<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <rss xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" version="2.0"> <channel> <title>Magick and The Powers</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_category?p_l_id=&amp;mbCategoryId=72617</link> <description>All topics related to magick, siddhis, powers, and other interesting topics related to strong concentration and the intentional or unintentional manipulation of experience, ordinary and otherwise.</description> <pubDate>Sun, 19 Oct 2014 00:42:26 GMT</pubDate> <dc:date>2014-10-19T00:42:26Z</dc:date> <item> <title>RE: Shaktipat, Transmission, Emptiness Vibes...</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606545</link> <description>Still haven&amp;#039;t investigated me?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;No, not buddhist.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;What Buddhist use to be.</description> <pubDate>Fri, 17 Oct 2014 23:39:54 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606545</guid> <dc:creator>Jeremy May</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-17T23:39:54Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Shaktipat, Transmission, Emptiness Vibes...</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606538</link> <description>C&amp;#039;mon man, there is no real me, is this a Buddhist site or what?</description> <pubDate>Fri, 17 Oct 2014 22:41:36 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606538</guid> <dc:creator>Howard Maxwell Clegg</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-17T22:41:36Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Shaktipat, Transmission, Emptiness Vibes...</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606115</link> <description>First, you must know the Real You.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Then, I won&amp;#039;t need to answer that question.</description> <pubDate>Thu, 16 Oct 2014 21:02:18 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606115</guid> <dc:creator>Jeremy May</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-16T21:02:18Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Shaktipat, Transmission, Emptiness Vibes...</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5605945</link> <description>How do you know you are seeing the real me?</description> <pubDate>Thu, 16 Oct 2014 09:59:54 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5605945</guid> <dc:creator>Howard Maxwell Clegg</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-16T09:59:54Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Shaktipat, Transmission, Emptiness Vibes...</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5605742</link> <description>We see you!!</description> <pubDate>Thu, 16 Oct 2014 01:36:31 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5605742</guid> <dc:creator>Jeremy May</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-16T01:36:31Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Shaktipat, Transmission, Emptiness Vibes...</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5605724</link> <description>I&amp;#039;m pretty sure I got it over skype with Kenneth. Before the chat, I had heard of Mahamudra as being this big-ass mind state that fixes everything ect. and nobody ever attains too except old, blind, Tibetan monks. 10 mins later, I was experiencing it myself in real time. The process was very simple, it was very like being the pilot of a plane lost in fog and being talked into land by air traffic control. Simple. Deceptively so.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Har!</description> <pubDate>Thu, 16 Oct 2014 00:38:58 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5605724</guid> <dc:creator>Howard Maxwell Clegg</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-16T00:38:58Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Shaktipat, Transmission, Emptiness Vibes...</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5605482</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;. Jake .:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I wonder if sometimes the gap is TOO BIG to perceive too. I remember my first Vajrayana retreat the teacher/guru was sort of a blank slate to me in terms of &amp;#034;vibes&amp;#034;-- seemingly no transmission at all. And yet, speaking informally to some students who&amp;#039;d been practicing for a few years, whether speaking about practice or just ordinary topics, I felt as massive a &amp;#034;transmission effect&amp;#034; as I did at the famous Zen master&amp;#039;s talk in the auditorium.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I saw Karmapa few years ago and I still can&amp;#039;t understand what happened for a moment there. I asked a monk about it but he also didn&amp;#039;t give me an adequate answer. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I think when something like this happens in person, it is the mirror neurons at work.</description> <pubDate>Wed, 15 Oct 2014 15:59:51 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5605482</guid> <dc:creator>Change A.</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-15T15:59:51Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Shaktipat, Transmission, Emptiness Vibes...</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5605429</link> <description>Hi Florian&lt;br /&gt;The answer to all your questions is yes. But not now cos I&amp;#039;m knackered. But in principal, yes.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Peace</description> <pubDate>Wed, 15 Oct 2014 12:54:27 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5605429</guid> <dc:creator>Howard Maxwell Clegg</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-15T12:54:27Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Anyone else usig Ajahn Lee's "Method 1" for concentration?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5601428</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Florian Weps:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Not Tao:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;I&amp;#039;ve had this in my bookmarks for a while.  Maybe you&amp;#039;ll find it interesting?&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Interesting, yes! I did get the 2d-3d shift in the &amp;#034;eyelid color&amp;#034; phosphene scenery some years ago.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Interesting about the rotating images. I haven&amp;#039;t been able to verify this yet.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Have you experimented with this?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Cheers,&lt;br /&gt;Florian&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The reason I was interested in this, I think, was because I was taking naps in the evening back when I was doing the jhanas everyday and I realized that if I used the same letting go technique, accepting the sleep as it came, I wouldn&amp;#039;t actually fall asleep but instead get visions. I was able to pop a few faces into visual reality, and I think I got a rose to appear once, but I never tried to rotate anything specifically. The technique of trying to adjust the colors of the floaters was actually good practice for control, so then popping in full images actually became easier. You&amp;#039;d think faces would be hardest, but they were actually the easiest thing I found. Something to be aware of, though, if you try that method is that actually going to sleep can become difficult. There was one night where I think I fell into the deep sleep state while still paying attention for a few moments (unintentionally, as I was very tired at the time). I posted about it on here somewhere. It was very blissful and still - but then I spent the rest of the night hitting the edge of it and popping back awake. I even had a few rotting corpse images appear haha.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;It seems like concentration meditation and sleep effects really go together...</description> <pubDate>Thu, 09 Oct 2014 04:23:54 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5601428</guid> <dc:creator>Not Tao</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-09T04:23:54Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Anyone else usig Ajahn Lee's "Method 1" for concentration?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5601285</link> <description>Great to see this here this evening. I had just decided that I was going to switch to concentration practices for the next two weeks and your link is the first thing I see when I log in. I&amp;#039;m giving a read now. Thanks for the link!&lt;em&gt;&lt;/em&gt;</description> <pubDate>Wed, 08 Oct 2014 22:40:11 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5601285</guid> <dc:creator>heath</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-08T22:40:11Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Anyone else usig Ajahn Lee's "Method 1" for concentration?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5601269</link> <description>Florian:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;I chose method 1 specifically because of its association with the powers.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Ah, well, then this book is next up on my rereading list! Enjoy!&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;</description> <pubDate>Wed, 08 Oct 2014 22:27:35 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5601269</guid> <dc:creator>_</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-08T22:27:35Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Anyone else usig Ajahn Lee's "Method 1" for concentration?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5601254</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Jenny:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;That book is my main practice! But, if I remember correctly, I use Method 2. I&amp;#039;ll look when I am home from work.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I chose method 1 specifically because of its association with the powers.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I did breath meditation for some years along the lines of method 2. It really is excellent!&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Cheers,&lt;br /&gt;Florian</description> <pubDate>Wed, 08 Oct 2014 22:01:45 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5601254</guid> <dc:creator>Florian Weps</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-08T22:01:45Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Anyone else usig Ajahn Lee's "Method 1" for concentration?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5601248</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Not Tao:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;I&amp;#039;ve had this in my bookmarks for a while.  Maybe you&amp;#039;ll find it interesting?&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Interesting, yes! I did get the 2d-3d shift in the &amp;#034;eyelid color&amp;#034; phosphene scenery some years ago.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Interesting about the rotating images. I haven&amp;#039;t been able to verify this yet.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Have you experimented with this?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Cheers,&lt;br /&gt;Florian</description> <pubDate>Wed, 08 Oct 2014 21:58:58 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5601248</guid> <dc:creator>Florian Weps</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-08T21:58:58Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Anyone else usig Ajahn Lee's "Method 1" for concentration?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5601232</link> <description>Hi, Florian,&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;That book is my main practice! But, if I remember correctly, I use Method 2. I&amp;#039;ll look when I am home from work.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I&amp;#039;ve not used that meditation guide specifically for powers, for I&amp;#039;ve only very recently become interested in the powers. However, I also started getting the nimittas soon after adopting this method of breath meditation for everyday practice. I think, by the way, that this is a fantastic meditation guide for beginners: Because he gives the meditator a lot to actually &amp;#034;do&amp;#034; during the sit, it is much easier to stay focused and much harder to become bored or otherwise distracted.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Highly recommended, and am glad you are seeing good effects.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Jenny</description> <pubDate>Wed, 08 Oct 2014 21:07:36 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5601232</guid> <dc:creator>_</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-08T21:07:36Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Anyone else usig Ajahn Lee's "Method 1" for concentration?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5600979</link> <description>I&amp;#039;ve had this in my bookmarks for a while.  Maybe you&amp;#039;ll find it interesting?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;www&amp;#x2e;bio&amp;#x2e;net&amp;#x2f;hypermail&amp;#x2f;neur-sci&amp;#x2f;1996-June&amp;#x2f;024159&amp;#x2e;html"&gt;http://www.bio.net/hypermail/neur-sci/1996-June/024159.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I think I got it from a post on a lucid dreaming forum somewhere, and the guy who posted said he was able to change the color of physical objects (like make a red lamp blue), invent people and talk to them, listen to music that wasn&amp;#039;t real, etc.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;EDIT: Sorry if this isn&amp;#039;t relevant, I&amp;#039;m not sure re-reading your post, haha.</description> <pubDate>Wed, 08 Oct 2014 09:59:09 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5600979</guid> <dc:creator>Not Tao</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-08T09:59:09Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>Anyone else usig Ajahn Lee's "Method 1" for concentration?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5600960</link> <description>Hello, DhOers&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;For the past couple of months, I&amp;#039;ve been doing concentration practice using Ven Ajahn Lee&amp;#039;s &lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;www&amp;#x2e;accesstoinsight&amp;#x2e;org&amp;#x2f;lib&amp;#x2f;thai&amp;#x2f;lee&amp;#x2f;inmind&amp;#x2e;html&amp;#x23;method1"&gt;&amp;#034;Method 1&amp;#034;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;It&amp;#039;s a breath meditation technique, but it moves attention along what are considered &amp;#034;energy&amp;#034; paths in many traditions, and focuses on a strong visual nimitta or afterimage-like effect. This meshes nicely with my experience using a kasina or visual meditation object.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;For me, it has so far been very effective in getting a nimitta, without having a candle or other external kasina available. I&amp;#039;ve got some fairly stable, subjectively autonomous visual effects, which are also mentioned by Ajahn Lee, though he doesn&amp;#039;t dwell on them, recommending deep breaths to make them go away. His aim in that booklet was a different one from what I&amp;#039;m trying to do here.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I&amp;#039;m using this technique to pump up my concentration skill because I want to explore powers-y effects.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I posted this to the powers/magick section. The new DhO Software does not make this obvious, so I&amp;#039;m mentioning it here.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;So I&amp;#039;m wondering if anyone else is using or has used this technique for this purpose, and what they&amp;#039;ve found out or been able to do with it.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Cheers,&lt;br /&gt;Florian</description> <pubDate>Wed, 08 Oct 2014 09:10:10 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5600960</guid> <dc:creator>Florian Weps</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-08T09:10:10Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Magick &amp; Euthanasia - Moral Question</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5594132</link> <description>you can also cultivate the brahmavihāras and dedicate it to aleviate their suffering. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;but again this is all dependent on our own beliefs&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;may you&amp;#039;s both find peace&lt;br /&gt;take care&lt;br /&gt;Jeff</description> <pubDate>Mon, 29 Sep 2014 22:04:29 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5594132</guid> <dc:creator>Jeff Grove</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-09-29T22:04:29Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Magick &amp; Euthanasia - Moral Question</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5594121</link> <description>Thanks Jeff... those were exactly the worries I had. :\&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The man I knew has gone completely and there&amp;#039;s just this lurching empty shell that is SOMEHOW still alive. I feel death would be compassionate. Yet if it happened and I believed I had had a hand in it, I am not sure what that would do to me psychologically.</description> <pubDate>Mon, 29 Sep 2014 21:56:15 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5594121</guid> <dc:creator>Edd</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-09-29T21:56:15Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Magick &amp; Euthanasia - Moral Question</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5594104</link> <description>The answer to this is dependent on you. Not the intent but more what it generates in your reality, feelings, changes stored in your emotional body. If you proceeded with this and even if by coincidence your grandpa died (as you stated there are enough yeses that this is a probable outcome), how do you react&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt; When your parent says we expected grandpa to live a couple of months, do you twinge with a slight remorse. Do you second guess. Does the thought &amp;#034;did I make the right decision&amp;#034; ever occur. Do you take full responsibilty for the outcome of your magic act or do you let go and never think of it again. Notice how the outcome is also tied to the belief in self and the suffering that goes with this view.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The fact that you are asking for an answer leans more to you will accept that there will be a karmic debt that you will have to account for. No matter how small the reaction the ripple may grow into a wave. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;What if you prayed to god or kuan yin to alleviate their suffering, how does that change your karmic debt if the outcome is perceived what you asked for&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;How does it change how you feel about karmic debt if it were a dog or cat</description> <pubDate>Mon, 29 Sep 2014 21:37:59 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5594104</guid> <dc:creator>Jeff Grove</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-09-29T21:37:59Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Magick &amp; Euthanasia - Moral Question</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5593949</link> <description>If all your premises are true, then it seems the moral question you pose is exactly equivalent to the moral question of whether you should go and physically cause the death yourself (e.g. by unplugging them or giving them an overdose of morphine or whatever).</description> <pubDate>Mon, 29 Sep 2014 17:45:43 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5593949</guid> <dc:creator>Beoman Claudiu Dragon Emu Fire Golem</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-09-29T17:45:43Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>Magick &amp; Euthanasia - Moral Question</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5593892</link> <description>This is a question for practitioners of magick who have vast knowledge and experience of the moral and karmic repercussions of magick.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Let&amp;#039;s hypothesize a family member who has Parkinson&amp;#039;s disease, which has led to the severest form of dementia -- they don&amp;#039;t even know who you are any more, or anyone else for that matter. They don&amp;#039;t know where they are, and they cannot perform the most basic actions for themselves. They can barely walk. They live in a state of permanent confusion and agitation.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;They also have bowel and skin cancer -- not aggressive enough to cause swift death, but enough to cause ongoing pain and the associated comorbidities of those diseases.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Let&amp;#039;s say they are hospitalized due to psychosis and possible infection. This is a window of opportunity for magick-assisted euthanasia at this time due to the following basic premises of magick:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;- When someone is hospitalized, there is an increased expectation among onlookers that they might die.&lt;br /&gt;- Many want the person&amp;#039;s suffering to end. There are compassionate reasons for this as well as more selfish ones.&lt;br /&gt;- Maybe the person wants their own suffering to end (but they are likely not lucid enough to register that on the level of conscious intent).&lt;br /&gt;- Being hospitalized may trigger the assumption in the individual that they are about to die.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;In other words, this is a moment when there are potentially more &amp;#034;Yesses&amp;#034; to the person&amp;#039;s death than there are &amp;#034;Noes&amp;#034; (on the level of the intentions of the observing consciousnesses).&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;As a strong practitioner of magick, you can bring enough &amp;#034;Yesses&amp;#034; to the table to tilt the balance. Acting only at a distance, and never being in contact with that person, your intention alone can bring euthanasia and end that person&amp;#039;s suffering.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Here are my questions:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;- Is this ever allowed? Why/why not?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;- From a karmic perspective, is this a compassionate act? Is it for the benefit of all beings?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;- The compassionate reasons aside (desire to end the individual&amp;#039;s suffering), will the selfish reasons (ending our own suffering that their condition brings) be reflected as a &amp;#034;karmic scar&amp;#034;? So, will karma bring the magick practitioner the same kind of suffering to have to sit through again because the karmic debt was not paid in full the first time due to the magickal intervention?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;- What would YOU do?</description> <pubDate>Mon, 29 Sep 2014 16:25:38 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5593892</guid> <dc:creator>Edd</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-09-29T16:25:38Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: "Spirits"... I'd Like to Meet Them, Anyone Experienced O</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5587913</link> <description>This is a kind of weird hypothetical question, but what do you do if you ARE a demon that&amp;#039;s possessing someone, and uh&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;you realize you&amp;#039;ve kind of forgotten the point of it, but you already ate their soul or whatever and now you&amp;#039;re just kind of wandering around, poking holes in unattended realm boundaries with a stick because you can&amp;#039;t find anyone to talk to because everyone smart enough to understand you is like hp lovecraft level terrified?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;(this is directed at hermetically sealed, mainly)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;my email is SUZZZZZY@metafable.com</description> <pubDate>Sun, 21 Sep 2014 07:24:38 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5587913</guid> <dc:creator>Jareth Dekko</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-09-21T07:24:38Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Knowing other minds</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5578054</link> <description>&lt;span style="font-family: arial&amp;#x2c;helvetica&amp;#x2c;sans-serif"&gt;I have had several teachers that clearly could read my mind.  They used their ability to guide us to deeper states of understanding.  About thirty years ago one of my teachers, &lt;span style="color: #000000"&gt;Ruth, would lead us through various stages often stating the name of the stage or state when we experience it.  For those of you who have had a personal trainer you may realize that a trainer can push you further than you can normally do on your own.  Ruth is such a person.  At one point while on my fourth retreat with her I attainted SE and I assume along with others because she said, “and I call these experiences stream entry experiences”. &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Also, as a high school math teacher I sometimes think I can tell how my students are doing.  