sirguessalot

i think cold hard skeptical science's greater value can be found if it will bother to realize the obvious mountains of subtler and causal "realities" of human experience, and their great value i mean...thousands and thousands of years of history and success from all over the world... to deny or somehow strive to suppress the arts and sciences of these subtler and causal realities is to increase suffering, to some degree yet, as a compartment of being, skepticism is vital. like a liver. or a samarai sword.

and what of the cult of cynicism? doesn't the "cult of skepticism" have its own "sales pitch?" does it claim a special unique sense of reliability that no other can offer? are there skeptics who make money off their school of thought? give lectures? sell books? and so, where are the statistics that prove skepticism brings more wellness and healing than reiki? is the burden on others to prove the flood of skeptical warnings wrong? however sincere a cynic may be, like anyone else, they may still be taken in by the promise of an non-existent ideal, right? ?

its sad, how there healing traditions in this world that have histories dating back 1000s and 1000s of years and many are alive and well and bringing wellness to those who bother right here, right now, as we speak just as they always have and a gdfing smorgasboard, too, if you ask me precious stuff that could be forgotten like recipes or art forms but they often deal with subtler and finer things than the eye of flesh can see, let alone prove thus, alone, the eye of flesh is doomed to ever be haunted by the ghost in the machine nonetheless, the modern machinations of conventional medicine are downright amazing in their own domain...holy cow...evolving very rapidly right now plastic, lasers, waves, RX, DNA, biology, all those electric eyes... many many miracles going on here. i couldn't name them all. ive got a friend who, a few years ago, was spared a shunt because of a thing called a gamma knife in and out in a month or so but as always, it seems, medicine is at war with itself old evolutionary strains versus new racial lineages and language sets methodology and "reality" and worldviews/god-views etc... even more distinctly, perhaps, interior versus exterior collective versus individual gross versus subtle also, religion, money, politics, ideologies... these are always strong influential elements to any field any field any field any field on a positive note....psychology, wisdom traditions, neurosciences, etc... are integrating rapidly right now yes, degrees in "real" universities, institutes clinics on the street yada yada but why bother post links to this stuff? who has the energy to defend things all day? the "prove it" skeptics are hypocritical, because they can't prove a thing they say they will almost never perform any of the injunctions and seem to use the same one or two broken examples kinda funny too, how they oft claim to reveal the "wicked" intentions of so many others all the while denying the reality of things like "mind-reading" lol

i agree, 100% but i wonder what kinds of things might be keeping old and new alternative and traditional medicines from getting into these places? or keeping people from accepting them? ? i tell ya, there is a healthy skepticism to be had in life but it can also get sick, cultic, even occultic and when worn like a badge or when its voice takes charge of the house or otherwise somehow becomes paramount to all other ways of knowing and experience its very voice diminishes possibility and so, impossibilities mount like a wailing banshee doubting the reality of ghosts i mean, why light a candle when you can curse the darkness, right? ;)--> ive seen and known and experienced enough proof to know that Reiki is and can be very effective the books have been/are being written, the studies have been/are being done, the people have been/are being healed such subtler and psychic levels of "reality" and "practice" are pretty easily demonstrable to those who will simply perform the injunctions or simply do the research outside of their comfort lingo, or favorite authority there is so much hope and wonder to be found in life especially inwardly, in the shadows so proceed with precision, curiousity, and gentleness the mysteries never end hope, healing and miracles are very possible within, without, alone, together..whatever peace

