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Hans Presents a Reasonable Challenge:
**New thread: Just Reasoning**

Hans:
Thought as reasoning = resistance.
Do you have reason to resist this statement ? If you have, let's talk
about it.
Hope to hear from you

Dan: I'm resisting reasoning with your thought. Does that mean my
resistance is non-resistance?

Sarlo (to Hans):
I'd rather think about it.

Dutch:
Thinking is an instrument that can be used for reasoning, without
resistance.
For example, to solve an algebraic problem. I would put it the other way
around: resistance = thought as reasoning All cows are animals, but not
all animals are cows...

Hans:
I had to be more precise. I meant reasoning on a psychological level
i.e. trying to solve existential *problems*. How i see it is that we try
to solve them by going over the *problem* in our mind because we do not
want to deal with it in *real* life i.e. thinking about dying is not the
same as dying. so i start trying to deal with dying in my mind because i
am afraid to deal with it in *real life*. i can even make myself believe
that i have solved this probem and am not afraid anymore of dying, sort
of dreaming that i am awake.
I agree with you that you can resolve an algebraic problem through
reasoning, without resistance, but on the other hand, if you do not like
the outcome of this problem, there might be resistance to it :)

Dutch:
That's true Hans. Thinking is *not* the appropriate instrument to solve
the existential problems.

Thinking itself cannot 'see' anything. You can see thinking, but
thinking can see nothing.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

**Chi and Kundalini thread (continues) **

Melody: If 'yi' is not logical thinking mind, is it 'unconscious' mind?
I ask this because I have always considered the body as linked to the
'unconscious' mind.

andrew: Yi is founded in awareness, sensitivity and intuition, it's
unconscious in that thinking mind isn't used, but it's not an
unconscious reaction. It is strongly linked to the body, its strength
increases as chi becomes concentrated, in martial arts practise its
definition is learned empirically but it's difficult to define in words.

Xan:
Non-conceptual mind, is how I conceive of it.

andrew: (continuing)
After reading OH and Jan's posts I'm thinking Kundalini is the
combination of chi and spirit(shen).

Melody: When you use the word 'combination' I was reminded of Xan's
offering the other day of the first two hexagrams of the I-Ching....with
the first hexagram as The Creative, masculine, and the second hexagram
as Receptive, feminine. (Xan said, in part:) I have seen there are
three energy forces that comprise the universe - power, love, and their
child, wisdom.

Perhaps Kundalini is the "wisdom" child born of the union between yi
(love) and shen (power) ?

andrew:
For the record, I have oversimplified things a little
in this discussion. I left out 'ching' which is sexual force or
regenerative energy, either male or female, often translated as sexual
fluids, but really also the subtle energy that produces them, sexual
energy or more broadly the force that gives form to things. Conservation
of ching leads to stimulation of chi, the interaction of chi and ching
is symbolically represented as 'fire and water', chi heats ching which
in turn causes chi to become active.

Xan:
For the record, Ching can be directed. There are tantric and shamanic
practices for its stimulation, accumulation and use for acts of power
such as healing, etc.

andrew (continuing;)
Chi, ching and shen are referred to as the essences or 'three
treasures'.
Together they are considered to be the essential nature of a person.

Xan:
Once thought, feeling and sensation are given up as the central stage of
life, the energies of which all life is comprised become more apparent.


++++++++++++++++++++++++++

**Chi and K thread (spin-off)**

Melody:
Yesterday in reading the posts to the list I experienced them as a kind
of deja vu .... recognizing the familiar pattern of responses and
reactions, as if I was watching re-runs on TV. I experienced the 'drama'
in my 3rd chakra. It felt like a churning round and round in my gut.
More than once I began to respond....started to enter the fray as I have
done time and time again. This time I held my responses. Watched my
'silent' responses. I could tell that the energy in the 'gut' wanted to
move after getting excited and 'in motion'.
The picture I had in my mind's eye was of a funnel cloud... a
vortex....of the 'round and round the mulberry bush'.

I could see my choices. To 'project' this energy outward knowing it
would no doubt do violence,
or I could channel it 'upwards'
or I could simply let it continue to churn where it was until it burned
itself out.
Mostly I let it sit. I thought yesterday that
I was channeling it upwards to do what you say above, but I didn't. (The
'mind' just let me believe it did <s>)

How does one consciously channel it 'upwards'...more effectively next
time, or is this just 'mind' just wanting to be kept busy?

Eric:
Your Mind is wanting to keep busy.