For example, if I am explaining a concept I can sometimes get a sense when they are saturated. </description> <pubDate>Sun, 07 Sep 2014 21:49:46 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5578054</guid> <dc:creator>Jeremy Kranz</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-09-07T21:49:46Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Knowing other minds</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5577814</link> <description>Hi, yes.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Quotes are here if you&amp;#039;d like to see:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;-Awakened beings suffering-&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;img src="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;i&amp;#x2e;gyazo&amp;#x2e;com&amp;#x2f;79f7604689c11d97eab313f0c70032ca&amp;#x2e;png" /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;-Black and blue-&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;img src="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;i&amp;#x2e;gyazo&amp;#x2e;com&amp;#x2f;d8c41aecb12afe0f546ff0c884393c73&amp;#x2e;png" /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;-Open wound pt. 1-&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;img src="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;i&amp;#x2e;gyazo&amp;#x2e;com&amp;#x2f;4196f85afd7b0f1364b27535b6a9a065&amp;#x2e;png" /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;-Open wound pt. 2-&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;img src="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;i&amp;#x2e;gyazo&amp;#x2e;com&amp;#x2f;d4034be852a2505fd4cdddb7b37b88bf&amp;#x2e;png" /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Cheers,&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;James</description> <pubDate>Sun, 07 Sep 2014 05:58:21 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5577814</guid> <dc:creator>J J</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-09-07T05:58:21Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Knowing other minds</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5577777</link> <description>Thank you James Yen.  I have been waiting for your input.</description> <pubDate>Sun, 07 Sep 2014 03:42:02 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5577777</guid> <dc:creator>Jeremy May</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-09-07T03:42:02Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Knowing other minds</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5577773</link> <description>I believe it was Chogyam Trungpa that compared compassion to an open sore, it&amp;#039;s like an open wound that hurts to the touch, it really speaks to vulnerability of compassion. He also spoke of bodhicitta as an immense strength, a black and blue toughness, simultaneously he also said that Awakened beings feel more pain because they are so sensitive.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I believe these quotes are in his &amp;#034;Bodhisattva Path of Wisdom and Compassion&amp;#034;, I&amp;#039;d have to check though.</description> <pubDate>Sun, 07 Sep 2014 03:25:43 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5577773</guid> <dc:creator>J J</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-09-07T03:25:43Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Knowing other minds</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5577770</link> <description>&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;sans-serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&amp;#034;We can be ok while taking on others&amp;#039; suffering because simultaneously, we are able to let the light of our wisdom shine.  This doesn&amp;#039;t mean laying dumb platitudes on suffering people.  It means doing exactly what needs to be done in that situation, which may mean doing nothing at all but being present to the suffering of that person.&amp;#034;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;This!  This is worth repeating!  &lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/smile.gif" &gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;sans-serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;sans-serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;sans-serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;</description> <pubDate>Sun, 07 Sep 2014 03:09:59 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5577770</guid> <dc:creator>Jeremy May</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-09-07T03:09:59Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Knowing other minds</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5577764</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Blue Jay:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;dat Buddha-field:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;FYI, you can read minds.  I think it&amp;#039;s very ordinary.  We tend to call it empathy or emotional intelligence.  My experience (which has been far less dramatic and metaphysical than the other stories on this thread) has indicated to me that &amp;#039;mind reading&amp;#039; is just a natural extension of what we do all the time.  I can&amp;#039;t know another persons thoughts (though I&amp;#039;ve had a few incidental experiences on retreat before), but I see far more of people that I used to.  I just pick up on more.  It&amp;#039;s in their eyes like you say, and how they hold their body.  &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Now that we&amp;#039;re at it, how do you cope? I mean, I used to be completely oblivious to the minutia of social interactions. Now I am too aware. Honestly, even though it&amp;#039;s fascinating, I don&amp;#039;t like it. If I&amp;#039;m not disturbed myself, I see every little conflict that arises, however innocent it may seem. In a normal situation, it would certainly bother me. But since I am releasing a lot of anger myself, it bothers me even more to be this aware of things I don&amp;#039;t like to know. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;How can we cope with that?&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;I&amp;#039;m afraid there&amp;#039;s no easy answer to that one, but your experience is opening to the ground of the Mahayana.  I think you realize the problem, which is that knowing the suffering of others is a large burden when we&amp;#039;re still very conflicted ourselves.  Eventually, we can be free and open enough to gladly take on the suffering of others.  It may still affect us deeply, but we can also be okay with that.  &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;We can be ok while taking on others&amp;#039; suffering because simultaneously, we are able to let the light of our wisdom shine.  This doesn&amp;#039;t mean laying dumb platitudes on suffering people.  It means doing exactly what needs to be done in that situation, which may mean doing nothing at all but being present to the suffering of that person.    &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;So the answer I have given you is to be wise, which I realize is a non-answer.  Yet even if we&amp;#039;re not yet that wise, we can aspire to be, and aspirations are worth something.  &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Keep purifying yourself.  If you&amp;#039;re filled with anger, do metta.  </description> <pubDate>Sun, 07 Sep 2014 02:45:10 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5577764</guid> <dc:creator>dat Buddha-field</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-09-07T02:45:10Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Knowing other minds</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5577747</link> <description>Ah, you have arrived at the crux of the matter.&lt;br /&gt;It is such sweetness to find such brilliant people that all discussions will progress toward such wise remarks...&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The crux: It is the meaning behind the Koan, &amp;#034;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;sans-serif"&gt;What is the meaning of the Patriarch&amp;#039;s coming from the West?&amp;#034;&lt;br /&gt;Why did Buddha toil in the teaching of the dhamma when all things are as they should be?&lt;br /&gt;Why does Daniel say he longs for the day he can be worth &amp;#039;less&amp;#039;?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The farther you go on your dhamma, the more suffering you will see around you.  There is nothing within you that can suffer, yet you suffer when you encounter suffering.  This is as true as &amp;#039;there is no-one to suffer, but there is suffering that is aware of itself&amp;#034; or &amp;#034;no seer but the seen&amp;#034;.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Even after the most illuminating enlightenment, one returns.  Even after the ninth jhana, the secret one, one must return.  It is not enough to know Truth, but instead Truth must be integrated in all the constituents that first caused the arising of delusion.  Why?  Because it hurts to love people and see them suffer, especially when the Arhat sees that it is ignorance that causes this suffering.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;This is why there is another path, the metta sutta, the way of Christ.  Along with the four paths in Mahayana, all Five paths lead to the destination of ego-death.  What remains illuminates the temporal mind and body to be instruments of love, the desire for the reconciliation of all things.  &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;For a more practical answer, I will say it another way:  In each moment, cope however you must.  When I was 19, I was so empathetic that I couldn&amp;#039;t function.  I was writing brilliant essays, one after another, detailing the ethics of modern institutions and how they should change. I got so overwhelmed by the misery in the world and my helplessness in its regards that I ended up in the mental hospital.  It took about a year to recover.  &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;So I know there are many people with mental illness.  But I also know that many people are diagnosed to have schizoaffective disorders when they are, in reality, empaths.  I did not learn this until a few years ago, however, and so for many years after a brutal experience, I had to cope in many ways.  Drugs helped me.  Meditation helped me.  Solitude helped me.  Many things helped me.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;What helped me most, to a point where never again will I have such concerns, was progressing in the Dharma.  &lt;/span&gt;</description> <pubDate>Sun, 07 Sep 2014 01:52:15 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5577747</guid> <dc:creator>Jeremy May</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-09-07T01:52:15Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Knowing other minds</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5577734</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;dat Buddha-field:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;FYI, you can read minds.  I think it&amp;#039;s very ordinary.  We tend to call it empathy or emotional intelligence.  My experience (which has been far less dramatic and metaphysical than the other stories on this thread) has indicated to me that &amp;#039;mind reading&amp;#039; is just a natural extension of what we do all the time.  I can&amp;#039;t know another persons thoughts (though I&amp;#039;ve had a few incidental experiences on retreat before), but I see far more of people that I used to.  I just pick up on more.  It&amp;#039;s in their eyes like you say, and how they hold their body.  &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Now that we&amp;#039;re at it, how do you cope? I mean, I used to be completely oblivious to the minutia of social interactions. Now I am too aware. Honestly, even though it&amp;#039;s fascinating, I don&amp;#039;t like it. If I&amp;#039;m not disturbed myself, I see every little conflict that arises, however innocent it may seem. In a normal situation, it would certainly bother me. But since I am releasing a lot of anger myself, it bothers me even more to be this aware of things I don&amp;#039;t like to know. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;How can we cope with that?</description> <pubDate>Sun, 07 Sep 2014 00:09:17 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5577734</guid> <dc:creator>Blue Jay</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-09-07T00:09:17Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Knowing other minds</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5577695</link> <description>&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;sans-serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&amp;#034;FYI, you can read minds.  I think it&amp;#039;s very ordinary.  We tend to call it empathy or emotional intelligence.  My experience (which has been far less dramatic and metaphysical than the other stories on this thread) has indicated to me that &amp;#039;mind reading&amp;#039; is just a natural extension of what we do all the time.  I can&amp;#039;t know another persons thoughts (though I&amp;#039;ve had a few incidental experiences on retreat before), but I see far more of people that I used to.  I just pick up on more.  It&amp;#039;s in their eyes like you say, and how they hold their body.&amp;#034;  &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Perfect!  &lt;br /&gt;I have been wanting to explain what has been explained in these last posts.  To proceed in the development of the iddhis, one must progress along the Dharma.  There is nothing to add.  I like Daniel&amp;#039;s Dhamma because I was working on the vast task of bringing new terms to the suttas, and found it had been done.  It is done perfectly.  &lt;br /&gt;Knowing Minds is Empathy.  &lt;br /&gt;The further you progress in the mastery of the jhanas, the more you will see (though some necessary stages are blind, dark stages).  You cannot know the mind that is clearer than yours.  But they can know yours.  &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Distance does not matter after a point in the Dharma.&lt;br /&gt;Yesterday I comforted a sobbing ten year old by talking to her about the people in her life.  She may wonder, later, how I knew her teacher at school, her friends, but in the moment it only mattered to her that someone understood.  I no longer showcase, but I use the siddhis when they suit me.</description> <pubDate>Sat, 06 Sep 2014 21:01:27 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5577695</guid> <dc:creator>Jeremy May</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-09-06T21:01:27Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Knowing other minds</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5577681</link> <description>Yea, you get it basically.  It&amp;#039;s hard to say what he took from that situation, but I&amp;#039;ve definitely had similar experiences where meditation teachers seem surprised and occaisionally a little insecure when our minds meet.  I don&amp;#039;t think they come across many high level practitioners who are not sitting up at the front of the room next to them.  &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Some jhana practitioners also have that &amp;#039;lit from within&amp;#039; look to them.  I enjoy meeting people like that.  &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;FYI, you can read minds.  I think it&amp;#039;s very ordinary.  We tend to call it empathy or emotional intelligence.  My experience (which has been far less dramatic and metaphysical than the other stories on this thread) has indicated to me that &amp;#039;mind reading&amp;#039; is just a natural extension of what we do all the time.  I can&amp;#039;t know another persons thoughts (though I&amp;#039;ve had a few incidental experiences on retreat before), but I see far more of people that I used to.  I just pick up on more.  It&amp;#039;s in their eyes like you say, and how they hold their body.  &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Maybe there are other more metaphysical types of communication but I don&amp;#039;t know anything about those.</description> <pubDate>Sat, 06 Sep 2014 19:29:45 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5577681</guid> <dc:creator>dat Buddha-field</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-09-06T19:29:45Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Knowing other minds</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5577674</link> <description>I used to read seduction community material (&amp;#034;The Game&amp;#034; by Neil Strauss). One of the advertised benefits of practicing their material is clairvoyance, which they define as the ability to tell what is going on in any given social interaction.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Their claim is more or less accurate; social interactions do not consist of interactions between conflicting &amp;#034;personalities&amp;#034;, rather the truth is in the exchange or the interaction itself, moreover there is always a tension between whether someone wants to invest in the conversation, or just bail, &lt;strike&gt;therefore it is necessary to say whatever comes to mind, even if it seems stupid.&lt;/strike&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The point is that your actions predetermine their actions in the conversation, and consequently it is possible to tell whatever they are going to say, their state of tension, and what they are &amp;#034;thinking&amp;#034; at any given moment.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I can easily tell what other people are thinking at any given moment in time, no one seems particularly inscrutable to me, I do not &amp;#034;hear their thoughts&amp;#034;, rather I can predict what they are going to do because I possess empathy, I can put myself in their shoes. I often made fun of my mother in this way, saying things like &amp;#034;Don&amp;#039;t worry, I won&amp;#039;t &amp;lt;insert action&amp;gt;&amp;#034;, saying exactly what was on her mind when I walked into the kitchen. I then proceeded to tell her that I was psychic.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;In terms of actual cool moments of telepathy, while playing a game that involves comparing disparate categories of objects (&amp;#034;If President Obama were a type of beverage&amp;#034; or &amp;#034;if Zen Buddhism were a type of car&amp;#034; etc) I repeated verbatim a comparison someone else was making in their head.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Peace.</description> <pubDate>Sat, 06 Sep 2014 19:08:38 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5577674</guid> <dc:creator>J J</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-09-06T19:08:38Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Knowing other minds</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5577661</link> <description>I see...&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I had a weird experience once. Usualy I know if a person is good or bad (simplifying it) by looking into their eyes. I met a teacher that I couldn&amp;#039;t understand on that level. The eyes were so clouded that I couldn&amp;#039;t even see his pupils. However, I couldn&amp;#039;t get what the &amp;#034;clouds&amp;#034; were, except that they were probably strong defilements. I usualy see sadness, or happiness, or anger, etc. But I couldn&amp;#039;t specify in this case. But I would guess with reasonable certainty that he wasn&amp;#039;t above 1st path.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I think he tried to do something similar with me, but got defensive. Since I expected him to be skilled in jhana, my guess is that, since I was skilled in insight (1st path at least) we both saw things in each other, but on different angles. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Does this make sense?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;PS: I &lt;strong&gt;cannot &lt;/strong&gt;read minds. It&amp;#039;s a kind of refinement of body language reading, focused on the eyes.</description> <pubDate>Sat, 06 Sep 2014 18:37:34 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5577661</guid> <dc:creator>Blue Jay</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-09-06T18:37:34Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Knowing other minds</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5577647</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Blue Jay:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;The Visuddhimagga makes a strange claim about knowing others&amp;#039; minds. Is it true that a person before 1st path cannot know the mind of a stream winner? And that a stream winner cannot know the mind of a once returner? And etc?&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;I think this is basically true... but it&amp;#039;s more about degrees of knowing.  You can&amp;#039;t know their mind fully.  Have you ever had the experience of talking with a powerful teacher and getting the sense that they could &amp;#039;see through you&amp;#039;?  Perhaps they could see your neuroses in a way that made them more apparent to you?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;You can&amp;#039;t &amp;#039;see through&amp;#039; someone who has a more powerful mind than you is the basic point.  You can know their mind in the sense of receiving what they choose to communicate to you.</description> <pubDate>Sat, 06 Sep 2014 17:56:44 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5577647</guid> <dc:creator>dat Buddha-field</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-09-06T17:56:44Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Knowing other minds</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5577611</link> <description>The Visuddhimagga makes a strange claim about knowing others&amp;#039; minds. Is it true that a person before 1st path cannot know the mind of a stream winner? And that a stream winner cannot know the mind of a once returner? And etc?</description> <pubDate>Sat, 06 Sep 2014 12:07:03 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5577611</guid> <dc:creator>Blue Jay</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-09-06T12:07:03Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Knowing other minds</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5576547</link> <description>Thanks for your detailed description Jeremy!&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I have some analysis to be done before I can add anything. Specifically I want to look further into &amp;#034;knowing one&amp;#039;s own emotions as distinct from another&amp;#039;s&amp;#034;.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Two strong examples of where this is murky for me are my eldest brother (mildly schizophrenic; a LOT of nervous energy) and my mother (nervous, ungrounded, angry). I get strong &amp;#034;transmissions&amp;#034; from them whenever they&amp;#039;re around but I&amp;#039;m leaning towards thinking that draws from my own past experiences with them as a predictive emotion rather than their emotions being &amp;#034;transmitted&amp;#034; to me.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;And then there are examples with non-family members whereby I might be drawing on past experience of someone similar to the person I&amp;#039;m interacting with, rather than actually &amp;#034;reading&amp;#034; THIS person. The line is extremely blurred for me.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The problem with assuming it&amp;#039;s all them is that it tends to discount what I myself am bringing to the table. Therefore it makes me more powerless to grow and stabilize myself if I assume it&amp;#039;s just what they&amp;#039;re bringing to the situation. I have tended towards assuming it&amp;#039;s MY &amp;#034;issue&amp;#034; and therefore working on that, rather than assuming it&amp;#039;s something I&amp;#039;m wholly reading from the other (which puts me on the backfoot in many ways).&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Then we have questions of how this &amp;#034;transmission&amp;#034; is taking place -- is it metaphysical, or am I simply reading cues accurately via mirror neurons, body language, tonality etc.? For me, this area is currently very murky and indistinct.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Yet I&amp;#039;ve also heard songs in people&amp;#039;s heads and started singing them, giving a &amp;#034;WTF?&amp;#034; moment (usually joyful and amusing for us both!) and I&amp;#039;ve heard exact words i.e. verbal thoughts. In the former, it&amp;#039;s possible we both heard the song on the radio minutes beforehand but did not register it consciously. In the latter, I&amp;#039;ve sometimes been thinking words, then the other person has started talking about that thing. I&amp;#039;ve not known clearly who thought the words first: am I the sender or the receiver? Also, this could be explained non-metaphysically as us sharing similar thoughts as a result of environmental triggers and/or shared experience -- or it could be explained metaphysically as &amp;#034;transmission&amp;#034;.