This is the seed syllable "hreeh" for the Padma family and is the seed syllable within my favorite mantra:
Om Namo Amida Buddha Hreeh
I worked on the hues to give the symbol the fiery radiance it is meant to have when visualizing it at the root chakra (pulsing with each exhale and rising as a flame up the spine, transmuting sorrow/sadness into compassion, appreciation, and gratitude). It is related to the Sanskrit word for "conscience" or "organic shame" and is therefore the empathic element within mahakaruna, great compassion, which purifies us of all negative states. Conscience generates the feeling that the only loss in life is time wasted not loving, since only love gives meaning and purpose to life, only love generates the deepest and profoundest celebration of what is.
Amida Buddha, the artchetypal Buddha of love and light, radiates love as light and grace to heal us of everything, carry us to supreme perfect enlightenment, touch our true nature and activate it into a living energy, and pour through us to heal all worlds. Each chant is an affirmation and trust in the living moment that this is happening and that this is true, and moves the process endlessly forward until complete. After chanting the mantra several thousand times to over a million times, eventually one just uses the seed syllable to activate the whole living sense of all the Amida sutras and the core mantra itself. The seed syllable can be visualized on every chakra to purify each one, it can ride the breath, and activate every latent ability within our Buddha nature. Drawn on the roof of the mouth with the tongue, it can connect the two channels of the microcosmic orbit (the frontal and spinal energy channels). Or it can be held at the 3rd eye in deep concentration until we enter a samadhi unity with the symbol and feel its core essence as part of ourselves.
I wanted to add some immortalist thoughts in a more journal fashion today. I have not posted on this blog in a while. This is partly because the foundations have been really laid down in the series of entries that have been given. I have been filling in some details, though, with further research, mainly on the herbal front. I have been studying Aryurveda, both in the traditional Hindu and Tibetan forms, as well as a kind of emerging synthesis form. There is a book called PLANETARY HERBOLOGY by Michael Tierra. One point of his writing is that we have an emerging global culture and we can evolve a planetary herbal system for the first time. While much of modern medicine seems to be more and more focused on chemical or pharmacological treatment of almost every illness, there is another line of research that is very promising and that is to create a global herbal database, hopefully compiling data on how the herbs are being used, what illnesses have been successfully treated, and with what protocols the herbs have been used. I do feel, in this regard, the "anecdotal evidence," usually discounted by clinical scientists, is useful to record and compile, though I would prefer better note taking of the details of use. Even regular clinical studies have been a little deficient by my standards. For instance, I do feel that diet is a more critical component that regular medicine gives credit to. Most studies on the use of herbs do not factor in the kind of diet a person has and do not factor how the herbs may have a different action within a multiple stage protocol than when taken in isolation from a protocol.
For instance, when a person has had a lot of animal flesh food, dairy products, processed foods, excitotoxins like MSG and Aspartame, and white sugar, they are going to react to cleansing herbs differently than someone who has a sattvic diet, eats on a less chaotic schedule, and does good food combining. For someone who has had a poor diet, it seems important to cleanse the intestinal track of mucoid strands, anaerobic pathogens, and other toxic debri. This allows the colon to act more like an eliminative organ so that the whole body can be cleansed more efficiently. If certain cleansing herbs are used first, before the colon is cleared, then the bloodstream may get loaded with cellular toxic debri and not be able to efficiently eliminate them. The toxins may, in this case, get pushed out through the skin via some kind of skin rash or pimples. This, in turn, may aggravate other illness conditions.
For similar reasons, once the colon is cleared, a liver and gall bladder flush may be necessary. The idea of this protocol phase would be getting all the detox organs up to speed so that they can efficiently help regenerate the body. From a Naturopathic perspective, most illness conditions can be reduced to a deficiencies and toxicities that can be healed by creating a foundation in a good diet, clearing the digestive and eliminative pathways, and doing an herbal detox program. Once this is established, then herbs will work more efficiently and with less side effects. Many side effects are really just cleansing reactions which may not be necessary if the body is able to purge the toxins efficiently. Sometimes just getting the elimination system cleared and drinking lots of pure water is enough for the body to heal itself.
I have found that nearly everyone has a certain lack of order in their diets. It seems that corporate marketing creates a subliminal factor in getting people to consume and that this factor makes it harder to establish a kind of healthy and consistent discipline to the dietary world. This is coupled by a massive spin around several contradictory and competing versions of what a good diet is, with a vegan diet being the one most left out of most of the discussions. I feel that the vegan diet is the healthiest. It is possible that a raw food vegan diet may be superior to a cooked food vegan diet, but at present, after having experimented consistently with a raw food vegan diet for a year and a quarter, I concluded that there might be two weaknesses to the raw food vegan diet. One is that, without cooking vegetables, you are more likely to consume live parasites which may adversely and intensely affect health. This is especially true with the popular "grocery store raw foodism" where people rely on food trucked sometimes over 1,000 miles and fumigated with carbon monoxide from the exhaust, subject to extremes of heat and cold, and subject to handling at various junctures along the way. A lot of organic growing relies on composting where animal fecal matter is mixed in with plant wastes. If compost is not done properly and the compost pile is not heated by bacterial activity up to a certain temperature, the parasite eggs may not be cooked sufficiently to become sterilized and have a chance to invade a human host further down the time line. It is very easy for composting to be done improperly, since many people are relatively new to organic farming and are still in a learning process. But with our economic world linking very distant places together it is hard to double check on all the critical factors, almost impossible really, and cooking is simple insurance to cover a number of these factors. It may be possible for a raw food person to overcome these factors, but they should at least be looked at. The second problem is legume digestion. It seems that legumes are more digestible when cooked. While cooking cuts down the number of useful enzymes in food and the raw food diet has the most enzymes (an important positive factor in this diet), legumes still seem more digestible cooked and very cooked at that (like in a crock pot soup). When I was into raw food, I tried several ways of making legumes more digestible and found none of them were as digestible as a thorough cooking within a soup. Even sprouting legumes did not significantly change this for me.
