19 -21- Dreams, Ego and Myth

Dreams, ego, myth, who we are --- what do these have in common? We are challenged to face the boundaries of normal human experience, and use various methods to share this information to others.

“Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.” - Carl Gustav Jung

2009.07.19 01:00 - Impressions of ego

Moon Fargis: so it goes so far as you let it be affect from your experience

Moon Fargis: no one else can tell you your right path
Moon Fargis: and ego makes things appear
Moon Fargis: but in different ways
Moon Fargis: like sunglasses in front of your eyes
sophia Placebo: how to remove those glasses

Moon Fargis: that’s not 100% possible
Moon Fargis: but there are ways to brighten up the sunglasses

Moon Fargis: well just another word for the same as there is the practice to drop your thoughts like a stone that you drop to the ground from your hands

2009.07.19 07:00 - Mary and Martha and Dream/Sleep Research

Adams Rubble: I had a dream that I saw some movie that pulled together my SL and RLs

Adams Rubble: but Pila and Pema were talking about living life on the superficial level

Fael Illyar: SL is a part of RL ... if you ask me :)
Adams Rubble: yes, I can't argue that one :)
Adams Rubble: but still, I have different concerns in the two places
Adams Rubble: my superficial lives are different. hehe
Adams Rubble: but the spiritual life is the same

Adams Rubble: I was thinking of Mary and Martha before I came this morning
Adams Rubble: hard to say what Martha was doing was superficial
Adams Rubble: but when the master is talking we need to listen

 Eliza Madrigal: Jesus said that Mary had chosen the more vital thing

Adams Rubble: maybe superficiality is a bit relative
Eliza Madrigal: Maybe, or perhaps the food might not have taken as long as Martha took with it...

 Adams Rubble: But an interesting parable when we consider living on a superficial level

Eliza Madrigal: In buddhism also this is true... gratitude for the honor of hearing dharma
Eliza Madrigal: feeling of privilege

Eliza Madrigal: The thing is, Mary/Martha is such a good example for some, of the wrestling we go through day to day... giving place to spiritual lives amidst so many practical considerations
Adams Rubble: about living life on a superficial level

Fael Illyar: Martha put all her effort into fulfilling just one of the needs the guests possibly had.
Adams Rubble: yes fael
Eliza Madrigal: yes, it was her way of showing gratitude also
Eliza Madrigal: her work

Eliza Madrigal: I think it is about priorities and nothing more.... not saying that cooking and serving practically, is not vital...
Eliza Madrigal: but making time for pauses/meditation the non-negotiable

Fox Monacular: I think it's also about what you show to your teacher... you just sit and receive the teachings or you try to please and impress his senses
Fox Monacular: so senses are superficial and easy

Fox Monacular: but genuine attention and gratitude for something intangible requires much more work
Eliza Madrigal: interesting, yes..even though the working 'looks' harder
Fox Monacular: than just preparing food
Adams Rubble: lots of levels to this :)
Adams Rubble: It goes beyond superficiality

Fox Monacular: yes, it is also about physical senses vs soul senses
Fox Monacular: like buddha in a way

Fox Monacular: yes, food for body vs food for soul...
Eliza Madrigal nods... not much energy for study if one doesn't eat, too
stevenaia Michinaga: service to others
Fox Monacular: one creates a temporary satiety, the other accumulates and is never lost

2009.07.19 13:00 - flowermaker

Moon Fargis: do you want more flowers ?:)
Lia Rikugun: hehe looks so nice
Moon Fargis: ill take this as a yes *giggles*
Lia Rikugun: WOW
Lia Rikugun: the flowermaker!!!