plz permit a rant and ramble as i pop on by... (bold is mine) i hate to say it, but none of the scriptures you quote justify these "laws/principles/precepts/proverbs" you've declared here, wth (sorry, not to pick on you, but you provided a pretty clear example for my rant) i will even go as far as to say that this kind of "prime directive" you've described leads to further isolation, suffering, depression, anger, fear, and a variety of basic hellish states of mind (both in and out of the church/grouping) and if the claim of some "doctrinal behavioral purities" are taken far enough, it is how we get things like the KKK and Nazis (and those similar aspects of TWI) "The Path" of Jesus is not one of getting pleasure and comfort and safety and blessings by surrounding yourself with friends and like-minded folks... this, any people in any religion in any country in any point in history can do, and has done, a thousand thousand times over, and quite darn well at times too to take things and draw lines and generally seek mostly to bless yourself and "friendlies" is NOT the same as being "blessed of God," but rather, to be "blessed of men"...namely, by oneself and buddies by "fleshly versions of a name," such as "Jesus" or "Jesus Christ" (neither of which, according to scripture, are not his "real" name anyway)) and this "Christ" is strongly about "newness" and "refreshing," full of "ways" to both endure and transcend and lessen the suffering of yourself and others, expanding our ability to embrace "aliens" of our own "natural" self but there is nothing new or revealing in what you say here, as it pertains to human spirituallity. not really. just a different name. a different time. a different language set. a different context you've stated no principle, or precept or other directive that is not plain ole anthropological religious isolationism and group-huggingness (just about every history of every race of man is full of such "burying one's head in a doctrinal group-think "church" cave, often for survival, and often for identity and pride and "sacred" ways to make one's group somehow part of immortallity. like all the peons laughing in a boardroom only when the CEO laughs, only this "CEO" is an ideology, not always a person) and to generally vilify "others" (outside of your circle of "friendlies") as "demon-ridden" (and thus needing to be saved by your "pure group" doctrines) is to go spiritually backwards from where you claim to be. not, not just a 100 years, or 2000 years. i am talking backwards at least 3 thousand years plus...back to when "race and clan and city-state" were the "cutting edge" of human evolution. and if we keep it up, the world will quite naturally become more violent and oppressive in the name of "Jesus" or "Allah" or whomever. the number of "little ideological box units" will grow into a heaping mountain of smaller isolations. like millions of "birds in cages." a thousand people in the same room, same lines, trying not to look in each other's eyes for fear of "demons" (unless your a (fill in group), of course) again, i hate to say this, but what you have described here as a way of life, seems like a way for spiritual growth to more or less end for as long as your kind of injunction is followed. (unless we are talking of a "spiritual growth" that is merely trying to learn how to function as a supportive group...which it is, but as "milk," not any kind of meat to handle most of the deeper problems and questions in life) but it when such valuable "milk" is pawned off as "meat" that we stop and possibly decrease "spiritual growth"...where we we have really turned growth around and headed backwards with "spiritual" things there are simply many many more effective "ways" to enable "spiritual deliverences" outside of the "us versus them" methods of "join us or perish" fundamentalism btw, i think "the sheep" were widely known to be feminine creatures, and the goats "masculine" and sexuallity and group behaviour of animals might have something (a lot) to do with the parable (as it often seems to) capability is a key, it is not just some arbitrary selection of duality to make a point about good guys versus bad guys ;)--> sorry for the derail, CM but i think this very dominant doctrine of "isolation from demons" for the sake of procuring one's own "blessings from God" is a part of what has led to the flattening of so much of our lost love of "the truth," and so has become a kind of "demon" of its own, if you will ("the truth," to me, being that "endless search" for greater deepness and understanding of what simply is...for there really is no "end" to this well) no, not a mythical insidious monster to be cast out of our persons but one of those "gosh derned sumabytching" knots and tangles to be combed out of the strands of our awareness and experience one of those "mysteries" thats got us fussing and hollerin and cursing all sorts of "other" things i mean, i see the world's population exploding, yet people are growing more and more afraid of other people because of "it all boils down to" doctrines like this this is a big problem if the "majority rules" are suffering from this isolationist knot, even if the same kind of knot structure is called by many names (Household of God, patriotism, the jones family, stoners, atheists, vegans, etc...) in "seeking only pleasure among friends," we have lost much of our creative imagination for universal selfless good, it seems (which universal selfish good is more "Christlike," imo), and have mostly reserved this imaginative creative spiritual energy for advancing and perfecting all kinds of sub-doctrines of selfish containment and self-imprisonment and self-preservation. cuz "in the end," there is no true "other," except relatively this demonization of "otherness" is "shadow-boxing" and a waste of time (but another thing me must also learn not to do by doing it til we realize how futile it is..in other words, please get on with the basic lesson of the value of groupness and get thru it, and in this life, soon, please, for the sake of all of us) The universal celebration of "other" as a part of a larger whole (regardless of ethnic/evolutionary spiritual heritage) will literally transform us on the inside, simply by practicing such a way. by playing at such ways. finding ways to see it and know it and experience it as a child would. Who knows? With practice, our love for "the truth" might just turn inside out again and continue on its merry way. i dunno, perhaps a large part of what "it" "all comes down to" is that we've simply lost our sense of humor regarding spiritual inquiry and evalutation. in so many modern upbringings, we never do learn how to play with/in spirit as a child would play with a toy in a toy box...with a sense of awe and wonder. and if this idea makes you cringe...that "cringe" is pretty much what i am talking about :)-->