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I&amp;#039;ve been comfortable viewing these phenomena through both lenses in the past. It hasn&amp;#039;t happened enough recently for me to go fully down the rabbit hole of metaphysical explanations, but I&amp;#039;ll keep my eyes open.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Most things in this world can be viewed through either lens (physical or metaphysical) -- I tend to lean towards the lens that is most useful to me as an individual. I would likely go down the metaphysical path if I felt it could be reproducible and useful. Right now I don&amp;#039;t have the reproducibility or even a method of trying to create reproducibility. Do you have step-by-step stuff for me to follow to get these results more tangibly and regularly?</description> <pubDate>Wed, 03 Sep 2014 13:04:48 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5576547</guid> <dc:creator>Edd</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-09-03T13:04:48Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>Charlie Morley 'Dream of Awakening' Interview</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5574803</link> <description>Not sure if this interview has been posted anywhere. But anyway, I think it&amp;#039;s worth watching for everyone interested in the topic: &lt;br /&gt;&lt;a href="https&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;www&amp;#x2e;youtube&amp;#x2e;com&amp;#x2f;watch&amp;#x3f;v&amp;#x3d;xVATrRTbLbw"&gt; Charlie Morley &amp;#039;Dream of Awakening&amp;#039; Interview by Renate McNay&lt;/a&gt;</description> <pubDate>Thu, 28 Aug 2014 17:28:14 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5574803</guid> <dc:creator>Andreas Thef</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-08-28T17:28:14Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Knowing other minds</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5574688</link> <description>&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;Edd, That was such a wise thing to say.  You must already be attaining Noble Wisdom, Omnicience, to know that Truth.  Siddhis are very dangerous in the wrong hands.  You can be very close to Enlightenment without achieving enlightenment, and in those cases, only compassion can keep a person from becoming very evil and very powerful when the siddhis appear.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;If you&amp;#039;re wondering,  I was not an ardent buddhist, ever.  I did not study hard.  Meditation was such a chore to me.  I came by way of Westernized Zen, like many in this forum.  I was lucky.  It is the most difficult of dhammas.  There are great things about the Zen teachings that led me to escape from suffering, though.  Most important of them all, however, is the disdain for Jhanas and for siddhis.  I was taught to disregard them completely as simply illusions. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;(Siddhis are the opposite of Illusion, just as jhanas are levels of escape from illusion, but we use lies and half-truths in all branches of buddhism in order to help people find the ineffable truths for themselves. So, when teaching, stick to sutras, but when meeting enlightened people, you can discuss truths in perfect and beautiful ways that can&amp;#039;t be done with deluded minds.)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;So I had not believed in anything spiritual about Buddhism or any religion for most of my adult life.  And Zen had given me a disdain for mahayana.  So I didn&amp;#039;t know what Siddhis were or if my psychic senses were actually psychic, or if I was experiencing an insanity.  I had always done it somewhat, and I had well-thought scientific and rational explanations for myself.  I was sure that my brain was picking up on cues I didn&amp;#039;t conciously percieve, and creating conclusions that were very accurate when there was nothing too specific involved.  Even after enlightenment, I still believed in absolutely nothing but science.  However, after this point, my senses not only got stronger, they started giving me Details!  Having no sense of shame anymore, I started telling people what I &amp;#034;felt&amp;#034; like I was getting.  It shocked me to the core.  Over and over.  I startled many people, but I was the one who became more and more uneasy.  Looking at a stranger and saying &amp;#034;you got raped at 13 by your stepdad&amp;#034; was wrong of me, but by the time this experience happened I was becoming very disturbed.  Afraid.  Desperate for explanation.  My science had to be ammended.  &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;So the path I had thought completed for so long, began again after five years.  I knew what I was not.  My new passion was to find out what I was.  What everything was.  Why was there illusion?  I learned so much since then that It is unfathomable to me in retrospect.  I am so glad to be able to discuss such things!&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I will tell you a little about reading minds.  But your own adventures will be much more interesting.  When you know another&amp;#039;s mind, it can be on any level.  Moods are the easiest.  They are often too easily known, as I will become very anxious if someone around me is anxious (that is, anxious but hiding it).  I think a lot of people do this to some degree  Very rarely is it ever phrases, as in distinct words, because we do not normally think in words, but it can happen if someone is concentraded on a phrase strongly.  The best example in my own life, so far, was a moment where my friend asked me to grab something and in my mind I felt &amp;#034;in the bedroom&amp;#034; while at the same time mentally &amp;#039;heard&amp;#039;, &amp;#034;Top drawer&amp;#034;.  My friend yelled &amp;#034;top drawer&amp;#034; when I was already in the next room and reaching for the drawer.  This was a rare thing for me, though i have found it common to start singing a song in someone else&amp;#039;s head.  &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Why did I get two knowings at the same time?  We think many thoughts simultaneously.  Each level of cognition can work at the same time.  The lowest level of cognition thinks in emotions or &amp;#039;flavors&amp;#039;.  This is the easiest to read, and the easiest kind of reading to practice. This is why you may walk into a room and sense &amp;#034;tension&amp;#034;.  If you have inner stillness, and feel panic when someone approaches, it is not your panic.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;So always ask yourself, &amp;#034;is this feeling mine?&amp;#034; before searching for its cause. ( Also, I still have anxiety sometimes, if you wondered.  But it is good.  It is useful.  It is just enough to make me hurry when I need to hurry, to want to leave a chaotic place, ro be careful not to break a thing.  But no longer do I have panic attacks.)  I feel other people&amp;#039;s emotions most when I know them well, and it hurts the same as if they were my emotions.  So if I can&amp;#039;t calm someone, I have to leave.  I am still attaining Noble Wisdom, so maybe it will not always be this way?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;sans-serif"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I love this discussion.  I want to comment on the other posts:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Reading minds is invasive.  It is also very natural and happens all the time between everyone.  However, learning to do it does cause a morality issue.  If I wanted, I could become very wealthy and influential with minimal effort.  That is why it is regarded as dangerous to pursue the siddhis before attaining Noble Wisdom.  That is the meaning behind &amp;#034;Tantra can create both buddhas and bodhisattvas, but can also create DemonKings&amp;#034;.  For a good example of a DemonKing, I think of the early career of General Buttnaked.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;sans-serif"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;sans-serif"&gt;When integrating the jhanas with daily life, there are many side effects.  If you feel as if you are receiving information when interacting with another being, you very much are.  The practice comes into play when you must familiarize yourself with the taste of your own imagination to know the taste of other minds.  You gotta find out when you are right and wrong.. This can lead to many bad experiences.  It&amp;#039;s best to use this siddhi only when you are compelled by love to do so.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;sans-serif"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;sans-serif"&gt;I have had many experiences that taught me how wrongness can enter in and cause suffering before I gained a better understanding.  One time, after playing a venue, a stranger sat next to me and began to compliment me and I immediately grabbed his shoulder and said &amp;#034;You&amp;#039;re supposed to be dead.  What happened? How are you alive?&amp;#034; and this made him run to the bathroom and lock himself in for thirty minutes while his gf had to calm him through the door.  It was a wrongness of me.  I discovered the story later.  The man held a secret that he had been born dead for his first six minutes and yet came back to life with absolutely no brain damage, baffling the doctors.  I had sensed an otherworldly &amp;#039;smell&amp;#039; on him and in my curiousity I had scared the shit out of him.  I drove away someone I could have helped in some small way.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;sans-serif"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;sans-serif"&gt;A few of these experiences taught me enough to know when to use this ability, though I&amp;#039;m still gaining wisdom even now, and the few times lately I&amp;#039;ve used it in the last two years, I&amp;#039;ve not ever been wrong...  ...Until last week.  I drank whiskey for the first time in many years, and that messed up everything and I ended up making a fool of myself.  But that was just another lesson &lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/happy.gif" &gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;sans-serif"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;sans-serif"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;For myself, as with Daniel, it started out as a natural gift that become exponentially stronger after 2nd, 3rd, and 4th path.  It gets stronger every day.  But of course now, I only have the impetus to ease pain, and so I keep it secret.  I wonder why some people have a natural gift.  I have my own thoughts on the issue, but it is very obvious to me that All people do it often.  Some people do it well, naturally, to a point where they need treatment and generally are diagnosed as schizoaffective or schizophrenic.  Some become psychics.  I know of a mentalist in Israel that describes the process in the same way as I always have.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;sans-serif"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;sans-serif"&gt;I feel when people are trying to know my mind.  I love feeling that feeling and I love calling people out when I feel them do it. When seeing two people, I often look into one person&amp;#039;s mind and listen audibly to the other person responding to movements in the mind of the first person, all without either of those people realizing that extrasensory perception was being used.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;It is powerful Sexually.  It changes the nature of Sex.  It is another level, and that is why certain sects promote ego-loss through tantric sex.  There is Dhamma in tantric sex! Vajrayana, Mahamudra.  I&amp;#039;m gay, or at least was gay, but I can say the same thing that Daniel has said about this siddhi.  It made me an amazing lover.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #ffffcc"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;Arial&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;Helvetica&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;sans-serif"&gt;Vajrayana &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;sans-serif"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #ffffcc"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;Arial&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;Helvetica&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;sans-serif"&gt;Vajrayana &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;sans-serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;</description> <pubDate>Thu, 28 Aug 2014 06:21:09 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5574688</guid> <dc:creator>Jeremy May</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-08-28T06:21:09Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Knowing other minds</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5574355</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Jen Pearly:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;Oh. So you are God&amp;#039;s gift to women, are you? I wonder how many times I&amp;#039;ve heard this one. &lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/bored.gif" &gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;We are here to discuss the powers, not your disdain for men, or bragging, or whatever.</description> <pubDate>Wed, 27 Aug 2014 10:17:12 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5574355</guid> <dc:creator>Edd</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-08-27T10:17:12Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Knowing other minds</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5574187</link> <description>EDD:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;I have literally had women say, &amp;#034;It&amp;#039;s like you&amp;#039;re in my head!&amp;#034; I actually am. I &amp;#034;become&amp;#034; them during sex (and them, me -- it always seems a kind of unity). It arose as a kind of natural gift, but intensified x10 after starting meditation. I have tantric abilities and these just &amp;#034;appeared&amp;#034; rather than being intentionally trained. I can transfer it directly to them, too, allowing them to become multiorgasmic and have multi-hour-long orgasms (including some who had never had an orgasm ever) with no specific verbal coaching, sometimes on the first encounter (though usually on the second when some barriers have come down). One woman painted a picture of me as Jesus Christ following sex (she was Catholic). In another painting I was done with glowing light around my head. &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Oh. So you are God&amp;#039;s gift to women, are you? I wonder how many times I&amp;#039;ve heard this one. &lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/bored.gif" &gt;</description> <pubDate>Wed, 27 Aug 2014 01:40:18 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5574187</guid> <dc:creator>_</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-08-27T01:40:18Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Knowing other minds</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5574144</link> <description>Experiencing someone spying on you is a creepy feeling. When I go to a particular Wat I always got the feeling that I was being watched and somehow unwelcome. The feeling persists during regular noting practice but I&amp;#039;ve found that by starting with Metta practice for all beings; the sensation instantly changes to like &amp;#034;Oh, ok you can do that here&amp;#034; and then the sensation stops....I continue for a while with metta then shift to noting. It&amp;#039;s all fine now as long as I follow this.&lt;br /&gt;~D</description> <pubDate>Tue, 26 Aug 2014 23:06:34 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5574144</guid> <dc:creator>Dream Walker</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-08-26T23:06:34Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Knowing other minds</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5574131</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Daniel M. Ingram:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;I remember this one conversation with a supervisor at the National AIDS Hotline and how she turned away and put her hand over her eyes and got flustered when I mentioned something that I had the sense she was thinking but not saying.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Did you get the actual verbal content? I&amp;#039;ve only ever had direct verbal transfer a few times (completely unintentionally) but it has happened.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Eric M W:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;- Keep your pants on (powers and sex go together in weird ways)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Indeed. I have literally had women say, &amp;#034;It&amp;#039;s like you&amp;#039;re in my head!&amp;#034; I actually am. I &amp;#034;become&amp;#034; them during sex (and them, me -- it always seems a kind of unity). It arose as a kind of natural gift, but intensified x10 after starting meditation. I have tantric abilities and these just &amp;#034;appeared&amp;#034; rather than being intentionally trained. I can transfer it directly to them, too, allowing them to become multiorgasmic and have multi-hour-long orgasms (including some who had never had an orgasm ever) with no specific verbal coaching, sometimes on the first encounter (though usually on the second when some barriers have come down). One woman painted a picture of me as Jesus Christ following sex (she was Catholic). In another painting I was done with glowing light around my head. I never intended any of this; it&amp;#039;s just how I am. I have become aware of the kind of emotional bond this sex builds and have actually suppressed it at times with some girls for both our sakes. I&amp;#039;m pretty sure I could teach all this, too.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I have only verified this direct mind link taking place (hundreds of times) actually during sex when I&amp;#039;m deep in trance myself. I&amp;#039;ve had a few women sleep with me after I visualized it but put that down more as a &amp;#034;people thinking of each other&amp;#034; natural thing rather than anything &amp;#034;magick&amp;#034;. But now I&amp;#039;m not sure.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Anyway, pain has been caused (at least half to me) by my use of the powers in these ways despite it being unintentional. I learned a great deal and went through many Dark Nights as a result. But I&amp;#039;m grateful for having learned what can be done.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;That&amp;#039;s why I want Jeremy&amp;#039;s tech -- the lessons, for me, come after we&amp;#039;ve already tested something. If we&amp;#039;re good people and do not want to cause pain then we will be inclined towards morality once we have seen first-hand what can happen. I&amp;#039;ve never been one for dogma and need to see everything myself before deciding whether or not something&amp;#039;s a good idea. I&amp;#039;m always thinking of how we can ultimately use this stuff for a nicer world. Omelettes and eggs spring to mind. &lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/tongue.gif" &gt;</description> <pubDate>Tue, 26 Aug 2014 21:35:30 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5574131</guid> <dc:creator>Edd</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-08-26T21:35:30Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Knowing other minds</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5574102</link> <description>I had a strong feeling of being able to look into other people&amp;#039;s minds during my last EQ phase. I would look at them, and something in my head would shift, and their head would open up. I could see their memories, thoughts, big issues. Or at least, I got the strong sense that I could, I never actually bothered to ask.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Something to think about-- our jobs, our family, our friends, even our &amp;#034;powers&amp;#034; are all impermanent. One day they will be gone. But the consequences of our actions ring on forever. In a sense, our only true possessions are the consequences of our actions. Remember this when using the powers, or doing anything, really.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;If that sounds too vague, here are some basic ground rules for the powers that I have found helpful:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;- Ask for permission before prying into the private lives of other beings, doing healings, etc&lt;br /&gt;- If you &amp;#034;accidentally&amp;#034; pry into another being&amp;#039;s life, simply set the info aside and resolve not to let it happen again&lt;br /&gt;- Keep your mouth shut&lt;br /&gt;- Keep your pants on (powers and sex go together in weird ways)&lt;br /&gt;- Do not make any major decisions based on what you perceive while practicing powers; they are unreliable&lt;br /&gt;- If things get too crazy, it&amp;#039;s time for meatloaf and beer&lt;br /&gt;- When in doubt, note it out&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I have had experiences with &amp;#034;the powers&amp;#034; on and off throughout my entire life. This includes seeing info in a past life that I was later able to verify, communicating with &amp;#034;people&amp;#034; who identified themselves and being deceased, reading minds, and manipulating the future to a very small extent. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Cool? Yes. Free of suffering? No. Remember that.</description> <pubDate>Tue, 26 Aug 2014 20:06:01 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5574102</guid> <dc:creator>Eric M W</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-08-26T20:06:01Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Knowing other minds</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5573692</link> <description>People do often find the thing really off-putting and creepy. I remember this one conversation with a supervisor at the National AIDS Hotline and how she turned away and put her hand over her eyes and got flustered when I mentioned something that I had the sense she was thinking but not saying. It is invasive. Privacy is important. It can be like looking through someone&amp;#039;s desk drawers, bedside table or diary but with them standing there not able to do anything about it. Departures from normal boundaries (of which internal private thought is a key foundation of most people&amp;#039;s sense of privacy) rapidly degrade most relationships, I have found. It is only in very unusual contexts that people tend to appreciate this, and they still often find it unnerving on retrospect.</description> <pubDate>Tue, 26 Aug 2014 09:19:25 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5573692</guid> <dc:creator>Daniel M. Ingram</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-08-26T09:19:25Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Knowing other minds</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5573677</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Dream Walker:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Jeremy May:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;Now, I am wondering what limits there are to this very natural practice.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;In speaking with someone who experienced this, they explained that many times it is none of their business and morality dictated that they shut down the information that was not for the benefit of all beings.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Jeremy I&amp;#039;m still interested in knowing everything about how you do it please, since living a moral life so far seems to have screwed me over more often than not... &lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/tongue.gif" &gt;</description> <pubDate>Tue, 26 Aug 2014 09:06:46 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5573677</guid> <dc:creator>Edd</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-08-26T09:06:46Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Knowing other minds</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5573391</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Jeremy May:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;Now, I am wondering what limits there are to this very natural practice.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;In speaking with someone who experienced this, they explained that many times it is none of their business and morality dictated that they shut down the information that was not for the benefit of all beings. Now only useful actionable information passes thru that they then respond to. &lt;br /&gt;Investigate the feeling you get when spying on people without their expressed permission. You may also wish to put up some limits/boundaries.&lt;br /&gt;You may also find that there are natural limits if you continuly use this ability to cause harm or knowing certain things may result in harm to your positive evolution as a being.&lt;br /&gt;Good luck,&lt;br /&gt;~D</description> <pubDate>Mon, 25 Aug 2014 16:29:38 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5573391</guid> <dc:creator>Dream Walker</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-08-25T16:29:38Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Knowing other minds</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5573370</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Jeremy May:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;Now, I have more control and sometimes can know someone&amp;#039;s current thought at will, if they are thinking on something hard enough.