Enlighten Me

The True Path

2012-02-19T07:47:00.001-05:00

Just before Ninakawa passed away the Zen master Ikkyu visited him.
"Shall I lead you on?" Ikkyu asked.

Ninakawa replied: "I came here alone and I go alone. What help could
you be to me?"

Ikkyu answered: "If you think you really come and go, that is your
delusion. Let me show you the path on which there is no coming and
going."

With his words, Ikkyu had revealed the path so clearly that Ninakawa
smiled and passed away.

What is Enlightenment?

2012-02-18T11:46:00.004-05:00

A student once asked his teacher, "Master, what is enlightenment?"

The master replied, "When hungry, eat. When tired, sleep."

Clouded Sight

2012-02-17T07:58:00.002-05:00

"Soon the child's clear eye is clouded over by ideas and opinions, preconceptions and abstractions. Simple free being becomes encrusted with the burdensome armor of the ego. Not until years later does an instinct come that a vital sense of mystery has been withdrawn. The sun glints through the pines, and the heart is pierced in a moment of beauty and strange pain, like a memory of paradise. After that day, we become seekers." -Peter Matthiessen-

A Samurai and a Zen Master

2012-02-16T17:25:00.001-05:00

A samurai, a very proud warrior, came to see a Zen Master one day. The samurai was very famous, but looking at the beauty of the Master and the Grace of the moment, he suddenly felt inferior.

He said to the Master, "Why am I feeling inferior? Just a moment ago everything was okay. As I entered your court suddenly I felt inferior. I have never felt like that before. I have faced death many times, and I have never felt any fear - why am I now feeling frightened?"

The Master said, "Wait. When everyone else has gone, I will answer."

People continued the whole day to come and see the Master, and the samurai was getting more and more tired waiting. By evening the room was empty, and the samurai said, "Now, can you answer me?"

The Master said, "Come outside."

It was a full moon night, the moon was just rising on the horizen. And he said, "Look at these trees. This tree is high in the sky and this small one beside it. They both have existed beside my window for years, and there has never been any problem. The smaller tree has never said to the big tree, 'Why do I feel inferior before you?' This tree is small, and that tree is big -- why have I never heard a whisper of it?"

The samurai said, "Because they can't compare."

The Master replied, "Then you need not ask me. You know the answer."

Character and Reputation

2012-02-16T08:28:00.001-05:00

Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.
- John Wooden

The Meditator and the Hermit

2012-02-15T06:26:00.000-05:00

A devoted meditator, after years of concentrating on a particular mantra, had attained enough insight to begin teaching. The student's humility was far from perfect, but the teachers at the monastery were not worried.

A few years of successful teaching left the meditator with no thoughts about learning from anyone; but upon hearing about a famous hermit living nearby, the opportunity was too exciting to be passed up.

The hermit lived alone on an island at the middle of a lake, so the meditator hired a man with a boat to row across to the island. The meditator was very respectful of the old hermit. As they shared some tea made with herbs the meditator asked him about his spiritual practice. The old man said he had no spiritual practice, except a mantra which he repeated all the time to himself. The meditator was pleased; the hermit was using the same mantra he used himself-- but when the hermit spoke the mantra aloud, the meditator was horrified!

"What's wrong?" asked the hermit.

"I don't know what to say. I'm afraid you've wasted your whole life! You are pronouncing the mantra incorrectly!"

"Oh dear that is terrible. How should I say it?"

The meditator gave the correct pronunciation, and the old hermit was very grateful, asking to be left alone so he could get started right away. On the way back across the lake the meditator, now confirmed as an accomplished teacher, was pondering the sad fate of the hermit.

"It's so fortunate that I came along. At least he will have a little time to practice correctly before he dies." Just then the meditator noticed that the boatman was looking quite shocked, and turned to see the hermit standing respectfully on the water, next to the boat.

Two Wolves

2012-02-13T13:05:00.000-05:00

A Cherokee elder sitting with his grandchildren told them, “In every
life there is a terrible fight – a fight between two wolves. One is
evil: he is fear, anger, envy, greed, arrogance, self-pity, resentment,
and deceit. The other is good: joy, serenity, humility, confidence,
generosity, truth, gentleness, and compassion.” A child asked,
“Grandfather, which wolf will win?” The elder looked him in the eye.
“The one you feed.”

Enjoying Fish

2012-02-12T23:02:00.002-05:00

One day Chuang Tzu and a friend were walking by a river. "Look at the fish swimming about," said Chuang Tzu, "They are really enjoying themselves."

