ... and that people have kind of got a lot of woo woo fairy like notions, and most people, seem to think they're correct ... which is fine, I'm holding space for those too, because who knows ... but my feeling is that, there's a lot of fluff, conceptualization, and nonsense in the world. So I'm fulfilling my own journey through meditative practices and embodiment practices. What is revealed to me through grounded experiences, and investigation is kind of how I'm going about life. While this experience has a relativistic truth to it, I don't think it is such that we as humans would be wise to treat it like an anything goes experience. But under certain perspectives, such as Bashar like interpretations, or Alan Watts, or Anadamayi Ma, Good or evil (of course there is dualistic notion and absolute notion where nothing is good or evil) are just god playing a game. While this is the case ... I don't understand why some people are oblivious and some people are more aware. People like Jesus, Buddha, and other saints and mystics (which I suppose you could say, (playfully) the jedi, because I know there's the other kind of Mystic that is more about hate, dominance, and control, with the goal in mind to align with darker spiritual forces) advocate for cleaning up the character. I think abandoning this effort because everything is relativistic and we are living the life of an avatar, and this experience is one to enjoy, is a fair counter, but I think, kind of like in that thread where the dude was like "I want to try hard drugs because it feels like this is part of my karma". Many people responded - that's not so wise ... why was that? If there is the mystic that teaches love, transcendence, peace, and the mystic that fulfills their desires for dominance and control. If both of these are god playing a game. Which one do you want to be? I think I want to be the one which causes less suffering. But then why am I this way? What brought my nature towards this tendency? My point is that we have choice. And therefore our actions matter. I have heard through my teachers, who studied with an Arhat, that even at the level of a buddha, there are still truths unknown, further things to know. Which is to say, that even with an 'enlightenment' experience, or a psychedelic exploration, there is still things unknown. And who is to say that our experiences, whether through psychedelics or through wisdom teachers, are not just what we need to hear rather than the truth of it all. Who's to say that these dimensional beings or experiences with channellers, or transcendental perceptions are the truth holders, and not being corralled by higher forces? This may not be the case, but who's to say that's not part of the bigger picture? But that being said - I feel yah! There is a level of asceticism and rejection of life that doesn't feel so necessary.

I hear yah All for that I'm kinda just playing around and doing what I think is fun as well. But also - I reserve skepticism for defining and having total faith in the ultimate truth or nature of things ... until I experience it for myself.

I think statement 1 invites the conclusion that people who don't live a monastic level of detachment can't go against their desires and have agency for how they act. I would go against this idea and say people can, they can, and they don't need to live in a monastery. They can have a family, and live in the world. Many cultivators I know do. 1 foot in and 1 foot out as they say. Statement 2 I see this as another way of defining spiritual bypassing. I think this is common for all people. But I don't think we are repressing our humanity by choosing to go against our desires. I think it is kind of an idol or conformity to think our desires are ultimate.

It seems like you're pointing at the challenge of a house holders lifestyle and how that lifestyle is incompatible with some of the results of monkhood. But even lay people can practice to transform themselves it is possible to lessen the power of the things that we need by observing the causes. It is the hardest thing but it can be done. The most common thing is to go with our desires.

People gotta deal with what they got. A monk is going to have aspirations that an average worldly person might not have, and the capacity for transformation will be different. So if someone has a need which they don't have the capacity to alchemize or transmute, than they may just live with it. For people working on their character. They may have a need which they need to accept, but it doesn't have to rule them, and can be met with consciousness. Then transformation can happen.

My point of view is that it depends on your level of awareness and empathy. If you have a low awareness and low empathy of how actions affect other people or outcomes, then it might be easy to have multiple partners because then it could be easier to disregard the negative impacts and reject personal accountability. The same is true if you had high awareness and low empathy. If you have high awareness and high empathy of how actions affect other people or outcomes, then it might be easier to have multiple partners because you would have the wear with all to create an enjoyable experience for yourself, and might even be able to manage everyone expectations. It could also be true that if you have high awareness and high empathy, you might see that it is not within your capability to manage that type of situation so you would choose to save yourself and other people the trouble.

Hey brother, Try flexing your fist, hold it for 30 seconds or a minute, hold it hard, as hard as you can, then release, notice the fist doesn't open completely, but it feels a little bit better. There's more to say, but that's a good place to start.

