Elephant In The Room

[Nagual LoneWolf]

In the first quote its said a warrior is unattached and this is good, in the last quote its said the Zen or whomever is referred to is detached and avoiding the elephant. But detached and unattached are the same thing, so how can both the warrior and Zen Buddhist be spoken of in the same way and yet the stipulation is they are approaching things differently?-Wei



This is the question yes?

[snowblind]

Nagual LoneWolf wrote:In the first quote its said a warrior is unattached and this is good, in the last quote its said the Zen or whomever is referred to is detached and avoiding the elephant. But detached and unattached are the same thing, so how can both the warrior and Zen Buddhist be spoken of in the same way and yet the stipulation is they are approaching things differently?-Wei



This is the question yes?
Detached and Unattached are two different things imo.  Detached connotes that one was attached at one time then de-tached (through avoidance).  Unattached connotes that there never was an attachment.  True warriors through the process of recapitulation are not only detached (having the remnants of once being attached) but unattached (no remnant left).  This brings a whole other way of dealing with and approaching things.

[Wei Shan Yang]

Nagual LoneWolf wrote:In the first quote its said a warrior is unattached and this is good, in the last quote its said the Zen or whomever is referred to is detached and avoiding the elephant. But detached and unattached are the same thing, so how can both the warrior and Zen Buddhist be spoken of in the same way and yet the stipulation is they are approaching things differently?-Wei



This is the question yes?Not necessarily.

[Wei Shan Yang]

___________________________________________.
Fill in your folly...give the image objects essence...but no matter what it will never be enough to achieve permanence in the interpretation. This thus shows the folly. Of which is the all of experience that cannot endure.

[Wei Shan Yang]

snowblind wrote: Unattached connotes that there never was an attachment.

This would mean not being defined or interpreted in any way, wouldn't it?
(not necessarily)

[Wei Shan Yang]

"My acts are sincere but they are only the acts of an actor because everything I do is controlled folly. Everything I do in regard to myself and my fellow men is folly, because nothing matters. Certain things in your life matter to you because they’re important; your acts are certainly important to you, but for me, not a single thing is important any longer, neither my acts nor the acts of any of my fellow men. I go on living though, because I have my will. Because I have tempered my will throughout my life until it’s neat and wholesome and now it doesn’t matter to me that nothing matters. My will controls the folly of my life." ~ DJ

[snowblind]

Wei Shan Yang wrotenowblind wrote: Unattached connotes that there never was an attachment.

This would mean not being defined or interpreted in any way, wouldn't it?
(not necessarily)
IMHO yes

[lex icon]

Nothing Ever Happens Here
Undo the works we engineer
And slip this knot of fear
For nothing ever happens here.
Peer within proclaimed the seer
Then the seer did disappear
Nothing ever happens here.
Radiant and clear
Empty and dear
Nothing ever happens here
Galaxies arise and steer
Only to fall as if a tear
Yet nothing ever happens here
Nowhere now here
No center no sphere
Nothing ever happens here
In quest to see Original Face
All form we fled As if a race
But now we turn and form embrace
All in All we leave no trace
I am
I am not
I am neither nor both
June 9, 2008 Lex Icon

[Wei Shan Yang]

undefined, uninterpreted, never ever attached ; )

[Mornings Son]

What is the Elephant?

Our blindspots? An unconfortable truth?

The lie that we live - like the matrix - this dreamstate called Tonal?



Shed some light on the elephant, please Lone Wolf

[Nagual LoneWolf]

I Since posting this I have seen that many have different explanations for the elephant in their space. We all see this elephant but we all seem to describe it differently. Blindspot is a interesting description Mornings Son. I saw the elephant as an event, something big and huge that I should not ignore but am. How I ignore seems part of the conversation. Am I being a warrior by not-doing. Am I practicing zen by being unattached/unaffected? Why would I not react to a giant elephant in the room with me?