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Do you get the actual verbal content of their thought, i.e. the exact words? Or is it the feelings, intent, visuals, or other sensory representations?</description> <pubDate>Mon, 25 Aug 2014 16:02:35 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5573370</guid> <dc:creator>Edd</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-08-25T16:02:35Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: "Spirits"... I'd Like to Meet Them, Anyone Experienced Out There?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5572828</link> <description>X X , that&amp;#039;s interesting. I&amp;#039;ve never been on a retreat. Part of me has been kind of scared of retreats. I tend not to like feeling, um, trapped (don&amp;#039;t like to fly in airplanes, don&amp;#039;t like to drive on highways with no &amp;#034;out&amp;#034;). &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The low/deep male voice I heard sounded like an actual, external voice, coming from someone riding in the back seat of my car. And the tone was instructional. It was definitely weird. I find it weird that my husband and I have experienced so many of the same weird occurrences. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I guess if I&amp;#039;m going to wonder or worry, it ought to be over that red evil demon in my head. &lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/suspicious.gif" &gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;[Edited for typos.]</description> <pubDate>Sun, 24 Aug 2014 07:24:43 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5572828</guid> <dc:creator>_</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-08-24T07:24:43Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: "Spirits"... I'd Like to Meet Them, Anyone Experienced Out There?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5572694</link> <description>I&amp;#039;ve never experienced the mumbler in waking reality, but many of my meditation sits will bubble with that kind of experience. Basically filled with &amp;#034;proto-thoughts&amp;#034; which aren&amp;#039;t necessarily &amp;#034;my&amp;#034; proto-thoughts. It can be weird if you put too much stock in them, but I tend to think of it as the mind just kind of off-gassing. Still the interesting thing is they make a great meditation object, just watch/listen to the proto-thoughts. It&amp;#039;s a bit like dreaming, but opening the eyes and changing the object of attention will break their flow. In general, these domains hit me strongest on retreat at night, so I bet it has some links to mental pathways associated with the dream/daydream state... although there is something about how meditation starts working on preconscious/unconscious domains, which is kind felt, kinda inferred. Somewhat hard to describe, but I bet it&amp;#039;s common. </description> <pubDate>Sun, 24 Aug 2014 00:20:22 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5572694</guid> <dc:creator>x x</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-08-24T00:20:22Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: "Spirits"... I'd Like to Meet Them, Anyone Experienced Out There?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5572661</link> <description>Eva:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;As for Castaneda, there is a lot of debate about the full veracity of the book coming from a college student whose thesis was almost due and then suddenly he came up with this story. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Yeah, my husband, who, as I say, is quite rigidly science-minded, always took the Castaneda books as pure fiction.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;</description> <pubDate>Sat, 23 Aug 2014 22:59:55 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5572661</guid> <dc:creator>_</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-08-23T22:59:55Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: "Spirits"... I'd Like to Meet Them, Anyone Experienced Out There?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5572644</link> <description>The line between hallucinations and reality may not be as clear cut as many would like to believe.  Are dreams hallucinations?  What is the difference between asleep and awake?  If you see something others can&amp;#039;t, is it always a hallucination?  What about people who can see into the ultraviolet color range? (yes some can do this).  In the end, it&amp;#039;s more about who can function well in society and who can&amp;#039;t than about what you can and can&amp;#039;t see.  &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;As for the mumbler person, it&amp;#039;s fairly common in shamanic journeying and dream travel to have incidents where you run into someone that is talking to you but you but can&amp;#039;t quite make out what they are saying.  Either they seem to mumble, are too far away, or there is some loud background noise.  If you play with your consciousness a bit, you can sometimes get the message to become more clear.  Sometimes parts of it can be heard and other parts not.  Some of us guess that it may be because your conscious mindset at that time is not ready to fully hear the message.  IME, a person simply will not hear or notice information that he/she is not ready for, even if it&amp;#039;s written 10 stories high on the empire state building and obvious to almost everyone else, the conscious mind will block the perception.  IME, the mental block generally is an emotional thing or sometimes a situation of having conflicting expectations or desires.  Anyway, that&amp;#039;s how my conscious mind perceives of it, beyond that, what is really happening at potentially subconscious levels, perhaps having to do with how thoughts and ideas are generated in the first place, is hard to say. But the mumbling phenomenon does seem to be an archetype that shows up often and probably is symbol of some kind of process one might guess..&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;As for Castaneda, there is a lot of debate about the full veracity of the book coming from a college student whose thesis was almost due and then suddenly he came up with this story.  Granted it&amp;#039;s a good read and the parts about drug use have a richness and depth that make me feel like he spoke from experience in that regard, but if you&amp;#039;ve even been out in south western deserts in summer or if you know much about plants like datura and mescal, lets just say you may find yourself very doubtful about some of that stuff.  Datura and mescal have very pretty flowers and you can easily buy the plants down at the local garden stores in this area..  &lt;br /&gt;-Eva   </description> <pubDate>Sat, 23 Aug 2014 22:09:04 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5572644</guid> <dc:creator>Eva M Nie</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-08-23T22:09:04Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: "Spirits"... I'd Like to Meet Them, Anyone Experienced Out There?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5572490</link> <description>Well, so long as we are confessing weirdness. . . . &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;People will write this off as a hallucination, but its ontological status will matter, ultimately, only to a science-minded materialist anyway. What matters to me is the effect it had on me. Once in my now very remote youth, I had a terrible substance-induced experience that involved seeing everything organic decay before my eyes. At the height of this episode, I went and looked in my bedroom mirror. Instantly I saw my head turn inside out via my mouth (my mouth actually split apart &amp;#034;at the seams&amp;#034;), and what emerged was a red demon-like face. Not my idea of the good time I had planned to have that day. Notably, I was also freezing and had every blanket in the house wrapped and my shivering body, even thought it was July, in Florida, and so hot.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;My younger sister had this friend at the time who regularly shoplifted and manipulated people and situations. She ended up in prison years later, her life a shattered mess. She dressed with all the trappings of &amp;#034;dark&amp;#034; sort of heavy-metal attire. Despite her bad habits of manipulation, she had this attractive mischief and playfulness about her. She was fun and exciting to be near. She had nearly black sparkling eyes and a constant subtle smile that denoted mischief. Well, she happened to show up at our house at the height of this horror. I was lying on my bed, crying, wailing, and she came over and sat at the end of my bed and placed a hand gently on me. I looked at her, and her eyes were glittering with goodness and golden light. She said to me, &amp;#034;Get up and put your bathing suit on.&amp;#034; I asked why, and she said, &amp;#034;Because I know how to stop what you are seeing.&amp;#034;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I was freezing, but I put on my bikini and she drove me out to a beautiful, pristine little sinkhole out in the north Florida backwoods. The hole was deep, and standing on the edge was like standing on a 20-foot-high cliff. She stood behind me as I stood on the edge and said to me, &amp;#034;As soon as you plunge beneath the surface of that water, you will be clean, you will be free, you will be wholly just yourself.&amp;#034; I jumped deep down into the ice-cold water, and it was exactly as she said. It was over, and when I emerged I was laughing with joy, completely sober and demon-free . . . although a month later, it was not completely over, but I won&amp;#039;t go into that here. . . . &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;A few years later I had this interesting, and this time peaceful, experience. I was driving toward downtown in that same North Florida town, and suddenly I heard a low male voice coming from the back seat. He was murmuring something to me for about 5 minutes. I tilted and looked in my rearview mirror but saw no one in the back seat (just checking!). Anyway, I decided to just go with what was happening since this voice was clearly benevolent. I kept driving and strained to understand the words. I didn&amp;#039;t understand the words, but the male voice was clearly imparting instructions to me, in a low-key way. After the voice finished whatever he had to convey to me, it was gone, and I had the feeling that something crucial had been transmitted to me. I was a Christian at the time and seriously wondered if the backseat driver were Jesus.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;In the decades since this happening, I&amp;#039;ve discussed it many times with my husband, who is a science-minded materialist-empiricist skeptic, and he always says, &amp;#034;Oh, yeah, the &lt;em&gt;Mumbler&lt;/em&gt;. I&amp;#039;m visited by him at times.&amp;#034; I ask, &amp;#034;Who &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; he?&amp;#034; My husband says, &amp;#034;probably &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt;!&amp;#034; I ask, &amp;#034;When he visits, does he seem to be giving instructions?&amp;#034; My husband says, &amp;#034;Yes, exactly that. It is a teaching session without discernable words.&amp;#034; My spouse was a big fan of Carlos Castaneda books back in the 1980s, and sometimes his answer as to who this voice may be is, &amp;#034;Mescalito, of course!&amp;#034;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Have any of you every heard the Mumbler?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Here is a random Google on &lt;a href="Mescalitohttp&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;www&amp;#x2e;angelfire&amp;#x2e;com&amp;#x2f;electronic&amp;#x2f;awakening101&amp;#x2f;carlos_datura&amp;#x2e;html&amp;#x23;N2000"&gt;Mescalito&lt;/a&gt;, which I&amp;#039;ve never looked up before. I see why my husband identifies our Mumbler as this spirit.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: georgia&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 10px"&gt;But Mescalito did not have a rule, and for that reason it was not an ally even though it was capable of transporting a man outside the boundaries of ordinary reality. Not having a rule not only barred Mescalito from being used as an ally, for without a rule it could not conceivably be manipulated, but also made it a power remarkably different from an ally.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;As a direct consequence of not having a rule, &lt;strong&gt;Mescalito was available to any man without the need of a long apprenticeship or the commitment to manipulatory techniques, as with an ally. And because it was available without any training, Mescalito was said to be a protector. To be a protector meant that it was accessible to anyone. &lt;/strong&gt;Yet Mescalito as a protector was not accessible to every man, and with some individuals it was not compatible. According to don Juan, such incompatibility was caused by the discrepancy between Mescalito&amp;#039;s &amp;#039;unbending morality&amp;#039; and the individual&amp;#039;s own questionable character.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Mescalito was also a teacher. It was supposed to exercise didactic functions. It was a director, a guide to proper behaviour. Mescalito taught the right way. &lt;/strong&gt;Don Juan&amp;#039;s idea of the right way seemed to be a sense of propriety, which consisted, not of righteousness in terms of morality, but of a tendency to simplify behavioural patterns in terms of the efficacy promoted by his teachings. Don Juan believed Mescalito taught simplification of behaviour.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Mescalito was believed to be an entity. And as such it was purported to have a definite form that was usually not constant or predictable. This quality implied that Mescalito was perceived differently not only by different men, but also by the same man on different occasions. Don Juan expressed this idea in terms of Mescalito&amp;#039;s ability to adopt any conceivable form. For individuals with whom it was compatible, however, it adopted an unchanging form after they had partaken of it over a period of years.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The non-ordinary reality produced by Mescalito was utilizable&lt;/strong&gt;, and in this respect was identical with that induced by an ally. The only difference was the rationale don Juan used in his teachings for eliciting it: one was supposed to seek &amp;#039; Mescalito&amp;#039;s lessons on the right way&amp;#039;.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The non-ordinary reality produced by Mescalito also had component elements, and here again the states of non-ordinary reality induced by Mescalito and by an ally were identical. In both, the characteristics of the component elements were stability, singularity, and lack of consensus.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</description> <pubDate>Sat, 23 Aug 2014 17:31:31 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5572490</guid> <dc:creator>_</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-08-23T17:31:31Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Practice Update</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5569279</link> <description>I would like to second Nick&amp;#039;s response. Daniel I greatly appreciate your practice reports and have benefited immeasurably for your book and this community. It is encouraging to know that even when a certain axis of insight is done there is still infinite change and growth and integration. The idea of a perfect guru is so totally obsolete, it is empowering to work along side other human beings in this great path. Keep it up!</description> <pubDate>Fri, 15 Aug 2014 08:07:27 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5569279</guid> <dc:creator>Jason Snyder</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-08-15T08:07:27Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Practice Update</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5569118</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Daniel M. Ingram:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;Actually, the Thoth deck was my first deck, along with The Book of Thoth, but sometimes that level of, well, Crowleyism, is just too much for me and I want something more down to earth, but thanks for the recommendation, as that is definitely one to check out, as there is still nothing quite like it.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Had to make sure you weren&amp;#039;t missing out. And, DuQuette&amp;#039;s book on it does a pretty good job of bringing it down to earth, if you&amp;#039;re interested. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Do you use the cards for divination or as an object of meditation? It&amp;#039;s hard for me to imagine the connection between your black ball and the tarot.</description> <pubDate>Thu, 14 Aug 2014 22:50:17 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5569118</guid> <dc:creator>Droll Dedekind</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-08-14T22:50:17Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Practice Update</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5568856</link> <description>Actually, the Thoth deck was my first deck, along with The Book of Thoth, but sometimes that level of, well, Crowleyism, is just too much for me and I want something more down to earth, but thanks for the recommendation, as that is definitely one to check out, as there is still nothing quite like it.</description> <pubDate>Thu, 14 Aug 2014 07:19:56 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5568856</guid> <dc:creator>Daniel M. Ingram</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-08-14T07:19:56Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Practice Update</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5568159</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Daniel M. Ingram:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I am pretty sure I can&amp;#039;t really explain why I chose the props I did, nor can I easily explain why I did what I did with them. Why did I visualize silver circles of protection in the x, y and z planes forming a sphere around me and then practice controlled explosions in that safe space, testing out what their implications might be? Why did I start to try to visualize an idealized and perfect magickal trainer showing me how to do these things? Why did I suddenly feel compelled to walk into a store in Asheville, scroll through about 100 pages of tarot cards, and finally settle on the Witche&amp;#039;s Tarot by Ellen Dugan and learn it to a degree that I had never learned the Tarot before? I couldn&amp;#039;t possibly tell you.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Sound crazy? Maybe. It sounds odd to me just writing about it, but then I still have this scientist, skeptic voice in there somewhere from my upbringing that looks at this stuff happening and just can&amp;#039;t make heads or tails of it. I stayed totally functional in other ways while this was going on, work was just fine, etc. I learned a lot in the processes and am now happy I went through them. It feels like something good happened, particularly the black sphere thing, like something was cleaned out by it. I feel lighter. Both sagas seem to have ended. What will happen now? I have no idea.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Anyway, I am just reporting. Speaking of why I don&amp;#039;t report much: the projection, even small amounts of it, is really, really offputting, even for one just wanting to write about their own practice on thier own forum which is vastly more tolerant of this stuff than basically any other place on the web. I don&amp;#039;t promise bliss and entertainment in my book anywhere that I know of. Adventure, definitely, but that is not quite the same as entertainment. I promise blissful states and stages, and these definitely happen. I promise clarity about this body and mind: can be done. However, something about having to constantly wade through people somehow imagining whatever they imagine and then projecting that out is more taxing than I think I generally realize and am generally willing to admit. Notice that there are not a lot of the old, high-level practitioners talking about much here anymore. A few show up on occasion, but many have gone elsewhere, and where, I have no idea.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Thus, while the questions are normal, and the projections are normal, there is something strange about how that just makes one want to wander alone, and some of this is still definitely still wandering, as I haven&amp;#039;t promised to have figured out everything, just a very few specific things.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;Personally, the tarot and magick stuff doesn&amp;#039;t seem all that odd to me. For one thing, no matter how you slice it humans are symbol-worshippers. Many &amp;#039;skeptics&amp;#039; criticize religion and then turn around and worship their own symbols to fill the void-- &amp;#039;Democratic party&amp;#039;, &amp;#039;Republican party&amp;#039;, &amp;#039;intelligence quotient&amp;#039;, &amp;#039;New Atheism&amp;#039;, &amp;#039;science&amp;#039;, &amp;#039;reason&amp;#039;, &amp;#039;philosophy&amp;#039;, etc. I definitely DON&amp;#039;T think that none of these symbols have value, just that most skeptics like to believe that their favorite symbols are fixed, neat, clean, and well-defined. For example, next time someone rejects something because it&amp;#039;s &amp;#039;unscientific&amp;#039; or &amp;#039;pseudoscientific&amp;#039; ask them to define &amp;#039;science&amp;#039;. Ask them their philosophical position on the &amp;#039;meaning&amp;#039; of &amp;#039;science&amp;#039;. I&amp;#039;ll claim that a majority of these people won&amp;#039;t recognize that &lt;strong&gt;there is no philosophical consensus on the definition or &amp;#039;meaning&amp;#039; of science&lt;/strong&gt;. (And, for that matter, there&amp;#039;s philosophical consensus on virtually nothing.) Ask them if they&amp;#039;ve read Popper, Kuhn, Lakatos, or Feyerabend. Ask them if they&amp;#039;re aware that in &lt;a href="https&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;en&amp;#x2e;wikipedia&amp;#x2e;org&amp;#x2f;wiki&amp;#x2f;Against_Method"&gt;Against Method&lt;/a&gt; Feyerabend provides a compelling attack on the notion that science should have a privileged position in society or government. Ask them their philosophical position on the symbols in which they&amp;#039;re communicating -- language. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;At least occultists and mystics are honest about their symbol-worship. Honestly, I find studying the Thoth tarot more intellectually stimulating than most philosophy. Someone please find me a &amp;#039;skeptic&amp;#039; that could understand half of the &lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;hermetic&amp;#x2e;com&amp;#x2f;crowley&amp;#x2f;book-of-thoth&amp;#x2f;theory&amp;#x2e;html"&gt;Book of Thoth&lt;/a&gt;. In case you hadn&amp;#039;t guessed, I would recommend studying the Thoth tarot next &lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/tongue.gif" &gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;About the projection:&lt;br /&gt;In some video Shinzen Young mentions that 80-90% of feedback that a meditation teacher receives is just projection by the students. I sympathize with your position. But, there are definitely people on this board (me included) that appreciate reading the experiences of long-time practitioners. IMO, to hell with the dogmatists, tell it how it is.</description> <pubDate>Wed, 13 Aug 2014 22:04:54 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5568159</guid> <dc:creator>Droll Dedekind</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-08-13T22:04:54Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>Knowing other minds</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5568141</link> <description>This began long before I encountered buddishm.  Of course, meditation was an instinct for me as a child, a spillover from the last life.  It was only the last few years, however, that I knew each time it was happening.  Now, I have more control and sometimes can know someone&amp;#039;s current thought at will, if they are thinking on something hard enough.  &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Last week, I realized that distance no longer matters, as I rushed to a friend&amp;#039;s house because I felt he may be crying.  He was.  Now, I am wondering what limits there are to this very natural practice.</description> <pubDate>Wed, 13 Aug 2014 21:22:02 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5568141</guid> <dc:creator>Jeremy May</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-08-13T21:22:02Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>Lucid Dream Spillover Study</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5567928</link> <description>...this just in...Lucid Dreamers have more success than your average bear.