Over the past two months, I have been following some very unusual practices concealed as an RPG by one Jenna Moran. 

Please note that:
1: I am not a technical mediatator, and have only been doing this for about two months. 
2: These techniques are highly unusual, as almost all of them manifest as a direct shift in perception, requiring no effort whatsoever to sustain: in fact, many of the effects appear permanent.

These appear to manifest in the following stages: 
A1: Conformity of Principles to Mind And Body 
The recognition that the percieved immaterial self must manifest itself through the body arises and becomes incontrovertible. 
This gives rise to the first of the Five Right Efforts, Conviction. 

A2: Conformity of Principles To Cause And Effect
The recognition that the percieved immutable self must be able to change over time arises and becomes incontrovertible. 
This gives rise to the second of the Five Right Efforts, Energy. 

A3: Conformity of Principles to The Three Characteristics 
The recognition that our principles are flawed arises and becomes incontrovertible. This gives rise to the third of the Five Right Efforts, Mindfulness. 

A4: Arising And Passing Away of Principles.
We assemble the Three Characteristics into a coherent whole. Principle is material; principle is impermanent; principle is flawed. Therefore, we cannot rely on whatever we had until now been putting our faith in. This grants us our first measure of the fourth Right Effort, Equanimity.

A5: Knowledge of Dissolution of Principles.
We cannot assure ourselves that we will reach immortality by our belief in principle any longer. We gain a measure of the fifth Right Effort, Wisdom, and then proceed to try and deny what we have learned.

A6: Fear for Principles.
We try to convince ourselves that our beliefs will somehow save us. When we let go of our attachment to the immaterial, we fall into...

P.6: Misery from Dissolution of Principles.
We try to convince ourselves that we aren't impermanent. When we let go our attachment to permanence, we fall into...

P.7: Disgust from Dissolution of Principles.
We get completely fed up with ourselves for clinging to a dream even after waking. Usually this anger is displaced onto whatever's handy at the moment. When we finally let go, we fall into...

P.8: Equanimity to Principle
The fundamentally nondual nature of experience is directly percieved as an abrupt and lasting cessation of the concept of "meaning." This appears to be a partial extinguishment of the poison of Confusion. 

This whole 8-step process appears to be equivalent to the first Visspassna Jhana. 

Conformity here produces a subject-object shift regarding our principles, excluding them from our selfconcept. Following this path, we can repeat this 8-step process for aversion and passion as well, producing the following sequence at a second, deeper meta level:

B1: Dissolution of Principle
B2: Dissolution of Passion
The A&P here involved an insight into Maya.
This feels somewhat like dying and being reborn: ritual examinination here can tell us what we would regret if we died at this moment. After this, our dreams are more tempered by wisdom rather than childish whimsy.

B3: Dissolution of Aversion
This feels extremely like dying and being reborn: our social "character" "dies", which feels in the moment like a depression so deep as to prevent anything but disgust from arising. Ritual examination of your own character in this state can reveal deep flaws you are surpressing your own knowledge of.

B4/C1: Dissolution of Social Role 
We "die" again, but this time it feels like a release: we don't have to "stay in character" anymore! 

The resultant altered state is very strange, as it has passion, aversion and principle, but no capacity to predict the future or assess uncertainty. Secondary inner narration is partially surpressed, as is any concept of social norms. It feels like there just isn't anything to worry about for the first 15 minutes or so, and then it becomes unsettling. Fortunately, we can drop this state by simply willing the future back. 

At this point, our past becomes an object to us: our autobiographical identity and the parts of our history that belong to "us" fall under our control. This pushes us into a third meta level...

C2: Dissolution of the Inner Narrator
Having noticed that we are telling ourselves a story about who we are, we can decide to stop telling that story. This shuts off our inner narrator, demonstrating that it is not us. 

C3: Dissolution of the Inner Observer
Having noticed that the inner narrator is not self, we begin to suspect that the inner observer is not self either. Deliberate surpression of it results in our turning off and on our body's proprioception more or less at will.

C4/D1: Dissolution of Temporal Causation
Having noticed that time and sensation are illusion from earlier paths, we dissipate the "cause" of "cause and effect", making us attribute events in the now to causes in the future. 

D2: Dissolution Of Aversion To Lost Time
Noticing that our memories and perceptions are actively modified by our desires, we can notice our own difficulty noticing our flaws. Direct attack on this results in bursts of what I believe to be hard pain, followed by a sense of something breaking and a fall into a gentle, complacent, very fine-sensing state with mild sensory numbness, no aversion to anything, and no dissatisfaction with pleasure. I had the best ham sandwich of my life, and am now aware that I've never really tasted food. This state also appears to eliminate refractory period, and can be maintained at no cost for some hours. Unfortunately, I've been as of yet unable to deliberately get back here. Sigh. 