If legumes are soaked overnight, drained of their soak water, rinsed, soaked again, slightly sprouted, rinsed, and then thoroughly cooked in a soup it seems that legumes shed a layer of natural toxins that are used by nature to protect the legumes-as-seed when sprouting (against molds, insect pests, etc.) and are literally easier for our body to handle. Legumes are the main viable protein in a vegan diet and should therefore be made as usable as possible by our body. The usual carnivore strategy is to load a lot of high protein animal muscle tissue into the body, bombard it with intense HCl acid in the stomach, and purge out the uric acid and nitrogen waste products from the system, along with hopefully dead maggot eggs laid by flies at the stockyards, and the urine that gets stuck in the system between organ death and cell death of the animal (animals die twice biologically, whereas death in the plant world is very different, some plants are so alive before being cooked that you can replant them and still have them grow; animals first die on the organ level when the heart and brain do not function, then the cells choke in the toxins secrete into the bloodstream when the organs no longer pump the blood, these toxins are consumed when animal flesh is eaten). One fallacy in the animal flesh eating strategy is that we do not use any "protein". Animal flesh eating diets are considered superior because they are high in protein. But humans do not really use protein at all. All the proteins of animal flesh must first be broken down into amino acids before they can be used. It takes massive acidic activity to break down animal muscle tissue to unlock its amino acids. Carnivores in nature have twice the HCl level of human beings for this purpose. Animal muscle tissue is very tough. Plants, on the other hand, do not have "complete proteins" (as if that is a disadvantage) and are already partly broken down, and therefore are easier to assimilate. Through cooking a soup, some of the processes of good digestion can be carried out outside our body so that the digestive process can be easier in our bodies. Preparation of legumes seems very key to this and probably works better in a cooked vegan diet. A quick stir fry, for the other vegetables, or a sauté under a lower heat (animal muscle tissue needs a higher cooking temperature to sterilize the maggot eggs and other pathogens that could be there, especially since the organ similarity of animals to humans may be enough of a match for humans to get cross species diseases), can preserve the enzymes that are sometimes lost during cooking. It is also possible to prepare high enzyme foods like papaya and pineapples to also compensate for enzyme loss.
In writing these notes, I am pointing to how much of a medicinal art really good cooking is and how little focus there is on this way of cooking. Very few people in modern society even cook from farm fresh ingredients, but open all kinds of boxes of processed powders and mix them together instead. Many people who are trained in gourmet cooking are really focusing on making food that taste good and only secondarily on its medicinal qualities. This is sometimes seen when, for instance, one TV chef who will remain nameless, got high cholesterol from his own cooking, almost got a lethal heart attack as a result, and had to switch to using less oil in his sauces. When you factor in keeping the nutritional and medicinal properties fully alive, factor in how food can synergistically combine with each other, and how to keep the properties at full potency, then everything matters, including how long each item needs to be cooked. What I learned from eating raw for over a year was that I was overcooking all my food and weakening all kinds of nutritional and medicinal potencies. I gained a sensitivity to a vital element that is easier to experience in raw foods and a wish to keep this vital element alive.
For instance, Omega 3's in oils have a lot of good healing properties, but also get destroyed easily by high heat. The best way to protect the Omega 3 factor is to put Flax Oil in last, after the stove is turned off, and to only gently stir it in. The same with adding this to a nutritional smoothie (only stir in after blending as the last ingredient). In terms of stir frying, I use olive oil and make sure it does not smoke. I add onions first and let them turn a little transparent, then add garlic, and then immediately add some pure water, then cardamom, then turmeric, and then some ginger. This creates the base for the fresh veggies to get added. They are added in terms of hardness, with the most hard veggies that need the most cooking coming first. If there is a hard veggie that is added later than this, I chop it finer so that it can cook more easily. Chopping finer is a good strategy for tough root veggies. Sometimes the cooking requirements of various veggies is so different that it is better to prepare these separately and then mix them together later on.
I find that herbal teas are even more sensitive to this and rarely use tea bags anymore. If I use tea bags, it is for when I go to restaurants, where I order a pot of hot water with my meal and make my own brew and use stevia as a sweetener. Regular green tea goes a little acidic when left to simmer after boiling for over a minute or two. Pu Erh tea, at least some varieties, seem to benefit from more boiling for a longer time, but still do best to remove them from simmering shortly after the boil (more tannins are leached out then). Every herb has its best way of being brewed and needs to be lumped in with herbs that have a similar or compatible brewing need (and then, if needed, combined together). I am still learning what is optimal for many medicinal herbs.
I am going to stop my notes here and post them, and maybe pick up later on.