"You are not a fish," replied the friend, "So you can't truly know that they are enjoying themselves."

"You are not me," said Chuang Tzu. "So how do you know that I do not know that the fish are enjoying themselves?"

Neither Here Nor There but Somewhere in Between

2008-07-25T21:46:00.002-04:00

My blog is now here: http://visionsoftheworld.blogspot.com/

Directions, Please

2006-07-24T22:11:00.000-04:00

"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"
"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat.
"I don’t much care where—" said Alice.
"Then it doesn’t matter which way you go," said the Cat.
"—so long as I get somewhere," Alice added as an explanation.
"Oh, you’re sure to do that," said the Cat, "if you only walk long enough."

11:11

2006-07-11T11:16:00.000-04:00

It seems that lately when I've glanced at the clock, it says 11:11 exactly. And also, when I'm on the phone talking to someone and then hang-up, the timer on the phone's display will say 11:11 (eleven minutes and eleven seconds). It varies a little, for instance, sometimes it's 1:11. Or even 2:22, 3:33, 4:44 and 5:55. But mostly it's 11:11.

Getting Rid of Negative Energy

2006-04-05T20:57:00.001-04:00

You'd be surprised to find out what the source of negative energy is. You can place the blame on external factors but you would only be shirking taking responsibility for what is truly the source of the negative energy, which is YOU. You cannot control external events, but you can control your reaction to them.

What you focus on is what you give power. What you allow to affect you you give power.

The best psychic self-protection you can engage in is to use Will power, and to choose what type of energetic entity you wish to feed and which you wish to starve. Do you wish to live in a state of grief, or would you rather free yourself from it?

A quote which I think serves the subject nicely is, "You can't control the wind but you can adjust your sails."

I have said some things along similar lines on my current blog. The specific post of which I speak can be found here: http://visionsoftheworld.blogspot.com/2009/07/you-ask-about-negative-energy-heres.html

It's Nice

2006-04-05T14:30:00.000-04:00

Here's something insightful for you. Why don't you email someone you haven't talked to in a long time? It will make their day. Just a "hello" would suffice. Think in your mind a friend you have that you haven't talked to in a while. Call them or write to them.

Indecision

2006-04-05T13:32:00.000-04:00

I just felt like posting some quotes on indecision today. There has been a lot of that going on lately.

Then indecision brings its own delays, And days are lost lamenting o'er lost days. Author: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Indecision is debilitating; it feeds upon itself; it is, one might almost say, habit-forming. Not only that, but it is contagious; it transmits itself to others.
Author: H. A. Hopf

There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision. Author: William James

We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run over.
Author: Aneurin Bevan

Neither have they hearts to stay, Nor wit enough to run away.
Author: Samuel Butler

Dream Journal April 5, 2006

2006-04-05T12:36:00.000-04:00

I had this dream last weekend but I forgot to post it, so here it is. Late, but better late than never.
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Someone takes a needle filled with salt water and sticks it in my arm, squirting the salt water inside. It stings badly.

Reliance

2006-03-31T13:57:00.000-05:00

I have a question for you. Tell me something. What is it you rely on?

Synchronicity Journal March 30, 2006

2006-03-30T10:14:00.000-05:00

I was just responding to Mark's comment on one of my posts. He had mentioned that perhaps I could describe the teachings I am getting right now in spirituality. I told him that right now I am reading the Jewish texts. As I typed out the word "Jewish", Sinead O'Connor sang into my headphones, "There's life outside your mother's garden." Mother = Eve, Garden = Garden of Eden.

Dream Journal 2 March 29, 2006

2006-03-29T22:17:00.000-05:00

Tonight I believe I had an out-of-body experience. Some of you might not believe me, might even label me as "crazy", but I'm telling you, it was real and it was magical. I'll tell you about that before I get to the dreams.

To begin with, I was falling. It's like I was falling down a deep tunnel of grey. I heard choirs singing. It was like the music of angels.

Another experience - I kept going around and around, as if there was a bar by my toes, and my toes were somehow magnetically attached to the bar so that I could keep flipping over and under over and over again like a gymnast. There wasn't really a bar there, I'm just trying to explain what the sensation was like.

OK, that is all for the out-of-body experiences. Now on to the dreams:

Dream 1:

I am not really a ghost, but look like one as I am having an out-of-body experience and my astral self is flying around the real world. People can see me and they go "ooooo and awwww" and point at me as I fly around.

