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Welcome to Taobums.

1975 is also the year I was born.

There are many paths you can read about here. Check out the discussions and read up on different teachers.

Enjoy.

Hi Dorian,

Interesting post - thanks for sharing your experiences! In my view, if you explore many traditions, you will find a great variety of practices, but mostly they are variations on the same basic principles. You have concentration practices like working with mantras, watching the breath, visualizing deities or mandalas and so, etc. Or you have insight practices like body scanning or noting one's cognitive phenomenological experiences; or that of just sitting in choiceless awareness. Both types of practices will lead to enlightenment, however, there is inter-traditional controversies regarding that thesis, but in my view, the evidence is overwhelming, hence, that is my position at least.

I would actually go further, and suggest concentration practices naturally lead to insight of the latter type described above. If we accept this is true, and you want to make some significant progress along the path of realising your true nature and the infinite power thereof, then simply find a practice that works for you and stick with it. It sounds to me like you have not been working with practices that are very effective, thus, you have not had too much practical results.

I can tell you from experience that the kundalini awakens of its own accord simply from practicing concentration methods and that of choiceless-awareness - just sitting. You do not need to make use of pranayama, although I have done extensive experimentation with that also. As one moves deeper into absorption, you will find profound things occurring. You will experience an incredible sense of bliss and power, joy and peace; energy and heat up the spine, and in the whole of your consciousness and body. You will have intuitive flashes of the non-dual and so on. The fear of loss and personal grasping you describe will, in time - due to constant exposure to deeper or higher levels of consciousness or those more basic expressions of being - naturally fall away without effort. What is left is an exponential realisation of that-which-is, which is often personally experienced as a profound and unshakable peace, bliss, power and ease, and an intuitive sense of being reality or the whole embodied, in you and as you. Grasping and need steadily falls away and there is a general ease and spontaneity.

The need for power and control follows from a need to grasp onto what you currently have (so as not to lose it), and attain what you do not, as a means to feel secure, whole, happy and at peace. This can never be attained as long as you sustain a current level of consciousness that is trapped in limited separation from the whole of awareness and all that is; or rather a consciousness of limitation and separation – of dualism. The sense of ego teeters on the edge of nothing because it is nothing, and desperately grasps and reaches out for any foothold in reality it can attain. Yet, this level of consciousness is not the base; it is contingent and ephemeral, and dependent on all else for an illusion of stability, security and a sense of wellbeing. It does not feel these things within itself, as itself; thus, it looks outside of itself to find them. However, if one learns to effectively look within and connect if you will, with the underling currents of reality, which in fact are not separate form us, but rather are us - our true nature and base - one will discover that the transient sense of satisfaction in fulfilling these needs without follows from identifying with an illusory sense of self and its apparent needs. One discovers in finding the natural state that no such needs are present, as we find that we are the infinite base of all-that-is, and thus, there can be no greater power than that which we are, and certainly there is no "other" being that is not us nor does there remain dependence on transient conditions. If we accept this as true, then we can see our apparent needs are based on a false premise and identification. See through the illusory identification, and we discover the infinite power the ego always dreamed of, yet we see through the ego also, thus the power is no longer relevant; and what remains is that which we always unconsciously sought yet we were unable to delineate .

In conclusion then, all we need do is find some effective practices and thus see through our own delusions; thus, the needs and grasping fall away and true peace and happiness is finally found. For that is what we truly seek. For no amount of power or money or physical perfection and immortality will bring us this as long as we continue to remain identified with a consciousness of separation. Even if we could do literally anything (as in absolute true infinite power), we would still be trapped in our own mind, our own consciousness of something is missing. That something is our true nature, and it is not actually missing, but as long as it appears so, we will be seeking. Therefore, we must directly see through appearances, and the sense of need is negated.

In kind regards,

Adam.

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Dorian,

Welcome to taobums, with your serious avatar and great experiences! Taobums is the Fantasy Island for cultivators and we always fight over who gets to be Tattoo.

The harder your path, the better teacher you'll be.

Your pal,
Yoda

you have correct premises, but you will not be on a "right path" until you find a teacher


so you hope that the blind will lead the blind...that is a quite common hope in the world of the red dust.

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wrong. niemand on they own. never.


you all do? the basics? really? i would laugh at it except when simplemindedness reaches its highest level, it is only marginally funny.


until a person has a teacher, he is just a "straw dog"

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Wu-Lu Pai.

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whether an argument is coherent or not is a matter of a subjective opinion.

here is the argument:



now i know the correct answer to your question. you and everybody else on this forum (with a possible exception of one person) dont, and naturally never will be able to figure it out on your own. There are hundreds of questions like that ahead on the path, and unless somebody tells you - you will never know.

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what is stopping you?

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go to sleep assured meine Camerade. Du bist eines gutes Kerle. There is hope for all of us. Lets talk tomorrow.

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