The instructions shared here are a little compressed and accelerated in that Buddhist masters in the past would have taken at least a week to go through them and the significance of each step. I have shared other versions of this before and go into more detail on my blogsite (amritayana.blogspot.com, see "four steps to freedom").
Place your attention on your breathing, gently expanding your belly on the inhale, gently expanding your chest and rib cage on the inhale (but with no strain, even a few milli-meters of expansion is helpful, see if you can have the feeling of expansion be present in the front and back, and even the sides of the chest), and then gently relaxing the belly on the exhale, having a smooth and soft exhale. Notice if any anxiety or fear is making you push the air out on the exhale a little too fast or too forcefully, and gently allow this push to soften and slow down, again no force is necessary. You do not want to impose softness, but simply allow it to slowly appear as you ease into surrender into life. Allow the place where the inhale becomes the exhale and the exhale becomes the inhale, what Shiva called "the turnings of the breath" to be smooth with no harsh pauses, so that your whole breathing feels like a continuous circle. When you exhale, follow the air out and feel like you are touching the world at the outer turning, notice the freedom and relief from the internal world and any thoughts, emotions, and sensations that may be whirling around in some angst. When you inhale, follow the breath deep into your body and belly, even the point two to three inches below the belly button, the chi point or center of gravity point. Notice the depth of being that can be accessed there, deep below any angst that is felt Feel like you are moving through your dukkha, your sorrows, tensions, and contradictions with both the inward and outward movement of the breathing. As you move through the dukkha, intend not to avoid or fixate on this sorrow. Place about 70 percent attention on the breathing and 30 percent attention on the angst.
There is a kind of harsh analytical awareness of dukkha that is subtly resisting our sorrow and trying to get rid of it, yet the harshness is actually part of the sorrow and actually reinforces it. There is also a kind of sad resigned attention which has given up on eliminating sorrow that also subtly reinforces it. There is also a fearful attention that is trying to avoid or block out sorrow, but ends up making it more and more obvious. Notice how you are noticing sorrow and relax the effort within the attention, letting the sorrow simply be while feeling the breathing flow in and out within a nourishing circle of pranic energy generation.
As this kind of breathing becomes more natural, you may notice the dukkha dissolving of its own accord. When this happens, watch for the part of ourselves that wishes to coopt this discovery and try to again lock into sorrow and try to get rid of it. This harsher attention only reinforces the existence of sorrow by subtly trying to make it more solid in order to eliminate it, rather than seeing its "emptiness" and letting it dissolve back into the field from whence it came.
Gently see if you can rest in awareness as awareness while the breathing is flowing. There is a quality of space in the breathing within the feeling that the breathing is breathing itself and needs no effort at all. Feel into a kind presence and identity that is not formed by thought or belief, not put together by thought, not maintained by clinging to ideas and resisting ideas. Let the older thought based and even emotion based identity dissolve. Rest in awareness, resume your deeper and truer identity as pure consciousness, pure awareness, pure understanding, pure compassion, pure unmanifest creative potential, pure intentionality before intending anything. Notice the thoughts that float around and see if you can not get caught in them, not caught in resisting them, reacting to them, or clinging to them. Normally, we are run by our thoughts. They dribble us around like a basketball player, running us around the court, and shooting us through all kind of hoops (goals). One of the most important experiences one can have in meditation is to notice how much our thoughts control us rather than the other way around. If we intend to sit in silence and experience a storm of intense thoughts, then thought is not following our intention. This means our real wishes and our thoughts are not together. Thoughts run by their own causation and their own laws. There is "no self" in them. We are usually a slave to them and do their bidding without question, and are hypnotized into believing the sense of self that they produce in us. See if you can, at least for a short while, awaken from this trance, and maybe later on you can resurrect from the death that they represent when we are living always in their trance.
If you can master this some, there is yet a deeper level that is possible. One can notice that there is less of a difference between "your thoughts" and "my thoughts". When we shift our relationship to any thought, no matter who the thought seems to belong to, then we generate a wakefulness and ease that can ripple through the human and animal community in this world. We can "pray" without words and vibrate an energy of awakening into this world that can heal it and bless it, invite others to do the same. It is a kind of osmosis or transfer of awakening because we are ultimately part of one organism, waves in the same ocean. It can be easily felt when calm abiding in awareness as awareness is relaxed into. There are no boundaries between self and self on this level, no lines drawn between imaginary mental countries, no duality. Because of this we can and will heal each other. This way of meditating and praying is really very much without words or beliefs, since all mental formations are abandoned along the way, whether mundane or spiritual, Buddhist or Christian or whatever. Without the divisions of religion, there is a greater peace, beyond the conflicts of all the "isms" that plague this world, all formed by thought.