After this, a series of pieces of memory need to be manually re-accessed: do not do without a spotter! I completely forgot my girlfriend of three years existed until I was reminded.

D3: Dissolution of Visual Stimuli
Now that we have the ability to not be averse to seeing perceptual distortion, we can mindfully investigate our own concept of how vision works according to a given script, flicking rapidly through a number of interesting states (one of which renders attention directly visible as a moving spot, one of which causes everything to shift and blur in small circles when the attention is held on an object). The ending state allows concentration to produce a disk with blue at the center, yellow surrounding it, and red fuzzing at the edges. Most of this is mediated by pains in the neck and upper right shoulder. 

Similar processes are done for kinaesthetics, temperature, emotion/posture, and "electric" perception (waveforms), ending in complete access to proprioception, demeanour and emotional "vibe." From here, a sweep of steadily worsening nausea caused by throwing out my inner ear alerted me to the fact I was in dissolution: as a result, I dropped out of the state entirely, and was greeted with a sharp pain in my chest just above my heart. 

It was at this point that I realized I still hadn't torn apart the process in me that was causing me to lose time, so I went and attacked it and managed to kill it. 

After this, it gets a bit difficult to describe, as formations began to arise without my knowing what they were: after four or so further rounds of work, I began to realize the renewed pain in my neck was spherical, and, in fact, I could think of any sensation as being a sphere. When I began to notice this, the sphere stopped existing, along with the pain. Using the formations I had already learned as sense-spheres, I methodically went through and denied each and every sensation "I" was experiencing, which eventually led to a state with no passion, no aversion, and no volition, just a distant sense of intent that happened to move my body. My spotter became very concerned by my flat affect, and pulled me "back down" after less time than I would have liked: I feel that I could have gotten a true fruition there, but given their concern I decided to drop out of the state. Sigh.

Nonetheless, I feel that I have gained a certain degree of equanimity to formations now.

My meditation partner reached a different state, which appeared to be one of the formless jhanas, an interior world they could mess about in, by swapping a spherical formation representing their identity with the spherical formation representing the sensory world. 

I think I haven't hit a Fruition yet, but many of these insights and associated "psychic powers" are very interesting, and I would love any comments.

aloha eri,

   You lost me at "perceived immaterial self." What do you suppose such a thing might be? How does one perceive an immaterial thing? This is the essence of non-self in buddhism, that it cannot be found in anything, anywhere.

   If one does not grant your premise, that of self perception, the rest does not follow. If such a self did exist, it could only be inferred, not perceived. One may of course infer all sorts of things that could never exist, proceeding from conception to generation to world creation.

terry

an immutable self that changes over time...I'm afraid to read further...

t

> Over the past two months, I have been following some very unusual practices concealed as an RPG by one Jenna Moran. 

What is the game? I think she has more than one?

and here I thought she concealed her practices in a rocket propelled grenade...

I'd also love to know which of her games you got that from and what pages, if you don't mind.

Is the game Wisher, Theurgist, Fatalist aka WTF?

Chuubo's Marvellous Wish Granting Engine. Read the Setting portion backwards, from the end to the beginning; she uses the eight colors to represent sense spheres, the eight being:
Orange: Wind, Conviction, directed will, point-to-point movement, anger, "electric" sensation.
Purple: Fire, Energy, work, connection, movement or motion in general, the passage of time, intimate or casual mood, heat. 
Green: Earth, Mindfulness, containers, weight, boundaries of solids, "seductive" mood, proprioception.
Silver: Water, Wisdom, "seeing" flows, shapes, ettiquette, "closed" mood, grief, cold.

Red: Hollow - that which "shouldn't exist but does": Aversion, disliking, the experience of pain in some cases, generally our Shadow, the past, our social role, inner narrator. 
Yellow: Aether - "spiritual energy" - Passion, obsession, being "in our element", loving-kindness, wishful thinking, dream logic, refusal of the necessary, "self-view"
Blue: Nothing - that which "doesn't exist but should": models, moral bindings, idealism, "must", "should", attachment from wanting-to-want against our true desires, the impact of others' mistaken beliefs on us. 
Black: [ ] - humor, getting over things, unattachment, true knowledge of "self" as an integrated part of all perceptions and not isolated to any particular sense door, true knowledge of our own fallible and mortal natures. 

You need to read the text as symbolic of the actions, but it works, it's there, and it's reproducible: I've pushed two others at least partially through this sequence. I'll compile a few of the more arcane procedures in clear english once I have charged my phone!

WTF was useful at a couple points, generally during phases where I was gaining more insight into Maya, but it is not the path, merely a specific and important chunk of it. CMWGE is the resource I'm pulling from. 