I did enjoy the cartoons posted. I like the one where the guy says to the elephant sitting on the couch "your sitting on my dog". Great stuff! Love it. That is truly a warrior's reaction. I say the elephant is always there and should be recognized for what it is.

The tonal? Dreamstate? Could you explain how these terms relate to you as far as the elephant MS as I am curious.

[Mornings Son]

The tonal? Dreamstate? Could you explain how these terms relate to you as far as the elephant MS as I am curious.We are rooted in both nagual and tonal. Tonal rules and dominates completely - like the elephant in picture. So much that people don't see it. Humans are just living in it as a Dreamstate completly absorbed - They don't see that it is unreal. If they did they wound see the elephant. That it is just sitting there and that there is much more to Reality than Tonal and the senseless social games played there.
For me to see the elephant is to become sure and settled in nagual as foundation. Letting go of the Tonal games on a new and deeper level. Unpluged from the Matrixed, but still having an avatar in it.

[Wei Shan Yang]

MS, how would you relate the tonal in terms of emptiness. This is in reference to another thread where we spoke of emptiness (as experience).

[Guest]

SOME Hindus had brought an elephant for exhibition and
placed it in a dark house. Crowds of people were going into
that dark place to see the beat. Finding that ocular inspection
was impossible, each visitor felt it with his palm in the
darkness.

           
The palm of one fell on the trunk.

           
‘This creature is like a water-spout,’ he said.


           
The hand of another lighted on the elephant’s ear.
To him the beat was evidently like a fan.

           
Another rubbed against its leg.

           
‘I found the elephant’s shape is like a pillar,’ he
said.

           
Another laid his hand on its back.

           
‘Certainly this elephant was like a throne,’ he said.


The sensual eye is just like the palm of the hand. The
palm has not the means of covering the whole of the best.


The eye of the Sea is one thing and the foam another.
Let the foam go, and gaze with the eye of the Sea. Day and
night foam-flecks are flung from the sea: of amazing! You
behold the foam but not the Sea. We are like boats dashing
together; our eyes are darkened, yet we are in clear water.
Rumi

[Mornings Son]

Wei Shan Yang wrote:MS, how would you relate the tonal in terms of emptiness. This is in reference to another thread where we spoke of emptiness (as experience).In my book Form (including thoughts, emotions - all manifestations) is tonal, Emptiness is nagual the elusive element that gives energy and room to all forms.

[Wei Shan Yang]

"In my book Form (including thoughts, emotions - all manifestations) is tonal, Emptiness is nagual the elusive element that gives energy and room to all forms."



Ok, and the way you perceive it, can you have one without the other? That is, can there be form without emptiness, or emptiness without form?



Really its not a question (rather rhetorical), because I cannot perceive how it could be so...form without emptiness or emptiness without form. This tells me form is emptiness and emptiness is form. So to distinguish between tonal and nagual is done in relative truth but is not ultimately so, as everything is empty.



We may distinguish and define, but that is not an all inclusive act, nor is the elephant truly definable, as all is empty. We must understand folly. Otherwise we take our acts and thoughts to be fixed and serious affairs.



You spoke of social games played in the tonal. Its actually the opposite when it occurs in perception...people take their tonal perception ( imagined solidity, essence) so seriously and thus they become obsessed with gain, influence, competition, fear, separation. Their games are not perceived as games, but as important acts in a universe that seems to have permanent attributes of solidified manifestations. And its this false idea of permanence (and solidity of form) that makes everyone behave in such a way as to be at odds with their environment.



In other words, people give the elephant essence and then act upon that as if that was real. So truly the elephant is not in the room in the sense we don't have to give it essence.



Taking the tonal as important, an example... a Muslim (not all) will take his religion so seriously and permanent as to blow himself and others up in the name of Allah. This is not a game for him, perhaps if he did perceive folly, he could withdraw from his obsessions. But instead he is much too serious and his acts are too important (solid to him) because he gives form essence.



But this part I question,



You said: Humans are just living in it as a Dreamstate completly absorbed - They don't see that it is unreal. If they did [see it was unreal] they wound see the elephant.