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;www&amp;#x2e;lincoln&amp;#x2e;ac&amp;#x2e;uk&amp;#x2f;news&amp;#x2f;2014&amp;#x2f;08&amp;#x2f;938&amp;#x2e;asp"&gt;http://www.lincoln.ac.uk/news/2014/08/938.asp&lt;/a&gt;</description> <pubDate>Wed, 13 Aug 2014 10:39:32 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5567928</guid> <dc:creator>tom moylan</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-08-13T10:39:32Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Reading The Akashic Records</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5567835</link> <description>Yes!  By using your focus, you can &amp;#039;wonder&amp;#039; and pull from the nondual.  The way to begin to recognize the information is to practice mindfulness on that which you know is mind-made and that which isn&amp;#039;t.  When focused upon with enough intent, the information can be understood as an impression.  Pulling information from the impression is possible but if mindfulness slips, imagination can seep in.  The more specific the knowledge, the more likely it will be partly wrong, as the records are not written in words or symbols, but in understandings.  One does not need enlightenment before this is possible.</description> <pubDate>Wed, 13 Aug 2014 04:44:35 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5567835</guid> <dc:creator>Jeremy May</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-08-13T04:44:35Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Practice Update</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5567504</link> <description>Hi Daniel,&lt;br /&gt; &lt;br /&gt;Like Florian, I really appreciate being able to read your report and hear how you are getting on. It seems the very fact that you are willing to stay open to whatever arises and talk about it, whether blissful or downright ugly, has resulted in MCTB as it is &amp;#x2013; incredibly inspiring and empowering.&lt;br /&gt; &lt;br /&gt;Since landing first path last year (accounts posted on DhO) my experience has been largely challenging and taxing as opposed to pink clouds and bliss. However, as further integration takes place I can appreciate the higher ‘contrast’ of experience that the change has brought. My sense is a need to be ever more willing to let go into whatever, without constraint and bias, which is what your recent post exemplifies to me. Please keep posting!&lt;br /&gt; &lt;br /&gt;Nick</description> <pubDate>Tue, 12 Aug 2014 11:32:26 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5567504</guid> <dc:creator>Nick Green</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-08-12T11:32:26Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Practice Update</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5567127</link> <description>Interesting questions:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The black sphere stayed right in that spot.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I didn&amp;#039;t really notice the energy moving down, just that it felt like the problem moved down, or that a new problem appeared just below the previous one, in that my psoas went into spasm, but nothing about that really felt or looked energetic particularly, though it is still hard not to think about it that way, and it may just be coincidence.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Prior to the sphere, I did nearly no energetic work and I was sleeping normally, if with circadian disruption, flipping from days to nights and back, with a week of days followed by a week of nights, then back to a week of days...&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I am generally a weight-on-toes person. As to bass playing, I actually often play it sitting down in an office chair with the arm-rests taken off.</description> <pubDate>Tue, 12 Aug 2014 06:00:17 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5567127</guid> <dc:creator>Daniel M. Ingram</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-08-12T06:00:17Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Practice Update</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5567042</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Daniel M. Ingram:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;...a black sphere of sorts about 2 inches across that settled into the area of my xyphoid, just sort of between the 3rd and 4th chakras. I could both see it at times and feel it. It began to feel like a bomb of uneasy energy that might go off...Finally...in the middle of the night, I woke up and the thing suddenly blasted out in all directions in a rapid burst of stark white light reminiscent of the petronus charm that Harry Potter cast while down by a lake that felt like it tore through my chest, abdomen, head, neck and organs in a truly unpleasant but seemingly healing way...&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;Then, within a few days, things moved down, and my left psoas muscle went into spasm again, as it did last year, but this time it locked up and stayed that way most of the time for months, bending my body forward a bit and to the left, such that I literally couldn&amp;#039;t fully straighten my body, and it caused all sorts of odd back pain... &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;I... I felt like I totally reworked my whole relationship of my legs to my body, of my lower body to everything, and for a while I literally couldn&amp;#039;t figure out how to walk normally, as if my balance, leg position, posture, foot position, weight distribution, and the combination of muscles that contributed to that couldn&amp;#039;t find any configuration that was normal or correct, like everything about walking was entirely foreign and unnatural, but the spasm was getting slowly better.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Finally...At first, the middle of my body refused to respond well, feeling locked, tight, stuck, frozen, particularly lower back and into my pelvic area, but, determined to get something to unblock, I pushed through the tension and pain and finally, slowly, after about 20 minutes, things finally loosened up and then really loosened up, and then I went and stretched out in the hot sauna and the thing finally seemed nearly done. Yeah! I repeated the same thing the next night and that seems to have largely done it. I can now walk normally and even run normally, something that was basically impossible for a few months. What any of this has to do with anything, I have no idea.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;...I have worked about 80 very hard and intense hours in the last 8 days hasn&amp;#039;t helped at all....&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Daniel&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Hi Daniel, thanks for the report. Some questions here if you don&amp;#039;t mind: &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;- Did the black sphere always stayed inside the body at the xyphoid or went out of the body? Up? Down? Circling to the sides? &lt;br /&gt;- When the energy went down, did it end at the abdomen or made it&amp;#039;s way down the legs? &lt;br /&gt;- Prior to the surge of the back sphere, have you been working on energetic stuff &lt;u&gt;and&lt;/u&gt; sleeping few hours at night (2-4 hours)? &lt;br /&gt;- Regarding posture, do you have a tendency to stay on your heels or near the toes? Or played the bass (standing up) too much?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;IME, postural problems + few sleeping hours + energetic practices --&amp;gt; unpleasant energetic stuff. IME, a tight sacral/lumbar region due to incorrect posture might end affecting the region where the psoas starts, near the xyphoid. Just shifting the weight towards the ball of the feet and opening the pelvis made a big difference for me, untightening the lumbar region and activating the front/core abdomen muscles, and activating also the bubbling wells at the soles of the feet. </description> <pubDate>Mon, 11 Aug 2014 22:52:04 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5567042</guid> <dc:creator>Pablo . P</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-08-11T22:52:04Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Practice Update</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5566941</link> <description>I&amp;#039;m sorry if I wrecked your day, Daniel. :3</description> <pubDate>Mon, 11 Aug 2014 17:11:27 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5566941</guid> <dc:creator>Not Tao</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-08-11T17:11:27Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Practice Update</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5566832</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Daniel M. Ingram:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;I realized that I nearly never talk about my practice here directly, which is interesting and another topic of discussion altogether, but I thought I would give a brief practice update, just in case anyone is curious. It is in extreme summary form.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Thanks, much appreciated!&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;I spent some 10 months or so dealing almost exclusively with something that coalessed into a black sphere of sorts about 2 inches across that settled into the area of my xyphoid, just sort of between the 3rd and 4th chakras.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Interesting how you tackled that. What drew you to the particular Tarot deck you used? Any funny, strange connections you discovered and care to share here? Did you try to find out more about that ghost? Apart from the often interesting stories it generates, I love the &amp;#034;throw goofy far-out techniques at it until it resolves into something recognizable (usually emptiness in the end)&amp;#034; way of dealing with stuff like that.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;Yeah! I repeated the same thing the next night and that seems to have largely done it. I can now walk normally and even run normally, something that was basically impossible for a few months. What any of this has to do with anything, I have no idea.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Did you try to explore it by magickal means/divination/whatever it was you did with the black sphere? Just curious.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;It should be noted for those who might try to get all mappy that regular practice cycles have continued in the standard cycling way without seemingly having anything to do with the above two phases: seem generally unrelated, so far as I can tell. Jhanas, ñanas, fruitions, none of it seemed to deal with the black sphere or the back thing at all.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Weird. Do you feel this is totally unrelated to anything, or might it be the lead-up to some new development? You mentioned getting older, which is in itself a &amp;#034;new development&amp;#034; in its own right. &lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/happy.gif" &gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Get well! And let me repeat I really appreciated being able to read and comment on your report. Thanks for that.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Cheers,&lt;br /&gt;Florian</description> <pubDate>Mon, 11 Aug 2014 11:27:18 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5566832</guid> <dc:creator>Florian Weps</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-08-11T11:27:18Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Practice Update</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5566743</link> <description>I will look into the Leopard Bro dude and the Bodywork stuff: thanks for the tips. I am getting older: 45 these days, and it is definitely not 25, that is for sure.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;As to an epic struggle or whatever, I am just reporting. I have no great context for those things, no great maps for them, no particular frameworks that I can say are definitive. Find me the book that tells what to do when you start to experience a black sphere there doing that and I will read it. In the meantime: this is all experimental, a work in progress, things that show up and I deal with them as best I can given the tools and hints and intuitions I have available.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;As to when I started seeing energetic stuff: the first time was the first time I crossed the A&amp;amp;P as a teenager, and stuff like that has shown up on occasion since in various ways, but I certainly don&amp;#039;t see or feel it all the time.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;As to things being all full of bliss and happiness and entertaining, well, that sounds nice: what do you suggest? I am interested.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Here&amp;#039;s the bottom line so far on that: there is a degree of awareness of this body that is far beyond what I had before. This transformed some things and allowed some other things to be seen clearly that I am extremely glad were seen clearly, but it also substantially dialed up the sense of things unpleasant also, and this body was born, will get sick, feel pain and die. So said the Buddha, so has been demonstrated again and again, so my life has gone, as expected.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The clarity about this is remarkable, the facts of its ordinary aging mammalian aspects being highlighted by that clarity. Thus, things like muscle spasms and sore throats and the like are at once perceived in this much wider context that is as broad as the experience field, which really helps, and there is not that annoying sense of some part of things trying to figure out its vantage point as it pretends to observe or try to get away from pain, which also really helps, but the direct clarity about pain itself is very, very real. We wake up to this ordinary life in all its conventional aspects: do your best to care for this body and mind.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;As to the black sphere thing: WTF? I have no idea. I do know that if you get your concentration strong and open up to that side of things by intention or accident, all sorts of odd stuff can arise and you get to deal with it. There are no great maps in that territory that I have found. I have some general principles, some guesses, some intuitions, but no more than that. I had never had anything like that happen before, and I have been meditating seriously for 20 years now. I had to wing it. I do get the sense that, if something magickal is happening, include something magickal in the way you address it. Thus, exploration using various props that happened to be around and happen to catch my interest.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I am pretty sure I can&amp;#039;t really explain why I chose the props I did, nor can I easily explain why I did what I did with them. Why did I visualize silver circles of protection in the x, y and z planes forming a sphere around me and then practice controlled explosions in that safe space, testing out what their implications might be? Why did I start to try to visualize an idealized and perfect magickal trainer showing me how to do these things? Why did I suddenly feel compelled to walk into a store in Asheville, scroll through about 100 pages of tarot cards, and finally settle on the Witche&amp;#039;s Tarot by Ellen Dugan and learn it to a degree that I had never learned the Tarot before? I couldn&amp;#039;t possibly tell you.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Sound crazy? Maybe. It sounds odd to me just writing about it, but then I still have this scientist, skeptic voice in there somewhere from my upbringing that looks at this stuff happening and just can&amp;#039;t make heads or tails of it. I stayed totally functional in other ways while this was going on, work was just fine, etc. I learned a lot in the processes and am now happy I went through them. It feels like something good happened, particularly the black sphere thing, like something was cleaned out by it. I feel lighter. Both sagas seem to have ended. What will happen now? I have no idea.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Anyway, I am just reporting. Speaking of why I don&amp;#039;t report much: the projection, even small amounts of it, is really, really offputting, even for one just wanting to write about their own practice on thier own forum which is vastly more tolerant of this stuff than basically any other place on the web. I don&amp;#039;t promise bliss and entertainment in my book anywhere that I know of. Adventure, definitely, but that is not quite the same as entertainment. I promise blissful states and stages, and these definitely happen. I promise clarity about this body and mind: can be done. However, something about having to constantly wade through people somehow imagining whatever they imagine and then projecting that out is more taxing than I think I generally realize and am generally willing to admit. Notice that there are not a lot of the old, high-level practitioners talking about much here anymore. A few show up on occasion, but many have gone elsewhere, and where, I have no idea.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Thus, while the questions are normal, and the projections are normal, there is something strange about how that just makes one want to wander alone, and some of this is still definitely still wandering, as I haven&amp;#039;t promised to have figured out everything, just a very few specific things.</description> <pubDate>Mon, 11 Aug 2014 06:29:08 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5566743</guid> <dc:creator>Daniel M. Ingram</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-08-11T06:29:08Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Practice Update</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5566723</link> <description>You know, Daniel, every time you recount meditation experiences, you seem to descibing an epic, time-consuming struggle full of strange visions and feelings of energy, but what are you actually trying to do?  If it was all full of bliss and happiness, then at least it would be a nice form of entertainment, but it always sounds pretty unpleasant...</description> <pubDate>Mon, 11 Aug 2014 03:34:43 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5566723</guid> <dc:creator>Not Tao</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-08-11T03:34:43Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Practice Update</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5566433</link> <description>Do elaborate on the wands and tarot, that part sounds noteworthy &lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/tongue.gif" &gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;As you apparently realize, a physio-energetic perspective can be profound. For that reason (my own experience of its profundity) I often recommend &lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;www&amp;#x2e;dharmaoverground&amp;#x2e;org&amp;#x2f;web&amp;#x2f;guest&amp;#x2f;discussion&amp;#x2f;-&amp;#x2f;message_boards&amp;#x2f;message&amp;#x2f;5201846"&gt;Reichian-based bodywork&lt;/a&gt;. I strongly suspect that 4-5 one hour sessions spread out over two weeks of the specialized breathing, &amp;#039;Pelvis Rolls&amp;#039;, &amp;#039;Push Breathing&amp;#039;, and &amp;#039;Extend the Belly, Breathe Chest Only&amp;#039; exercises would have dissipated your black ball... or at least made it explode earlier!&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I&amp;#039;m curious, when did energy start to be visible for you? Does it happen all the time?</description> <pubDate>Sun, 10 Aug 2014 20:56:05 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5566433</guid> <dc:creator>Droll Dedekind</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-08-10T20:56:05Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Practice Update</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5566325</link> <description>Only a mundane observation... if you are interested in some pretty advanced body mobility stuff, this is a great book, the title is supposed to be both funny and descriptive: Becoming a Supple Leopard: The Ultimate Guide to Resolving Pain, Preventing Injury, and Optimizing Athletic Performance Hardcover &amp;#x2013; April 23, 2013 by Kelly Starrett. (PhD). He has videos on youtube, too. (Be warned he has a &amp;#034;dude-bro&amp;#034; kind of persona.) The book has good stuff -- understanding the basics of body alignment, multiple joint weight training, plus lots of different ways to target tightness using foam rollers and other objects, plus stretching under muscle tension, etc. etc.  Although in theory it&amp;#039;s for athletes, now that I&amp;#039;m over 40 years old, I find I need to do this stuff as kind just for basic body maintenance or my body locks up. &lt;br /&gt; &lt;br /&gt;By the way, this isn&amp;#039;t to diminish any other modality or approach or interpretation... it is just one more tool to have. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I appreciate the work on the black ball, too. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt; </description> <pubDate>Sun, 10 Aug 2014 16:31:43 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5566325</guid> <dc:creator>x x</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-08-10T16:31:43Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Practice Update</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5566311</link> <description>&lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;www&amp;#x2e;dreammoods&amp;#x2e;com&amp;#x2f;dreamdictionary&amp;#x2f;g&amp;#x2e;htm"&gt;http://www.dreammoods.com/dreamdictionary/g.htm&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;This is all I can find on ghosts, otherwise I have no clue LOL!&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 12px"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;helvetica&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;sans-serif"&gt;To see a ghost in your dream represents something that is no longer obtainable or within reach. It indicates that you are feeling disconnected from life and society. Try to figure out what the ghost wants or what it is looking for. The dream may also be a calling for you to move on and abandon your outdated modes of thinking and behavior.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</description> <pubDate>Sun, 10 Aug 2014 16:11:37 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5566311</guid> <dc:creator>Richard Zen</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-08-10T16:11:37Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Practice Update</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5566304</link> <description>hey daniel, interesting stuff...even if i can&amp;#039;t place it anywhere.  the black ball thingy is out there.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;in any case keep getting better.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;tom</description> <pubDate>Sun, 10 Aug 2014 15:59:07 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5566304</guid> <dc:creator>tom moylan</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-08-10T15:59:07Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>Practice Update</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5566263</link> <description>I realized that I nearly never talk about my practice here directly, which is interesting and another topic of discussion altogether, but I thought I would give a brief practice update, just in case anyone is curious. It is in extreme summary form.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I spent some 10 months or so dealing almost exclusively with something that coalessed into a black sphere of sorts about 2 inches across that settled into the area of my xyphoid, just sort of between the 3rd and 4th chakras. I could both see it at times and feel it. It began to feel like a bomb of uneasy energy that might go off, and so a very large number of hours were spent trying to figure out what it was, why it was there and what would happen if it went off. It is hard to describe in reasonable form all the places this odd journey into dark things went, but it involved wands, tarot cards, a lot of metta practice, jhana practice, energetic manipulation, waking up with a ghost sitting on my bed (this in my little apartment in Tupelo, MS: nice-seeming black man probably in mid 20&amp;#039;s dressed in work clothes of a style that couldn&amp;#039;t have been newer than the 1930&amp;#039;s) and all sorts of other complex sorts of things. I literally thought about taking a trip out to the SouthWest to find a nice desolate desert to meditate in until it exploded in safety. Finally, after what felt like an absurdly long project all realted to one single strange object, a few months ago, in the middle of the night, I woke up and the thing suddenly blasted out in all directions in a rapid burst of stark white light reminiscent of the petronus charm that Harry Potter cast while down by a lake that felt like it tore through my chest, abdomen, head, neck and organs in a truly unpleasant but seemingly healing way, sort of like when you rip through old scar tissue and then gain mobility, except that it felt sort of global. It hasn&amp;#039;t returned, and I felt lighter and easier for the whole thing.