there was a door
that no one crossed
that lead to a place
that no one went
and to a time
that never was
courageous voyagers
shrank away from this door
subtly attached to the known
and fearing that the door
was a gate to annilation
they roamed everywhere else
to endless places
that they had been before
until
one by one
they had played every card
until they knew every move
of every game
and every outcome
until nothing was a surprise
and nothing was a risk
and they had nothing
anymore to lose
every war had then been fought
every possession had then been bought
every goal had then been sought
and found
save one
and there the door remained
offering no promises
giving no guarantees
presenting no clues
unwilling to compromise
sharing no hints
no one returned
from the other side
no message
was ever sent back
no prophet spoke
for the other side
no seer reported
the truth of what was there
no holy book
even mentioned
the existence of this door
no scientific probe
ever crossed its threshold
the words of every poet
never touched
its perfect silence
no philosophy
ever deduced anything
about what was behind
this door
or even tried
the humblest philosophers
simply admitted
they did not know
and bowed to this door
ordinary people
rushed by the door
too busy living
their day to day struggles
until the door gathered cobwebs
on the side
of a busy city street
one crazy homeless person
spray painted
some words on this door
"this way to heaven"
and was heard of no more
religious people
read these words
frowned at the sacrilege
and hurried on
very occasionally
a child would be lost
on this street
bereaved parents
would hunt for them
looking everywhere
but at this door
it seemed that
few could even see the door
after a while
and it seemed
to fade away
like an old billboard ad
for a product
that no one ever bought
from a company
that had long gone bankrupt
i was curious
about all these stories
that whirled around this door
of children, of homeless ones,
of insane ones, and downtrodden ones
who opened the door
crossed over
and disappeared
never to be heard of again
and for a while
i rented a room
overlooking the street
where the door was
and for some reason
i could still see it
though i could not tell you why
i would sip tea
go to work
and wonder
what became of them
and look at the fire
in my fireplace
seeing the flames dance
and almost tell me
what happened to them
knowing one day
i would follow them
when i felt ready
one day
i did see a child
open the door
and walk in
and disappear
like the rest
but i caught a glimpse
of the little child's
wide eyes
filled with wonder
and an innocent smile
rise in response
to seeing something
far down some corridor
in another land
that the child could see
but i could not
the child's eyes
glistened like stars
and the body of the child
cast a long shadow
on the dusty street
and the child disappeared
like the rest
never to be seen again
in the dream world
i would wander toward the door
and reach out an aged hand
to grab its door handle
but would never quite reach it
something would make me hesitate
to take the last step
perhaps because of fear
perhaps because it felt so final
and something still held me back
the world would call me back
until whatever it was seemed hollow
and i would return to the door
and reach again for the handle
and something else
would call me back
as if i was looking
for some excuse
and found it
knowing whatever it was
would only distract me
for a short while
and i would be here again
in this dream
or was it reality
i ran out of distractions
and i would be reaching
for the handle
for the very last time
but would be paralyzed
only a few inches away
suspended there
not knowing how
to go further
no longer wanting
to run away
frozen and helpless
suspended between
running away and completion
not caring anymore
and caring too much
paralyzed until
time itself had no meaning
and feeling like
i had been here
for a thousand years
and long ago
stopped counting the years
and only dimly remembering
that i had any experience
at all
save being in front
of this door
a bird made of fire
comes to my rescue
and shows me the way
gently pushing me aside
and taking my place
the bird concentrates
on itself
and generates
an all consuming fire
burning so brightly
that even the door
is burned to nothing
and only a pile
of ashes remains
and a child
emerges from the ashes
and walks
through the open door
or what is now
just a hole
an open vortex
spinning wildly
i find that
there is no need
anymore for effort
i am already
falling in
the vortex pulls me in
and i merely trust
what is happening
my old form lights on fire
turns to ashes
and falls completely away
new eyes rise
from the ashes
and see
something
obvious and wonderful
i want to come back
and tell others
shout from the roof tops
and tell everyone
that there is nothing to fear
nothing to lose
and everything to gain
but i realize
that I cannot do any better
than the insane homeless one
i realize that
i have already spent
too much time
in the known and familiar
too far away
from my real home
having traded it
for a shadow world
with a quiet smile
and with gratitude
i leave the shadow world
knowing that all others
will come when they are ready
i want to soar
across this shadow world
just one more time
and notice
i have become a bird
and my wings
are on fire
There is a teaching in Buddhism that the gods and goddesses are "mind made". This does not mean that they exist and does not mean that they do not exist. When we go within, we touch upon the eye consciousness, ear consciousness, tongue consciousness, nose consciousness, and tactile consciousness. We go deeper into the summarizer that unites the five senses into one experience and reach the 7th consciousness which conceptually interprets our experience. The interpreting consciousness is the home of the ego, the sense of a personal self that binds us to the wheel of sorrow. It is also the home of the gods and goddesses. We construct them with our interpretive mind. They become archetypes within the 8th consciousness and take on a life of their own. We can invoke them in our experience, chant mantras to them, and even create results within our empirical experience.
