The Power of Now

[Undertoad]

Preach on bro.

[lumberjim]

Once it happened…Four men were walking in the forest. The first was a gnana yogi, the second was a
bhakti yogi, the third was a karma yogi, and the fourth was a kriya yogi.
Usually, these four people can never be together.


The gnana yogi has total disdain for every other type
of yoga. His is the yoga of the intellect, and typically, an intellectual has complete disdain for everybody
else, particularly these devotional types who look upward and chant God’s name all the time. They look
like a bunch of idiots to him.

But a bhakti yogi, a devotee, thinks all this gnana, karma, and kriya yoga is a waste of time. He pities
the others who don’t see that all you need to do is know that God exists, hold his hand, and walk in trust.
All this mind-splitting philosophy, this bone-bending yoga is absurd to him.

Then there is the karma yogi, the man of action. He thinks all the other types are just plain lazy. Their
lives are pure self-indulgence.

But the kriya yogi is the most disdainful of all. He laughs at everyone. Don’t they know that existence is
just energy? If you don’t transform your energy, whether you long for God or for anything else, nothing is
going to happen! There can be no transformation.

These four people customarily cannot get along. But today they happened to be walking together in the
forest. Suddenly, a storm broke out. It grew fierce. The rain started pouring down relentlessly. Drenched
to the skin, the four yogis started running, looking desperately for shelter.
The bhakti yogi, the devotion man, said, “There’s an ancient temple in this direction. Let’s go there.”
(As a devotee, he was particularly familiar with the geography of temples.)
They ran in that direction. They came to an ancient temple; all the walls had crumbled long ago; just the
roof and four columns remained. They rushed into the temple—not out of any love for God, but just to
escape the rain.

There was a deity in the center. They ran toward it. The rain started lashing from every direction. There
was no other place to go, so they moved closer and closer. Finally, there was no alternative. They just sat
down and embraced the idol.
The moment these four people hugged the idol, suddenly God appeared.

In all their minds the same question arose: why now? They wondered, “We expounded so many subtle
and arcane philosophies, worshipped at every possible sacred shrine, great and small, selflessly served
so many people, did so much body-breaking penance, but you never showed up. Now when we’re just
escaping the rain, you turn up. Why?”

God said, “At last you four idiots got together.”

[lumberjim]

The problem is that religious nuts around the world have exported everything that is beautiful about a
human being to the other world. If you talk of love, they speak of divine love. If you talk of bliss, they
speak of divine bliss. If you talk of peace, they speak of divine peace. We have forgotten that these are all
human qualities. A human being is fully capable of joy, of love, of peace. Why do you want to export
these to heaven?
There is so much talk of God and heaven mainly because human beings have not realized the immensity
of being human. It is obvious that the very source of life is throbbing within you in some way. The source
of your life is also the source of every other life and the source of all creation. This dimension of
intelligence or consciousness exists in every one of us. The deliverance of every human being lies in
finding access to this deathless dimension.
To be joyful and peaceful within yourself every moment of your life, to be able to perceive life beyond
its physical limitations—these are not superhuman qualities. These are human possibilities.
Yoga is not about being superhuman; it is about realizing that being human is super.

here's an overlap of Tolle's thing. He's promoting the present moment awareness and quiet mind as an access point to the same goal. I guess they all are trying to help us see the same thing, but each have differing ways of illuminating the same truth. I never paid any attention to Yoga. Not this actual Yoga. I pay attention to fit women in tight pink outfits with their asses up in the air whenever I see it. But Spiritual Yoga was an abstract. Still is really. I'm interested now though. I know for sure that my physical body is out of tune/alignment. I think my mind and energy are more in tune, but still lacking.



It's gonna get weird in here.


weeee!

[lumberjim]

[lumberjim]

An interesting biproduct of trying to be aware of my own ego and my thought parade....and of trying to 'not know.' ( To not know is to be open to finding out. To know means you've stopped looking. I think. )

Anyway... I'm finding that I'm more... impressionable. A bit wide eyed at present.... Not overly, I think.... Just more aware that I don't really know what I had previously assumed. Less willing to react instantly with incomplete info. And seeing things from a bit more distance.

I'm seeing more that things are often backwards. Beginning with which direction to look for solutions when I think there is a problem. Mostly the issue is inward, not outward. Sometimes it's brought on from outside, but it's really how I take it.

I met an old guy today. 80. I had met him once before, but neither of us remember. He helped his grand son buy a car from us 3 1/2 years ago, and I did his deal.

He came because the bank had called him. His grandson had missed 2 payments. He must pay. His grandson had moved to Knoxville 4 months ago. They had had lunch a week before the kid (24 yrs old now) moved away for work. The girlfriend of one year went with him.

Since then, no contact. Since the bank called, he hadn't been able to get him on the phone. He had dates and times written in one of those little pocket notebooks of the times he called... Even had someone text him from his flip phone.

No reply. It was a whole story. I got the sense that it was his main focus.
He was angry about it. Even pantomimed shaking the kid by the collar at one point....

But I had to tell him... You promised to pay if he didn't. So you must pay. Or say fuck it. You're 80. Are you going to need good credit going forward?
You're not on the title, so you can't take the car. All you can do is pay or not pay. Why make it into a problem?

