What is the spiritual path?

[dendro]

Azure blue
Can you float through the universe of your body and not lose your way?
Breathing
Breathing
Can you drift into free air?
Breathing
Breath of life
Aetherial bliss
Inspiration
Can you rise on the trembling vibration
of inhale.....exhale?

Breathing.....breathing
Breath of life
Can you ascend the fragile thread of life
into cloud-blue bliss?

Can you spiral up through soft atmosphere
Breathing.....breathing
Catch that exact second between in-breath and out-breath
Just there.....
Can you float beyond life and death?
Azure blue
At that exact second
Now


JRL mentioned Dr. Leary's prayers, and LW mentioned breath, so I thot I'd add the breath cakra prayer.

This prayer was important to the Brotherhood when I took sacrament with them. Breath was the key to shedding the bonds of ego. In another part of the prayers, the saying was, do not drag your ego thru the life process. To have a happy journey, float on the inbreath, or outbreath. Death, rebirth. Then with thoughts stilled, experience.

One way to voyage. One might say, the shamanic yoga way.

In my experience, if the lessons of morality, as shown in the yamas and niyamas, are not internalized and practiced, then the light withdraws.

[laughingwillow]

Up from da depths comes den. Glad you could join us brudda.....

I was fascinated by the breathing lessons you shared with me when we visited your little corner of paradise last winter. And I was hoping you would share a little fo that here at spr.

jrl: All the beating around the burning bush and I finally realize its the concept of reincarnation that wraps me tightest around the freak pole.

But I'm now doing a better job at grasping the fact that the past and future mean less  the more we are able to focus on being here, now.....

lw

[gnrm23]

well, particularly no-harm to the other sentient beings with whom we are sharing this world (these worlds?)...
as for "lesser beings", well, that's part of the puzzle... but the infliction of needless pain & suffering (upon any being) is just, well, bad karma, innit?
the vows of a bodhisattva? well, working towards the liberation of all sentient beings can cetainly be used as a wonderful model for treading the path...
(heh, when some o' me mates accuse me of being a saint, i tell 'em that some of us prefer the term bodhisattva...)  :wink:

[JRL]

I remember reading this article in the Oracle in 1967:

//http://www.luminist.org/archives/psychedelic.htm

[dendro]

That's a fine essay, JRL. I wish I had seen that back in the day, it would have helped me along. I didn't see it until internet, but it helped me understand.

[fuzz]

To me the spiritual path is a very personal issue. No one has the answers, but we can share some experiences and then make informed choices over the direction we would like our life to go.
I do not believe that there is any correct or uncorrect answers, just personal preferences.

Here is a piece I wrote about ego and stuff. I think this piece can relate to spiritual questions, because, to me anyhows, the spiritual issues are very close to the questions of "I" versus the "other".
How does the "I" percieve the world, and how does it fit in it?
Goals, things to achieve, what are our options?

=========
« Modern man develops like an earth worm : a tube that swallows and leaves little piles behind it. If one day Earth disappears because man ate everything, he should not be surprised.”

 

I don't want to save the world.

I find those that want to save the world to be selfish beings. To want to save the world, we first have to create an idea of how the world should be like. To want to change the world, it is wanting it to match my ideas about how it should and should not be.
Me, I have no idea of which world I’d like to live in. Imagination, human memory being without limits, I can imagine an infinity of worlds in which I could live.
I would even go as far as to say that I like the world we live in, just as it is, just as I live it. For now, I live in this world, so I must make the best out of it.

Of course, I see things that can make me sad. I would be a monster if there wasn’t. Kids that have no childhood, hungry families, war on tv. I am a modern kid, I see the wars and horrors on tv. I know the world comes with it’s problems.
”The world is full of suffering” says the budhist mantra, “we all seek happiness” it keeps on chanting.

Too often, this suffering makes us incapable of dealing with things when faced with what we see as problems. We like to think of happiness, but we rarely live it. Happiness remains like a far away land, in which we only take refuge in our dreams, instead of living it right here and right now.
A simple truth is that the more we seek happiness, the more we go away from it.
Each continent of the world comes with it’s own set of problems. Wheter the continent is in development stage, or whether it is full on technological, nobody seems to fully escape this human suffering.