:)--> words like "spirit" and "spiritual" seemed to have taken quite a hit (shattering it into like, a thousand pieces) it has sooo many conflicting meanings (and not just 2, like how every darned thing in PFAL seemed to have, such evenly split meanings) off the top of my head... to some, "spiritual" is a gift out of nowhere to some, it is something earned to some, it is something always present to some, it is something always far far away to some, it is invisible to some, it is hard to miss to some, it is mannish to some, it is womanish to some, it is parental to some, it is childish to some, the bottommost to some, the topmost to some, it is looking forward to some, it is looking behind to some, it is everything to some, it is not a thing at all to some, it is life to some, it is death itself to some, it is good to some, it is evil to some, it is private to some, it is collective in all cases, spirit seems to imply an ultimate something or other the most farthest extreme whatever royal mostness of almightiest yada yada yada be it deepest inward or farthest outward, or the most extreme middle zone i mean, even as nonsense goes, spiritual nonsense has got to be the ultimate nonsense there is, no? :P-->

a bit more of what i'm getting at...is finding as many ways as we can to bridge the many language styles we all use, rather than further disconnect and isolate any one of them simply for their age or our utility. then from there, we can begin to see all the specializations of dialogue for what they are (and there are many of them). And by this recognizing and honoring of all the forms currently in use in a more neutral all-encompassing framework, the versatility of application deepens and widens (as on a spread sheet or something). cuz in the end, it seems, there is no absolute dialogue form when it comes to "reframing beliefs" or "getting to core-meaning" (which even contradicts what i just said). ok. now, apply this to "whose fault is it?," and maybe this might make more sense:

and whether or not the KJV language has little use in a discussion might also depend on who wants to control the discussion and why. sure, one can say "in this discussion, we will only use the lingo that I/we are most comfortable with," but this is just a single arbitrary recipe for a single line of discourse. an exclusivity of style and form that serves an exclusive purpose (which, as you applied to "KJV-language," can also be useful for students and worshippers of "discussions like this one."). another question is, perhaps: can we find a way to engage in a dialogue form that does not exclude any "language style?" (as long as its english among english speakers, of course, for example) can not the "poetic" voice speak and be heard by the "rational" mind? cannot the "rational" voice speak and be heard by the "poetic" mind? Here is the thread i mentioned. With a professional background in facilitation, i think you might really appreciate the links in the second post. hmmm. with at least a little dissection and explanation, will you please give me some "commentary" on what you mean by this request? :)-->

I agree that the delay allowed and discipline fostered by thread posting is valuable in many many ways, but i wouldn't go as far as to say that the live "real time" interactions are in any way less valuable for re-framing beliefs and such. just a different set of "prescriptions," if you will. whether or not people getting "windy" on abstract or higher concepts is useful or essential for finding core meanings, is a matter of opinion. and perhaps even more so...a matter of contexts, and the degrees of openness in the group. doh. i gotta run, but i'll try and finish up later

hi, e :)--> not really. not always. which has been one of my main points all along. not exactly sure why, but it seems that you and i are talking about very different things when it comes to "spirituallity" which makes it pretty hard for me to respond without a lot of extra redundant yack yack, if ya know what i mean... from the beginning of this thread, i have tried to describe a concept of "spirituallity" that is NOT "spiritual automatically equals moral or ethical or healthy" and how "spiritually" is NOT some mythical thing that "God only gives to very good very special people" and how one can and does get lost and trapped and addicted and confused in our genuine "spiritual" experiences perhaps "spirit" is more of a neutral thing which makes it "more gooder" than the ole "good and evil" as it is in the rain or wind or fire or blood all of these things can both kill and quicken things and even the heart itself can betray us and others heartache can benefit us and heartache can kill us how does one measure the "truths" of this? imo, we can measure things with whatever stick we want or find there are soo many rulers and yardsticks and scales in this world some simple (good and evil), some more complex but if we can somehow first measure them from the perspective of "Spirit" we measure them from a radically neutral perspective which is not simply neutral (as in inactive and lazy) but good thru and thru cuz its free and so, not sure what else to say, e i also think VP flunked...hard (in spite of his brief spiritual peek thru a tiny "hole in the wall" he found) and im not sure how to say it any clearer than i have but i'll keep trying mwah