Channelling it would be to Own It, inside you, through you, alive in
you. Where it goes is none of your business.
This is your choice. There is no Melody telling Shakti where to go. Only
a part of Shakti playing mind games with the Heart. Intention Melody? Oh
My God!!!!!!!
:-)

Marsha (replying to Melody saying "Is this just mind trying to be
busy?"):
This is a good question. It is not 'mind' that wishes for that. As you
'mind' your body then the wish will be born in the emotions. Think of it
as the affirming force is the mind and the receptive force is the body
and the child of this union is real feeling. Use your mind to pay
attention to your body.

~~Editor's Note: This thread continued in a personal vien, and a number
of posters contributed. i have decided not to include in the Highlights,
but if you would like to read them, you can always check the "Messages"
in the new format, under the Nonduality Salon list.

Here are some posts near the end of this thread:
Melody Brings in Her Buddy, Osho and Kristi Speaks in Parable:

Osho:
Innocence
~~~~~~~
Zen says that if you drop knowledge--and within knowledge everything is
included, your name, your identity, everything, because this has been
given to you by others--if you drop all that has been given by others,
you will have a totally different quality to your being--innocence. This
will be a crucifixion of the persona, the personality, and there will be
a resurrection of your innocence; you will become a child again, reborn.

Osho, Dang Dang Doko Dang, Chapter 7

Commentary:
The old man in this card radiates a childlike delight in the world.
There is a sense of grace surrounding him, as if he is at home with
himself and with what life has brought. He seems to be having a playful
communication with the praying mantis on his finger, as if the two of
them are the greatest friends. The pink flowers cascading around him
represent a time of letting go, relaxation and sweetness. They are a
response to his presence, a reflection of his own qualities. The
innocence that comes from a deep experience of life is childlike, but
not childish. The innocence of children is beautiful, but ignorant. It
will be replaced by mistrust and doubt as the child grows and learns
that the world can be a dangerous and threatening place. But the
innocence of a life lived fully has a quality of wisdom and acceptance
of the ever-changing wonder of life.

Kristie:
There once was a great pianist. She played in elegant concert halls, for
royalty and all manner of fine people. All who heard her play were
transported, by the lovely tones of Lizst, or the passion of her
Rachmaninoff, to other realms, a place where the spirit could soar free
and the heart could pound without fear of anyone discovering the depths
of soul that such self-possessed people could feel. All agreed that she
was a great artiste, and wanted nothing so much as to
share in her gift.

There came a time in her life when she decided to share her great love.
She thought to invite children to her piano and
to teach them how to touch the souls of others, how to find their own
passion.
When they came she played for them. And she cried with the poignancy of
baring her soul to such innocence, with the sheer pleasure of exposing
such young minds to the genuis of Mozart. Then she asked them to the
bench where they
lifted their timid hands to the cool, solid ivory of the gleaming grand
piano and plunked out the first forlorn notes of "Three Blind Mice."
Inwardly the teacher grimaced at the baseness of the sounds that
otherwise rose in such glory
from her own practised hands. But she pasted on a smile and patiently
told them what they were doing wrong.

"No, not that way," she said. "This way, like I do, here I'll show you."

Week after week she stayed to her task, the desire to share her love and
passion, and the wisdom of beautiful music,
with her young charges. But the duty became wearisome. It seemed no
matter how much she played for them, or how
patiently she showed them the right way, or how diligently she corrected
their errors, they still could only play
"Three Blind Mice," or "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star." She grew very
disappointed and irritable, and finally, one day angry.
"You will never learn how to play," she told one of the little girls.
"You are clumsy and you do not apply yourself.

You must feel the music, hear it in your heart. Like I do. You are not
trying hard enough. You must not want it. I have had enough of your bad
efforts. I will teach you no longer." And that very day she resolved
never to teach again.

She returned to the concert halls, and the admiring applause of fine
people, who wondered at her great gift.

At another time in another part of town, lived a woman, in a small house
with a dilapidated porch. Every evening she
went to work cleaning the high school's bathrooms and hallways. When she
came home late at night, she fed her cats,
and sat down to play at the old worn mahogany upright piano that would
never hold a proper tone again. She knew
only a few songs, some hymns and a folk song or two. But playing those
songs her mother taught her brought her
peace and respite from a life that had not been easy.

Each day, as the children walked home from school, she opened her front
door and played her few songs. A few of
them would venture carefully onto that old porch and peer into the room.
