Fael, Sophia and I discuss PaB and Tao

sophia Placebo: can i ask you question?
Wol Euler: sure :)
sophia Placebo: how do you play this game? it sound to me to be a real thing more than a game
Wol Euler nods. It is very real, or perhaps: it is as real as you want it to be. We are real. You meet people here, not "characters"
sophia Placebo: sure, but i meant that those exprinces are not meant to be for the sake of experincing and gaming only
Wol Euler wonders about "meant to be"...
Fael Illyar: Not a game, really. It's virtual world, but the people are real.
sophia Placebo: person intentions wol, differ from one to one
Wol Euler: sure. Many people do come to SL thinking it is a traditional game, with points and skills and winning and losing
Fael Illyar: you can find pretty much anything here.
Wol Euler: and there are places in SL where that applies too. There are combat sims and sexual-roleplay sims ...
sophia Placebo: oh no i wasnt asking about sl
Wol Euler: oh! sorry.
sophia Placebo: i was asking about playing as being
Fael Illyar: Ah :)
Wol Euler: silly me, sorry, I was fixated on my own personal hobbyhorse :)
Wol Euler: the lessons of PaB are very much real-life tools, it just happens that we meet in SL to talk about them
sophia Placebo: its ok my fault not being clear from the start
Wol Euler: (though in fact the group does meet in RL too :) No, the practices are all about real life.
sophia Placebo: i see
Wol Euler: SL is -- in this instance -- a tool for defeating time and space :) I'm in Germany, it's evening; you are in America, it's afternoon -- Where and how would we meet, otherwise?
Fael Illyar: nowhere :)
Fael Illyar: I'm in Finland
sophia Placebo: so how do you meet in rl?
Fael Illyar: almost midnight here :)
Wol Euler: with great difficulty and expense :) There was a gathering in Princeton last autumn and there's another planned for August in Berkeley
Fael Illyar: yep, more expense than I'll be putting into SL in a year :)
Wol Euler: and a possible Euro-meeting sometime this spring, if I ever get around to organizing it
sophia Placebo: ok i see. What is these lessons about?
Wol Euler: but that is clearly more difficult and expensive and cumbersome than just logging in to SL :)
sophia Placebo: hehe sure
Wol Euler: people see them in different lights, Sophia, depends what they want out of it.
Fael Illyar: these aren't lessons, it's a discussion group :)
Fael Illyar: no teachers :)
Wol Euler: I am personally looking for tools to deal with fear and anxiety, to calm myself down. Others are on a religious path.
sophia Placebo: aha , ok so it is spiritual discussions
Fael Illyar: those too, sometimes.
Wol Euler: (perhaps we should have left the recorder on :-)
Wol Euler: yes, spiritual rather than "religious". There is very definitely no specific religious afiliation in PaB. There are many buddhists here, but we are not a Buddhist group. Ditto christians. What we find is there is a great overlap in the core teachings, which is of use to us all, familiar and helpful, regardless of the name we put on it
sophia Placebo: lovely
Fael Illyar: Also many who are not really part of any religious group.
Fael Illyar points at herself.
Wol Euler: I come from a Christian background, in that the Bible is a part of my mental "furniture", but I am intrigued by the links to Taoism and Buddhism in those bits of the Bible that have always appealed to me most. Ecclesiastes (Koholet) is almost pure Buddha :)
sophia Placebo: that is nice. I wanted to know about Taoism. Read a few about it but i want to see its effect on practice
Wol Euler smiles. Well, there are far better people than I to tell you about it. I don't know much that I can say with certainty, I am approaching it in a very amateurish way, driven by curiosity, taking what comes to hand.