god, ex10, this really jumped off the page. i just "had to" respond to the inspiration :)--> to me, "giving room" = "making space" like "being clearER" in a "clearing" and so...to both work and play at this behaviour of "giving of room"... ...as an art form ...as a lifestyle ...as a "religion," if you will ...is indeed a higher calling in that...we are already always being called to such a way of being with each other spiritually evolutionarily whatever you wanna call it and it is at least an entire step beyond what we learn in The Way (and ilk) in fact, we already kinda do it, here, now, at the GSC which is why this place is sooo cool (as in refreshing) tho, another step beyond, i believe, comes when we are not simply falling into such a wonderful open space but rather, when we consciously, intentionally, specifically, curiously, and playfully, JUMP OFF into such a place together... ...when we more deeply know that we are doing it...and why... ...this it what changes things a bit more there is a descending move to this idea, in all of us coming "down to earth" from a higher place (no, not "higher" as in elitism, but "higher" as in a place of love and openness and general practiced focused "allowingness," if you will) :)--> ok, thanks a mil for the inspire

another link chock full of goodies: Peer Spirit and no, not another twi but perhaps some of what twi was missing in terms of how to simply be with each other i think it can be tremendously helpful and healing for and re-grounding ex-way and innies to look into things like this :)-->

a little something along these lines you guys might appreciate: Blowing Bubbles in Open Space

yeah, "meditation" is just a word, like any other word. some buddhist lineages seemed to have really honed the arts of it over the past centuries, but all spiritual traditions and scriptures have aspects of contemplation and meditation in them, even if they describe it with a different tongue. and there are many styles of meditation, just as there are many recipes for tea. some zinger and honey for this, some earl grey for that... but the common thread, is that all bloods of humanity have naturally developed valid ways to "rest in The Witness" (from Hopi to Sufi to Jesuit to Aborigine) via a simple means to a generic place where subjects becomes objects in nested layers, and "the stuff" dreams are made of becomes more tangible and useful and subordinate to increasingly "higher ground" imo, every epistle and gospel and OT record shows many many shades and degrees of evidence that this level of human experience (reached via what we often call "meditation") was alive and well (and downright majestic) in the many of the spiritual lineages that came out of Abraham to learn to meditate is to enter the "death" state. the last enemy (within) is finally overcome. reminds me of how we are to "trim the wicks of all the smoking candles in the temple," by becoming adept at "snuffing them," then relighting them. "meditation" practice allows us to simply see these "candles of the soul" as objects rather than subjects. though, also, not all things called "meditation" function on the same level. a lot of McMeditation out there in materialist culture (even in Asia). a lot of crude delusional half-baked "PFALs" of meditation. they may "bump" and "rattle" us a bit and help us along and make us calm, but they do not all bring one to the same state of awareness that led Jesus to say "I AM," lt alone teach how to remain there in waking life. in other words, we might still always need to crank up that Barnes and Noble meditation CD to find "Abraham's rest" for Christians, "contemplative christianity" is something very worth googling, imo. maybe check out Father Thomas Keating's work, too. :)-->

not specifically. ive been swept away by a few other things lately. but i do plan to get back to it someday soon...and passionately. either here at the gsc or elsewhere another track i'd like to develop and explore alongside the cyber versions, is taking the idea to mainstream churches and ministers in meatspace. or as one-day group retreats, hiking trips...live f2f stuff, ya know? truth is, one of the main reasons i introduced small tastes of the process here was not just so i could learn to facilitate, but so others might want to learn how to "facilitate in open space". ...in churches and temples, at work and school, for holidays, with our children, our neighbors... the potential for "stimulating positive transformation," if you will, is pretty high, imo. which makes this somewhat of a high priority, considering how communication breakdown is what seems to be making the world go even crazier. to simply open up and unfold the forms and manners in which we speak to each other, is to change the way we literally "lick each other's hearts." and if it can evolve into the mainstream, it could revolutionize everything consider how much weight is given to higher communication skills in the instruction of the gospels and epistles, in terms of the collective spiritual rebirth more efficiently taps into our collective intelligence and wisdom, deepens compassion and understanding and patience, give voice and validity to the marginalized, widens the spectrum and integrates the sciences and religions... (no, this is not the same as a list of green card promises...cuz it really is free, and transparent, and is not owned by any organized body, and has been and is being proven and demonstrated throughout the world and history in more contexts and languages than can be expressed in one place) a new tongue a new song a new wine :)-->