She always invited them in and promptly
gave up her seat at the old keyboard to them. Without fail at least one
of them would pound on the keys.

"Ah," she said, "I see you like cacophany. What great sounds you make.
Here, let me make them with you." And she
would come and stand by their sound and pound away with great delight. A
little one would move over and make
room for her at the piano. She played for them then, "Twinkle, Twinkle
Little Star" and "Silent Night." And when
they put their hands next to hers on the chipped and crooked keys, she
smiled and said, "yes, that's right. I love the sounds you make."

She was delighted when one of the children learned to play "Three Blind
Mice." She sang with them at the top of her off-key voice and brought
them milk and cookies to celebrate and thought what a great gift it was
to share this time together loving the sound of an old out of tune piano
and the laughter of a child who never knew that she might be
doing it wrong.

Now fearless and utterly conviced that she could absolutely play this
thing, the child learned a hymn and then a folk
song. They played and laughed and ate and sang and never took it at all
seriously. .
Many years later the woman learned that the girl had become a great
pianist and played in the finest concert halls.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

**Gene/Jerry Specs thread (continues):**

Gene (was responding to Jerry):
NOW we are getting somewhere, so to speak!

If is 'funny' how those specks can see each-other, but NOT the space in
which they dwell.

Thanks for the link! And speaking of specks, where are those specs? 8-)
Noticing space,

andrew:
'Noticing space'...space noticing. Light noticing light. Speck notices
specks?
Speck notices light reflected from specks. Speck
notices manifestation of light. Speck interprets light as other specks,
then deduces own speckness from first interpretation. Closed loop.
Secondary mode of awareness.
Light noticing light...raw awareness, unprocessed, primary mode.
Speck resists fragmentation by being fragment. By
supressing primary awareness and running secondary mode only, speck
establishes boundary and ensures speckness. When speck allows primary
mode to run, speckness collapses.
Running two modes at once produces dissonance, each
requiring overriding the interference and discontinuity produced by the
influence of the other unless succesfully merged into common process,
this integrative ability is the human possibility.
The discovery is that secondary mode only need run as called for,
discontinuously.

Speck loses ongoing speckness, is light seeing light as light, manifest.

Gene:
Hi Andrew...
Hey, how did the quantum physicist know that photons are both
intelligent and friendly?

Because... they are very 'particular' and they 'wave'.
---
Bruce:
Excruciating, Gene.
Thank you! :-)

Gene (continuing):
In this 'particular' conversation, we see that we are bi-phasic; what
appears as matter is energy, what appears solid is ephemeral, what
appears temporary is permanent...

Light occurs in invisible stainless space; invisible stainless space is
the arena in which all of this occurs. Clear as diamond, it carries us
all; it is the stage upon which all 'enlightenment' takes place.

Phenomenon may occur, but all occur in space; phenomenon, the world of
'things and men', comes and goes in the blink of the eye; a flash of
light, occurring in space.

Invisible stainless space is the womb which bears us, is the midwife who
catches us, is the breast we suckle, is the path we walk, and it is the
undertaker who takes us into emptiness... yet the whole time, we see it
not...
Open to space,

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

**New thread: Is It Fair?**

Mark:
Is it fair to paraphrase Nelson Rockefeller?

"Gentlemen, set the thing straight once and for all. The Ego is not
there to create separation, the ego is there to preserve
separation..."

Dutch:
No, the ego IS separation!

Gene:
Like a neutral bookmark, ego is there to preserve. Imagine, an ego which
preserves our conscious awareness. Now, is that an upgrade, or what?

To assume: "I am not as I was" is to predicate 'how I am now' upon 'how
I was'; this strategy necessitates having both 'states' (how I was, how
I am) "in order to" be 'as I am now'.

To let go of 'how I was' is to let go of 'how I am'; now, there is no
state.

This is the problem with 'changing' or 'growing'; in change, what 'was'
persists, as the foundation upon which 'what is now' must rest. If there
is not 'what was', there is no 'what is now'.

With no 'what is now', there is only the living nondual observer,
observing 'nondually'. This living nondual observer may make use of any
means to communicate this neutrality; any trickery, which leads to the
falling away of the assumption of the reality of 'what was', may be
employed, for the purpose of connecting our disparate nodes.

Change or no change is in the changeless; and it is the changeless which
is never seen. Form mutates, time seems to occur, and it is the job of
ego to reconcile all of this complexity. It is the job of mind to
catalogue the particulars, and thus generate generalities; mind calls
great generalities 'truth', and thus enlists ego to the task of
preserving particulates.

The energies of Being are thus diverted to the maintenance of what is
transitory; it is then that ego is seen to be a 'problem'.