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Then, within a few days, things moved down, and my left psoas muscle went into spasm again, as it did last year, but this time it locked up and stayed that way most of the time for months, bending my body forward a bit and to the left, such that I literally couldn&amp;#039;t fully straighten my body, and it caused all sorts of odd back pain that also involves my left lats and even intracostal muscles on the left lateral side, as well as subdaphragmatic pain just to the left of my xyphoid a few inches. As with last year, I poured meditative things into it: careful energetic, chakral, emotional, etc. investigation with resolutions to cause it to release with extremely dedicated and careful somatic, proprioceptive and emotional attention using all sorts of focuses and emphases from radical acceptance to bruit force. Whereas last year I got it to release in a few hours of this, this time it took a few months. Slowly, slowly, it began to relax.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I am summarizing again a long, involved process that consumed many, may hours of attention all during the day and night as well. I felt like I totally reworked my whole relationship of my legs to my body, of my lower body to everything, and for a while I literally couldn&amp;#039;t figure out how to walk normally, as if my balance, leg position, posture, foot position, weight distribution, and the combination of muscles that contributed to that couldn&amp;#039;t find any configuration that was normal or correct, like everything about walking was entirely foreign and unnatural, but the spasm was getting slowly better.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I got so that I could feel when it was about to try to lock up again and catch it just as it was starting and it would chill out, only to try it again a few seconds later, and I would catch it again, and it would chill out, repeating and repeating and repeating, day after day, week after week. I tried yoga, stretching, various relaxation poses, such as Constructive Rest, deep tissue massages, and many other things.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Finally, one night on the way home, when my body by the end of my shift was bent in the oddes of ways, I stopped by the little, strange-smelling, 24-hour gym that I have a membership to, and it was deserted, just as I hoped it would be. It was about 3am, and I turned on the sauna and went into their aerobics room and began to dance like a crazy person to my favorite iphone dance mix. At first, the middle of my body refused to respond well, feeling locked, tight, stuck, frozen, particularly lower back and into my pelvic area, but, determined to get something to unblock, I pushed through the tension and pain and finally, slowly, after about 20 minutes, things finally loosened up and then really loosened up, and then I went and stretched out in the hot sauna and the thing finally seemed nearly done. Yeah! I repeated the same thing the next night and that seems to have largely done it. I can now walk normally and even run normally, something that was basically impossible for a few months. What any of this has to do with anything, I have no idea.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;It should be noted for those who might try to get all mappy that regular practice cycles have continued in the standard cycling way without seemingly having anything to do with the above two phases: seem generally unrelated, so far as I can tell. Jhanas, ñanas, fruitions, none of it seemed to deal with the black sphere or the back thing at all. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Then I got sick and have been dealing with some unfortunate viral thing for about 6 days: first few days of gastroentestinal upset, now just diffuse muscle aches, sore throat, and general heavy-duty fatigue. That I have worked about 80 very hard and intense hours in the last 8 days hasn&amp;#039;t helped at all. If it keeps going for a few more days I will get tested for mono...&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;That&amp;#039;s the news from New Market, Alabama. Hope you all are well,&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Daniel</description> <pubDate>Sun, 10 Aug 2014 08:28:01 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5566263</guid> <dc:creator>Daniel M. Ingram</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-08-10T08:28:01Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Controling the Placebo Effect</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5562431</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Paweł K:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;While generally this 8 circuit model is interesting as something that matches my own experiences with chakras including even numeration (up to eight chakra above the head), I fail for the same reason to see necessity of such model when chakras already capture everything there is to it.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;It depends what your purposes are. For the kind of work we do here, maybe the chakra model is fine.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;However, if you want to learn how the majority of humans live their everyday lives, the 8CM is a gold mine of insight. &lt;em&gt;Prometheus Rising&lt;/em&gt; is the finest description of the current state of human affairs I have &lt;strong&gt;ever &lt;/strong&gt;read. (Only Circuits I-IV however, since a) That is where 99.9% of humans are, and b) I find his higher circuit descriptions to be too vague to work with -- and he swapped around Circuits VI and VII for some odd reason. He does however improve upon this in its sequel, &lt;em&gt;Quantum Psychology&lt;/em&gt;).&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;But for the first four circuits -- the really, &lt;strong&gt;really &lt;/strong&gt;important ones for understanding how the human world is how it is -- Circuits I-IV in &lt;em&gt;Prometheus Rising&lt;/em&gt; are &lt;strong&gt;the &lt;/strong&gt;chapters to read. I never looked at the world in the same way after that. It&amp;#039;s like the psychology book that would be written about us by a genuine impartial observer. Like how we can write about dog behaviour in very blunt terms, but when it comes to writing about ourselves we get all egoic and storytelling about it, and modern psychology could simply be thrown out the window entirely if everyone just read &lt;em&gt;Prometheus Rising&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;In fact, &lt;em&gt;Prometheus Rising&lt;/em&gt; follows on from Timothy Leary&amp;#039;s &lt;em&gt;Info-Psychology: A Manual on the Use of the Human Nervous System According to the Instructions of the Manufacturers&lt;/em&gt; -- written as a tongue-in-cheek guide for aliens visiting Earth for the first time to understand our odd behaviour. That is also worth a read.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Where to read about some practices related to those circuits? I mean some good free e-book that will describe it practice-wise but from non-drug use side.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Antero Alli&amp;#039;s &lt;em&gt;Angel Tech.&lt;/em&gt; I don&amp;#039;t know if it&amp;#039;s available free. His exercises for the higher circuits are all ritual-based, if I recall. That&amp;#039;s one reason I didn&amp;#039;t like it. I prefer the drugs. &lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/tongue.gif" &gt; Also, I didn&amp;#039;t like having to subscribe to new systems such as tarot (which features a lot) because I felt like it was an extra step I did not have much faith in.</description> <pubDate>Wed, 30 Jul 2014 10:34:08 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5562431</guid> <dc:creator>Edd</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-07-30T10:34:08Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Controling the Placebo Effect</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5562296</link> <description>While generally this 8 circuit model is interesting as something that matches my own experiences with chakras including even numeration (up to eight chakra above the head), I fail for the same reason to see necessity of such model when chakras already capture everything there is to it.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;my observations:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;1st have sensations without their placement in any space, just raw sensations like whole reality flashes with given sensation.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;2nd circuit is the one to recognize 2d symbols and presentation of it is quite flat, like seeing 2d symbols out of seen outlines of 3d world, quite excessively if this circuit is made too strong compared to rest, to the point of everything being just flat surface with washed out texture details, especially those three dimensional texture details&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;3rd is space based mind. Nothing remarkable bout it except maybe that it tends to make everything into 3d, even flat images representing 3d space can be looking having real depth if this mind is stimulated enough.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;4th viewed from 3rd perspective is more like hyperspace, space + links to other spaces. Viewed from itself its essence of directness and contact with object.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;5th is about seeing own neuron nature and image of body made of tree-like structures, quite dense, representing nervous system in general. and its layers&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;6th is definitely about seeing processes as various forms of light and allow controlling them, though always as in future as reconditioning furhter arising or not similar processes. Also related to feeling colors and mirror touch synesthesia which I got opening it. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;7th is about seeing own consciousness as aggregate of many consciousnesses. I had once DNA access experience related to it on LSD trip few years ago so description of DNA-RNA-brain link in Cirtcuit VII was quite interesting and a proof that its the same thing. Will have look on it now closer. I haven&amp;#039;t really dwelled in 7th chakra as of yet and lately I mainly work on 6th.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;8th is related to chakra above head. Using it make unhealthy sensations of surrounding like I can feel how matter around me feel inside on atom/quantum level it and see its God-mind nature (that matter is made out of mind). I can sense crystal, especially when I hold it in left hand and this ability is definitely related to this chakra as its only one without its own sensations pattern and suck in otherness. Also I feel like I can feel other people minds, though it kinda goes from eight down to lower chakras for processing (interpretation). In itself eight chakra is all about feeling matter and energy of space directly. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I am quite skeptical about realness of those experiences of higher chakras, though I must say that I can generate incredible amounts of sensations with them so while it might be bogus it still can work wonders sensations-wise. If that is something my mind, especially right-hemisphere likes to play then I let it be.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Where to read about some practices related to those circuits? I mean some good free e-book that will describe it practice-wise but from non-drug use side.</description> <pubDate>Tue, 29 Jul 2014 20:37:16 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5562296</guid> <dc:creator>Paweł K</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-07-29T20:37:16Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Controling the Placebo Effect</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5562161</link> <description>Hello Edd.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Thank you for your answer. That&amp;#039;s fascinating. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Have you, or any of your spiritual friends with the same ability, considered to put that ability to test with EEG, and other instruments that register brain activity? That way, scientists may figure what specific part of the brain is being stimulated, and create some kind of neurofeedback system that allows any person to do that. I mean, it&amp;#039;s a long shot, I know. But the cause itself is completely worth it, I would say. The placebo effect is the mind curing itself from &lt;u&gt;&lt;strong&gt;any kind of illness&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/u&gt;. One thing is to apply for the Randi challenge to prove some trivial activity, like moving an object with the mind. Another thing is this case. I don&amp;#039;t see drawbacks. Only advantages. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;And sure, the present day neurofeedback systems don&amp;#039;t completely capture concentration states, so it&amp;#039;s unlikely that it would make a perfect system immediatly. But I see a gigantic potential in case you could repeat that ability in a controlled environment!&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Thank you also to Psi Phi for your videos. I haven&amp;#039;t watched them all, but will in due time.</description> <pubDate>Tue, 29 Jul 2014 13:55:11 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5562161</guid> <dc:creator>Blue Jay</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-07-29T13:55:11Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Controling the Placebo Effect</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5562083</link> <description>Hi Blue Jay,&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I&amp;#039;ll read the replies shortly but wanted to give my experience with this.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I have been a student of Robert Anton Wilson for some time. I feel I have probably one of the best grasps of Circuit V around, but time will tell. I&amp;#039;ve made a fairly comprehensive model of it.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;My view is that Circuit V is all about revealing to you your mindbody&amp;#039;s &amp;#034;template&amp;#034;. I say we all have a template that wishes to be realized. It&amp;#039;s the mindbody&amp;#039;s ideal state. When it is fully realized, it is &amp;#034;lit up&amp;#034;. I literally get a combined visuo-kinaesthetic (visual plus feeling) representation of my entire mindbody. I believe this &amp;#034;lit up&amp;#034; state might be one source of the term &amp;#034;enlightenment&amp;#034;. You may have found that when deep in a restful meditative state with eyes closed everything appears &amp;#034;bright&amp;#034;. An muscle tension or negative thoughts/energy fade away and also light up.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;With illness, negative thoughts, muscle tension and so forth, these areas appear as &amp;#034;dark spots&amp;#034;. They are errant parts where the template is not being realized. Watching them allows them to light up. This is why sitting and watching, over time, seems to &amp;#034;cure&amp;#034; so many damaged parts of the psyche and physical body.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;This &amp;#034;template&amp;#034; is present in all areas of life and can be referred back to to fix any maladie. For example, let&amp;#039;s take posture. The tight muscles which cause bad posture can be detected as dark spots, watched, and relaxed, to rejoin the template.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The &amp;#034;placebo effect&amp;#034; can be seen as simply dark spots relighting to rejoin the template. Just through sitting meditation you can &amp;#034;find&amp;#034; illness as dark spots in the template, watch them with equanimity, and they light back up.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Circuit V is all about returning one&amp;#039;s mindbody to its &amp;#034;pure&amp;#034; form -- undisturbed by ill health or the negative pullings and trappings of the lower circuits. Restoring the template is the method by which the earlier circuits are transcended. It is then, through this pure template, that the other circuits can be accessed.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The template is persistent. It is always there, in the background. It is a reference point by which any situation can be measured and observed equanimously. Meditation reveals the template and solidifies your knowledge of it so it becomes a stronger and stronger reference point -- hence equanimity can be found in practically any situation by your measuring of your mindbody against the template. And, yes, the template extends far beyond the mindbody, into the infinite -- hence access to the higher circuits, up to Circuit VIII - &lt;span style="font-family: sans-serif"&gt;The psychoatomic or quantum non-local circuit (Overmind)&lt;/span&gt;.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;You can manipulate the template once your awareness of it grows. For example I can dilate my pupils and lower my heart rate at will. For the placebo effect, however, in terms of healing, you are not looking to manipulate, but rather reveal to yourself the &amp;#034;pure&amp;#034; template and let those dark spots realign to that pure template and become lit again. That is, in my understanding, how you cure illness.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;In physiological terms, Circuit V is mediated by the right hemisphere. The right hemisphere is far more connected with to the body (The Master and His Emissary is a fantastic science book on this -- search for Iain McGilchrist on YouTube and watch his lectures if you are interested in learning about the right brain from a scientific perspective). The right brain&amp;#039;s preferred modalities are visual and kinaesthetic, which are the means by which the template is &amp;#034;seen-felt&amp;#034; and made bright.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;My idea with the placebo effect in terms of taking a sugar pill is that the assumption that one will be cured lets go of the left brain&amp;#039;s grip over the body (the left brain, the standard modality most people are stuck in) is poorly connected to the body and is miserable at its management. Letting go of the left brain&amp;#039;s grip over the body lets the right brain reassert the template by itself -- hence you get better. Left brain is all about grip, right brain is all about letting go. That&amp;#039;s why faith, intuition etc. are all domains of the right brain.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The right brain is always feeding to you the signals of the pure template. You just have to let go and allow those signals to be realized. Assume you have the knowledge, assume you are already receiving the signals, then let go and simply follow them.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;This isn&amp;#039;t just about curing illness either -- it&amp;#039;s about finding pure form in anything you do. I&amp;#039;m really into golf, and the truest swing comes when I just let go and don&amp;#039;t try to hit the ball. The right brain is feeding to you the pure forms at all times -- just learn to listen!</description> <pubDate>Tue, 29 Jul 2014 10:10:59 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5562083</guid> <dc:creator>Edd</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-07-29T10:10:59Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: My Magick Experiences</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5559295</link> <description>Thanks all! I am reading MCTB in its entirety and will hopefully add more experiences as they arise.</description> <pubDate>Tue, 22 Jul 2014 14:55:42 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5559295</guid> <dc:creator>Edd</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-07-22T14:55:42Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Controling the Placebo Effect</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5559109</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Blue Jay:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Eric M W:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;I would say that the power is always there, but that &lt;strong&gt;lack of belief &lt;/strong&gt;is the problem.&lt;strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;An interesting example of the placebo effect is a man in the 1950s who was given medication for his stage IV lung cancer. He believed it would work, and his tumors &amp;#034;melted like snowballs.&amp;#034; Later studies showed that this medication was actually ineffective, and sure enough, the cancer immediately returned. His doctor gave him a new medication, saying it was a new and improved version. The cancer, once again, melted away. However, the doctor actually gave him nothing more than a glass of water.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;(I don&amp;#039;t know the name of this man, but I know it&amp;#039;s referenced in one of my shamanism books. I will have to dig it up...)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Well, surely you understand that I can&amp;#039;t look at a cube of sugar and fully believe that it will cure me of cancer. (I don&amp;#039;t have cancer, don&amp;#039;t worry &lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/happy.gif" &gt; ). I can&amp;#039;t force myself to believe that something is what it&amp;#039;s not.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;So what is the process that is activated through the belief of a cure that turns into actual cure. It can&amp;#039;t go through forcing myself to believe that a sugar pill is going to cure cancer.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;Hey All !!!&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Placebo effect Mind/Body communication, accessing the unconscious and subconscious mind, latent powers of the body/mind, well...&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Been thinking that since most of the Mind does NOT communicate in words, the mind/body has to communicate in chemicals and energy, AND that other sections of the brain probably can communicate in symbols and imagery.  Symbols and imagery, while seemingly primitive should and could actually work on accessing different parts of the brain/body/mind, same with chemicals and/or energy fields.  I think the part of the brain that can use words is relatively small, like roughtly the dimensions more or less than the bottom of a coffee cup, and only the thickness of 2-3 sheets of common notebook paper.  It is a wonder why we put so much emphasis on words, huh? &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;This excerpt is from Andrew Newberg M.D. and Robert Waldman&amp;#039;s book Words Can Change Your Brain page 57&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;How Thoughts Become Real&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;In the center of the brain there&amp;#039;s a walnut shaped structure called the thalamus.  It relays sensory information about the outside world to other parts of the brain.  When we imagine something, this information is also sent to the thalamus.  Our research suggests that the thalamus treats these thoughts and fantasies in the same way it processes sounds, smells, tastes, images, and touch.  And it doesn&amp;#039;t distinguish between inner and outer realities.  Thus, if you think you are safe, the rest of your brain assumes you are safe.  But if you ruminate on imaginery fears or self-doubt, your brain presumes that there may be a real threat in the outside world.  Our language-based thoughts shape our consciousness, and our consciouness shapes the reality we perceive.  So choose your words wisely because they become as real as the ground on which you stand.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Also, directly relating to Placebo effects I thought the following talks were pretty cool and spot on:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Lissa Rankin (this talk , BTW goes over the melting snowball tumors described by  Eric M W&amp;#039;s post, within first five minutes or so) &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;www&amp;#x2e;youtube&amp;#x2e;com&amp;#x2f;watch&amp;#x3f;v&amp;#x3d;LWQfe__fNbs"&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWQfe__fNbs&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;Eric Mead (Placebo)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;www&amp;#x2e;youtube&amp;#x2e;com&amp;#x2f;watch&amp;#x3f;v&amp;#x3d;Cb_6PPBJJB8"&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cb_6PPBJJB8&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;Two other talks, that are more like Mind hacking, but have useful tips to releasing and sustaining wholesome states.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Amy Cuddy&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;www&amp;#x2e;youtube&amp;#x2e;com&amp;#x2f;watch&amp;#x3f;v&amp;#x3d;Ks-_Mh1QhMc"&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ks-_Mh1QhMc&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;Ron Gutman&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;www&amp;#x2e;youtube&amp;#x2e;com&amp;#x2f;watch&amp;#x3f;v&amp;#x3d;U9cGdRNMdQQ"&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9cGdRNMdQQ&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;May all in the Dark Night be free, and know they are only one smooth breath away from Equanimity.