What is interesting is that Buddhist praxis that the deities are visualized, sometimes in great detail, then we "become them", and then we "dissolve them". When we dissolve them, we learn something about their seeming reality that is hard to put into words. We notice how we have faith in our own creations, how our mind can invest energy into a form and bring it to life. We do this with our ego personality. When we dissolve the whole structure, then there is a kind of "energy essence" that remains and that is felt. A certain kind of "psychic flexibility" is attained. I can concentrate this energy essence into a point of radiant light and feel myself as this form, move it across the universe, and influence events through intention. There is a sense that even this "energy essence" is a subtle thought construction. It can also be dissolved and recreated from an energy field. This energy field can be called "emptiness", "the ground of being", or "the space beyond being and nonbeing". Whatever it is, when we are touching this in meditation, we are beyond the conventional deities of all the religions. We see that the deities themselves are "mental constructs". There is a certain kind of feeling of Yahweh, for instance, that you get by reading the Bible. It talks to other characters, like prophets, smotes cities, floods worlds, makes promises, etc. The idea of Yahweh, too, is not static. It evolves within the collective contemplation of a people. Upgrades from a tribal god to a monotheistic supreme ruler of gods, to the only god, and to a personal god that has a relationship with individual humans. People can feel this construct loving them or judging them, forgiving them or punishing them, believe this being in some way speaks through the Bible to them, and even fantasize this god throwing nonbelievers into a burning lake of fire to be tortured for an eternity. To show how much of a mental construction this Yahweh is, there are variations in how this deity functions. There are different categories of believers and nonbelievers depending on what the "right beliefs" are and who believes them, and then there are those who "really believe those beliefs" and those "who do not really believe those beliefs". So different factions form with each believing that they have the right Yahweh and the others do not. But whatever the variations which are believed, it is clear that each set of believers has constructed a Yahweh for themselves, visualizes it, worships it, and follows what this Yahweh has commanded them to do. What these commandments are is a mental construction generated by the thinking of the tribe as they "study the Bible". Even the Bible itself is a mental construct, written down by humans, compiled by humans, the individual texts selected by humans over other texts, the humans who selected the texts were in some sense also selected by a kind of psychological consensus as being "authoritative". It was not quite a democratic voting process, but some kind of selection took place within a certain kind of society. The whole process is not as formal, scientific, and precise as Buddhist meditation practice, but it still happened and a deity was created on the level of thought, given life, and then surrendered to. Again, whether or not this deity is "real" is not something that Buddhism goes into. The construct has a life of its own. In some sense it is real and in some sense it is not. Through the combined mental power of the tribe, this deity can exert a tangible force in human life. This deity can also be weakened by doubt, like when contradictions are found in the Bible, in the theological views of a specific mental tribe, when the historical views that support the story of the deity are called into question, or when the philosophical views supporting the construct cease to make sense to the believer. It is interesting here to notice something. We have philosophical and empirical arguments to support or refute a specific belief. If we are convinced of these arguments, then we "believe them". If we are not convinced, then we "disbelieve them". A certain process of thought constructs beliefs and deconstructs beliefs. In meditation, we look at this level, notice how the 7th consciousness operates. This is a hard one for humans to really look at and transcend, because there is a belief that every belief has something "real" behind it. When, for instance, "god" is shown to be a mental construction, then there is a leap to believing that there is something corresponding to this idea that is real and is beyond our thoughts, that exists separately from our thoughts, and that our thoughts can at least label. When a believer asserts this, then the belief gets projected again and reconstructs itself on a another level. There is still a mental process going on and it is still creating the deity. The mental process is still reiterating itself and does not stop functioning.
When Buddha negated the idea of self, he was seeing that this was a construct that we form and attach to, experience our identity through, and which has a certain amount of illusion within itself. When we do not understand who and what we are from direct experience, then the concept of self that we generate about ourselves is largely fictional. But this fiction still has a curious life of its own. It can have low self esteem or arrogance when it compares itself with other selves, which are also visualizations and constructs as well. We take in raw sensory data, react to this data and form opinions about who others are. There are very complex and multiple thought streams that pour into this process, with all of them constantly changing moment to moment, sometimes moving so rapidly and compulsively that people do not see them or notice how they invoke a certain feeling of self one day and another feeling of self another day, and how each sense of self is different from each other. There is an assumption that there is something "real" behind all those different feelings of self that unifies all of them, yet when a person looks within one never finds anything like a self. No one even bothers to ask what a self would even look like. But when thoughts, emotions, and sensations arise, both separately and in any combination, there is no self that is attached to these experiences, no self glued to them in any way. There is nothing we can point to and say, "Look, here is the self, notice how it connects to this emotion, but not that emotion." When a person looks within and notices this, then something starts shifting inside. The person moves out of the 7th consciousness and into the 9th consciousness. It is like one has been living within a haze of thought and is lifted above and beyond all thoughts, whether theistic, atheistic, or agnostic. From the vantage point all philosophical systems, they look like different dreams. Naturally, some are better constructed than others. If we glue our thoughts together very logically, connect them within a flow of thought that has no contradictions, it feels better inside. But compared to "radiant awareness", there is a kind of dull and old energy to all these thought constructions. They feel like an obscuration. They are like well worn grooves in the brain, tied to the past, repeating a kind of past, and constantly reiterating themselves. It seems, too, that these grooves eventually do wear out the brain and cause it to age and die. When we shift into radiant awareness, then brain starts to renew itself and may not need to age and die.
The 8th consciousness has several levels in and of itself. It seems that there is an individual level, a kind of personal unconscious, and there is a deeper and more collective level. The different levels of consciousness interpenetrate each other and influence each other. Our thoughts are shaped by the thoughts of others and visa versa. There is a reflection of the deity, too, on this level. When groups of people put enough energy into a construct, then an archetype is formed. It can appear in the dreams of individuals from other cultures. We can feel this energy even within the thought or word of the deity, by its name, as if the name is a microcosm and focus of a vast story or series of thoughts that gives the flavor and definition of this deity. Because this level of consciousness is transpersonal, beyond each individual consciousness, it feels "real". When multiple witnesses see something and have matching reports, it becomes part of a social reality. When people talk about a deity, pray to a deity, and gather together to worship a deity, then the thought form gathers a kind of energy and becomes alive. The deity seems greater any one individual opinion. It is hard to see it as a mental construction. Yet a game like Tennis is easier to see this way. The rules are mentally constructed and the meanings associated with the empirical moves are mentally constructed, and even the emotions surrounding "winning" and "losing" are generated from those interpretations. A certain number of events are called "winning" and a certain number of events are called "losing". There are very high emotions with crowds cheering or hissing regarding those events. The rules of the game teach the group what to cheer and what to hiss. There are even righteous feelings when someone is "cheating" or breaks the rules, moves outside the social consensus. Once again, Tennis takes on a life of its own. Does Tennis exist? In a sense it does and in a sense it does not.