I also told him to try not to be angry. I said, you don't know enough yet to be angry. What if he's in trouble? Maybe he couldn't pay his phone bill either? I checked his insurance policy on the geico site, and it was inactive. Presumably for non payment... Maybe it's drugs? No. He never did that.... Maybe the girl? Nice girl.... Jail? ?? No idea.

So, You don't know. You're having both sides of the conversation in your head. It's not real. If you can't get him on the phone, get on a plane and go see him. You have his address. You're retired and you have the money. Go knock. Then you can choke him. If that's what you see he needs when you find him. Or don't.

Depends on how much you're willing to go through to find out what has gone on. I think he heard me. We talked for another 30 minutes.... Cool guy. Died when he was 25. Car crash... DOA, but he pulled through. Still has a metal chin.


And..
That Anias Nin quote jinx had as her signature.... 'We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are... '. This is quite clearly true to me now. I don't see you. I see light reflecting off of you. I see it inside my eyeballs at the back on the retina.

How far can you see? I used to wonder. As a kid... Looking out at the ocean on clear nights. I thought... I can see allll the way to the horizon. But.... You can't see any distance at all. It's like asking how far can you smell? Or touch or taste.

And the notion that we are part of the planet? That we are simply accumulations of what we've gathered over our lifetimes. Mentally, we accumulate the ideas and thoughts we're exposed to... through the filter of what has come before and/or the mood we're in when we hear it.... So... Random..... Accidental.... We could actually do that by design if we paid attention and made choices about what we want or don't want to be keeping. And the body is the same. We're accumulated earth. Small outcroppings. On loan until we die and give it back.

Aren't we though? Thinking about that... Yes, ok, I smoked.... Fine. But we're food. Made of food anyway. We ate a lot of things. Each one of us did. Those things.... It was plants, fruits, animals, drinks, drugs, medicine.... Some of it, we broke down and released their energy, and made more Jim or Tony or Bruce out of it. Some, we passed back to the planet, but the energy we used to make bigger or better bodies. Our particular body. Our bodies have memory.

We eat a banana. The banana has its own DNA. If you give a banana energy, it will turn it into more banana. If a person eats a banana, why don't we become more banana like? What changes the banana energy into that person's energy? We don't think about it. Science knows. That's that.

How do we manage to walk on two legs through a dark cinema, with a soda and popcorn and find our way back to our seat... To recognize our girl in the dark? To make a fade away jumper? To hit a baseball going 95 mph with a bat? To drive cars all the way home and have no recollection of the drive? Our bodies are fucking smart. That's how.

So lots of new thoughts to think. And I'm trying no to think so much. Funny.

[Griff]

Originally Posted by lumberjim

Anyway... I'm finding that I'm more... impressionable. A bit wide eyed at present.... Not overly, I think.... Just more aware that I don't really know what I had previously assumed. Less willing to react instantly with incomplete info. And seeing things from a bit more distance.

This is huge. Empathy lives here. I can get so damned self-absorbed when I start assuming things.

[Undertoad]

Originally Posted by lumberjim

Just more aware that I don't really know what I had previously assumed... I also told him to try not to be angry. I said, you don't know enough yet to be angry.... 'We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are... '.

This is, exactly, "This is Water", the David Foster Wallace graduation speech. It is life-changing and sums up a lot of this stuff.

The original speech if you prefer direct, have 23 minutes:



If you only have 9 minutes and a low attention span, someone has edited this into a more produced version. This gets taken down from youtube because copyright, I think, but here it is at this time:

[lumberjim]

[lumberjim]

Sadhguru introduces Jiddu Krishnamurti


I'm down the rabbit hole now... Tolle did a bit of reading from the book called Krishnamurti's notebook.

this section of his talk about silencing the mind must have had some impact on Tolle...

[xoxoxoBruce]

Stumbled on this today...

Erich Fromm could, in the mid-twentieth century, note that what separates humans from other creatures is not the upright posture, or tool wielding, or the ability to laugh, but rather precisely the fact that humankind is the only form of life blessed and cursed with the ability to query its own purpose. “Man is the only animal for whom his own existence is a problem which he has to solve and from which he cannot escape,” Fromm wrote in Man for Himself, confronting what he regarded as the “paralysis of our productive powers” that issues from the experience of boredom as an unavoidable part of that problem. Boredom was, Fromm thought, an experience of everyday damnation. “I am convinced that boredom is one of the greatest tortures,” he wrote. “If I were to imagine Hell, it would be the place where you were continually bored.”

Kind of relevant.

[lumberjim]

[lumberjim]

Attention = awareness



When he says, 'I wonder if you can see this'. Or something to that effect... He's saying something important.

He's hard to follow.... I wish he wasn't dead. The way he makes very sure he understands the question... And then goes into them.... To go into... To investigate them.

[lumberjim]

[Undertoad]

OK now I'm overwhelmed with video to watch...!

Peterson-McGilchrist is just dense with thoughts. They're saying profound, amazing things every few minutes. It's like, whoa, I need to stop and digest that bit about the brain, but you guys have already moved on to the nature of God!

[lumberjim]

It's quite the rabbit hole.

The other night I decided I had come to a conclusion. It's awareness. Throughout every one of these thinkers' messages. Awareness. Attention. When you are fully aware, time goes away. Fully aware.

But that's not a conclusion. Is it? Just a point of overlap. I'm changing. But I'm not. I was already there. Just that I'm seeing it more...