#for jerks

[thefreelanceangel]

A Fuckin' CALLOUT POST 'cause I'm TIRED OF THIS

@gatheredfates and @riftdancing are too fuckin' cute someone stop them

...and you know what? while you're at it? Go DOGPILE on THESE PEOPLE for being TOO FUCKIN' TALENTED.

@iron-sparrow! YOU! and @ahollowgrave! THE FUCK??

@sealrock??? how tf DARE you be good at things??? and @this-is-ris quit being so fuckin' adorable!

@hex-blogs what the FUCK being TALENTED??? IN FRONT OF MY FUNYUNS???

[yoga4yokels-blog]

Call Me A Hindon't, I.

Because, well, calling me a Hindu would probably be offensive, because I'm not, really. But Indian philosophy, what I know of it, is rather interesting. Of course, by Indian philosophy, I mean things like the Bagavad Gita, the Vedas, and the various myriad of Sutras on Yoga, Kundalini, Tantra, Weird Esoteric Shit Most Hippies Only Talk About To Sound Deep And Pick Up Chicks With... that sort of thing. But one problem with a lot of it is that in our modern culture, especially here in Amurrica, these ideas are too aloof and weird to digest. So I want to make it easy to pass, like those Lunchables™ that we all gobbled up as kids. One of the ways I'm going to do that is by taking modern, accessible ideas and relating them to these almost ancient ideas to, hopefully, provide a clearer context for most people that either aren't familiar with them, or have a hard time understanding these ideas. I'll start simply.

Let's start to get a general feel for the mentality before we Jump into source texts and start splitting hairs about context and meaning. I think the Bagavad Gita is really the essence of Indian Philosophy and their spiritual way of thinking. "Bagavad Gita" [bug-uh-vud ☼ GEE-tuh] literally means the "Song of God" in Sanskrit. This has a few meanings to it: Firstly, it is a conversation between two friends on the battlefield, before the start of a war. When Arjuna begins to falter before the battle starts, Krishna reveals himself as the source of all existence and counsels his friend Arjuna. So, it is the song of God, in that sense. But as the conversation unravels, and Krishna explains more and more to Arjuna, we find that Krishna is really just a vessel for this source. "The true essence of God creates all things, is all things and is also all things that are not," He tells Arjuna, "And so you are God just as I am." So in another sense, the book itself is the Song of God, a melody that reminds the listener that he or she is actually God, having a physical experience.

"Woah, dude. Pass the bong."

Well, that's the really heavy stuff, there. See, Hinduism is usually seen as this crazy religion that thinks there's thousands and thousands of Gods, and in many ways they do believe this, but there's also an aspect that there is only one Everything, and that's what "God" is- and more. God is quite possibly the worst name imaginable for it, though. And terms like "Source" and "Ultimate Reality" leave a grimy, New-Age taste in my mouth after saying them. An Indian saint was once asked what God is, and he replied, "Neti, neti!" (Not that, not that!)

Arjuna is quite taken aback by this, like most people would be, and shoots Krishna a quick, "Nigga' what?" Krishna goes on in length, then, about the nature of God and how to reach Union with it. Basically, he says: "It's already there, there's nothing really to add to make it come out, only stuff you've already added that needs to be taken away."

"Can you say, 'Brain Washing'?"

There's a lot of talk in the Gita about Yoga, and so it helps here to know what Yoga actually is. It's most common to be thinking of Yoga as a form of exercise and stretch routine that purportedly makes people calmer, more serene. Well, that is a yoga- Asana Yoga- but there are at least seven other types. I won't get into them all right now, but it's enough to know that "Yoga" means "Union" and is the ultimate source of our English word "Yoke" (something you put on Oxen to plow a field).

This Yoga has all kinds of connotations and applications regarding it, and to appreciate it, we need to know a bit more about how the concept of reality works in the Gita, and most Indian scriptures. We have the physical realm, created by Nature (Prakriti), which is our bodies, our planet, the Universe and the four forces of nature. Anything involving atoms is here. At a finer level, we have what pagans would call the "Astral Plane" (Akasha), where spiritual energies operate. This would be where the tinyGods (Devas) from mythology reside. The Hindus have their own Mythology, but the idea is that the gods of all cultures are present here, often called by different names in different times and places. At a level even finer than that, you have something you could call the "First Manifestation". This is the first point at which anything could be said to exist. Then, there's something beyond that- something beyond an ability to even imagine. "God" is all of these, combined. It's noteworthy to consider that only at the physical level is Time an applicable concept.

"No Ego- not a drop. No, sir-ee!"

