snowyowl

Hi, I may be mistaken here, but it appears that you're using words as your starting point (eg Leo's teachings), and then trying to 'fit' your experience with the theory. My suggestion: flip it round. Your experience is already true. The difficulty most of us face is experiencing the experience in a direct, pure way without layering it over and obscuring it with our culturally conditioned thoughts. This is basically what the spiritual techniques aim for. When we've made some progress with that, we make more headway comparing 'my' experience with someone else's description of theirs.

I used to enjoy chanting when I was Buddhist. There was the rapid staccato of the Japanese Heart Sutra, also the softer and lyrical Pali chanting. It's beautiful in a group setting, following a meditation to deepen the silences. I also like listening to Christian chant sometimes like Gregorian and Eastern Orthodox. It uses the mind, but in a non logical way - especially when in a foreign language I don't understand. Actually most religions use chanting, but not so many as their main practice. This topic's one could be a variety of Nichiren Buddhism such as Soka Gakkai, which has become well known in the West through celebrity members like Tina Turner, Courtney Love and Orlando Bloom.

Yes, maybe it's a spiral level thing? Eg Blue likes to subsume ego into something bigger than its individual self; Orange swings back to individual control.

i feel like i understand this but the stage orangeness in me doesn't Consider that happiness comes from within, is already deep inside us and is revealed by calmness like the depths of a lake are shown by still waters. Restlessness, like choppy waters, hides the depths beneath. Just a thought to contemplate, not a belief.

My ego thinks it is in charge of my life path and has free will to choose how it pans out. And the ideas of ego being an illusion, or free will being an illusion, are both hellish to the ego.

What is your "witnessing" like? Can you describe it for us? But before telling us, observe your witnessing (you may already be doing this). Nahm is offering two conceptual models: twoness and oneness. Does it appear as a witnesser, witnessing "the body mind behavioral patterns" (subject-object)? Or appear as a singularity of body/mind/witnessing all rolled into one? Ie awareness, being? For me, it fluctuates, but when I try and pay attention to the witnesser, all I find is a thought. And yes, it does make a difference to me. But ignore me, the important thing is for you to look.

True, and yet on the other hand, I can't find the subject when I look for it, to draw a line. I can find the thought of subject/object, that's about it.

one thing which shook my materialism was a perspective I read (can't remember where) about it all being my mind. From the materialistic POV, the external, objective world enters our material brains through the 5 senses, and into the brain via the nervous system, where it gets converted into consciousness as an emerging property. By that logic, when I open my eyes and look at 'the world', listen to it, feel it etc, what's actually happening is I am always seeing, hearing and feeling only the inside of my own brain. All my awareness is my own brain, I never get to the supposed external world. I only receive a tiny fraction of the information about the external world anyway. It's Plato's cave I guess. The objective world, including my material brain, is only a logical deduction, not an experienced thing. Only my subjective brain is certain. Flip this logic round, and we have the realisation that brains and the material world doesn't exist, only mind. My third insight is to throw out both matter and mind, and what's left is, "This".

Great question We desire partial objects, to get a fix of temporary pleasure and yet it is wholeness which gives eternal happiness. Wholeness = the present moment, This.

Many good ones above, I also use: Jim Newman https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCePJsB5SO31QlSx65oHTr2Q Tony Parsons https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0tz7Ul3KSlExXT32c8pOdw

@Dunnel Regarding becoming a monk. if this is an idea which appeals, I'd suggest talking with a community, openly explain your situation and asking how you can get involved in an introductory way first. Also focus on your medical/psychological treatment too. What type of community do you have in mind? The thing is, life as a monk involves a huge lifestyle change with obedience to the rules, a loss of personal freedom and less distractions from yourself and any problems. You can't just switch on the TV or eat something whenever you feel like it. But I think your intuition of some time with a supportive community doing more authentic down to earth activities can be healing.

I do get the need for a process to remove rogue politicians. What interests me about this case is the grey areas. I mean, Trump made his speech (whether it was incitement or not I don't know), before Biden was sworn in, so I think that means Trump was still technically the President, but the impeachment process didn't happen until after he left office. Anyway, I guess that point was considered by the lawyers and senators. Another point is the strategy behind it. Is it better go ahead with the impeachment on the point of principle, and give Trump the extra publicity and possible martyrdom which may enrage his supporters again? Or to just begin the process of ignoring him, moving on, treating him as yesterday's man, so the right wing Republicans may look to to someone else?

@DocWatts interesting points, thanks. So it seems that impeachment isn't limited to people currently holding a public office, and any US citizen can in theory be impeached to prevent them getting elected in the future? Could be they have set a precedent, even if it wasn't ultimately successful. Or does the law say you need to have held office in the past? That's another thing, does it still count as impeachment even if it doesn't get passed? They're talking about this as his second impeachment even though the first one failed too. Or maybe I've misunderstood all this

I don't understand how someone can be impeached who isn't president any more. If he's broken the law then prosecute him in a regular court like anyone else. But he doesn't hold any public office to be removed from, so what's the point, apart from scoring political points?