CW, this is what i was trying to address and stimulate and demonstrate on this thread here. "dreaming up" ways to shift the dynamic of our discourse into a much wider open space applying more playfulness and patience to our tongues (and thereby, to each other's hearts) and so perhaps we can invent and discover together, ever more nourishing and effective and loving "recipes" and "little ditties" of methods and disciplines for heart to heart communion as a "church" going from that ole pyramid style of spiritual communication to a round table of equals our manner of living live communication can be more like that of a salon, or a temple, or a refuge, or a think tank we ourselves literally become a "safer" place for inquiring together as equals...about things such as: what the heck just happened to me? to us? sharing secret recipes and notes and tips like "breaking bread" we do not, cannot learn much about this in any language of fundamental doctrinal MLM (though we learn many other things there) because it requires a certain deeper level of being able to "disrobe our souls" in front of each other and wanting to learn (believing we can learn) to simply better allow ways of this graciousness to "happen" i think the way we so often put work before play in our deeper discourses has taken the flavor out of the whole process but if the majority does not recognize or support such dialogue as valid or valuable or sane, the seed of the idea falls by the wayside simplicity innocently overlooked...like a piece of gold in a fish's mouth imo ;)-->

thats some funny ****, 2g i think you might have nailed it (for a sec...lol) nice mug btw

ditto, HCW. i just wanted to tell you how much i appreciate your detailed additions to this..on many levels (everyone else too, i could quote the whole thread) just sifting thru your words, HCW...i see so many things that reflect what i've been trying to "get at" especially as it pertains to the ripples that erupted around the genuine brotherhood/sisterhood aspect of TWI to add: like one small flock among a new developing way of evangelical bible-study christianity in a new hyper-era of innovation and independence in america (though TWI was one of the odder balls, fer sure. ive seen way odder sub-things in religion...equal to or greater in magnitude than TWI)) with all kinds of new and competing "spiritual brotherhood" aspects going off everywhere like many small heaps and circles of programmed amd indoctrinated exclusivity..like so many self-repeating but adaptive structures/processes (thus, the offshoots and PFALish principles being taught on catholic tv) as with business, modern religion entered a new evolutionary phase together...and quite rapidly, in anthropological time industriality and technology and complexity and integration and wide spectrum cross-training and specialization...all off the charts in the last century like some new dawn, waking fields of flowers one horizon at a time and re: TWI's advancing the art of banality...one of those many lines of human intelligence i was talking about that specialist with a square and plum-line, a valid useful sub-aspect of our being, one that strives to make things "primo" and "dialed-in" (as my custom log home builder friend always says) but can be quite ruthless, cold and nasty when in charge and somehow hungry