Dream 2:

I get the impression I am in a farm house. I am naked. There is a grimy dirty man chasing me and grabbing onto me. He is trying to rape me. I can feel his body parts on my skin. I am trying to get away and I am crying. I am fighting him and trying to push him away and off of me.

Dream 3:

I am with a dream-husband in a house. A guy who lives next door who has long blonde hair is over visiting. When my dream-husband is in another room, the next door neighbor confesses to me, "I've always been in love with you." My husband comes back so we stop the conversation. Then, my husband says he is going to go get us all a pizza. When my husband leaves the house, the next door neighbor and I start to have sex on the couch, but we hear the door open. My husband didn't really leave to get pizza. It is dark in the house, and I tell myself that if I hurry fast enough, I can get my clothes pulled back up before my husband turns on the light and sees what we've been up to. My husband says, "I knew you two had something going on." But when the light comes on, he sees my clothes are on. I tell him he's wrong, that there wasn't really anything going on. But then he notices a part of my pants are stuck in my shoelaces and he catches me in the lie.

Dream 4:

Note: I don't know why I keep having dreams about marijuana, but here is another one.

There are people over my house. One of the guys brings some marijuana joints with him. He gives me two of them to do with as I like. Later I see him outside. The cops are there. He is talking to the cops. When the cops are busy, he tells me, "They already got me. You better hide your joints and keep them to use later on." I panic. I start running around the house trying to find a place to hide them. First I put them in the egg carton in the refrigerator. Later, as the cops start coming up to the door, I change my mind thinking they'll look there so I grab them and put them in a cassette-tape player that is sitting up on a high shelf, thinking they'll never look in there.

The cops come in. They can't find any joints, so we're safe until they tell me and my dream-husband that we have to take a mental test to be sure we're not stoned. I take the test as the cop draws it out on paper. I tell him, "This is like a brain-teaser. It's fun." I pass the test but my dream-husband gets the answer wrong. Luckily the cop decides my dream-husband isn't stoned anyway so he lets us go.

A Man Made Me Cry

2006-03-29T14:28:00.000-05:00

Michael made me cry today. Read this post to find out why, and see if it makes you cry, too:

http://awakenenlighten.blogspot.com/2006/02/in-previous-life.html

News Article on Higher Consciousness

2006-03-29T13:45:00.000-05:00

In my never-ended search for higher states of consciousness, I found this little article on the Scotsman news webpage. It's an older article, from around January of 2005, but it's still interesting, none the less. Maybe if I bang my head hard enough on a wall I'll get what I've been looking for. :)
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Higher states of consciousness
MEDICINE
MARGARET COOK

PICTURE THIS: A 43-year-old lady is being treated for temporal lobe epilepsy in a Swiss clinic. In order to pinpoint the aberrant electrical focus in her brain, electrodes have been implanted under the dura - the membrane covering the brain. When she is wakened, the doctors stimulate different areas and watch the results.

When they activate an area called the angular gyrus on the right side, she reports a feeling of "sinking into the bed". This progresses to "falling from a height". With stronger currents she reports she is "floating two metres above the bed" and actually able to see her own body parts lying below her.

She is having an "Out of Body Experience" (OBE), and hers is a classical description.
Some 10 per cent of the population endure these sensations at some time. These can be terrifying, though mostly brief. Associated with epilepsy and migraine, they also occur in normal people, often in states of altered consciousness. They seem to be closely linked to "Near Death Experiences" (NDEs), which take place in extremis, due to an interruption in the supply of oxygen to the brain: or occur when under the influence of drugs - opiates, ketamine, LSD and other hallucinogens - or of sensory deprivation, or brain stimulation of the right angular gyrus as described above.

One of the most celebrated cases was that of the psychologist, Carl Jung. After a heart attack, heavily doped and unconscious, he saw a huge dark stone in space, a meteorite with an entrance into a chamber, where he met a Hindu. Thinking he was about to be inducted into life’s mysteries, his hopes were dashed by his doctor appearing in the guise of a Greek healer, telling him he was not destined to die yet. Jung survived, much impressed with himself, and his visionary life flowered. His major works were then written and he was hailed and worshipped as a guru, much revered by New Agers in the 1960s and by mainstream thinkers.

Jung was neither the first nor the most fascinating case of OBE or NDE. He followed a long line of forceful personalities who used trance-states to mesmerise ordinary folk into thinking they were spiritually special.