I say the opposite, people perceive an elephant (a problem or separate object of import) because they don't see it is unreal. To realize emptiness would be to not pay into the idea and influence of "elephant" that they or others would make of it. So, most people see an elephant and it often bothers them, how they respond depends on them, but they don't seize the opportunity, due to perceived solidity, to dissolve the apparentness of elephant via not making it of essence. They prefer (not much choice really) to have "their problems" and blow them out of proportion and then either avoid the problem (they created) or else combat it depending on their character.



So is there an elephant in the room? If we make it so, yes, because perception is nine tenths of the law.



To embrace folly is to accept relative experience of phenomena for what it is, impermanent and not of essence. Reality then is dreamlike, in terms of... its all folly. Its not saying we take it carelessly, but rather we don't take ourselves or others so seriously nor see our acts as important (permanent) ultimately.Then we have freedom and cannot become ensnared into 'belief systems' or influence from others belief systems.

[Wei Shan Yang]

MS-wondering what you meant by "off topic post"?



Back to the topic of elephant now. I will say, elephants are most often "created" out of being indirect. Its this indrectness the begs to be exposed, its there but not directly addressed. That's actually the true application of the term as it usually occurs. Funny how this has not been mentioned before here.



Such as, there is something going on behind the scenes in everyone's thoughts, but it is deemed too important (controversial) to discuss openly. Maybe an example best explains. 2 couples meet and become good friends. A few weeks into the friendship they discover one couple is democrat and the other is republican...or one is christian and the other jewish. And then there may become now an "elephant in the room" which would be the discomfort in addressing difference in fear of falling out of favor. This example is just to make clear and erase any confusion as to what I am getting at. That's what this expression most often represents. Is there a problem truly? No, but people hold hard and fast to their beliefs so there can be friction then.

[Lunoor]

Mornings Son wrote:The tonal? Dreamstate? Could you explain how these terms relate to you as far as the elephant MS as I am curious.We are rooted in both nagual and tonal. Tonal rules and dominates completely - like the elephant in picture. So much that people don't see it. Humans are just living in it as a Dreamstate completly absorbed - They don't see that it is unreal. If they did they wound see the elephant. That it is just sitting there and that there is much more to Reality than Tonal and the senseless social games played there.
For me to see the elephant is to become sure and settled in nagual as foundation. Letting go of the Tonal games on a new and deeper level. Unpluged from the Matrixed, but still having an avatar in it.

"If they did they wound see the elephant."
I think there is a clue in this typo.
People are wounded when they are born  into this world of wounded tonals. From day one and even before, the parents and soon the rest of the environment imprints the child with the dominant paradigm and all the dysfunction and constriction that goes along with it and is at odds with the child's own perceptions. In order to survive the child sooner or later takes this false reality of others as it's own at the expense of her or his own truth. The wound is real and a key to getting back to the spiritual/nagual is recognizing and accepting the wound and then doing one's best to undo the energy constrictions, internal dialogue, and habits connected to it. This means recap, this means that new behavior that can now arise from  the released energy. This is the warriors work. Many never see the elephant and therefore are condemned to be repeatedly whacked and rolled over by the elephant while never getting to the spiritual/nagual concealed within it. This work doesn't get done by the proverbial ostrich method, it doesn't get done by denying the reality of the wound.
Yes it is different for each individual, some aren't as wounded as others, some keep some of their awareness while growing up, some loose it, some never recover it and so on.
That's two of my cents on the elephant.

[Wei Shan Yang]

To have the experience of wound is to see an elephant. Its just that some see it and avoid it (but it remains an unpleasantness they are aware of) and others see it and try to resolve it.



To not see it is to not have the perception of any wounds. See, there must be a state of woundlessness. There is. No elephant.



You say the wounded person does not see the elephant, but if they truly didn't see it, they would not perceive they were wounded.