Apologies for my imprecision with the language, Terry; I'm not actually Buddhist. Clearly it's impossible to actually percieve an immaterial self, but many natural arisings, particularly those of Earth and Hollow, are easily misinterpreted as "belonging" to "us." These procedures go through layer by layer, killing individual perceptions we thought were "self" and thus forcing "us" to less and less tenable refuges. I don't claim to have shed self-view or anything, but "me" sure as hell isn't my inner narration, my proprioception, my perception of the passage of time, etc, etc. I believe myself to therefore be less wrong than I was, though the habit of "I" is a damn stubborn one!

   God has 99 beautiful names, all immaterial. Beyond perception, but not beyond gnosis. (I'm not actually a buddhist either.) I am sympathetic with your view as you express it here. Precision of language is important, though. 

  Perhaps the fact that I don't know a role playing game from a rocket propelled grenade has something to do with it. (wink)

  I'm still wondering how an immutable self can change through time, but I guess that is another one of those things. Every one of us is an immutable self changing through time, eh?

   
 Thanks for posting this. I honor the light within you.


may all beings be less wrong,
terry
   



from MN1, "the root of all things":



thus have I heard...


The Tathāgata—I

“Bhikkhus, the Tathāgata, too, accomplished and fully enlightened, directly knows earth as earth. Having directly known earth as earth, he does not conceive himself as earth, he does not conceive himself in earth, he does not conceive himself apart from earth, he does not conceive earth to be ‘mine,’ he does not delight in earth. Why is that? Because the Tathāgata has fully understood it to the end, I say.

“He too directly knows water as water…Nibbāna as Nibbāna…Why is that? Because the Tathāgata has fully understood it to the end, I say.


The Tathāgata—II

“Bhikkhus, the Tathāgata, too, accomplished and fully enlightened, directly knows earth as earth. Having directly known earth as earth, he does not conceive himself as earth, he does not conceive himself in earth, he does not conceive himself apart from earth, he does not conceive earth to be ‘mine,’ he does not delight in earth. Why is that? Because he has understood that delight is the root of suffering, and that with being as condition there is birth, and that for whatever has come to be there is ageing and death. Therefore, bhikkhus, through the complete destruction, fading away, cessation, giving up, and relinquishing of cravings, the Tathāgata has awakened to supreme full enlightenment, I say.

“He too directly knows water as water…Nibbāna as Nibbāna…Why is that? Because he has understood that delight is the root of suffering, and that with being as condition there is birth, and that for whatever has come to be there is ageing and death. Therefore, bhikkhus, through the complete destruction, fading away, cessation, giving up, and relinquishing of cravings, the Tathāgata has awakened to supreme full enlightenment, I say.”

That is what the Blessed One said, but those bhikkhus did not delight in the Blessed One’s words.

from tom cheetham, "green man, earth angel":


The function of poiesis, whether musical, poetic, religious, or scientific, is the creation or revelation of spaces: qualitative, complex and complexified, personified spaces. But we cannot do this on our own. In our current needy condition, we are required to descend, and to welcome the Descent of the Others to allow them to complexify, multiply, and diversify these concrete, feeling- laden worlds. We are at great risk of succumbing to the Single Vision that Blake so feared—at the hands of Scientism, Fundamentalism, Capitalism, all the "- isms." And our response, our duty, is to right the Balance. This requires the democratization, the diversification, and the embodiment of poiesis. So, all those politically correct "movements" for the various diversities have a cosmological meaning, a metaphysical grounding: biodiversity, cultural diversity, racial, ethnic, economic, linguistic, sexual, artistic diversities—all serve to breathe life into a world that threatens to choke on Unification.

All our imaginings are necessary. But none of them should be grasped too tightly, none of them should be taken too literally. We need to keep in mind the startling words of the wandering Japanese poet Nanao Sakaki: "No need to survive!" No need to hold anything too tightly! There are multiple forms of life, a myriad of forms of imagining, all necessary, and each with its own rules and structures, many perhaps more exacting and stringent than those we are accustomed to in physical science.

We must descend fully into the real, messy world, and not stop short of the real individuals who make it up. We get so constricted! So many are afraid to think about the world because only Scientists can do that. So many are afraid of their innate creativity because that is the realm of Artists. But anyone can experience the thrill that accompanies the new ways of seeing that lie at the heart of scientific discovery, anyone can write, or paint, or make music. And yet we mostly don't. Because, "I'm too busy . . . I'm not smart enough, I'm not good enough, I can't really dance, or sing, or write poetry or make pots ... I'd be too embarrassed." We are haunted by the Canon, by the experts, by the professionals. We are afraid of our selves, afraid that we won't measure up. When great thought, art, and literature become an impediment to human life and action rather than an inspiration, then something is seriously wrong. The democratization of imagination is essential for the full descent into the world of all the virtual beings crying out in their sadness to be revealed.