@John Iverson hi, great question! I'd agree with commie, that you can't write off whole industries like banking, insurance, financial advisers etc. But there are scammers around, so if you're thinking of using a financial service, make sure they're regulated (if you can trust regulators in your country). Insurance is about dealing with risk: you have risks in your life such as fires, thieves, illness, death, car accidents and so on. You can pay an insurance company to take on the financial risk, for a fee, and hopefully they will pay up if the worst happens. You can even insure yourself against living too long and running out of money - that's called an annuity. Some things you have to get insurance for, like cars (in my country), or houses if you get a mortgage. But otherwise, you can shoulder the risk yourself, and save up for bad events, rather than paying an insurance premium. Which is better? You decide! With financial advisers, I've found it better to pay a fixed fee rather than ongoing commission, and certainly make sure they're independent and not tied to any particular products. If you have the time and inclination, it's definitely worth educating yourself about personal finance to help you make good choices. I like the UK web forum Lemon Fool https://www.lemonfool.co.uk but I'm sure there's many others.

... and now the CCP hits back against the BBC: "China has banned BBC World News from broadcasting in the country, its television and radio regulator announced on Thursday. China has criticised the BBC for its reporting on coronavirus and the persecution of ethnic minority Uighurs." https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-56030340

I'm starting to read The Mind Illuminated, and one passage is discussing types of awareness. He simplifies it into two basic types, attention and peripheral awareness. My thoughts: when we cultivate peripheral awareness entirely and let go of attention, that is nondual awareness, oneness without distinction. Looking at something, listening to a sound, paying attention to a particular 'thing' is what creates distinction, duality, a boundary between an object and its environment. The good thing about this approach is we can observe it actually happening; if you want to watch the process of distinction, just watch your mind paying attention to various features of the whole, and thus creating 'things'. Eg I can take in my room as a whole, or zoom into particular features within it.

Sorry to hear you're going through all this, I totally sympathise as I can recognise some of your story in my life too. You're the innocent victim of domestic abuse and violence, your feelings of anger, suicide etc are the result of the trauma you experienced. My advice is to seek professional help, it sounds too intense to deal with by yourself. If necessary, your family owe it to you to pay for it too.

1-4 read like a spiritual crisis, dark night of the soul, as if someone is questioning their life and going through the birth pangs of moving up a stage in the spiral. 5-7 are positive things, perhaps the person is finding their feet in their new stage. BTW, why isn't someone "woke enough" for you to help them? People helping each other, in many ways, is what makes for a good community. Or perhaps you mean help in a more specific way.

Don't the Chinese people have a grievance with Japan over the historic mass rape / sex slavery of Chinese "comfort women" during The Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945)? The hypocrisy is shocking.

@Fadldo you mean the attitude towards Muslims? Could be, but there's also examples of Muslim countries with discrimination against other religions. It's a systemic human (ego) problem I'm afraid, we all share some of the guilt.

"Uighur separatists." "What would be the purpose of the alledged crimes " My theory is that the Chinese govt is paranoid about the "country" splitting up (actually China could be better described as an empire than a country). So they squash anything that might be a separatist movement. Like Tibet in the south, Muslims in the west, democrats in Hong Kong, they don't even accept Taiwan as a separate country. It's imperialism imo.

@roopepa this sounds like what I sometimes practice under the name of choiceless awareness (tho I know that name is used in various ways). As in midway between focussed attention on a meditation object, and resting in pure being. Thanks for the share

@SamC tight as in tensed up, unrelaxed, or as in solid strong unflabby muscles? I don't see how it would limit your work, but tension in the body is sometimes linked with repressed feelings. Emotion is spread all through the body, not just in the head. You may not be repressed but if you are, the spiritual work is a great way for un-inhibiting you.

The Buddha said that desire is suffering, and spiritual desires are no exception, just more refined perhaps. There is no more progress for you or me, because nondual experience is a temporary death of the self which wants, which seeks. This is the paradox, the difficulty: the seeking to get something, experience something, is another survival strategy for the self. So what to do? How to find the pathless path? Who was it who said, 'There is no path but only a fool doesn't walk it.' I love that quote because we need to find that wholeness, love, which is already here, it is this, me, already. There's lots of techniques, honestly I have no idea what will 'work' for you, relaxing that clinging to outcomes, intentions and beliefs. One which does for me is letting go: of thoughts, experience, sensation, notice the awareness happening by itself. Let go of letting go, then what is left - just a single field of awareness with no watcher, no watched.