something helpful, perhaps (sorry it looks so long...i'm aiming for density...lol) is to attempt to view the TWI experience as not only a part of a larger whole wave of peaks, but having a complex and ongoing multitude of sub-factors and sub-contexts and, how we experienced it and continue to experience it as an individual, both inwardly and outwardly and how we experienced it and continue to experience it as a collective, both inwardly and outwardly because simultaeneously from within these four "dimensions," if you will, we have and do witness many intersections of causality, though we may have come to favor one "dimension" over another, perhaps even at the expense of the others. this is only natural. innocent, if you will we often reject one "dimension" as not having any causal influence or validity at all (thus, arises arguments such as "culture versus choice being the cause crime"...arguing from seperate cages, in a sense) both collective and individual truths exist as aspects of one truth, just as inward and outward are a wider spectrum of different "thicknesses" of one body. in other words, VP (and ilk) played a key role in their own rises and falls, but we (and ilk) also somehow "made" him and them and us rise and fall together. just as we do now, and always TWI reminds me of like how the grunge scene pretty much "made" Kurt Cobain "happen" (not simply the other way around). it spit him out like an offspring of the angst. which is why so many people resonated with his words and passionate expressions. it was a collective expression of self. and "Kurt" was a lick among a wave of "Kurts". this was and is still a mirror of some generational wave of truth, expanding outward throughout sub-cultures of concentric circles, overlapping other circles caused by other splashing things...yada yada yada no, not like strict orderly arranged circles on a legal pad but like ripples on ripples on the surface of a pond in the rain and so perhaps even the silly rain (outer collective) can show us something useful about the fluidity of humanity (inner collective) and how we react to each other (individuals). and rain, it seems, being always true, cannot tell a lie ;)--> and Kurt himself was still equally a complex individual in the midst of all this even though he was also a mirror, just as the crowd was simultaeneously a mirror of him can we not look in a mirror on still not realize what it is we see? and all the causes and effects continue to change and evolve in their own historical unfoldings. the effects themselves always changing its meanings and values and complexities over the passage of time. the story is never quite over and the general "spirit" of things has a way of turning all things inside out and upside down, imo. eventually. and its not our believing and wishing and wanting that causes it to do so (because it is going to "flip" someday regardless, and is already trying to) what counts more, it seems, is how aware we are of its happening and no matter how painful the truth of all our mirrors if life may be, and as in all shadows, there is a gift hiding. otherwise, it would not have happened at all. i have seen and believe that there is such an "order" in God's universe but not flat. rather...the order is equally exotic and wild and daring and courageous enough to break itself at times there is a bitter-sweet graciousness in that, imo if we could only learn how to simply witness "it" in the present moment we might find that free will we often seek not sure what you mean by "giving too much creedence to VP," Sunesis. I have stated that he was "a sorcerer" who hoodwinked himself and others. And that his spiritual peak is something he stumbled over and was kinda like what happens when being hit over the head with a shovel, or being in a car accident. and that it was brief and small and something that happened to many in a wave, and that many others surpassed him in the depth (or height) of their own peaks (such as us here) i also stated that this crude sloppy spike was perhaps "high" but brief, and served mostly to move him from "a low place" to a "mid place," and that he didnt really understand what happened to him in a greater context. and his pre-existing and ongoing unresolved "issues" were more or less amplified by that "bump" the dimensions and degrees of difference between VP and some realized saint who lives in the mountains and comes down from time to time to actually heal and help...is quite a wide one. i am talking miles wide difference on a scale of 1 to 100, globally and historically, VPs overall life and ministry may have measured something like a 2 or 3 on "the spiritual goodness earthquake scale." i'm giving most of the credit to the grace of God, perhaps. but not to VP. not from here. and the concept of there being one "good God" and many "bad gods" is true enough, imo, in a certain sense. VP himself became a "bad god." he was possessed by his cigs and his booze and johnson and his buddies like a small pantheon of "bad gods" but imoae, The Divine is neutral and exists in a spectrum and is everpresently so, which is why "God is so Good" and benevolant. there is no partiallity in Spirit. it is all inclusive. it is universal and eternally so. ultimately, everything is within This. and so what is not "of God?" touchy subject...and no offense, but its mostly I and we who unconsciously make devils and demons out of the dark corners of our understanding and so even for some backwoods schmuck to peek into the I AM by fasting and praying for a spell(which is a neutral act), it is what it is, and was what it was, regardless of what happened before, or what happens next. he is no Ann, Francis, Peter or Paul...he was an envious Simon with some "magic tricks" to bewitch an audience (because his neutral "peeks" showed him some true things about human nature. intentionality is a different matter) imo, his peak was of only a few of his lines of intelligence, and shows mostly in things like his charts and concepts and models and in what he chose to copy-cat and rip and cut and paste of things he saw

peace, Satori gotta tell ya, this thread has been a fascinating read but my timing sucks. i hope you have a good vacation a few things come to mind... have you ever played in a chatroom? and, you ever catch wind of the live doctrinal chat sessions some of us were playing with a few weeks back? i think you'd be pretty darn good at facilitating "open-space" and "talking circle" type dialogue sessions in fact, your idea of one-liners gave me an interesting idea for another talking circle "form" to play with also, the exchange betwen you and CM made me start thinking of some way of actually utilizing the different languages (like archaic bible speak) in order to get past them (but include them more objectively) btw - you ever hear of Genpo Roshi's "Big Mind Series?" no, not another PFAL. but a simple "game" of using zen and psychology models to walk one thru various states of mind via a simple interactive Q&A dialogue pretty cool stuff as it pertains to a brief something regarding "Whose Fault IS It?"... just blame this, i guess just this, as it is as it rises and falls even now where it moves it moves and where it sticks it sticks where it sees it sees where its blind its blind where there is smoke...blame fire (thank Something)