Moon Fargis: play as jungle

Eos Amaterasu: slowly rezzing, hi
Nymf Hathaway: Hello Eos :)
Pila Mulligan: we'll send a scout out to guide you into the jungle
Moon Fargis: yes lot to rezz today:)
Pila Mulligan: Organic Sunday :)
Lia Rikugun: so nice, in the middle of nature
Eos Amaterasu: yeah, where's the jewel in the lotus?
Pila Mulligan: there may be several of them in the pond
Moon Fargis: ah those are waterlillies:)
Pila Mulligan: have a seat, if you can fid on, Eos :)
Eos Amaterasu: like being inside those Monet pigments

Moon Fargis: soo is there a topic for today ?:)
Pila Mulligan: or Padma as in asana
Eos Amaterasu: effulgence of being
Pila Mulligan: a term that may refer to the lotus, Moon

Pila Mulligan: effulgence of being, Eos?
Eos Amaterasu: indeed
Pila Mulligan: can you elaborate, please?
Eos Amaterasu: being as the cornucopia of the possibilities of itself

Eos Amaterasu: rich juicy colorful feeling of summer being

2009.07.19 19:00 - Myth

Vajra Radikal: on the subject of myths the commonality probably arises from the fact that those symbols address
Vajra Radikal: some very common needs in human nature

Vajra Radikal: however i do find that myths are dealt with in different fashion in the orient than in the west
Vajra Radikal: the east is happy looking at myths as metaphors and the west looks at them
Vajra Radikal: in a more radical and literal way

Pema Pera: I think that the very notion of "existence" takes on a quite different sense when you go deep into the kind of experiences that are relevant here . . . . and in Christian mysticism and Sufism, for example, the great mystics and Sufis have quite a different outlook on existence than what you normally read and hear about Christianity and Buddhism; much closer in fact.
Pema Pera: I meant to say "Christianity and Islam", sorry

Pema Pera: When they talk about God and the world, much of what they say is close to the way Buddhist talk about the world

stevenaia Michinaga: and what can be found within the myth

stevenaia Michinaga: a story, a lesson, a meaning
jeena Cyberstar: so why myth?

Eos Amaterasu: because it's the only way to tell the truth?
stevenaia Michinaga: history comes in many forms, this may be one type of oral history with a cultural lesson
Eos Amaterasu: it our own story

Eos Amaterasu: to hit the point you have to myth the point
Vajra Radikal: the prob with myth is that we immediately assume it as a fib or a lie

Vajra Radikal: it's just a metaphor

Eos Amaterasu: science looks to and from the myth
stevenaia Michinaga: yet science used metaphor to explain itself often

Vajra Radikal: however metaphor is great at attempting to describe the transcendent
Eos Amaterasu: or the mundane

2009.07.20 13:00 - Where is Aware?

Pila Mulligan: science seems to almost tease us with ideas that sound just like ideas from old contemplaitve traditions -- e.g., entanglement, mirror neurons -- it may be that they are related or it may just be wishful thinking, I don't know
Pila Mulligan: but it is interesting

Eliza Madrigal: Interconnectedness as an idea seems to be a very accessible idea, in discussing the way we live our daily lives with other people.. a paradigm that sees individuals as fundamentally separate from each other/environment brings diff. actions than one that sees others as, in essence, oneself?

Fox Monacular: I think science taking from contemplative traditions can also signify a shift in underlying ontologies

Fox Monacular: I guess I'm thinking that science as a discipline has been seen as fairly separate from anything else, especially anything pertaining to religion or philosophy
Fox Monacular: and now there is more movement towards interdisciplinarity
Eliza Madrigal nods. Perhaps discoveries turn assumptions on their heads which brings about a new kind of humility and listening.