Hallucinations and illusions have fascinated humankind from the dawn of our being: that is to say, from the time when our neurological networks had sufficiently evolved to experience and describe them - about 50,000 years ago, give or take. We know this from the evidence of cave art from prehistoric and more modern sites from several continents.

The famous cave paintings of South Africa, for instance, were inspired by memories of images from a state of altered consciousness - induced by plant chemicals, by sleep and sensory deprivation, by isolation, by rhythmic music and dance - by shamans in connection with rituals and religion.

Those paintings have astonishing parallels with rock art from the American continent and from the pre-historic rock art of caves in France and Spain. Many are extraordinarily inaccessible, reached by crawling along narrow, dark, wet passages, through lakes and pot-holes. It was believed that caves were anterooms to a world of spirits - and the cave wall whereon the paintings were made was a thin membrane between the two worlds.

Shamans used their inner revelations to act as intermediaries between the spirits and the people, much as priests do today. They thereby achieved power and status.

The depictions on the cave walls and the content of modern human trance-like states are strikingly similar and reproducible. Vision-questers, by whatever route, feel they leave their bodies, pass through a hole or aperture and along a tunnel or vortex. Early on, they see geometric shapes, lines and zig-zags. Later they encounter scary animals which must be overcome before meeting a spiritual supreme being. Other features common to multiple cultures are emerging from water; flight; a bright and blinding light; and, curiously, bleeding from the nose or mouth. In some cultures, aspiring shamans were obliged to go through painful and dangerous ordeals which really did bring them to the brink of death.

How many parables and allegories have these components? Pilgrim’s Progress, Lord of the Rings, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and many biblical tales all do.

Scientists believe that only humans have "higher consciousness" - which is difficult to define, but consists of a greater understanding of our place in time and space; our temporal nature; communication of abstract concepts through language and so on.

This cerebral conscious level conflicts with primary consciousness - which we share with animals - which has evolved multiple survival techniques, many of which are nothing whatever to do with sophisticated, scientific truth. However, our higher consciousness can go awry - very awry if we help it along by trying to escape its stern logic through vision-questing.

So now we know how, in theory, to tickle our brains into priestly status. It’s a bit of a cultural and sacred climb-down. It could be good for migraine and epilepsy sufferers, though. And it casts a little more light on that mysterious entity, consciousness. But the fundamental question remains: What - and where - is it?

This article: http://news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=4442005
Last updated: 03-Jan-05 02:54 BST

Dream Journal March 29, 2005

2006-03-29T11:25:00.000-05:00

Note: In college I worked for four years as a computer consultant in the computer lab at the university. I had a boss named R.B.
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In this dream, I get the feeling that I haven't been to work in a long time. I show up, and a fellow computer consultant informs me that we have a new boss. (I forget his name.) I go to a podium and pick up a white long telephone to call him to introduce myself. I am extremely nervous. I say, "Hi, this is Stacey. Um... I just wanted to say I'm here at work...well... I got here on time a few hours ago... but I'm calling now and I want to say I'm here for anything that you might need."

Later on I look at our shift schedule and see that the new boss didn't schedule me to work very many hours and I am upset about this. I say, "I can't work here with so few hours on the schedule."
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Note 2: When I worked in the real lab, I always worried about getting the right number of shift hours each semester. I had to practically beg the boss to keep me loaded on hours. I haven't worked in the computer lab since December of 2001.

The Four Learning Styles

2006-03-28T08:46:00.000-05:00

I'm a Visual/Verbal learner. What are you?

http://www.metamath.com/lsweb/fourls.htm

Spiral Dynamics Color Codes

2006-03-28T08:39:00.000-05:00

Does anyone understand the spiral dynamics color code? How does one know what color type they are? Do I just pick whatever color most matches my personality type? I'm thinking I'm blue (which just also happens to be my favorite color), but is there a test I have to take to determine this?

http://www.spiraldynamics.org/Graves/colors.htm

Jung Typology Test

2006-03-28T08:26:00.000-05:00

I was filling out my profile for the forums on the Integrative Spirituality webpage, and one of the questions it asked was what type of personality I have, so I took the Jung Typology test. It turns out I'm an ISFP.

Your Type is ISFP

Strength of the preferences %
Introverted 89
Sensing 50
Feeling 62
Perceiving 33

ISFP type description by D.Keirsey
ISFP type description by J. Butt

Try the test out for yourself if you haven't already:
http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes1.htm

Party Time

2006-03-24T00:55:00.000-05:00

The world is a great big giant shiny disco ball. Let's just all dance and have a good time.