ok, up late...some envisioning fun..to help show where i'm trying to come from...regarding the spiritual "peek" envision this...as a 3 year old would (in other words..."Behold!") if we could peel off our skin and meat and bones and yet live, and somehow see "what dreams are made of," each of us might resemble some sort of beautiful fiery ten-headed dragon climbing in trees. another layer peeled, and we might even crackle with gases and light imagine, each of these heads growing like the stems of of a plant some upward and inward as branches some downward in outward as roots like a pantheon of gods in heaven, each having a head with a certain face or structure of intelligence represented in life in anything from the signs of the Zodiac to Jim Henson's Sesame Street muppets things like... our memory our hungers our sexuallity our self-sense our playfulness our moral sense our rationallity our interactive intelligence our cognitive forecasting our ability to endure suffering and all our various controllers and dials and knobs and clutch-plates (like skepticism) etc...(very off the cuff, so i missed some) each of these lines grows through the same basic stage-like growth from body to soul to spirit from gross to subtle to causal from pre-conventional to conventional to post-conventional (the "post-stage" having transcended but included both previous stages) in a sense, we can say that each lines of intelligence will eventually have to die and be reborn once in layer upon layer of "sheathes" or "petals" and...different heads/faces of intelligence may take the lead for periods of our life or struggle against each other but all develop together, alongside each other, as a singular unit we can favor one over all the others where it can get ornery and choke the life out of the others but we do not want to simply chop off the head out (cuz they will all grow back) we want to integrate it by somehow combing out the knot, if we can restore a sense of wholeness to that which is already complete and we can do this by "trimming the wick in the temple" which means we have to somehow "blow out the candle" for a sec then relight it this is where The Spirit comes in and it is the ground in which this very very complex soul/body unit grows in every moment we spend in this ground the growth of all our lines are quickened (which might not seem like such a good idea if a "crooked" line becomes a menace to self and society) and like soil, the quality of these moments "in the ground" is also a very vital factor but regardless, to sit in this ground is to somehow fertilize and stimulate "the bush" and the human mind is always intuitively coming up with all sorts of ways to enter this ground counting rosary beads, dancing round a fire, mandalas, counting breaths, repetitious prayer, speaking in tongues... nascar racing, downhill skiing, mountain climbing, bungee jumping... humping at rave parties, pign out on McDonalds, gettn lost in a bottle... ok, so VP fasted and prayed til he was blue in the face and entered subtler realms, and so had a few visionary expansions in his own pre-existing biblical-minded head by doing so, he quickened the growth of his lines (especially those dominant "dragon heads") for those few years he was actually being genuinely somehow backwoodsy "pagan" country bumpkin monastic spiritual this left an impression on him, in his strongly racist language, of course, and so he saw his generic little peak as "Gawd gave him a special gift cuz he was a special man like Paul and Martin Luther was gonna save the world" not to mention how he and his buddies (and some of us) did this "speaking in tongues" thing til we all ran our mind out of thoughts... sure, we were trying to visualize our wish list to daddy and loved ones and such...but more than that, we were learning how to stop the thinker...which, if done, is what gives us a "peek" at Spirit. a taste of it. a feel, if you will like giving the monkey-mind a banana to shut him up for a sec or giving the baby a nipple :P-->