Wol Euler: One thing that keeps coming up here in our meetings is Wu Wei. "Do without doing"
Fael Illyar: That's how I approach pretty much everything here :)
Wol Euler: trees grow, but they do not DO growing. The world turns, but it does not DO turning.
sophia Placebo: you sleep but you dont do sleeping
Wol Euler: right
Fael Illyar: yes :)
Fael Illyar: you just ... sleep
Wol Euler: this not-doing is a very powerful concept. It is in the Tao, in the idea that everything comes up at its proper time and place, and that your task is to be aware of this, to feel it and to let it happen -- which again is in our nine-second exercise, to drop what you think is happening and see what IS.
sophia Placebo: i get it. Do it sometimes
Fael Illyar: Well, not sure if it's right to call it a task but :)
sophia Placebo: well, trying not to push poeple to do things , instead let them do things
Wol Euler: "task" is a bit too directed, yes. Say that the doing that we might do, is to be prepared for what the moment brings us, to see it and accept it and let it happen -- which goes also to a buddhist idea that conflict and unhappiness are caused by being in disharmony with what the world wants to do.
Fael Illyar: not so much what the world wants... what the world is.
sophia Placebo: i like the disharmony thought
Wol Euler: when you resist what the world is, you cause stress and tension and unhappiness
Fael Illyar: the more you try to decide how things are instead of just accepting how they are, the more you feel unhappy.
Wol Euler: oh yes.
sophia Placebo: though it seems like walking while asleep
Wol Euler: well, it doesn't mean that you sit on your arse all day eating bonbons :)
Fael Illyar: at it's core is an idea that kind of means that we're just here to get experiences.
Wol Euler: you have a part to play in what the worlds wants to be. It is important that you play this part as well and as seriously as you can. To say that "things happen" sometimes means that you must take a hammer in hand :)
Fael Illyar: yes, the world is one big story and we're all playing a part in it :)
sophia Placebo: ok, it is like being the object that the machine works on not the machine engine
Fael Illyar: oh but we are both :)
Wol Euler: right. The world wanted us to be here for you to talk to tonight, Sophia
Fael Illyar: just, you're the whole engine, only a small part of it
Wol Euler: so we are here; but we have a part to play, we cannot just sit. We must listen and think and answer :)
Fael Illyar: you're not the whole engine I mean
Fael Illyar: yet, as far as your own personal story goes, you're the whole engine :)
sophia Placebo: no fael, it is more that you are not the engine at all , as i undestand it
Wol Euler: analogies are always troublesome :)
Fael Illyar: yep :)
Fael Illyar: I'd say it largely depends on what you take "you" to mean in that sentence. :)
sophia Placebo: ofcourse. I do refer to intentions and will most of time when i say you me and they
Fael Illyar: intentions and will do have effect on the world. Just not a very strong one in the grand scheme of things. But with regards to one's own life, they play a big part.
sophia Placebo: grand scheme for the whole world but not for oneselfe
sophia Placebo: yep
Fael Illyar: That's pretty much it I guess :) The effect is limited so spreading it too thin is a recipe for seemingly getting nothing done.
sophia Placebo: that what i understand when i said walking asleep
Fael Illyar: another way to express the same idea I kind of like is to compare it to trying to swim a waterfal upwards :)
sophia Placebo: hmm, i wonder about the spirit of chalange and adventur in that thought
Wol Euler: salmon manage it quite well, after all
sophia Placebo: salmon do it by not doing i think
Wol Euler: :)
Fael Illyar: Well, I like to bring it up when I think someone is demanding too much from themselves :)
Wol Euler: as an image, it has a certain power.
Fael Illyar: Yep :)
sophia Placebo: unpleasant result of one acts, certanly that helps
sophia Placebo: well nice to meet you both , thank you for making the idea clear about this group
Wol Euler: me smiles. My pleasure, I hope it helped
Fael Illyar: You're welcome Sophia :)
Fael Illyar: Nice to meet you too :)
sophia Placebo: g2g now, im almost asleep :)
sophia Placebo: bye
Wol Euler: :)
Fael Illyar: Good night sophia :)
Wol Euler: goodnight, sophia, take care.