Pila Mulligan: science seems to rely on a similar empirical/intuitive approach as an initial element, prior to proofs, while contemplative traditions did not seem to require proofs beyond personal experience
Fox Monacular: personal experience can be a proof too
Pila Mulligan: yes
Fox Monacular: in a phenomenological way
Pila Mulligan: sufficient for the person at least

Fox Monacular: yes, there has been a true explosion of brain scans of meditators
Fefonz Quan: not sure about explosion, but there sure has been some.
Eliza Madrigal: they've linked actual physiological changes to meditation, but can't say 'why' exactly
Pila Mulligan: thinking of the Menninger Institute and Swami Rama, 40 years ago
Fox Monacular: explosion for real :) every week in my pubmed notifications :)
Fefonz Quan: though their point was to show the neurological influence of meditation, which is totally within the scientific region

Fox Monacular: no, they can't say why because nobody has proposed a good model which would truly bring these things together in a meaningful way
Fox Monacular: although there is the enactive approach
Fox Monacular: from Varela and Thompson and Noe
Fefonz Quan: what does it say?
Fox Monacular: that our minds are not in our brains but rather consciousness can be seen as an interplay between brain, body and environment

Pila Mulligan: to me it is interesting that contemplative traditions paid somewhat more attention to the spine than the cranium -- e.g., chakras, kundalini, acupuncture
Pila Mulligan: so the body's whole sense spectrum was at play
Pila Mulligan: not just brain stuff

2009.07.21 19:00 - Avatars, gaps, buildings

Eos Amaterasu: SL is to some extent a visualization practice, it seems
Eos Amaterasu: Making it more apparent the extent to which RL is visualized as well
Eos Amaterasu: & the nine secs can also be suspension within the ongoing visualization
Threedee Shepherd: You mean it is visually based? The main communication is really this type chat
Eos Amaterasu: I mean visualization in a more general sense: perhaps as "projection"
Eos Amaterasu: with "grooming behavior" that helps create our appearance
Threedee Shepherd: yes, that sounds appropriate
Eos Amaterasu: Vajrayana buddhism uses visualization as a way to catch up with ourselves always visualizing anyway
Eos Amaterasu: SL seems similar in that regard
Eos Amaterasu: we play with idealized or whimsical versions of ourselves
Eos Amaterasu: (interesting word :-) [idealized]
Threedee Shepherd: I do not know very much about Vajrayana
Eos Amaterasu: it more or less uses the phenomenal world and appearances as the path
Eos Amaterasu: rather than pushing it away

Eos Amaterasu: There seems to be a bit of a play between being "aware of something", and gaps in that, where there still might be sense of aware, awake
Eos Amaterasu: touch and go
Threedee Shepherd: We only take as much into awareness as is needed to make the moment of living sensible. Much is just happening that forms the context.

Eos Amaterasu: awareness, appreciation, of presence of appearance is a kind of moment smeared out over appearance
Threedee Shepherd: all is appearance and appearance is all, at the conscious level

Threedee Shepherd: hmmm, now I back up a bit and ask if thoughts, ideas, concepts and even dreams, are "things"
Eos Amaterasu: perhaps there is no experience of things without thought (thought including sensation)
Eos Amaterasu: and thought includes experience of emotion, wish, intention, which are less "thingy" but still very real
Threedee Shepherd: Yes, but is there experience of thought without "things"
Eos Amaterasu: Ah, yes, good question

Eos Amaterasu: kind of subtle, too, since "experience" implies "experience of...", and so "experience of thingyness"
Threedee Shepherd: All thought involves the body and its history of "thingy" experiences, even if that is virtual and not present in the moment, I believe.

Eos Amaterasu: One classic buddhist et al recipe for realizing awareness itself is to attend to after the last thought, and before the next one
Eos Amaterasu: eg, transitions, gaps
Threedee Shepherd: I do not understand. If the gap is truly "empty" there is no-thing to attend to, only the emptyness.
Eos Amaterasu: It's not so much that you can "catch" or "see" that gap , because then you thingify it
Eos Amaterasu: but you kind of allow it
Eos Amaterasu: something like that you and experience are already coming from that
Threedee Shepherd: Why do you even assert there is a gap, as opposed to a continuum with subtle transitions
Eos Amaterasu: Well, transitions says it: there is discontinuity (in the realm of things and thingification)
Threedee Shepherd: There is a physical discontinuity between a rock and the tree it is next to. However, perhaps there is no discontinuity to thought/experience, other than one I invent for the purpose of sanity

(typos fixed, for the most part)