If you are following my contemplation of "mental construction", see if you notice something shifting inside your consciousness. I am merely describing a mental process that we do not always look at. I am not assigning a verdict of "true" or "false", because these are, in some sense, the ultimate labels of the interpreting 7th consciousness. It feels it has done something very significant with those labels. It sometimes spends a lot of time agonizing over what is real and what is not real, and how to find out. Whole wars have been fought over which belief is true and which is false. Yet this total activity is rarely looked at. People in general do not step out of this process to look at. People do not, as in Buddhist praxis, see what happens when you deliberately visualize and create a deity, identify and become the deity, and then dissolve the deity. It is interesting when you make this process conscious and do it deliberately, systematically, logically, and completely. Most people let this process happen inside them through a social conditioning process, through education and teachers, who are unconsciously visualizing and conjuring with their words, no really knowing what they are doing. In Buddhist meditation, you "take over" the process. There is something learned when we do this that is hard to put into words. It is not about proving or disproving something as "real" or "imaginary". When we build a house, we learn something through the experience of going through the whole process. We will know the house in a different way than someone who just moves in and lives in the house. In one way, the house will feel more real because we made it. In another way, there will be less mystique around the house. We might even have better ideas about how to build it from having made the first one. The second one will most likely be better than the first and the third better than the second, and so on.
In a similar way, we see that the deities are mental constructions, then something happens there. We can construct better and better deities, make them more loving, wise, and creative than some macro-thug that smotes cities and who is so arrogant that it needs worship. We will also get a feeling for all the believers and atheists who we meet, and we will notice how superficial merely believing and disbelieving those constructs are. We will notice how whether or not we believe or disbelieve in the "macro-thug" is really a small thing. All this is very different from moving past the entire 7th consciousness into something deeper and vaster, moving past the entire 8th consciousness into something deeper and vaster, etc. We will, too, wonder whether putting one of the deity labels to this vaster energy is really doing much. If we call this thing "god" what are we doing? What do we mean? Do we merely fall back into the 7th consciousness and just be content with our mental antique shop? Do we really want to step into the vastness and stay there, or do we want to make a little toy in our shop called "vastness" and just sit and admire it?
Transition Time Checklist
I wanted to share some things that might be of help during this present transitional time.
1. The bottom line is trusting life to take of us and resting in that more than money. To paraphrase Jesus in this regard, you either trust life or trust money, but you cannot really trust both.
I have always thought insurance was an odd thing. It only kicks in when you are already damaged and insurance does not help you to not get damaged in the first place. If you are too damaged, insurance also does not help. If you get damaged below your deductible, then it does not help. If you get damaged within a certain exact range, then they paid a certain amount, but maybe not enough to cover the costs of the damage. Once damaged, then your policy may get rejected as too high a risk. If you are likely to get damaged, as in a forest fire in a dry valley, then you will most like not get covered at all.
My insurance is to chant to Amida Buddha and continue to burn accident causing karma away. To visualize "hreeh" in the sacrum and have this purifying fire raise up the spine as a tingling energy and then mix it in the heart chakra with white "om" drips coming from the third eye, turning the energy into a silvery blue elixir that radiates out from an "ah".
2. Focus on community and serving in love. Real economics will be about this, about being true neighbors to each other, brothers and sisters in one consciousness, and generating a life worth living with each other, trading products and services that will fulfill the four purposes of life: survival, healing, growth, and celebration.
3. Get out of debt and stay out of debt. Some people are not going to be able to do this one. A person can be "locked into debt". In this case, do not add debt to debt and see if you can at least finance to systematically reduce the debt or at least pay off the principal. The current economic system thrives on debt.
4. Drop out. The old word for dropping out is "renunciation". You renounce the world. You give up ambition and success in this world. You are then "in the world but not of it". If you do not drop out, you tie your star to a sinking ship.
5. Drop TV. Switch to the internet for your news and even your fun shows. It is all there and free for the most part. The regular news is apparently owned by 4 corporations and they do avoid publishing certain news items at all.
6. Drop higher education. Unless you feel called into a profession, just decide to take a path of self learning and avoid one of the most popular methods of getting into debt. We have tons of books, youtube videos, and tutors who are a lot more reasonable than a university education. Plus if you go university, you will have a lot of mandatory classes that route you into official views which are one sided. History, for instance, is about money and war dates for the most part, not the emergence of powerful ideas, like Sahraj's discovery the the tantric principle ("you only transcend the things you first accept") and the Zen principle of "immediate enlightenment". If you do like a certain university teacher, it might be possible to audit the class and simply not get "credit" for it, and still get exposed to the same learning information. The same goes for setting aside money for the education of children. It is better to give them learning experiences all their life and help them to create their own wealth through their own creativity.