Then, below all these ideas is the world of Illusion (Maya). What is meant by Illusion is our constructs and projections upon the world. What is the thing you are reading this on? Some kind of a computer, right? Well, it's not. What a thing is it will always be, for a thing only is what ittrulyis.

"What the shit does that mean?"

Smash your computer. Is it still a computer? No. It's a heaping pile of capacitors and transistor chips and other bits. But even those bits, once smashed, aren't even what we call them. What they really are, what we should recognize in them, is what is constant, unchanging. Maya is the illusion that this thing is a computer, simply because we use it as such. All these levels of reality are very intimately connected. They aren't like alternate dimensions that you have to travel to, either by science or magic. In fact, you could look at them as fractal representations of each other. By practicing the Physical Yogas, Uniting yourself with the Universe, literally yoking yourself to the movements of existence, you synchronize these higher levels of existence as well. By performing Mental Yogas (meditations and study, or just intense observation), you synchronize those aspects in the higher levels. And you keep on reorganizing until there's a clear path to "God".

"Fine. Use whatever hippy term suits your agenda."

What about all those Indian Gods? Shiva? Ganesh? Kama? Etcetera? They exist in some sense. My thoughts are that Maya (our artificial conceptual world) and Akasha (our "spiritual" level of existence), while separate, interpret this Source as various aspects that are easier to contemplate, to manage, and then project them into a sort of collective-conscious space where they really do exist. This isn't much of a problem in Indian thought, since even the most unenlightened person is ultimately a manifestation of God. Of course, there are some Hindus that believe in the literal gods, but there are others, still, that only appear to believe in them. It's perfectly acceptable, according to the Gita, to accept that a limited mind can't think of the unlimited and use a representation that is itself limited. How else would you even begin to contemplate God without it? So there's some reason for the confusion of someone unfamiliar with Indian thought looking in from the outside.

"Getchyer spiritual loopholes! 3 for five, 10 a dozen!"

There's some severely technical stuff regarding further examination, especially when we start talking about the idea of the Energetic Body- through which the energy centers and pathways used in things like Acupuncture are laid out. In future installments, I intend on covering a wide array of these topics. You might think a lot of it is bullshit. You might be a True Believer™.

I can say that these systems of thought make sense to me, and that the philosophical practices I've adopted from them seem to work well. Again, I'm more of a Hindon't than a Hindu. I make no claims to being some ultra-enlightened guru whose every word you should hinge on. But if you think this stuff is bullshit, then test it. I'll include "Meat and Potato" style experiments/exercises in upcoming posts of the same name that anyone can try. But you have to earnestly leave your preconceptions at the door or you botch the experiment and misinterpret the results.

Until the next sunrise, ☼ Gesturing Infinity ☼

[gesturing-infinity-blog]

Call me a Hindon't, part 1

Because, well, calling me a Hindu would probably be offensive, because I'm not, really. But Indian philosophy, what I know of it, is rather interesting. Of course, by Indian philosophy, I mean things like the Bagavad Gita, the Vedas, and the various myriad of Sutras on Yoga, Kundalini, Tantra, Weird Esoteric Shit Most Hippies Only Talk About To Sound Deep And Pick Up Chicks With... that sort of thing. But one problem with a lot of it is that in our modern culture, especially here in Amurrica, these ideas are too aloof and weird to digest. So I want to make it easy to pass, like those Lunchables™ that we all gobbled up as kids. One of the ways I'm going to do that is by taking modern, accessible ideas and relating them to these almost ancient ideas to, hopefully, provide a clearer context for most people that either aren't familiar with them, or have a hard time understanding these ideas. I'll start simply.

Let's start to get a general feel for the mentality before we Jump into source texts and start splitting hairs about context and meaning. I think the Bagavad Gita is really the essence of Indian Philosophy and their spiritual way of thinking. "Bagavad Gita" [bug-uh-vud ☼ GEE-tuh] literally means the "Song of God" in Sanskrit. This has a few meanings to it: Firstly, it is a conversation between two friends on the battlefield, before the start of a war. When Arjuna begins to falter before the battle starts, Krishna reveals himself as the source of all existence and counsels his friend Arjuna. So, it is the song of God, in that sense. But as the conversation unravels, and Krishna explains more and more to Arjuna, we find that Krishna is really just a vessel for this source. "The true essence of God creates all things, is all things and is also all things that are not," He tells Arjuna, "And so you are God just as I am." So in another sense, the book itself is the Song of God, a melody that reminds the listener that he or she is actually God, having a physical experience.

"Woah, dude. Pass the bong."