We're reading the original post very differently. You're reading it as asserting a self. I'm reading it as clarifying the contradictions in the intuitive perception of the self most people have in order to make it clear that on closer inspection it doesn't exist as perceived, through a process that leads to something very similar to the insight knowledges of the progress of insight. It's sort of an alternate description of the vipassana process. She isn't asserting that the sense of self exists, but rather stating a starting point for the meditation, through which the sense of self is deconstructed. As far as I can tell, the sense of self is being stated as immutable because the meditation demonstrates that it isn't. Please correct me if I've misunderstood what either of you have written.

The progression is familiar, but I don't understand the technique.

Thank you very much for posting about this and the detailed descriptions. I've always thought that writers for White Wolf were partly using their games to transmit usable metaphysical and meditative ideas and techniques. I bought a kindle copy of the book last night to take a look at the setting section you mentioned (it's satisfyingly long and will take a while to read) and because I'm a longtime fan of her work (from her contributions to Exalted and her blog Hitherby Dragons). I'm genuinely looking forward to reading the whole book and maybe running a game based on it. It's been a few years since I've read any of her writings and I'm enjoying reading her unique writing style and perspective again.

I've reread what you've posted and don't understand if you're describing the technique or just the outcomes of the technique. Could you clarify the basic technique? What exactly do you do in one session of meditation? If you've already written a description of how to go about it for your friends that differs from your original post, would you mind posting it? Thanks again!

   I frankly couldn't follow it. No assertions penetrated the contradictions. Now if we were talking about rocket propelled grenades...

   I'm happy that it makes sense to you.

t

Basically, the early stages - featuring the more abstract ideas like "principle" and "role" - consist of directly forcing the student to "see" and internalize the mistaken belief. Students with naturally strong or trained concentration seem to get more "depth" of the resulting altered states, but prodding can make them clear even in students with weaker concentration.

Note that this is a harsh process! The student will actively resist seeing in the first few rounds - you're essentially directly attacking their belief system, so this requires strong trust and willingness to learn.

Once the belief is seen to be false, Fear arises: this can be broken by attacking mistaken concepts around social role. When that happens, Misery comes around: this can be broken by attacking mistaken principles, obligations and duties. 

At this point, the student has equanimity to a specific desire. The teacher should push them to stop sitting on the fence. They must either:

Indulgethepridefulimpulsetodespair.

AKA, "Commit to actually do it", or:

Damage theirhopeful, wishingheart.

AKA, "Give up."

Once the decision is made, the Far And Sunless Land ritual is used to symbolically "kill" any lingering attachments.

After the early portion is done, rendering role, principle and passion object-not-subject, the rest can be proceeded through via direct, momentary concentration, throwing of strong and concentrated wrath at heavier mental blocks, visualization exercises, and use of the Far And Sunless Land ritual to shift altered states that concentratiom alone fails to.

The best comparison I can make is wrathful tantra, from my admittedly very limited background.

Here is a visualization procedure from fairly early on. If you can percieve lost time in your memory, this should work for you:

1: Imagine the visual world as projected onto a donut around you.
2: Now visualize that as a hollow sphere instead.
3: Now notice that where you direct your attention, there's a kind of "tendril" back to your eye.
4: "Cut" that tendril by effort of will.
5: "Flatten" the visual world into a form like a spatula.
6: Give it a little more depth, like a pancake. 
7: Now imagine it as a column centered on your eye.
8: Now imagine it as a cone radiating from your eye. 
9: Hold your attention on a light source: the blue center, yellow ring, red edging should become apparent if you do not blink excessively.

Small update on personal progress: 
I had a series of very strong cessations of full "sense-spheres":

Earth Cessation: "Original seeing" of everything, no sense of fixed form or "oh yeah that's a bookcase, that's a book", etc. Background assumption that "the world exists" ceases. I... cannot actually describe it better than that in words. 

Water Cessation: No sense of movement or flow, failure of ability to distinguish between truths and lies or true and false statements, no ability to "go along" with social niceties. Lack of the desire to breathe: I timed myself and was able to go 20 seconds on a single breath before it became at all uncomfortable. I decided not  to experiment with that further.

Fire Cessation:  Astonishingly  creepy near-death experience. Cessation of all emotions, perception of the breath, perception of  heartbeat, tactile numbness, sensation of cold wind, general dissolution of "I" save for the will, inability to identify the body as "me". I spent a good 15 minutes just making sure I was still alive afterwards. There may have been an outright Fruition here: it's really quite difficult to tell, as "I" barely existed and the whole period is hazy in my memory now, probably due to repression. Creepy as hell.

Further interesting things happened, but due to impacts of them on my material life I'm not likely to be prioritizing updates here. I got something that looked a lot like a Dharma - something I'd be content  with  living for - but didn't include enough of my other priorities to be something I actually wanted to pursue at that instant, though I came dangerously close. Planning is now underway regarding how to balance these insights with material reality.