The flexibility to see multiple paths and differences was the biggest insight I had about reading and going through my own response to this thread. I appreciated that feeling or breath of being able to hold multiple reference points at once and not needing one to be the one size fits all approach. Yea I think the important thing is to alchemize something into the form that is most beneficial for us and our circumstances. Yea that's a tricky part. Always a little slight of hand when it comes to conditioning. Sometimes it happens so fast. Yea wonder is a breath of fresh air. That feeling of touching on something greater ... yea, that's what it feels like sometimes. I feel yah about relishing being triggered - something unknown with you to discover when that happens. Beautiful ❤️ That's interesting, pretty cool! Love that you're able to remember the feeling and activate the state. I can see how wonder can empower the breadth of experience - great feeling to move into and focus on. It's something I'm starting to experience with looking at the sky, the water, the trees. By releasing, the attention is less drawn compulsively to things, and I'm finding new things arising in the awareness. It's fresh!

This is stuff I'm working through too, in my own way. Cool to hear that you have, and/or are in the process of sorting them out. The description of your completed projects, and the way you can connect with who they help, though they are not personally connected, or may never know your role, I admire this, and can relate with that feeling of losing steam when not seeing a higher purpose or mission or outcome. Glad you're able to find that.

I like this @Natasha Tori Maru I find your introspection balanced with everyday life. The things you have to do expand beyond taking care of yourself of a small group of people. You're working with many moving parts that can change and you're not totally in control of everything. Great training for sorting through the internal contractions. @LordFall brother, I know this may seem unconventional, but, to release anything and make space for a new pattern, there is no need to intellectualize, or even feel the emotion. Both, without proper release mechanisms can spin out and become self perpetuating, draining energy, and not gaining the outcome. Natasha has a good process for feeling through emotions, understanding them to release, you have a good process for breaking things down intellectually. I feel I am weak in both those areas, and I am going to be working on them. How I tend to approach things is through the body. Rather than through emotion or logic, I try to open the body physically with different asanas, I then rest the mind in the lower dan tian and release, this pulses energy through to my feet, hands, head, everywhere pretty much, and overtime it purges pathogenic information. As this clears up, the awareness and the thoughts become distinguishable as seperate and then the practice moves to releasing the awareness itself. I don't have to go into stories, emotions, or logically break things down, and I can still release, transcend, and include. I can still use Natasha's prompt for analyzing the experience, but my approach for analyzing the experience will be using the awareness to see space within the emotion, story, thought, etc. The prompts help me unravel what might be subconscious. Then I can use this particular skill set to deal with the underlying binding. Once you apply a label, and start to guess where things come from, then you move further from release. This is the insight of the training - that at the center of it is a tangibly felt somatic contraction which can take place on any of the layers of our being. When you see the contraction and soften awareness towards it, then the mind see's space. This space has a contageous affect on the mind, and what happens is release. The release creates pleasure, and by abiding in this pleasure, you release the negative, and reinforce the positive. This is called a cycle of release.

@integral These are pretty cool. Nice thread. I was vibe coding a few months ago but decided to stop for a bit. I have a couple webapps i'm working on. I need to film content for one of them. The software is so much more advanced than it was when I started so I'm excited to see what I can do now. I had a lot of fun learning about Git, worktrees, mcp's, agents, and I even tried to program an agent to recursively reflect on it's source haha. I like your apps. I want to meditate and contemplate different app ideas and see what comes up. Like you said, marketing is the hardest part to turn a dollar. When you say 6 months, do you mean you would be posting videos on youtube, and running the X algo game type thing?

Generate a level of quality attentiveness through spiritual practice to resolve the underlying issues related to intimacy with people so that you can connect with anyone and still find a level of wholeness within. The problem on the surface is "being properly entertained" by people who you are interacting with, such that you feel "close". But the real underlying issue is a quality of discontentment with what is happening now. Each of those moments is an opportunity to practice your philosophy. The more you can alchemize moments of discontentment into contentment and cease looking for the next thing, the more you can chain a continuum of wellbeing that persists through the changing conditions of the moment.

The human being is composed of all the biological matter but also dimensional energy centers, and magnetic fields. Awakened and cultivated beings imbue their objects, interactions, and crafts with their energy. When this energy is transmitted, then objects can have stored information and radiance which can make people feel calm, sleep better, etc. Aside from the purely physical, there are energetic aspects as well. This is why spaces can have this kind of feeling when built by people with this quality.

Planning a unique and creative challenge and inviting people to join can be fun.

Often in the past the friends who became very close were ones that were confident and skilled in what they do, yet had a layer of insecurity or pain which we allowed eachother to see. We connect on that. This seems to be a common theme in deeper friendships. And can help with loneliness - being seen. Mentorship with someone can help with loneliness, either youre teaching, or being taught. Being of service in the community really helps with loneliness. In spacious awareness, one can feel connected. Building life force energy can reduce the perceived barriers between yourself and others. Wonder if this helps. Forgiving oneself can help if theres a level of shame that prevents one from being seen. I remember a lecture on dante's inferno, which I'll share here, which was super interesting. In this lecture he described Hell as being a place that people experience when they cannot forgive themselves. The way to love is through self forgiveness. An interesting lecture to say the least.

