Archive for the ‘Esoteric Wisdom’ Category
Zen Mind: The Beginner’s Mind – Control
by Shunryu Suzuki | Zen Mind The Beginner’s Mind
“To give your sheep or cow a large, spacious meadow is the way to control him”
To live in the realm of Buddha nature means to die as a small being, moment after moment. When we lose our balance we die, but at the same time we also develop ourselves, we grow. Whatever we see is changing, losing the balance, but its background is always in perfect harmony. This is how everything exists in the realm of Buddha nature, losing its balance against a background of perfect balance. So if you see things without realizing the background of Buddha nature, everything appears to be in the form of suffering. But if you understand the background of existence, you realize that suffering itself is how we live, and how we extend our life. So in Zen sometimes we emphasize the imbalance or disorder of life.
David Lynch: Consciousness, Creativity and the Brain
This talk on transcendental meditation, consciousness, creativity and the brain is a fascinating look at what several noted academics and film director David Lynch are doing to promote true world peace; the lasting peace that comes from inner peace.
About 45 minutes into the talk, John Hegalin Ph.D. speaks about the scientifically documented information regarding transcendental meditation, he also demonstrates, with a student hooked to an EEG, the effects of meditation on the student’s brainwave patterns.
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Dr. Mitchell Gibson on Spiritual Healing
Dr. Mitchell Gibson is a rare kind of medical professional. From an early age he used Buddhist meditation to purify his thoughts and energy. This enabled him to discover aspects of medicine that go far beyond what most doctors understand.
Most doctors are highly trained at understanding which disease a person has, based upon the symptoms that are observed; it is rare, however, that a doctor understand the underlying cause of the disease. According to the wisdom of spiritual healers, both diseases and healing come from the higher spiritual realms and then travel into the body.
Two health-related forces are at work during one’s life. Qliphothic forces create evil and suffering in one’s life while Sephirothic forces create goodness and well-being in one’s life. These two forces interpolate to help us, should we choose to do so, to grow spiritually and reach higher levels of intimacy with the creator. Read the rest of this entry »
Gangaji – Still in Awareness
The most sublime truth of all has never been stated or sung or written. Not because it is far away and cannot be reached, but because it is so intimately close, because it is closer than anything that can be spoken.
It is truly alive as the stillness in the core of your being; not my being or her being being or his being, your being. Alive in the stillness that is the core of your being. It is too close to be described, too close to be objectified, too close to be known in the way that we think of knowing as knowledge, as objects. But it is yours already, it is already present.
The only reason that I have appeared in your consciousness is to simply confirm that. i truly have nothing to teach you, you probably know more than I do anyways. There have been plenty of teachers who have taught exquisite and true and useful codes of conduct, methods of meditation, ways of living in the world, ways of manifesting in the world.
But what this appearance that is called Gangaji is, in your consciousness, is simply pointing to the stillness that is alive in the core of your being and an invitation to turn your attention to that, to let that live your life, to give your questions to that, to give your answers to that, your failures, your successes, your form, your formlessness, your action, your inaction, your choice, your choice-lessness, all, to give it back to where it came from, back before creation.
This is possible only because you are that stillness. It would be impossible, regardless of the intention or the effort, if you were who you think you are. Who you think you are is, by the very nature of thought, limited. So, however grandiose that thought may be, it is still limited. But who you are, that has never been spoken, is closer than you can know. Who you are is where all is… ~Gangaji Read the rest of this entry »
Interview with Gangaji
Gangaji is a great teacher of self-realization and the realization of our oneness. She has been exploring deeper levels of her being since 1972, when she moved to San Francisco. She took the vows of a Bodhisattva, practiced Zen and Vipassana meditation, and helped facilitate a Tibetan Buddhist meditation center. Between 1981 and 1987, she practiced as an acupuncturist, and worked in a clinic in San Francisco.
This interview, conducted in Europe, is an excellent introduction for individuals who are not familiar with her ideas about the nature of existence and how we can reach a deeper level of intuitive understanding.
Gangaji has a remarkable way of helping her students to see the eternal (present) moment, without trapping themselves in false concepts of the past or the future. It is truly a remarkable feeling when we can release all notions of our continued existence and accept the present moment in all of its fullness. If you are unclear what I mean by this, watch this and listen to her eloquant words; you will soon understand what it means to live in the present. It is not as simple as it seems, as it requires a different attitude about who the “I” that exists is. Read the rest of this entry »
On the Origin of the World
From the Nag Hamadi Library
Translated by Hans-Gebhard Bethge and Bentley Layton
Seeing that everybody, gods of the world and mankind, says that nothing existed prior to chaos, I, in distinction to them, shall demonstrate that they are all mistaken, because they are not acquainted with the origin of chaos, nor with its root. Here is the demonstration.
How well it suits all men, on the subject of chaos, to say that it is a kind of darkness! But in fact it comes from a shadow, which has been called by the name ‘darkness’. And the shadow comes from a product that has existed since the beginning. It is, moreover, clear that it existed before chaos came into being, and that the latter is posterior to the first product. Let us therefore concern ourselves with the facts of the matter; and furthermore, with the first product, from which chaos was projected. And in this way the truth will be clearly demonstrated.