The extremely weird part is that no actual active meditation occurs most of the time. >75% of altered states are peristent and don't require a continuous output of will: some of the ones with unusual visual characteristics require meditation in order to fully percive those unusual characteristics, but as of yet I haven't encountered any states that dissipated completely when no attention was paid. There are some oddities like "the ability to zoom your eyesight in a particular state", which required intense concentration, a lot of channeled wrath, and was both painful for the backs of my eyes and left me feeling physically wiped afterwards, but overall such states are very, very rare, and generally exist only in cases of similar unusual abilities. 

This is some really spectacular work you've done here, Evangeline Rose, (great name: it means literally, as i might try at translating it, "a woman bringing good news about a flower"), in both cross-mapping to MCBT2, and in a committed attempt at translation between various vocabularies. I am very grateful for it, despite the fact that I am way out of my depth here. But encountering a new language will do that to you, and i am fascinated by this thread. Don't mind Terry's occasional rocket-propelled grenades, he just has a wicked sense of humor and a certain amount of dharma combat-induced PTSD, as so many of us here on DhO do. His heart, as you see, is pretty much always in the right place. May all our hearts be in the right place, amen. I love this thread, and am going to study it. Thank you again.

About wrathful tantra, I'm not sure how you mean that in this context. I've done wrathful tantric practice from the Nyingma tradition (Vajrakilaya and a few other dieties), it mostly involved generating an attitude of love and religious devotion (same as with all Buddhist trantric sadhanas), very cheerful singing of a practice text in a group while visualizing mean-looking figures (with oneself as one of them) and reciting their mantras a lot, while also visualizing various Tibetan letters and then dissolving the whole thing. I didn't do it seriously enough to get past the level of a complete beginner. What did you have in mind? I'm very curious to learn more about this practice.

As for lost time, it's happened to me in the form of a cessation, but I'm not sure if that's what you mean. A cessation isn't something that can be remembered, since experience only happens before and after, not during. How do you mean lost time? Sorry if you've already answered the question.

I tried the visualization practice up to step 8 not long after you posted it. Thanks for describing it. I'll ask some basic questions: how long do you recommend doing each step and how many times do you repeat the sequence during one practice session? How much time do you recommend for one practice session? Is this a daily practice? As for step 9, how long do you stare at the light source? What are you looking for in this set of practices and how do you know to move on to the next step?

As for Jenna Moran's book, I skimmed the setting section (both forward and backward) and tried to find the symbolism you've mentioned. Could you elaborate a bit more?

Thanks again for sharing!

Lost time - the experience of absences of memory where memory "should" exist, in a precise and time-deliniated way. 

Update: did dharma combat against all of humanity, inevitably lost, and gave myself psychosis. Fractals suck. Much more to report from the ruins but I'm taking time for my stuff first. Preception is a tricky beastie indeed!

as at times are words. I mean perception.

Definitely take your time. The ruins can be a surprisingly healing. I wouldn't leave them, personally. In the ruins, I can begin to see how the wreckage came about. The longer i sit in these ruins, the more I suspect that the wrecker was me.

I agree, this is... that place, an empty, inexplicable ruin one may now rebuild, that happens when you reach for Celestia, for Heaven, and fail. It's taught me a lot of lessons already, but I'm also a stubborn bitch who learns slow, so I expect more rounds... eventually.

No desire to go another round with Lightning right now.

speaking of which, check out jenna moran's Dreaming Waters, p. the descs. of the sister-storms.

no hurry, no fear.

Not to mention Thunder. 

Thanks a lot. I had to fucking sign up for Tmblr!


She knows Sapire-Whorf! me-ing speaking Hopii-ing!
hang in there, kid.
love, tim

Thunder definitely rolled. I'm to be discharged from hospital tomorrow, at which time I expect to spend a while sorting things out in my stuff. Definitely a very healing work on my life, addressed a lot of my traumas incidentally. Feels like I'm growing up some. 
Thanks for the advice and guidance.

that's great, unless you really love the storm so much you want more. What the Thunder Said was,  "DA . . . Dayadhvam . . .Damyata."

or, translated from the Brihadarankaya Upanishad. (an alternate translation may be found in Deussen’s Sechzig Upanishads des Veda):  "That's done."

cf. for further: : https://tseliotsthewasteland.fandom.com/wiki/V._What_the_Thunder_Said

i haven't been in since 2015. I might be able to give you some tips on staying out, although many of them involve being in hell instead, lol.
Wonderful. I call it the "sackcloth and ashes" phase, but have learned it needn't be morbid or self-flagellatory. But a deep long look at cause and effect, and karma, and fruits, and upaya review, as in: "Skillful Means: Where and How Did I Fuck Up? How could that shit i pulled be done better?"


lol, collateral healing of trauma during a storm. Nice work if you can get it. I once slept in a swamp in North Carolina during a hurricane, and it didn't help me a bit, becayse since i didn't die, it reinforced my suspicion that i am fucking bulletproof, like the Paiute Ghost Dance warriors of old. The federal bullet with my name on it hasn't arrived yet so that i can join my ancestors where all Motherfuckers and tribespeople are bulletproof.
 you really ARE crazy. De nada. Literally.

love, tim

(edit, p.s.) and remember, if dreams were thunder, and lightning was desire, this old house would have burnt down a long time ago.