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Psi</description> <pubDate>Tue, 22 Jul 2014 04:30:05 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5559109</guid> <dc:creator>Psi Phi</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-07-22T04:30:05Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Controling the Placebo Effect</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5559038</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Eric M W:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;I would say that the power is always there, but that &lt;strong&gt;lack of belief &lt;/strong&gt;is the problem.&lt;strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;An interesting example of the placebo effect is a man in the 1950s who was given medication for his stage IV lung cancer. He believed it would work, and his tumors &amp;#034;melted like snowballs.&amp;#034; Later studies showed that this medication was actually ineffective, and sure enough, the cancer immediately returned. His doctor gave him a new medication, saying it was a new and improved version. The cancer, once again, melted away. However, the doctor actually gave him nothing more than a glass of water.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;(I don&amp;#039;t know the name of this man, but I know it&amp;#039;s referenced in one of my shamanism books. I will have to dig it up...)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Well, surely you understand that I can&amp;#039;t look at a cube of sugar and fully believe that it will cure me of cancer. (I don&amp;#039;t have cancer, don&amp;#039;t worry &lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/happy.gif" &gt; ). I can&amp;#039;t force myself to believe that something is what it&amp;#039;s not.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;So what is the process that is activated through the belief of a cure that turns into actual cure. It can&amp;#039;t go through forcing myself to believe that a sugar pill is going to cure cancer.</description> <pubDate>Mon, 21 Jul 2014 19:47:43 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5559038</guid> <dc:creator>Blue Jay</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-07-21T19:47:43Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Controling the Placebo Effect</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5559035</link> <description>I would say that the power is always there, but that &lt;strong&gt;lack of belief &lt;/strong&gt;is the problem.&lt;strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;An interesting example of the placebo effect is a man in the 1950s who was given medication for his stage IV lung cancer. He believed it would work, and his tumors &amp;#034;melted like snowballs.&amp;#034; Later studies showed that this medication was actually ineffective, and sure enough, the cancer immediately returned. His doctor gave him a new medication, saying it was a new and improved version. The cancer, once again, melted away. However, the doctor actually gave him nothing more than a glass of water.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;(I don&amp;#039;t know the name of this man, but I know it&amp;#039;s referenced in one of my shamanism books. I will have to dig it up...)</description> <pubDate>Mon, 21 Jul 2014 18:25:38 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5559035</guid> <dc:creator>Eric M W</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-07-21T18:25:38Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Controling the Placebo Effect</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5559030</link> <description>Yes, but the fundamental question is &amp;#034;&lt;strong&gt;how&lt;/strong&gt; does belief turn into power?&amp;#034; If we fully understood the workings of this process, we would have the power to heal ourselves from anything. And maybe even tell others how they could cure themselves. Or develop an electric feedback program that would acomplish this for anyone, for example. Having control over the placebo effect would be the ultimate medicine.</description> <pubDate>Mon, 21 Jul 2014 17:13:52 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5559030</guid> <dc:creator>Blue Jay</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-07-21T17:13:52Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Controling the Placebo Effect</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5559024</link> <description>[If it&amp;#039;s all placebo, maybe our normal thoughts and view points are also a placebo, the dullness, normal , daily , life placebo, that most of us take as &amp;#034;normal&amp;#034; life.  What if the consensus view of reality is false, and is a delusion?  Just a made up make-believe world , no more real than the placebo reality???]&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Yeah, exactly!  I think of placebo as just the power to convince either yourself or others.  Once there is belief, belief in a pill, belief in the &amp;#034;power&amp;#034; of a priest or whatever, then that belief has power.  Once you directly understand that belief  has power, then you can skip the middle stage of convincing, realize the power was always yours and use it directly.  I don&amp;#039;t think any monks have any special &amp;#039;power&amp;#039; to not get sick, only that those particular monks may have come too understand their mind well enough to use the power that all lof us have.  And/or they have been well convinced and so they believe.  If you don&amp;#039;t accept the existence of something, then you are probably not going to able to use it well and most of the world simply does not accept the existence of such things as the &amp;#034;power&amp;#034; these monks might have.&lt;br /&gt;-Eva </description> <pubDate>Mon, 21 Jul 2014 16:41:41 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5559024</guid> <dc:creator>Eva M Nie</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-07-21T16:41:41Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Controling the Placebo Effect</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5558960</link> <description>Shamans have been harnessing this power for about 60,000 years or so. It&amp;#039;s nothing new, and in fact it&amp;#039;s much older and better tested than most techniques of modern medicine. </description> <pubDate>Mon, 21 Jul 2014 10:12:56 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5558960</guid> <dc:creator>Eric M W</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-07-21T10:12:56Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Controling the Placebo Effect</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5558659</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt; If time slows down, then your perception is speeding up, that is as real as when your perception slows down, and time speeds up.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;perception of time have relation to perception speed but it is not as straightforward and simple as you might believe&lt;br /&gt;you have to try to change it to learn what is what&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;If it&amp;#039;s all placebo, maybe our normal thoughts and view points are also a placebo, the dullness, normal , daily , life placebo, that most of us take as &amp;#034;normal&amp;#034; life. What if the consensus view of reality is false, and is a delusion? Just a made up make-believe world , no more real than the placebo reality???&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;solid insight&lt;br /&gt;there is nothing &amp;#039;real&amp;#039; and quality that you perceive as &amp;#039;real&amp;#039; is just &lt;u&gt;suffering&lt;/u&gt;, you do not want to be it, touch it or even look at it. It have permanent ban in my mind and for a good reason.&lt;br /&gt;stop perceiving reality like that and see it as mind instead, it will free you from ridiculously large portion of suffering&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;as for controlling pain being default reality... well, it actually is like that. It is just not tuned to please you. In nature survival is much more important than feeling good.</description> <pubDate>Sun, 20 Jul 2014 07:45:52 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5558659</guid> <dc:creator>Paweł K</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-07-20T07:45:52Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Controling the Placebo Effect</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5558645</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Paweł K:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;I practice those things. Best result so far I had was stopping runny nose last winter. So far I haven&amp;#039;t got occasion to try it again as it never returned. Will see this winter. I can also tweak my pain threshold up or down, globally or locally (disable pain if its not too strong). And lastly slow down perception of time. Speeding it up is harder... &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Its all placebo, just dwelling in it way too much confuse mind into believing it is real and I do dwell in it too much.&lt;br /&gt;I doubt it will be popular topic. Lots of people on DhO who are much more likely to fall for placebo than control it...&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Wait a minute, if you are experiencing something, whether it is a placebo effect or not, the phenomenon are both real.  You don&amp;#039;t have to believe if phenomenon is real or not, it is what it is, as you know.  If time slows down, then your perception is speeding up, that is as real as when your perception slows down, and time speeds up.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;If it&amp;#039;s all placebo, maybe our normal thoughts and view points are also a placebo, the dullness, normal , daily , life placebo, that most of us take as &amp;#034;normal&amp;#034; life.  What if the consensus view of reality is false, and is a delusion?  Just a made up make-believe world , no more real than the placebo reality???&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;What if speeding up and slowing down the perception of time is the reality, and a constant sense of time is a delusion?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;What if experiencing pain without being able to turn the pain volume up or down is a delusion, and adjusting the  pain is the reality?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;What if half of the illnesses in the world are dreamy illusions of the mind, and the placebo effect works, not because it is an illusion, but because it breaks the spell of the illusion?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Sci fi</description> <pubDate>Sun, 20 Jul 2014 06:13:11 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5558645</guid> <dc:creator>Psi Phi</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-07-20T06:13:11Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Controling the Placebo Effect</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5558639</link> <description>Hey Droll, thanks for postin&amp;#039; this I&amp;#039;m a big R.A.W. fan!!  The Neurosomatic circuit sounds very, very  similar to the mastery of Buddha&amp;#039;s Formula of Right Effort, which I am sure everyone is tired of me posting here.  It seems that Buddha&amp;#039;s advice is explained in such practical terms that it loses much of the luster and allure, when in reality the teachings can be unfathomable and otherwordly.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The practice of the Right Effort Formula is actually at and only at this NeuroSomatic level, most think it is something else entirely, or are just stuck in the mental world of words.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I would also like to add that it seems that there is a time that one not only notices sensations in an equanimous manner, but that one starts to work on changing the mind/body with intention.  Any spiritual path has to have intention, right?  Otherwise we just train to be like a boulder and let reality flow around us, but then we just become boulders.  Not, that being that unshakeable would be a bad thing, but...&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Anyway, I&amp;#039;ll have to take a re-observation of the 8 circuit model&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Cool&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Psi Phi</description> <pubDate>Sun, 20 Jul 2014 05:51:46 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5558639</guid> <dc:creator>Psi Phi</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-07-20T05:51:46Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Controling the Placebo Effect</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5558635</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Blue Jay:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;Hello&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I&amp;#039;ve been reading the section of the Visuddhimagga on supernormal powers. If all that is true, I think it&amp;#039;s theoretically possible that a person who is extremely proficient with jhanas can understand how the placebo effect works in their minds and take advantage of it. Wouldn&amp;#039;t that be the ultimate medicinal psychic power? I mean, aside from infectious diseases, all other diseases could be controled, or even cured, by the person with that psychic power!&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;If this makes any sense and if someone is willing to try it, tell us how it went.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Best wishes!&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;This reminds me of the Girimananda Sutta, basically Girimananda is diseased and is instructed to train in the Ten Perceptions, and he abandons his disease.  Simple , Huh?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;www&amp;#x2e;accesstoinsight&amp;#x2e;org&amp;#x2f;tipitaka&amp;#x2f;an&amp;#x2f;an10&amp;#x2f;an10&amp;#x2e;060&amp;#x2e;than&amp;#x2e;html"&gt;http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/an/an10/an10.060.than.html&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;Also, and related, due to synchronicity, this topic came up at work , and my co-worker spoke about &lt;strong&gt;psychoneuroimmunology&lt;/strong&gt; and meditating monks who were being studied that had the power to not become sick. There is a ton of information out there about psychoneuroimmunolgy, not sure how much is conclusive as it is still relatively new to the scientific method, but seems to have been around for thousands of years in Tao, Tai Chi, Buddhism, etc. etc.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Personally, one can notice the though interplay cycle of &amp;#034;sickness&amp;#034; coming on when it tries to start up that makes the mind/body sick, it is mostly the Ego&amp;#039;s excuse to be slothful and lazy, generally because the mind/body system is over worked, underslept , and/or undernourished, or relating to stress in the outside environment as if it was stress on the inside environment, (delusion).&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Also, in my view, this is all thrown out the window, when either an important organ in the body is impaired or breaks down, or there is an invasion of a viral, bacterial, or parasitic nature.  Then, time is needed, for the mind/body to overcome the  illness, or die tryin&amp;#039;.  &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Oh yeah, don&amp;#039;t forget, go to the Doctor!&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Peace , Psi Phi</description> <pubDate>Sun, 20 Jul 2014 05:31:27 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5558635</guid> <dc:creator>Psi Phi</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-07-20T05:31:27Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Controling the Placebo Effect</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5558591</link> <description>Robert Anton Wilson writes extensively on this topic in Prometheus Rising. He relates it to what he and Leary called the Neurosomatic Circuit. The term &amp;#039;placebo effect&amp;#039; isn&amp;#039;t used because the effect is more general and common than the term lets on.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;5. The Holistic Neurosomatic Circuit. This is imprinted by&lt;br /&gt;ecstatic experience, via biological or chemical yogas. It process-&lt;br /&gt;es neurosomatic (&amp;#034;mind-body&amp;#034;) feedback loops, somatic-sensory&lt;br /&gt;bliss, feeling &amp;#034;high,&amp;#034; &amp;#034;faith-healing,&amp;#034; etc. Christian Science, NLP&lt;br /&gt;and holistic medicine consist of tricks or gimmicks to get this&lt;br /&gt;circuit into action at least temporarily; Tantra yoga is concerned&lt;br /&gt;with shifting consciousness entirely into this circuit.&lt;br /&gt;...&lt;br /&gt;The neurosomatic skill of transmuting all experi-&lt;br /&gt;ence, so that one is high and happy in a situation where the four-&lt;br /&gt;circuited majority would be miserable, is worth learning for the&lt;br /&gt;very simple, egotistic reason that it&amp;#039;s more fun to be happy than&lt;br /&gt;to be in agony. It is also socially beneficial, because, as Tim&lt;br /&gt;Leary often said, &amp;#034;You can&amp;#039;t do good until you feel good.&amp;#034; Just&lt;br /&gt;as misery loves company, the high and happy want everybody&lt;br /&gt;else to be high and happy. (This first lesson the fifth-circuit adept&lt;br /&gt;has to learn is to control this upsurge of altruism and not make a&lt;br /&gt;nuisance of oneself by trying to force everybody to be happy...)&lt;br /&gt;The Rationalist is even more alarmed by the results of pro-&lt;br /&gt;longed fifth-circuit bliss, which includes the ability to heal a&lt;br /&gt;wide variety of diseases both in oneself and in others. Even the&lt;br /&gt;well documented current research on endorphins&amp;#x2014;which gives&lt;br /&gt;us the beginning of a neuro-chemical explanation of how such&lt;br /&gt;healings operate&amp;#x2014;is regarded with discomfort or hostility by the&lt;br /&gt;more robotized Rationalists. It all sounds &amp;#034;metaphysical&amp;#034; and&lt;br /&gt;therefore it cannot exist.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</description> <pubDate>Sat, 19 Jul 2014 19:07:25 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5558591</guid> <dc:creator>Droll Dedekind</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-07-19T19:07:25Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Controling the Placebo Effect</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5558549</link> <description>I practice those things. Best result so far I had was stopping runny nose last winter. So far I haven&amp;#039;t got occasion to try it again as it never returned. Will see this winter. I can also tweak my pain threshold up or down, globally or locally (disable pain if its not too strong). And lastly slow down perception of time. Speeding it up is harder... &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Its all placebo, just dwelling in it way too much confuse mind into believing it is real and I do dwell in it too much.&lt;br /&gt;I doubt it will be popular topic. Lots of people on DhO who are much more likely to fall for placebo than control it...</description> <pubDate>Sat, 19 Jul 2014 14:50:00 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5558549</guid> <dc:creator>Paweł K</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-07-19T14:50:00Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>Controling the Placebo Effect</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5558493</link> <description>Hello&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I&amp;#039;ve been reading the section of the Visuddhimagga on supernormal powers. If all that is true, I think it&amp;#039;s theoretically possible that a person who is extremely proficient with jhanas can understand how the placebo effect works in their minds and take advantage of it. Wouldn&amp;#039;t that be the ultimate medicinal psychic power? I mean, aside from infectious diseases, all other diseases could be controled, or even cured, by the person with that psychic power!&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;If this makes any sense and if someone is willing to try it, tell us how it went.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Best wishes!</description> <pubDate>Sat, 19 Jul 2014 06:25:43 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5558493</guid> <dc:creator>Blue Jay</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-07-19T06:25:43Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: My Magick Experiences</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5557657</link> <description>I have had similar clairvoyant experiences. Can I control them - no but it has happened enough for me to question. One of the by products of meditation that often occur for me are seeing and feeling energy/qi fields around people. Occassionally a person, animal or even a tree will be close by and it will tug on my field/awareness.&lt;br /&gt;When I was in China training my teacher and his teacher demonstrated teleknisis, lighting fires with their minds and a number of other things which I captured on video and have shared here before.You may want to check out &lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;www&amp;#x2e;urbandharma&amp;#x2e;org&amp;#x2f;udharma14&amp;#x2f;pathpure&amp;#x2e;html"&gt;http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma14/pathpure.html&lt;/a&gt; and read through these books &lt;br /&gt;visuddhimagga and Vimuttimagga. Look at the kasina practices and the powers. Everything is worth investigating&lt;br /&gt;Usually breath practices and concentration/jhana skills are involved&lt;br /&gt;cheers</description> <pubDate>Wed, 16 Jul 2014 22:35:30 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5557657</guid> <dc:creator>Jeff Grove</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-07-16T22:35:30Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: My Magick Experiences</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5557651</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;strong&gt;QUESTIONS&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;- Are any of these &amp;#034;siddhis&amp;#034; and if so which ones?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;- I&amp;#039;ve seen it mentioned around here that the book &amp;#034;Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha&amp;#034; has a section on &amp;#034;Magick and The Power&amp;#034;. I downloaded the free e-book version after following some links and I don&amp;#039;t see this section?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;- Am I &amp;#034;special&amp;#034;? I&amp;#039;m pretty titillated by what I&amp;#039;ve seen of &amp;#034;the other side&amp;#034;. Can I harness these &amp;#034;powers&amp;#034; and get them working consistently? I would love to find out what can be done!&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Hey Edd,&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Yes, these are siddhis. I can&amp;#039;t tell you which ones off the top of my head, at least in Theravadin terms, but they are pretty stock and standard. There are two categories of powers in the Buddhist tradition-- mundane and supramundane. Any being with good concentration or natural proclivity can attain to the mundane powers, whereas supramundane powers are available only to enlightened beings. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;According to my ebook&amp;#039;s table of contents, the section on the powers is on page 144. It&amp;#039;s in part 3, after the description of the fourth jhana.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;- Am I &amp;#034;special&amp;#034;? I&amp;#039;m pretty titillated by what I&amp;#039;ve seen of &amp;#034;the other side&amp;#034;. Can I harness these &amp;#034;powers&amp;#034; and get them working consistently? I would love to find out what can be done!&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Well, no, you aren&amp;#039;t &amp;#034;special,&amp;#034; not at all. &lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/happy.gif" &gt; Though it does sound like you might have a natural knack for this sort of thing, as do I. These powers can be cultivated by any being with good concentration skills, and there are some practitioners who can basically turn them on and off at will. Good morality is also *highly* recommended. Anything done without the purest intentions can come back and bite you. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;- So where do I go from here? What do I look up next?&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I recommend reading part 1 of Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha. It talks about the three trainings, and the three characteristics. From there you can start practice in insight meditation. Be sure to read the Forward and Warning, and I will say here, that the path of insight meditation has some really dark parts. Specifically, read the chapter on the Dark Night in Part III. You may even lose access to the powers for a time, but it&amp;#039;s worth the trouble.