Hey Leo, I don't understand what you mean by Buddhists putting the cart before the horse. I'm curious about it. Can you elaborate?

Buddha means the knowing quality all the time. Buddho means the knowing quality here and there. So with this, we can ascertain that a buddhist is one who is training the ability to know. (and one need not be a buddhist, to practice this) This knowing can be pointed at anything. I would look at it as a skill that can be used creatively. Not always as a way to extinguish thoughts. Thinking skillfully I think is more the point. Also - I personally tend to break away from generalizations like "buddhists, daoists, hindus," etc, because it is a form. When you do the practice, one will overtime do away with rites and rituals. But I suppose one could identify with buddhist daoist etc. What are your thoughts on this?

I edited a lot out I was saying that knowledge can be a hinderance to direct experience. Intellectualizing over the nature of reality is not the same as having a constant direct perception of it. And perception is not the only thing that's important. How you look is just as important as what you see. In practice, not forcing oneself to experience more than they actually can is important. It's releasing with what is within the boarders of your current experience that causes growth, where imagining and conceptualizing ideas like all is mind, without a direct experience of that, it can be a block. I also mentioned that the path of progressing in your life, you may come across many different teachers, and you'll have to use your own discernment to sense what is right for you.

Remove the cultural, ritualistic, and religious aspects, and buddhism is an alchemical framework. In the process of practicing, you'll transform.

Within buddhism, the deeper meaning behind the practical stuff is that the cleanliness of mind makes it easier to absorb. Cleanliness of action builds merit, which empowers penetrative seeing.

"The center is the thing in the middle." "If you start a fight by beating yourself up, you're already outnumbered."

@Natasha Tori Maru I appreciate your breakdown of the logic in this thread, observations of patterns, effort to uplift, be relatable, and debatable. Re: being misunderstood I had a conversation with someone the other day, and the opportunity to test out the relational vs logistical logic you proposed arose. It turned out this relational issue with someone was being interpreted as logistical, and that lead to a conversation of getting on the same page. It was a insight into how relational problems can be misunderstood by the face value logic we ascribe to them. Leading to the sensation of not being understood, which can lead one to acting in emotional ways, or feeling like the connection is null. When someone says, "that's right, that's what I mean" that's when they feel validated and people become more open to viewing things from different perspectives. Easier said than done. Especially when you're trying to get someone else to understand what you mean haha. In some ways it can be easier to try and figure out what others mean than it is to have others understand what you mean. At the same time, the knee jerk reaction and triggering is also very powerful and it goes deeper than what thinking is happening. There can be somatic blocks. Often in the heart which messes up the mind.

It's a silly frame. Guy, woman, who you are is governed by your intention, and action, not some involuntary gender bias, unless the person is unconscious, people with spiritual development are capable of controlling their speech. Watching their mind, and seeing the beginning of a thought, and the proliferating of ideas, until it becomes action. And choosing what to act on. Until that is possible, decency is an approach. If decency is not possible, then you have external feedback from people or events around you that try to nudge you back onto decency. What you're saying reads to me like - I am not responsible for my conduct because I have testosterone. Which is negligence rather than empowerment. And men don't want sex, they want freedom. Lust and the expression of lust is at its core is a spiritual desire for oneness. If one is full, content, at peace, then sex isn't an overpowering drive. It can be managed, channeled, transmuted, expressed in different ways.

When one can control his desire and lust, so that it doesn't rule him, and he can be free of that, or ... if it takes 250 partners, learn to see with non-attachment, then he can progress. On the level of lust and self gratification ... there is something distorted , and it is a block. Don't let psychedelic experiences or spiral dynamics theory knowledge bypass the importance of self-control, discipline, virtue, and wisdom.

It's fun Nice! ... so through this process you're a lot better at what you do and feel like you can relax. Yea it can be a lot to brace against the world. I feel yah ! Feeling this gradual continuity arise? This cycle can be turbulent but its kind of interesting eh? Body / mind / emotions / awareness are not always on the same page but ... it can be enjoyable. Pressure builds / release ... clouds form / it rains ... mind scatters, body contracts / awareness settles, insight dawns release. This cycle, continuous. It's actually kind of queuing me into things like the Yi Jing, looking at how things change, the way things grow, reach their limit, their pressure max, then release, gradually rise, and again. It's very illustrative within nature, and Alchemical practice. Loving the process of seeing it in myself, in terms of the practice, and observing the mind / body / awareness. Then seeing the reflection. ---- I'll be paying more attention to the confidence energy because doubt is one of those things I work on releasing but forget to pay attention to what fills that space. Sometimes the absence of doubt is enough. But confidence is a little more assertive. Amazing Sounds like a sense of authority, and embodied insight, trust in thyself - great stuff