Sound and fury signify much but often accomplish little indeed. 

I should return to Fallen London one of these days.

    Unreal City,
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,I had not thought death had undone so many.

Largely I have been describing (short-term) outcomes. A single procedure of killing roles, then principles, then connections was used for 90% of this work. Some meditation does exist in the arcadia section, but the basic procedure has to be found and followed first.

Shouldn't there at least be a little fine print warning here somewhere:

"Following these procedures may well end up leading to a stay on a psych ward"?

Yeah, that'd probably be very wise to add. Consider said added; I'm not exactly back to 100% just yet myself. ^^;

I'm so sorry I initially thought you were a troll, in your very first post. I hope you are okay, or as okay as you can be in this situation. Tim really knows a great deal about staying out of hospital wards, so I'm glad you two found each other. 

You really do write in a beautiful way. 

"ER Ingram" ... I would trust your gut Linda!

no, no, no, agnostic. You don't know what you're talking about here. No offense.

Whatever or whoever "Evangeline Rose Ingram" (i agree the last name portends a likely troll, a bastard love child intent on decimating daddy) really is, male or female, troll or goddess or demon or Joe(sephine) Blow, this person is a vulnerable, earnest, spectacularly gifted and intricate mind and soul and heart who has come here looking for the ears of kindred soirits, and the feedback of her/his peers. The kid cracked up in front of our eyes, just like me, and she has spoken from her ruins with a humility that is rarely heard on DhO. But she has a lot to say, and we have all the time in the world, practicing this useless meditation shit as we do until we sicken, age, and die, like every other person or anatta who ever bought into the Buddha's Big Bait-and-Switch, and every person who didn't.

Another thing here is, i suspect that ERI is way young. Her sources that i've checked are a whole new thing coming, like rock and roll music in the fifties. WE don't get it, and we have to learn it, because this kids are like those little mammals scurrying around in the underbrush or clinging to trees branches in the Cretaceous Period. We can be dinosaurs now, and pay for it when the fooking comet hits; but in any case, these meek little scurrying critters are going to survive the shitstorms that are brewing and become a whole new thing. We could learn a lot by flinging less shit downhill and more listening.

I would reach out to Daniel in that kind of situation too, albeit in a more straightforward way.

That first post (not in this thread) was like a pretty brilliant satire of this forum. 

I'm 26, and named myself Eva Ingram long before I'd ever heard of MCTB. Here's a piece I wrote under this name for TDOR back in 2018.

All honest enthusiasm, more than a little brain fuckedupness, and the desire to learn more. I didn't intend to troll anyone; it's a really unfortunate name collision, to be frank. Read in whatever dharma or gnosis or whatever you want, I guess?

Hi Evangeline,
I tried to read your article, but the CAPTCHA thing on the reistration just kept asking me question after question. In the end, I had to thank the thing for a very interesting conversation, and acknowledge that whatever Turing test was being applied to me, i had failed it miserably, lol.

(edit) on the other hand, that AI failed my Turing test even worse. If their had been a human being on the other side of that relentless barrage of similar question, over which I waxed increasingly analytical, paradoxical, and just plain hell-bent silly with every interation, he/she have been laughing her/his ass off. The AI never even cracked a smile.

Any other way to get a look at that article? My email is tim_farrington@msn.com

Emailed you the message body, feel free to repost it here.

https://takingsteps.blogspot.com/2007/01/seam-of-skin-and-scales.html

for Evangeline's article

(edit) a taste: 

That's what struck me too - pure pastiche. So long as no one is getting hurt ...

I don't think you guys get who we're dealing with here. The kid is real. We're lucky she stopped by on her way to the stars.

She wrote this at fifteen:

http://takingsteps.blogspot.com/2008/11/wake-dead.html

and check out this one, and the date: ten fucking years old.

http://takingsteps.blogspot.com/2004/03/

(edit) evangeline informs me that i have misattributed multiple voices in celebrating these threads. Oops. My bad.