Each lives this suffering very personaly.

I do not want to change the world, I just want to live in it.

Me, I do not know anything. I travel the world barely touching the world under my feet. In the world, staying slightly detached from it. Every day discovery of the outside world helps me to relate better to my inner world. Every day, the both become more and more indistinguishable.

Me, I know nothing, and I like the world just as it is. I will keep on my little way, quietly and in music. I will keep on helping others when I can, not because of some sense of moral code, just because I feel like it.

 

I do not have any hope that my actions will give such and such result, for the simple reason that I can not tell the future. I do not have any hope that my acts could help or not, I do not have any hope that tomorrow things will be better. Hope is also a projection of things as we would like them to be. It is better to all together give up this selfish hope.
If I paint an orphanage, it is because I feel like it, if I give some rupee to a person that has less than me, it is because I feel like it.

Maybe I am just a selfish person, but really I think we all are selfish beings. Too bad ego has been rolled in the mud by most if not all religious systems. Ego became a dirty word, it became something we are supposed to get rid of.
Yet, this ego I have, is all I have, all I can hold on to. I can not seem to see it as something that I should get rid of. I can make an infinity of experiences with this ego, I can transform it, but never can I fully get rid of it.


This Atman of the Hindus, it is me, it is you, it is everything.  
And Atman whispers: “I am nothing. I know everything. I am everything, I know nothing.”


So, let’s enjoy the moments that pass, me and my ego. We watch things pass by, we fully experience things, all while knowing that really, we do not know anything at all. We are alive, and it’s already a lot.


Fuzz and joy from the city of flags.

You can find the full article here.
http://www.fuzzytravel.com/manue/5968-save-world.html

[dendro]

Thanks fuzz, excellent essay.    

fuzz said:

"Maybe I am just a selfish person, but really I think we all are selfish beings. Too bad ego has been rolled in the mud by most if not all religious systems. Ego became a dirty word, it became something we are supposed to get rid of.
Yet, this ego I have, is all I have, all I can hold on to. I can not seem to see it as something that I should get rid of. I can make an infinity of experiences with this ego, I can transform it, but never can I fully get rid of it. "

I agree.

which is why in my post above I mentioned shedding "the bonds of ego", not destroying it. As far as ego bonds (misperceptions, delusions) cause suffering, they can be abandoned.

I wish to identify with atman in all things. This is my study, and my spiritual life.

[laughingwillow]

morning sun rises
on my personal ego
and sets on yours..... - bol -

lw

[fuzz]

Glad this could resonate a bit with someone.

Also, i had forgotten this part of the text:

"I do not want to change the world, I just want to live in it.

Those that want to save the world often have gods to which they can dedicate their acts. Me, I do not have such thing, seing God in everything, even in this suffering that ties us together. Those that want to change the world have reasons, morales, they know how things should be done.
Me, I do not know anything.

I do not dream of better days, because these days are already the best. I do not dream of perfect humans, of super men or super powers, because all of this, man already has. In my eyes, man is already perfect. A magical creature capable of the most amazing creations as well as of the crulest of monstruosities.

This is man. A creature in constant formation, a creature which discovers itself day by day, learning with each step."

have a nice end of week end:)

[JRL]

What I don't understand is everything

[gnrm23]

heh...
i know very little about everything, and a great deal about nothing at all...

 :lol:

[Anonymous]

TAO.

[laughingwillow]

duh-ow!

[laughingwillow]

gnmry: Life is suffering
as It subsists on life;
rejoicing as It's fueled further.

lw

[judih]

life is suffering
yeah, sure, that's what we've been told
but i think differently
life is learning
the deeper we get into an experience, the more amazing it all is

jrl - thanks for the luminosity.org site - lots of good stuff there. it amazed me that Louisa May Alcott was on the list beside Crowley and Leary.

the chakra meditation is certainly an energizer - revving up morning motor, opening doors to wider perceptions. Sometimes it's a shame i have to deal with the flatter emanations of various sentient beings (bless em) instead of tripping through a day with radar blasting wide-open sorts.

But in the light of opening up myself, perhaps there can be a little energy to spare.
Is it ego? Probably. But noticing ego is still preferable to not noticing.