7. Shift some savings out of the dollar and into silver. This, again, may not be possible for everyone. One analyst I trust says that silver will eventually be worth $500 per an ounce, once its real value is not affected by economic manipulation. This means that only a few ounces of silver can be a protection against dollar devaluation. This is happening every time the government prints money without any backing by precious metals. This is called fiat currency and it is going terminal. It is not about hoarding silver or even investing in silver. It is about shifting your savings into a reliable currency that will not collapse. Pull out of all the paper fiat currency "investments" and put it into real silver (not certificates, which is more paper). Keep enough paper money to pay bills and cover expenses. This might be most of the money. But if you can, see if you can put about 10 percent in.
8. Grow a garden. One economic principle that saves money is to eliminate the middle person and deal direct. When you grow a garden, you eliminate the need for food to get shipped to you via ships, planes, trucks, sprayed with chemicals which also need to get shipped and trucked, grown in fertilizers that need to get shipped and trucked, bought in grocery stores where the stuff is shipping and trucked to reach, and brought home in a car whose gas is shipped and trucked to the local gas station. While we cannot eliminate interdependence, we can simplify the web a little by focusing on getting needs locally met.
9. Wildcraft for edibles and medicines. I am amazed at how much food is around even in this wounded valley. Get some books, get a guide to show you what is out there, and start to explore. Also, when you have found some plants that are highly nutritious, take their seeds and help to spread them around. Help nature to become the lush grocery store that it once was.
10. Go organic, gluten free, alkaline, non-GMO, and vegan. Most people will not be able to do this, especially in one leap. But take it in stages, eliminate sugar and flour products first, get away from anything with MSG (autolyzed yeast, autolyzed corn protein, hydrolyzed vegetable protein, and natural flavor are all synonyms for it, natural flavor may or may be it, but the only safe way to know is if the label says "no MSG", soups are notorious for having MSG as "natural flavor") or Aspartame (both MSG and this tend to fry the brain and have addictive qualities), then eliminate cheese (has casein aka Elmer's glue), then do some cleansing routines, starting with an intestinal cleanse and then a liver flush. Many people brag about being healthy without a good diet, but I want my diet to actually help me be healthy. A diet is not something that we should be surviving, it should be helping us.
11. Master pranic breathing and practice it to the point where you feel pranic waves going through your body. Enlist an energy healer or trade energy healing sessions with someone to help unblock the energy flows and keep them unblocked. Master energy chants too. Master meditation.
12. Follow your heart. If you do not live in fear, you will be able to hear deep guidance and follow it. You might be guided to special places of safety in during this time, when and if they are needed. Sometimes the safest place, though, is right in the thick of what is happening, helping others in compassion. Follow your vision and start building the next world now.
13. Go alternative energy. Get off the electric grid. Get solar panels. Research zero point energy. Use wind, tides, rivers, and geothermal for energy. Move away from petro-dollars.
14. Get a musical instrument and learn to play it. Learn the principles of sound healing and play music with this awareness.
When I was in college, I read a book called THE LIGHT OF A THOUSAND SUNS. In just two pages somewhere in the middle of the book, there was mention of Amida Buddha who radiated blessing energy and healing grace to anyone who called upon upon his name, who promised to liberate anyone who called to him, and who visualized and manifested a world called Sukhavati from the deep purity of his compassionate meditation, a place where people could be reborn into after they died and continue to meditate in peace into supreme perfect enlightenment. I did not know much about chanting. But I was transitioning away from Christianity, which had a similar idea of divine grace, but also threw anyone into eternal daily agony if they rejected this grace. Amida Buddha represented a divine grace without any trace of punishment for rejecting it. During that time in my life, it was something that I needed.
After many long days at college, where I was taking 18 hours a week of class and working 25 hours a week of work at the cafeteria, had tons of homework and labs, I would end my day walking in the cool night air and chanting "Namo Amida Buddha" with a kind of plain song Gregorian style that I made up as improvised the chant. I found that when I came back to my dormitory that I always felt well. I would move through many emotions as I chanted and somehow Amida Buddha would uplift my energy into peace.
When I was in Florida, I got inspired to make my own mala and chant 1,000 repetitions of the mantra per a day. I found that the beads got so charged with blissful energy that people who touched them would feel peaceful. I would often give the malas to people who were going through sadness and kept making a new one in its place. I ran out of them eventually and chanted using the joints of my fingers as a bone mala to do the count. I would feel uplifted to a space where I was beyond the world of ordinary events and yet I could feel all the people I cared about. I could send them energy from this space.
I was doing some Sufi lucid dreaming practice at this time and Amida Buddha appeared to me and told me to add the word "Om" in front of "Namo Amida Buddha". He said that he wanted the mantra to be universal, associated with no religion in such a way that someone had to join the religion to receive his blessing, that he would support any path that anyone was on and help them to go further into healing, love, and bliss, that he wanted the pure land to be a place of refuge to anyone who needed it, not just Buddhists.
When I was in Washington, I was sad when I was feeling stuck in my life. I was working delivering pizzas. I started to chant the mantra and found that I received three times more tips than usual. I did not need the money, but somehow grace reaching deep into the Earth plane and physical plane meant something to me. Amida Buddha later shared in dreamtime that he wanted the Earth to be transformed into a pure land, a place of peace, where everyone loved each other, took care of each other, and were sensitive to the needs of each other.