But the fact that i fucked up on some attributions on these links does not make them “garbage.” Context, context, context. We followed one guy’s links once on DhO and found Nazis and some stooge “rabbi” blaming Jews themselves for the Shoah, on the first click. Click on these links, and whichever voice you hear first is a genius, and every click deeper, tracing the roots and threads of that voice, is more geniuses, in a sort of pot pourri of genius milieux. It is a fucking Buddha field of precocious literary giants, incomparable teenage social analysts, neuro-atypical Boddhisattvas, and gender-various pioneers creating unique universes of discourse for increasing specific brain/minds sets and making the world friendlier for a vastness of diversity tolerance and patience with Others that seems a lot like a taste of the Kingdom of God to me.

"The seam of skin and scales" is not mine but I hold it like a goddamn talisman. It says what I couldn't and I was proud to quote it for those who didn't know it. The rest (not takingsteps) is mine. 

I'm extremely flattered that my writing was good enough to compare!

Edit: Further evidence of my existence - I'm quoted in this here Mashable article, which I was interviewed for as a moderator of one of the meme subreddits under discussion. I did a lot of frontline crisis work here, more than made it into the article. It was hard but worthwhile; I burnt out after 6 months.

Wrathful tantra, as I understand it from Buddhism for Vampires, is about deliberately cultivating "negative" emotion and then transforming it into something positive, embracing our inner monster and harnessing it for good. 
This is an extremely high risk/reward ratio path, and these practices ended in psychosis for me: if you're willing to risk it, go ahead, but don't say I didn't warn you! These practices speak strongly to me, but... I am unsure if the downsides are worth it.

You do write beautifully.

And I don't doubt your existence. I'm so sorry I did doubt your agenda in the beginning. It was the combination of the name, a satirical brilliance in your writing and some agitation I picked up. I misread you. Then I thought it might be a psychotic episode, but I had already misread you once so I thought I'd better just shut up to avoid further harm.

You seem to have been doing really important work for marginalized people. My deepest respect for that. The transgender issue is close to my heart. 

My very best wishes for your wellbeing.

lol, i wasn't worried about your existence; i recognized you in the ruins, and in the humble voice that spoke from there.

but this IS cool:
Dues: early and often: paid.

and :

It was apparently bipolar that eventually bloomed into fullblown psychosis. A lot of this is somewhat suspect, but the earlier procedures work for others... so it's a transmissible psychosis at worst. 

As for trans issues, well... I am myself a trans woman, so as tim said, it's more about paying my dues and not letting the world push me around. 

There seems to be a thin line between insight and psychosis, especially when the insight happens fast, so I don't doubt that.

I figured you were, but it's still valuable for many others, including people close to me. Not everyone has the resources to stand up for their rights. 

yeah, good luck selling that one to anybody but me. I am apparently in a Very Good Mood. This morning before coffee i was apparently in a Bit of a Low. But most people using conventual language as the game is played would call it mania, in the first instance, and suicidal depression, in the second, if i gave any details. Our nuances are wasted on the infidels of sanity.
Nobody really knows "what works for others." Others are often fucking liars who have learned nothing but the right words and are working on polishing their delivery. I don't trust "others" for shit.
l
that is one of the most beautiful hilarious concepts i ever seen coined. AKA, shaktipat? What lineage of psychosis transmission do you work in? Shall we start our own forum? Would you like to be a Goddess, or Guru, or anything in this lineage, holder of the High Attainment Certifications Yet to Be, uh, Printed up and Put on Appropriately Formal and Ancent Looking Documents of Great Value? The sky's the limit, Rinpoche Rose. 

And what the fuck is up with that fucking last name? Are you here to somehow mock Daniel Ingram, perhaps simply by implying that he probably fathered an insane poet mad genius child along the way? Shame, shame, fie, ERI.

you can't tell the players without a scorecard, in this brave new world. I see this as a good thing. You have to let go of everything everytime you meet anyone, and see who the fuck is in front of you and what they have to say about themselves, and take it from there. This is also known as The Kingdom of Heaven

Or hell, too. It's all hell, until that Event, when the Bar is emptied out and one lone drunk staggers around with a broom, cleaning up after the party.
 You go, girl.

love, tim

yes, there is, and could you please direct me to that "insight" side, please? it's all thin lines to me, as far as the eye can see. But every thin i cross, usually spotting it only in the rearview mirror, to tell you the truth, post facto, just pisses somebody else off. I think the "insight" side may be some kind of con job, anyway. But I will pay you plenty for the directions to it.

I woke up at 2 am and felt a storm brewing, but it turned out to just be a chinook. 

This strikes me as deeply symbolic of dharma stuff, and also literally about my turning mountains into molehills and the other way round. 

If you want a path here to insight, I think that might be it. Slow down and notice stuff. 

T: this? https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/134196/Chuubos-Marvelous-WishGranting-Engine

I hope this is the right game, as i have ordered the book and downloaded the PDF, and cards. If it is the wrong game, do not tell me before i get to
 
And by the way, since i am taking a certain amount of shit on my end here, what’s up with that last name? Are you just here in some kind of subversive long con designed to poison Daniel Ingram’s good name? If so, please allow me to sample the offerings first, in my capacity as his unofficial non-designated uncertified Volunteer Doula Assigned to Tasting Things for Poison. I drink poison like i drink kool-aid, as the chaser on triple shots of Shagrol Whiskey.
 