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I highly recommend you read &lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;www&amp;#x2e;erowid&amp;#x2e;org&amp;#x2f;experiences&amp;#x2f;exp&amp;#x2e;php&amp;#x3f;ID&amp;#x3d;88620"&gt;this erowid experience report&lt;/a&gt;, written by someone who practiced insight meditation. It will basically spell it out for you. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I also highly recommend &lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;homepage&amp;#x2e;ntlworld&amp;#x2e;com&amp;#x2f;pesala&amp;#x2f;Pandita&amp;#x2f;"&gt;&lt;u&gt;In This Very Life&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, by Burmese meditation master Sayadaw U Pandita. It&amp;#039;s available for free at the link.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Good luck,&lt;br /&gt;E</description> <pubDate>Wed, 16 Jul 2014 22:16:21 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5557651</guid> <dc:creator>Eric M W</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-07-16T22:16:21Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>My Magick Experiences</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5557625</link> <description>Hi all,&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;This is my first post. Some of you may know me by my screen name Illuminatus from my writings in places such as the Seduction Community, Steve Pavlina&amp;#039;s forum and my own website which I won&amp;#039;t mention because I&amp;#039;m not here to spam. I just got recommended to this site today by my friend.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Anyway, there&amp;#039;s a lot to take in here so I&amp;#039;ll write my &amp;#034;magick&amp;#034; experiences (not even sure if that&amp;#039;s the right word) and hopefully you can tell me what they mean, and what to look into next for study etc.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Seeing the Future&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;As a VERY young child I had dreams of the future which would come true the next day exactly as in the dream. E.g. visiting an airport I had never been to and had no idea we were visiting the next day. I had about 3 or so such dreams that I can remember. They stopped after about age 7 or so.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;About a year after taking up meditation, while meditating I had a vision. An image of a woman&amp;#039;s arm with a silver bracelet with purple stones. It was like I was seeing something that was happening &amp;#034;through&amp;#034; my eyelids. I was definitely not asleep. My friend came over that night and she said to me, &amp;#034;Do you like my new bracelet?&amp;#034; Then the arm went in front of my face and it had the bracelet in a 100% match to the vision. After that I would have &amp;#034;context&amp;#034;-based &amp;#034;intuitive&amp;#034; premonitions such as the sudden knowledge my boss who I hadn&amp;#039;t spoke to for a year would contact me, then going downstairs to find an email from him. The premonitions gradually became less &amp;#034;content&amp;#034;-based (i.e. exact visions) and more theme-based like this. I never got the &amp;#034;exact vision match&amp;#034; again but still have &amp;#034;theme&amp;#034; premonitions from time to time, in decreasing frequency despite keeping up the practice.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Another Vision&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;While meditating once I saw a golden Buddha similar to this: http://www.rsaa.org.uk/images/photos/full/golden_buddha.jpg&lt;br /&gt;Again, it was like seeing through my eyelids. I&amp;#039;ve had other visions since but more non-descript (I don&amp;#039;t even remember them now) but, again, they are of ever-decreasing frequency despite maintaining the practice.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Thought Transfer&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Countless times somebody in my vicinity has said the exact words I was thinking. It happens so quickly it makes me wonder if I heard them first then thought it and my brain&amp;#039;s just &amp;#034;out of sync&amp;#034; with itself. These were often people I didn&amp;#039;t know and wasn&amp;#039;t talking to, e.g. people in shops.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;A few months ago, a girl I was seeing came to mine and talked about a new tattoo she had designed. I described it for her and, wide-eyed, she said &amp;#034;Yes! It&amp;#039;s exactly like that.&amp;#034; I then showed her the new logo for my site which nobody had ever seen and it was exactly like her tattoo. She sent me the design and it was the same. I had several such experiences with her; it was an intensely pleasurable time.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Making People &amp;#034;Do&amp;#034; Things&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I was living in France for about 9 months. In the second month I was coming off a tramadol addiction, was completely alone in the town and didn&amp;#039;t speak French. I felt like hell; in pain, confused and scared. Walking around town trying to be &amp;#034;present&amp;#034;, I looked at someone and they fell over. Not even a stumble, a complete fall which hurt them. This then happened to &lt;strong&gt;another three people in a row&lt;/strong&gt;, over the course of about 2 hours. It was like my pain just focused like a laser on them.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;On the &amp;#034;positive&amp;#034; side, when I was playing with the idea of &amp;#034;mind control&amp;#034; (and therefore temporarily was fully bought-into the idea) I could see a girl in a nightclub for example and have her walk over and kiss me or least just stand in front of me -- from the opposite side of the bar or club. This has happened a dozen times or so when I&amp;#039;ve felt in the &amp;#034;space&amp;#034; where this would &amp;#034;certainly&amp;#034; happen.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Visualization&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I have had intentional visualizations come true to a degree of accuracy that beggars belief. This usually happens when I return to visualization after several months of &amp;#034;not believing in it any more&amp;#034;. Something will prompt me to try it again, and it will happen exactly as I wish it. After that (which I&amp;#039;ve been presuming is when my ego gets involved), these visualizations have decreasing returns till they appear to stop working again. The cycle typically repeats a few months later.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;These have included finding money, getting girls, and new business opportunities just landing in my lap.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;A recurring theme (I perceive) is that these &amp;#034;powers&amp;#034; (not just visualization, some of the others above as well) happen best when I am &lt;strong&gt;curious &lt;/strong&gt;about something -- i.e. not &amp;#034;ego-invested&amp;#034;. If I&amp;#039;m trying something just to see what happens, it&amp;#039;s got a high chance of happening exactly like I thought it would. If I&amp;#039;m doing them to &amp;#034;get&amp;#034; specific things, they work far less well and often not at all, at which point I lose faith in them and abandon them, usually to pick them up again a few months later when something piques my curiosity again.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sexual Powers&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I&amp;#039;m not going to go into this too much lest I be accused of bragging but I feel I can &amp;#034;enter&amp;#034; the other person while having sex. I can give her an experience she&amp;#039;s never had before, and dozens of orgasms easily even if she&amp;#039;s not had them before (their words, not mine). It&amp;#039;s like a powerful kind of state transfer; I feel like I &amp;#034;am&amp;#034; her temporarily. One woman did a painting of me as Jesus Christ after such an experience. Sex is &lt;strong&gt;always &lt;/strong&gt;transcendent for me.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;This started happening to this level shortly after starting to practise meditation. Thankfully this one has never stopped working. &lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/happy.gif" &gt; If anything it has increased significantly with each new experience.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;strong&gt;QUESTIONS&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;- Are any of these &amp;#034;siddhis&amp;#034; and if so which ones?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;- I&amp;#039;ve seen it mentioned around here that the book &amp;#034;Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha&amp;#034; has a section on &amp;#034;Magick and The Power&amp;#034;. I downloaded the free e-book version after following some links and I don&amp;#039;t see this section?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;- Am I &amp;#034;special&amp;#034;? I&amp;#039;m pretty titillated by what I&amp;#039;ve seen of &amp;#034;the other side&amp;#034;. Can I harness these &amp;#034;powers&amp;#034; and get them working consistently? I would love to find out what can be done!&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;- So where do I go from here? What do I look up next?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I have other experiences such as OOBE too but I think this post is long enough for now.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Thanks!&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Edd a.k.a. Illuminatus</description> <pubDate>Wed, 16 Jul 2014 21:38:59 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5557625</guid> <dc:creator>Edd</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-07-16T21:38:59Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Guide on Willpower and GTD (Getting Things Done)</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5553263</link> <description>That&amp;#039;s a good description.  If you just stay with details of objects (especially details that trigger likes and dislikes) you&amp;#039;ll probably act on those low-level construals.  A high level construal will likely be values and goals so those reminders can keep you on track with them. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Asking why is good but I like how the Dalai Lama gets us to look with more detail at the pros and cons of our desired objects so that the reaction is more realistic.  The amygdala is a little bipolar in that it likes things 100% and dislikes things 100%.  So for example when a person goes from OK behaviour to slightly bad behaviour then another person judging will flip between 100% liking of the person to 100% disliking instead of something more nuanced.</description> <pubDate>Sat, 05 Jul 2014 06:12:12 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5553263</guid> <dc:creator>Richard Zen</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-07-05T06:12:12Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Guide on Willpower and GTD (Getting Things Done)</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5553259</link> <description>Hello, Richard, the word &amp;#034;construals&amp;#034; was new to me, but I did study Latin, but I decided to look it up:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Helvetica&amp;#x20;Neue&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;Arial&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;sans-serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&amp;#034;Construal is a social psychological term that refers to the way in which (or the process of) people perceive, comprehend, and interpret the world around them. We all need to interpret the world around us so that we can make sense of the world and determine our own actions and judgements. For example, imagine you are walking down the street and in front of you someone stops, falls to the ground, grabs their chest, and starts to turn blue. You would begin to interpret this situation, running through all the possible explanations for this situation and the person&amp;#039;s behavior. Is it a joke, are they choking, having a heart attack, is this an emergency, etc. This would be construal - your interpretation of the situation.&amp;#034;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Helvetica&amp;#x20;Neue&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;Arial&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;sans-serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Helvetica&amp;#x20;Neue&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;Arial&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;sans-serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&amp;#034;con·strue&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;(k&lt;img src="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;img&amp;#x2e;tfd&amp;#x2e;com&amp;#x2f;hm&amp;#x2f;GIF&amp;#x2f;schwa&amp;#x2e;gif" /&gt;n-str&lt;img src="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;img&amp;#x2e;tfd&amp;#x2e;com&amp;#x2f;hm&amp;#x2f;GIF&amp;#x2f;oomacr&amp;#x2e;gif" /&gt;&lt;img src="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;img&amp;#x2e;tfd&amp;#x2e;com&amp;#x2f;hm&amp;#x2f;GIF&amp;#x2f;prime&amp;#x2e;gif" /&gt;)&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;em&gt;v.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;strong&gt;con·strued&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;con·stru·ing&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;con·strues&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;em&gt;v.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;em&gt;tr.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1. &lt;/strong&gt;To adduce or explain the meaning of; interpret: &lt;span style="color: #226699"&gt;&lt;em&gt;construed my smile as assent.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/span&gt; See Synonyms at &lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;www&amp;#x2e;thefreedictionary&amp;#x2e;com&amp;#x2f;explain"&gt;explain&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;strong&gt;2. &lt;/strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Grammar&lt;/em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;a. &lt;/strong&gt;To analyze the structure of (a clause or sentence).&lt;strong&gt;b. &lt;/strong&gt;To use &lt;span style="color: #1d4994"&gt;&lt;u&gt;syntactically:&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span style="color: #226699"&gt;&lt;em&gt;The noun fish can be construed as singular or plural.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3. &lt;/strong&gt;To translate, especially aloud.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;em&gt;v.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;em&gt;intr.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1. &lt;/strong&gt;To analyze grammatical structure.&lt;strong&gt;2. &lt;/strong&gt;To be subject to grammatical analysis.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;em&gt;n.&lt;/em&gt; (k&lt;img src="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;img&amp;#x2e;tfd&amp;#x2e;com&amp;#x2f;hm&amp;#x2f;GIF&amp;#x2f;obreve&amp;#x2e;gif" /&gt;n&lt;img src="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;img&amp;#x2e;tfd&amp;#x2e;com&amp;#x2f;hm&amp;#x2f;GIF&amp;#x2f;prime&amp;#x2e;gif" /&gt;str&lt;img src="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;img&amp;#x2e;tfd&amp;#x2e;com&amp;#x2f;hm&amp;#x2f;GIF&amp;#x2f;oomacr&amp;#x2e;gif" /&gt;&lt;img src="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;img&amp;#x2e;tfd&amp;#x2e;com&amp;#x2f;hm&amp;#x2f;GIF&amp;#x2f;lprime&amp;#x2e;gif" /&gt;)An interpretation or translation.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #85a8c2"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;[Middle English &lt;span style="font-size: 10px"&gt;construen&lt;/span&gt;, from Late Latin &lt;span style="font-size: 10px"&gt;c&lt;img src="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;img&amp;#x2e;tfd&amp;#x2e;com&amp;#x2f;hm&amp;#x2f;GIF&amp;#x2f;omacr&amp;#x2e;gif" /&gt;nstruere&lt;/span&gt;, from Latin, &lt;em&gt;to build&lt;/em&gt;; see &lt;strong&gt;construct&lt;/strong&gt;.]&amp;#034;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;Now I will go back and continue to read your posts, thank you.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;</description> <pubDate>Sat, 05 Jul 2014 05:49:46 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5553259</guid> <dc:creator>Colleen Karalee Peltomaa</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-07-05T05:49:46Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Guide on Willpower and GTD (Getting Things Done)</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5552040</link> <description>&lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;www&amp;#x2e;dharmaoverground&amp;#x2e;org&amp;#x2f;web&amp;#x2f;guest&amp;#x2f;discussion&amp;#x2f;-&amp;#x2f;message_boards&amp;#x2f;message&amp;#x2f;5552028"&gt;http://www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discussion/-/message_boards/message/5552028&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;T&lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;www&amp;#x2e;dharmaoverground&amp;#x2e;org&amp;#x2f;web&amp;#x2f;guest&amp;#x2f;discussion&amp;#x2f;-&amp;#x2f;message_boards&amp;#x2f;message&amp;#x2f;5552028"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;he practicing Mind Book Review</description> <pubDate>Mon, 30 Jun 2014 01:21:20 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5552040</guid> <dc:creator>Richard Zen</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-06-30T01:21:20Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: being lucid (awake) during deep sleep - possible? related to jhanas?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5540277</link> <description>I have induced many lucid dreams over the years by awakening after about 5 or 6 hours of sleep and returning to light sleep.  Lucid dreaming is a scientifically validated hybrid state between waking and dreaming and has some of the characteristics of both.  I don&amp;#039;t see how it is possible to lucid dream in a deep sleep delta state, but I haven&amp;#039;t read Charlie Morley&amp;#039;s book and perhaps it really is possible although it seems contradictory to me.  Now that I am meditating and no longer putting the work into inducing lucid dreams, my hope is to encounter the possibility of experiencing this state again around the 4th Jhana where I understand one can encounter a lot of astral and bardo experiences.   I am somewhere now between Jhana 1 and 2, so I can&amp;#039;t verify this yet.  &lt;span style="font-size: 12px"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;</description> <pubDate>Sat, 31 May 2014 13:08:08 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5540277</guid> <dc:creator>Carole Lindberg</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-05-31T13:08:08Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: being lucid (awake) during deep sleep - possible? relate</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5537507</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Dream Walker:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;On my 10 day Goenka retreat I would continue to have awareness and attention while asleep and dreaming. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;It&amp;#039;s happened to me on a Goenka retreat too. I was going through a couple of days of intense fear symptoms while awake.  I had a dream one of those nights that was turning fearful - novel in itself since I hadn&amp;#039;t had a bad dream in years though I used to have them all the time a long while ago. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I found myself inside the dream while the dream continued. I wasn&amp;#039;t awake, I was in the dream observing the dream rationally while the dream continued, it was hyper-real as if I was there, yet I was aware it was a dream. I am used to waking up from bad dreams the moment I realize it is just a dream. So I also knew immediately this time was unique since I stayed asleep and dreaming.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I knew something changed as a result of the observation, I had a sense of progress.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I have since found myself observing interesting dreams as they occur. The observation has never been as hyper-real as the first time, or maybe I&amp;#039;ve got used to it.</description> <pubDate>Sun, 25 May 2014 10:41:37 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5537507</guid> <dc:creator>Chee Ni</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-05-25T10:41:37Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: "Spirits"... I'd Like to Meet Them, Anyone Experienced Out There?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5536505</link> <description>Hi,&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;   I had an experience of this nature. I was doing meditation on the breath, but I was a little sleepy and nodded off for a few minutes.  On coming back I heard multiple voices talking. Quitely at first, so I focused attention on them and they became louder.  It was very strange really. There was definitly several different voices but they proceded one after the other.  They all made short statements. The nature of the statements were &lt;u&gt;all&lt;/u&gt; negative with ill will behind them.  I was composed enough to remain detached from the experience, which I just found fascinating.  This lasted for a few minutes, and I wondered if they were going to stop as they were getting louder and louder. In the end, it was my choice, I just changed the focus of my attention and they disapeared.</description> <pubDate>Thu, 22 May 2014 05:51:26 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5536505</guid> <dc:creator>Thor Jackson</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-05-22T05:51:26Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: "Spirits"... I'd Like to Meet Them, Anyone Experienced O</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5536126</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Daniel M. Ingram:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;2) However, something in the ethics of this rings oddly to me now, like some wrong was done. I would advocate for trying some more compassionate approach that considers the full balance of things, the point of view of the purported demon, and tries to find a reasonable solution that doesn&amp;#039;t involve harsh commands and banishment so much as some totally different paradigm or point of view based on loving-kindness, resonating at some totally different frequency of perspective, and the like.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Thanks Dan, that was useful corroboration for a similar event I&amp;#039;ve had.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I was being bothered by a low level demon for a while. I once saw my girlfriend&amp;#039;s face turn into a fanged demon just as I was about to kiss her, it left me a bit rattled thinking that it was a sign I should break up with her. Thankfully she stayed around as I sorted my feelings, and luckily for me I never told her about this.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Then my neighbor&amp;#039;s very friendly dog bit me hard on my left hand between my 2nd and 3rd metacarpals as I was playing with him. He looked like he had been startled; luckily I had no motor or neurological impairment despite the deep gash. I didn&amp;#039;t tie any of this to the demon until later. I nevertheless went on a retreat as planned with my heavily bandaged hand.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;During the retreat everytime I sat down to meditate I would see scary snake images at least once every session. A few days in I was lying on the grass when I saw through my closed eyes a black snake glide past my head. I also had a warning appear in my head that this was my chance to leave the retreat. I stayed on, and that same night I saw visions of the snake biting me near my hut the same time next day. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Pertrurbed I decided to equip myself with a torch light everytime I stepped out. I also sat down in meditation during the next few hours and resolved on three occasions that day to forgive the snake that was about to bite me, and to ask for its well being and the well being of its family. The third time I meditated on it I saw an image of the snake disappearing; and as if in reaction an enraged winged red demon with the face of a bull was about to attack me from behind. In an instant Lord Shiva appeared and an icicle spear erupted in the demon&amp;#039;s flight path to block him. The demon appeared to fall down vanquished. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;That was the end of it. I instantly knew I wouldn&amp;#039;t be bothered again. I was then able to tie the demon to the dog bite, the girl friend morph and so on. I&amp;#039;ve never encountered snakes during meditation since.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I think asking an abstract or specific known-good higher being to protect you is better than taking on the demon yourself.</description> <pubDate>Wed, 21 May 2014 10:48:47 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5536126</guid> <dc:creator>Chee Ni</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-05-21T10:48:47Z</dc:date> </item> </channel> </rss> 