After the natural structure of the immortal beings had completely developed out of the infinite, a likeness then emanated from Pistis (Faith); it is called Sophia (Wisdom). It exercised volition and became a product resembling the primeval light. And immediately her will manifested itself as a likeness of heaven, having an unimaginable magnitude; it was between the immortal beings and those things that came into being after them, like […]: she (Sophia) functioned as a veil dividing mankind from the things above. Read the rest of this entry »
Michael Tsarion on the Hermetic Tradition
In this interview Michael Tsarion discusses how, thousands of years ago, the ancients formed the basis for the concepts of existence that we use today. In the modern day, most of us are symbol illiterate; we don’t realize where the symbols we use are from, what they mean or why we they are used.
Most of our symbols were originally derived from the Tarot deck. The Tarot was used long before the modern notion of writing; images are a universal method of communication, as they transcend the differences in language that tend to divide us.
Michael also makes some interesting points about the importance of the physical (material) world versus the psychic (mental) world. It is commonly believed that the physical world is more significant than the psychic world, but the reverse is actually true; the physical world is merely a representation of the state of our psychic world.
This makes perfect sense when you consider the fact that everything we perceive as “material” must travel through the psychic realm for us to even know about it. If our psychic world is in disorder, and we fail to understand its true significance, then how are we to have any understanding of the physical or psychic worlds?
Michael Tsarion Interview About the Hermetic Tradition – 1 hour
Forbidden Archeology: Understanding the Vedic Cosmolical Calendar
This is a lecture and a documentary inspired, in part, by the research of Michael L. Cremo. The videos explain the evidence that humans may be many millions of years older than the current evolutionary model suggests. Humans may have existed for much longer than most of today’s “scientists” tend to believe.
Cremo describes the archaeologists’ tenancy to cover-up as much as they dig up, utilizing deceptive academic techniques that classify artifacts which shatter their commonly-held theories as “anomalies” and, essentially, brushing them under the rug in order to preserve their careers.
Here are a couple of fascinating videos about the Archaeological and Historical cover-ups, as well as a detailed look into an understanding of Vedic Cosmology that may explain the many so-called “anomalies” which seem to suggest that humans have co-existed with the other life on earth for much longer than contemporary thinkers had previously thought.
Lecture: Micheal L. Cremo: The Vedic Understanding of Cosmology and Time
Documentary: Mysterious Origins of Man: Forbidden Archeology
Zeitgeist – Looking Deeply Into Who and What We Are
Spirituality is a particular term which actually means dealing with intuition.In the theistic tradition there is a notion of clinging into a word.A certain act is regarded as displeasing to a divine principles. A certain act is regarded as pleasing for the divine … whatever.In the tradition of non-theoism, however, it is very direct — that the case history are not particularly important. What is actually important is here and now. Now is definitely now. We try to experience what is available there, on the spot. There is no point in thinking that a past did exist that we could have now. This is now. This very moment. Nothing mystical, just now, very simple, straight forward. And from that nowness, however, arises a sense of intelligence always that you are constantly interacting with reality one by one. Spot by spot. Constantly. We actually experience fantastic precision, always.But we are threatened by the now so we jump to the past or the future. Paying attention to the materials that exist in our life — such rich life that we lead — all these choices takes place all the time, but none of them regarded as bad or good per say — everything we experience are unconditional experience. They don’t come along with a label saying ‘this is regarded as bad’, ‘this is good’. But we experience them but we don’t actually pay heed to them properly. We don’t actually regard that we are going somewhere. We regard that as a hassle. Waiting to be dead.That is a problem. That is not trusting the nowness properly that what is the actual experience now possesses a lot of powerful things. It is so powerful that we can’t face it. Therefore, we have to borrow from the past and invite the future all the time.Maybe that’s why we seek religion. Maybe that’s why we march in the street. Maybe that’s why we complain to society. Maybe that’s why we vote for the presidents.It is quite ironic. Very funny indeed.
Michael Tsarion – 2012: The Future of Mankind
“We seldom realize, for example that our most private thoughts and emotions are not actually our own. For we think in terms of languages and images which we did not invent, but which were given to us by our society. We copy emotional reactions from our parents… Society is our extended mind and body”
~Alan Watts
“When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside of you as fate.”
~Carl Jung
Many of you may find this video, a lecture by Michael Tsarion, to be of interest. The lecture covers a wide range of topics, focusing primarily on the nature of consciousness, alternative history and the work of people like Carl Jung and Alan Watts.
Tsarion describes the following quote as the theme for this presentation:
“The gigantic catastrophes that threaten us today are not elemental happenings of a physical or biological order, but psychic events. To a quite terrifying degree we are threatened by wars and revolutions which are nothing more than psychic epidemics. Instead of being at the mercy of wild beasts, earthquakes, and inundations, modern man is battered by forces of his own psyche. As with all dangers, we can only guard against the risk of psychic infection when we know what is attacking us, and how, when, and where the attack will come.”
~Carl Jung