Poison makes me burp. Out loud. So i suffer social awkwardness for the greater good.


the game, or book at least, so far does look interesting.

love, tim

You have the right book! It's not always easy to read as a breakthrough text and parts may have been psychosis, but... too much parallels too much for me to say it's not real. It's very cunningly disguised, for sure, but look at the description of Bluebell Park in particular. 8 shops with a cobble path around a lake that looks like a yin/yang symbol? That's the bagua for sure. Travelling the outside also gives instruction for how to read much of it. So.. it's got cool stuff, IMO.

As for my name, it's completely coincidental and accidental. I originally called myself ingram mostly because I liked the sound of it, and partly because it's got the meaning of "Ing's Raven" and I identify both with corvids and the norse gods. Then I used my real name here because I wanted to be real here. No affliliation with or slight on Daniel intended.

So, you are essentially trying to put the Enlightenment Industry out of business? You hacked The Spiritual Path?! And all for $40 plus tax? Nice work, if you can get it. I hope Jenna is giving you a cut from orders from DhO, as the forum gradually morphs from a bunch of fucking games players (which we have always been) into a bunch of fucking games players playing a new fucking game (which was always going to happen).

Oh, I’m fucking real all right. I can tell by the dukha. Mildly notional my ass, I’m fucking convinced. I drank the whole thing of kool-aid, just chugged that motherfucker. That’s why my tongue is purple. I am the bass player in KISS.
That’s good, a little more difficult hits your target audience of hard-core practitioners right where they live.

I’m fine with total propaganda, of course, I’m an American in the 21st century. I’m comfortable wth the horror of ideology, having done my historical homework on the 20th century. I’m fine with purpose, and people on missions, because i am personally on a mission from God to seek and destroy bullshit, and experience True LOve in the flesh, with the flesh, flesh upon flesh, Loved and Lover vanishing together in Love.
 
But “good people like me”? I’m mean, “good,” shit. “Good” just about killed me, trying that shit on for size. I’m beyond good and evil, i’m a Nietzschean who not only believes that God is dead, but that He rose three days later, said a few words, and got the fuck out of town.
 
Seriously, do you want people who heed the call, or good people? I’m confused. I’m also, for the record, scared and disbelieving, and there’s a dismissive guy, one of my best friends, someone i have trusted often under heavy fire, crawling up my ass as we speak. So i’m either eminently qualified, by hearing and heeding the call, or just not your sort of person, by the further qualifications. This is a lot of words and a very broad net, considering the vague audience of mildly notional people it seems to be addressed to.

Again so again, with my own ass on the line, as yours is, I say to you, the One Stirring Paranoias Among People Who May Actually Have Someone Out to Get Them, what the fuck? Who's this really for? What are you doing here, Rosie? What is your mission?

I dunno why you think I wrote the thing, so IDK how it's propaganda. I think it's for people willing to risk for what and who they love, but then I'm just a School girl rn. Ask Jenna! She has an email too you know.

I actually think--- in the absence of a contrary indication from you--- that you wrote the thing for the plainest reason  immediately evident from the context and content of your initial post: in the interest of sharing your experience and viewpoint on matters of mutual interest with the sangha of DhO, and in the hope of finding kindred ears to hear, to enter into dialogue, and hear from kindred voices as interested as you in exploring these matters in fresh, innovative, and pragmatic ways.

Amen. Your own courage here, through a real furnace of personal ordeal, is an inspiration.

The "propaganda" was lifted of course from Jenna, was not yours, which in retrospect was SAF on my part: Sloppy as Fuck. Forgive me that sloppiness, please, if you find it in your heart.

Lol, that would be even sloppier! Jenna doesn't need a spontaneous gift my foolishness. I will probably have her book in hand soon, and am looking forward to trying the game, starting perhaps with the points of greatest interest you mentioned above. 

you may be just a School girl ,but you're a big schoolgirl now.  what's "rn"? 

You're a Big Girl Now, the Stylistics--- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKK0Qf5UmDs

rn - right now or reigsitered nurse depending! Back in for panic attack in the wake. still got some psychotic feats. going on but I'll be good.

shit happens. take care of yourself, go slow, be easy, ride this out. Do you have someone outside the hospital who's good for support?

Many, both out and inside. We got this, don't worry.

Bubbala, you know how i can't help myself, worrying. Eat! Eat!

love, tim

There is a lot of shadow down here to swallow. But we're getting through it, my shadows and I. 

Small bites, chew slow, plenty of clear liquids. You've got this, your shadows and you.