In Oregon, on the coast, two friends were getting married, and Amida Buddha wanted to bless them. I asked them if it was okay to channel this blessing to them. They said yes to this. During the wedding ceremony, I placed my hands on both their heads and started chanting. It was a typical cloudy day on the coast. The clouds parted in that very moment and sunlight shined directly to the gathering, gliding across the favorite tree of the male of the couple.
During another dreamtime encounter, Amida Buddha shared that he wanted me to add "Hreeh" to the end of the mantra, so it ended up being, "Om Namo Amida Buddha Hreeh". It has not changed since then, but more instructions have been added that relate to visualizing "Hreeh" in neon fiery red in the sacred, "Om" in luminous white at the 3rd eye, and the energies mixing at the heart to form a silvery blue life force elixir that vibrates with "Ah".
During my time on the coast of Oregon, I was 10 miles away from a town of only 3,000 people (1,000 in the actual town and 2,000 nearby). I lived more in nature than in human civilization. I loved feeling the thunder rumble in the clouds. Lightning energized me. I would often leave my physical body and soar through this natural world and sometimes beyond. During this time, I saw thousands of worlds. I saw worlds filled with so much sorrow that Earth as it is now would feel like heaven to those beings in those worlds. I have seen worlds so beautiful, loving, and tender that I would just fall to the ground and cry. I saw worlds where everyone was dedicated to the spiritual path, honored the spiritually wise over the money wise, and had no wars, no poverty, and no violence. I saw teachers in those worlds teach and words leave their mouths as radiant liquid light that would flow directly into the ears of the students. Whenever anyone understood a deeper truth, had a realization, or opened their heart into deeper love, flowers would spontaneously bloom to honor this event, and flowers were blooming all the time.
I learned from my travel to all the worlds and saw how they were made mainly by thought. Just as Amida Buddha visualized a wonderful world from a deep and loving meditation, uncaused by any past thoughts, every angry thought creates worlds of fighting and hatred, every jealous thought creates worlds of wandering hungry ghosts, every dull thought creates worlds of compulsive habits and numbing addictions, every fearful thought creates a nightmare, and every greedy thought creates worlds of competition and struggle. I saw that this world, this beloved Earth, was formed by thought, arisen by thought, sustained by thought, and will be transformed by every loving thought, every loving chant.
I remember sharing the mantra with people who were even a little receptive and even just a little sincere, and found that even one repetition was bringing light into their aura, but they did not stay with the process, that just million chants is needed to go the whole distance to supreme liberation, to flash into Sukhavati and to see this beautiful world that Amida Buddha created through his own mind. But the very first chant is enough for the light to shine into our sorrow and start to lighten our karmaic load. I found that Shinran said, "The first chant is all that is needed, such is the grace of Amida Buddha, and remaining chants are only chants of gratitude."
I found that some sutras exist that describe Sukhavati. I saw the world before having read about them. They are a little different and mostly the same. The trees glow with small orbs of light. Some describe white light orbs and some describe rainbow lights. Both are right. There are many orchards with different shining lights, different luminous healing herbs for many illnesses. Every one is meditating. You have to like to meditate to be in this world. Some meditate in a Lotus posture on the ground. Some are on Lotus blossoms in the many lakes. Some are floating in bubbles of light in the sky. There is a natural progression in the lessons of meditation that are in this world. Those with many negative thoughts are placed in Lotus blossoms that envelope them and contain them until their minds are pure, until all their thoughts converge into the mantra and then disappear into the pure thoughts of the luminous void. There are pools of water where you learn to calm the waters (emotions) with your mind, simply by waving your hands and saying, "Calm, calm, calm." Thought has more obvious power in this world. It has power in our world, too, but our thoughts are more confused and run at cross purposes with each other. When we converge our thoughts into the mantra, then when we focus our mind we have more power to manifest anything. It is more important then to not be negative at all, because the power of our minds to manifest this increases many-fold.
At this point in my life, I have chanted the mantra over a million times. When I started, it took 1,000 repetitions to shift my consciousness into bliss. Later on it took 100 repetitions. Now it takes only about 3 repetitions. After chanting for a few years, I remember that a fierce wolf in the dream leaped for my throat and the first words from my dreambody mouth were, "Namo Amida Buddha", and the wolf dissolved. I found in a Buddhist text that it is auspicious when your dreambody picks up the mantra and spontaneously uses it. This means the meaning and intent of the mantra has penetrated into your consciousness and become part of it.
Lately, the visualization of "Hreeh" in Tibetan magical script, in luminous red fire, has the convergence of this mantra. It is like a one syllable focusing of all the energy of all of those repetitions. I find it vibrates at the core of my dream body and moves energy through my physical body and can extend to others.
The "Hreeh" is the sacred sound of the Lotus family, the family of Dharmakara who merged with the primal genderless energy of Amida Buddha and carried with him his promise to liberate anyone who calls upon his name. The Lotus family includes White Tara, Mandarava, and all the beings of all the religions who become one with the energy of unconditional love. When the mantra is chanted long enough, you become a part of this energy also, one of the thousand arms of Avalochiteshvara, reaching out and helping sorrow to end everywhere.