imagine, e a time when you and yer boy are together maybe yer watching him play or maybe he fell asleep on your lap watching a movie together in that moment there is no past there is no future only now and it is perfect this is a kind of spiritual peak i am referring to a timeless place that simply always is except we may only glimpse it from time to time perhaps when something wonderful helps us rest in the witness of it or even something terrible like this example from the other side: imagine a child being severely abused and tortured (like Sling Blade) and so they may grow up to be an unfeeling killer because a kind of spiritual peak was forced upon them prematurely it was that peak that allows them to detach so easily a piece of artwork that takes our breath away...it slays us, stops us in our tracks, removes time a movie or book or song that smacks us into a higher state of mind for awhile, perhaps changing our life forever part of the problem is, i suppose, is that there are at least 10 different meanings given to the word "spiritual" in modern english the reason i think VP had a spiritual peak, is because he fasted on fruit juices and went without much sleep while studying scripture til the wee hours. and this will do "it" for anyone, actually though, as we've seen, a peak is no guarantee for good behaviour to follow in life nor a guarantee that the "peeker" understands what they saw once they "wake up" VPs writings and works showed signs of a period of personal theological integration for him (which comes from a kind of spiritual perspective) and it does not take long at all for one to descend back to their lower gravitational pull. it can happen instantly, in fact. and like ive said, PFAL and TWI twas a crude imitation of much more refined and effective spiritual traditions (again, reflecting the briefness of his glimpse). a haphazard water-down patchwork of a method, incorporating pieces of mysticism and personal development and group activities and such, but in a very very new context of human evolution...namely: the US of A but...what is better than a horny boy peeking once through a hole in the wall at angels showering in heaven? ...one who can simply sit in peace on the other side of the wall without compulsively having to pursue all the angels i think the brief nature of his peak caused more problems than had he not peaked at all

i don't know, e. its just a theory. an educated guess. based on a lot of reading and experiences and thinking. and we all experience peaks like this, when time and self ceases. when our perspective shifts momentarily. nothing special, really. which is one of my main points

hi all didnt mean to bail on the thread i started, but life sure does sweep one away at times besides, just reading thru, im amazed at the variety and wisdom in the all the reactions and contributions im not sure how to respond to the many many directions but thanks for chiming in... plz dont let me kill the thread to patch a few holes, perhaps... *i mentioned how those early years of many sleepless nights and grape-fasting was probably responsible his most prominant spiritual peak/peek, and then how most everything after that was somehow less-than or way-less-than that peak. this initial point seems to have been largely missed so far fasting, like meditation, or intense prayer, as with the contemplative christian traditions, provide a ways and means to move yourself outside of time, outside of body, ourside of ego, by somehow moving physiologically and psychologically closer to death, or radical formless consciousness, or whatever you wanna call it. and so, to say that VP had a peak experience, or altered state, is not to say that he somehow earned it by wit or virtue or any other such thing. he basically tripped over it during his suffering. he got lucky. so what? he had a few "good" years in his youth (pre-pfal, pre-twi) other things that cause such spikes...almost dying, life-changing illness, drugs, fame, starvation, incredible books, giving birth, losing a family member, getting hit over the head with a shovel...not much to brag about but then VP descended back into the old world he was born and raised, that of patriarchy, mythic fundamentalism, and a blossoming new hollywood rock star christianity and then he developed a crude and sloppy imitation of the many perennial philosophies he briefly glimpsed, probably hoping to do good (deep down inside himself, hidden most of the time) *such spikes come in waves to generations...like wind blowing arcoss the face of a field. only touching the highest blades of grass. vp was small time player off in the corner of the field...a medium blade, maybe a time when the printing and distribution of concordances and lexicons and made so many mc-preachers feel like they had the "secret codes" to the "most sacred book." post WW2 earth saw many such unprecedented things. i would even go as far as to call him a "sorcerer" to use the biblical term. he bewitched others with the spells he learned from his "peak" for personal gain (rather than using his peak for greater good), some of which speels he himself was partially under (his moments outside of himself taught him a few of these things...but to maintain a semblance of this state, he needed booze, sex, cigs, glory fame of an old-fashioned sermon preacher, etc...) it just happens that VP an ambitious narcissist type who got a glimpse of "the deep" in certain years of his youth, which is a natural time in a man's life to trip over such things his work and processes (which he taight LCM) were crude, sloppy, lazy, full of holes and errors and blatant copy-cats. but there is a trace of that "glimpse" in his work, and the magnitude of his (and our) "splash" on the collective soul was perhaps not small but more like medium. there is no doubt in my mind, that PFAL (and ilk) have replicated like a program thru-out modern evangelical christianity damn spikes cause all sorts of problems to solve ;)-->

No, not an educator, per se. Just a yackity signpost whose lost most all taboos. :)--> btw - Howard Gardener has done some of the best work on our multiple intelligences, if anyone is interested.