Reverting to basic nature, is reversion to an unknown future, to
formlessness; reversion to basic nature is thus openness to the unknown.
Unknown is what is unseen, when space is filled with preserved
particles, all of which stand for truth, none of which will survive, all
of which are subsumed by the changeless.

Give up changing, to survive.
Space never changes.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

**New thread: The freeheart Story**

freeheart (Eric):
Well....I am losing a wife, probably the role as primary father to 4
children, I hurt from an Hernia of past 10 months, considering leaving
my home of 6 years, ending my profession of 18, am a little scared and
have a moment to compose an actual letter, So...

We all have a choice. Somewhere, god is a living god, a dance more
beautiful than
beauty. I don't know about that. But in
my little life's wanderings, I have watched something else beautiful.
People.
Choicelessly, people dance. Sometimes in love sometimes in war. Mostly
somewhere inbetween. Always to me, the most beautiful Thing.

And I loved them for it. All of it. Still do.

By the time I was 19, I was living in San Francisco, just three years
from a broken dysfunctional USAF family, and a year into a relationship
with a 29 year old scorpio. I had chosen to stay with her, moving away
from my mother, to care for the child she was carrying. She had been an
brief encounter earlier, but convinced me of a parental
obligation for what ultimately turned out to be another Man's daughter.
At the time of rebeginning our relationship, I knew not of her
pregnancy, only that she was under police protection from a powerful
cocaine dealer, who had thrown her out of his Compound in Palm Springs;
with two black eyes, and a promise to return and finish the job. In the
next year up north,
Judy shared many things esoteric, including the invitation to take her
place in the ongoing group work, began by Alice Bailey. I had no
interest in this. Within a year this relationship would end entirely.
What happened one afternoon, while chatting casually with Judy at our
apartment, became the unknown center of my life up until yesterday.

While discussing my then growing awareness of the plight of Man - and
the folly's of His religions - a thought appeared, an allowance I had
always resisted. It was that God might only be in the imagination of
Man. Man that I Loved, Man notably incapable of much more than tying his
own shoes. Man with violence in his heart, Man with a certain button in
his greedy hand. It was 1982, and I realized that if there was no God,
then it would be up to this same Man, to avoid Nuclear Armageddon.

I am not stupid. I knew exactly what this meant.

So there I was, suddenly really panicked, spinning all the wheels,
attempting to save the world in my own perceptions. Nothing. Nothing
came. It was real, and I must say, I could see no hope. Petty Man.
Struggling Man. Beautiful God like Humans. Bombs, to justify christian
prophesy.

And Eric Laing, always the optimist, understood finally the frivolity of
hope. I gave up to what was so obviously... Fate.
(hang tight, one of three... still writing:-)


Part II:
It was sad. So we sat for awhile. And then I went back to fixing, well,
researching all my thoughts. Three things came to me:
A picture from a few weeks earlier in the New York Times, of an Indian
Guru, didn't read the story beside it- just remember
his eyes: emormas, oval shaped.
The Bible's Phrosphey: ..."and at that time, He shall speak
simultaniously, to each and everyone of his Children, in Their own
tongues..."

And about the movie "ET The Extraterestial", currently being played, and
dubbed into native languages, all around the world.

Me: still busy 'fixing'. Scant materials, two tools, no hope.

I remember turning to Judy, and saying:
if there is no God, then why is the movie E....(i tried again),
E...E....

Total Implosion.

It came down first, bounced really low,
and then shot straight up. Light -
Fountains - Colors - Feelings - Birth
Death - Math - Laughing People - Wonder - Mystery - Love. Yes Love. And
it was
warm, and good, and soft, and fuzzy.

Later, Judy commented that for the first several minutes, (tears,
uncontrolled
sobbing) that she thought I was releasing some surpressed early
emotions. But after a half hour of it changing into my softly swaying
iditots grin eyes sealed shut
routine, that something terrible had
probably happened with my body's chemistry.

When I opened my eyes finally (hell no, I didn't want it to stop!) the
room was
empty. Since to me it had seemed to take only seconds, I could not
figure out
where she had gone, I thought "I would have heard her get up".

I sat there a long time, by myself. Judy came in eventually, and asked
if things were going OK? I tried to explain, so confused about all this.
She did not want to talk much. I let it go.

Funny thing that.

So life went on. And I never thought much about it. Every then and
again, amazing
people and friends of mine would hear this story from me. Some seemed a
little interested, many not.

Life went on.

(to be continued)

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Mark Brings the Highlights to a Close:

Waves, waves, waves, waves, waves... water.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

love to all,
oh

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