Well, that's the really heavy stuff, there. See, Hinduism is usually seen as this crazy religion that thinks there's thousands and thousands of Gods, and in many ways they do believe this, but there's also an aspect that there is only one Everything, and that's what "God" is- and more. God is quite possibly the worst name imaginable for it, though. And terms like "Source" and "Ultimate Reality" leave a grimy, New-Age taste in my mouth after saying them. An Indian saint was once asked what God is, and he replied, "Neti, neti!" (Not that, not that!)

Arjuna is quite taken aback by this, like most people would be, and shoots Krishna a quick, "Nigga' what?" Krishna goes on in length, then, about the nature of God and how to reach Union with it. Basically, he says: "It's already there, there's nothing really to add to make it come out, only stuff you've already added that needs to be taken away."

"Can you say, 'Brain Washing'?"

There's a lot of talk in the Gita about Yoga, and so it helps here to know what Yoga actually is. It's most common to be thinking of Yoga as a form of exercise and stretch routine that purportedly makes people calmer, more serene. Well, that is a yoga- Asana Yoga- but there are at least seven other types. I won't get into them all right now, but it's enough to know that "Yoga" means "Union" and is the ultimate source of our English word "Yoke" (something you put on Oxen to plow a field).

This Yoga has all kinds of connotations and applications regarding it, and to appreciate it, we need to know a bit more about how the concept of reality works in the Gita, and most Indian scriptures. We have the physical realm, created by Nature (Prakriti), which is our bodies, our planet, the Universe and the four forces of nature. Anything involving atoms is here. At a finer level, we have what pagans would call the "Astral Plane" (Akasha), where spiritual energies operate. This would be where the tinyGods (Devas) from mythology reside. The Hindus have their own Mythology, but the idea is that the gods of all cultures are present here, often called by different names in different times and places. At a level even finer than that, you have something you could call the "First Manifestation". This is the first point at which anything could be said to exist. Then, there's something beyond that- something beyond an ability to even imagine. "God" is all of these, combined. It's noteworthy to consider that only at the physical level is Time an applicable concept.

"No Ego- not a drop. No, sir-ee!"

Then, below all these ideas is the world of Illusion (Maya). What is meant by Illusion is our constructs and projections upon the world. What is the thing you are reading this on? Some kind of a computer, right? Well, it's not. What a thing is it will always be, for a thing only is what ittrulyis.

"What the shit does that mean?"

Smash your computer. Is it still a computer? No. It's a heaping pile of capacitors and transistor chips and other bits. But even those bits, once smashed, aren't even what we call them. What they really are, what we should recognize in them, is what is constant, unchanging. Maya is the illusion that this thing is a computer, simply because we use it as such. All these levels of reality are very intimately connected. They aren't like alternate dimensions that you have to travel to, either by science or magic. In fact, you could look at them as fractal representations of each other. By practicing the Physical Yogas, Uniting yourself with the Universe, literally yoking yourself to the movements of existence, you synchronize these higher levels of existence as well. By performing Mental Yogas (meditations and study, or just intense observation), you synchronize those aspects in the higher levels. And you keep on reorganizing until there's a clear path to "God".

"Fine. Use whatever hippy term suits your agenda."

What about all those Indian Gods? Shiva? Ganesh? Kama? Etcetera? They exist in some sense. My thoughts are that Maya (our artificial conceptual world) and Akasha (our "spiritual" level of existence), while separate, interpret this Source as various aspects that are easier to contemplate, to manage, and then project them into a sort of collective-conscious space where they really do exist. This isn't much of a problem in Indian thought, since even the most unenlightened person is ultimately a manifestation of God. Of course, there are some Hindus that believe in the literal gods, but there are others, still, that only appear to believe in them. It's perfectly acceptable, according to the Gita, to accept that a limited mind can't think of the unlimited and use a representation that is itself limited. How else would you even begin to contemplate God without it? So there's some reason for the confusion of someone unfamiliar with Indian thought looking in from the outside.

"Getchyer spiritual loopholes! 3 for five, 10 a dozen!"

There's some severely technical stuff regarding further examination, especially when we start talking about the idea of the Energetic Body- through which the energy centers and pathways used in things like Acupuncture are laid out. In future installments, I intend on covering a wide array of these topics. You might think a lot of it is bullshit. You might be a True Believer™.

I can say that these systems of thought make sense to me, and that the philosophical practices I've adopted from them seem to work well. Again, I'm more of a Hindon't than a Hindu. I make no claims to being some ultra-enlightened guru whose every word you should hinge on. But if you think this stuff is bullshit, then test it. I'll include "Meat and Potato" style experiments/exercises in upcoming posts of the same name that anyone can try. But you have to earnestly leave your preconceptions at the door or you botch the experiment and misinterpret the results.

Until the next sunrise, ☼ Gesturing Infinity ☼