Always wounds are perceived. To not perceive them is to not have them in any way. How can you have a wound without knowing it? You must know it on some level. Then in doing this, you keep it alive in the sense you continue to perceive it. Maybe your perception makes you avoid the situations that trigger its recall, or maybe your perception makes you take on the challenges through such situations. But you truly stop feeling wounded when you don't perceive it.



Maybe your wound is you felt ugly. Kids teased you in school because you had a big nose and you felt ugly because of the names they called you. So you avoided many things because of the pain of your perception. Then one day you stop perceiving you are ugly. You just shift. Where is the wound? Someone calls you ugly, but you don't feel it. There's nothing there to give it form. If you acknowledge a form you acknowledge the wound.



So its not about accepting the wound (not quite anyway, although this kind of abandon can at times be the forerunner perhaps), but seeing the wound is perception. And perception can and does shift. And furthermore, no shift is final or absolute. Thus perceiving does not define absolutes.

[Lunoor]

Sure wounded people who don't see the wound might sense it at some level(it is amazing though how much defenses can obscure one's view) but that is not what I mean by see. I mean bring it out to the light of day, I mean examine it, i mean work with it, i mean accept it so one can grieve it and move beyond it, I mean become more compassionate because you are intimate with it, because you have taken the time and space to listen to your heart who is the record keeper of wounds and the dispenser of compassion elixir, the unpatentable Milk of the Heart.



So for me these wounds have been the path to my heart, the doorkeeper at the gate of the enlightenments I have experienced. I didn't get here by an out of the blue change of perception, I got here by effort and grace. This is not the victim mentality, this is an important part of my path with a heart. I acknowledge I was victimized at a time when I was too young to stop it, I acknowledge I absorbed faulty patterns and acted from those, I let myself remember and release the pain, I began to see possibilities for change and moving on, I move on: I forgive myself and my wounded parents and others, then forgotten friends come more clearly into view, the parts of my being that were held in check: the energies=faculties of Will, Imagination, Creativity, Love, Spiritual presence, Play, Joie De Vivre...



I do not feel like a victim on most days, I feel like a participant in the Utmost Mystery, even as my wounded heart beats(my Champion). I see her Presence in Smiling: my friend's soft face, I taste her in my Salsa, I laugh at her when I laugh at my Complaints, I Sing her in the Bathtub, I hear beautiful sounds when she Plops from my Bottom Parts : D



When I look around at this world I see also the results and further actions of wounds that aren't receiving the healing elixir from a personal heart which must be the fractal or shadow of a Larger Heart. In my two cents we can all benefit from this Milk if we begin where we are at which for many is a lot of unhealed wounding. If more were to do this work there would be less and less of these evidences of unhealed wounds: water boarding, hoarding, sexual abusings, thief of your life usings, globaldomdamnationings, time taking trivialationings...insults, paranoias, better than you'ems etc.



I don't consider myself enlightened, say I am on the enlightening path which is the path with a heart in my experience through my realitytunneling which is different to varying degrees from every other individuals perceptions of our Omnipresentness. I am not fully recapped either I still have work!



You speak from your reality tunnel at this place in time and I speak from mine.

[Wei Shan Yang]

ok



But I say no matter how you feel, you never were, are or can be a victim or former victim. Its only a perceptual experience of such (so the potential to be completely free is available). Which I went through also BTW. And yes it helps us evolve in the relative sense. If you were to read some of my posts at PP (a few years back) you'd see very much a similar reply as yours here, that is, I was embracing my childhood "wounds" as powerful imprints that helped me become strong. That was how I viewed things then. You can see now my view has changed. I mention this because I feel its perhaps of value to you to know I am not just theorizing out of the sky.



And compassion is what I use as well, in fact some of my posts here are about it--Avalokiteshvara. To me compassion is the great equalizer. We can have compassion for those we perceived wounded us and this is the pinnacle of letting the wound go completely. And when we feel we made a terrible mistake, we can let compassion overwhelm us so "right and wrong" "good and bad" all washes away into the ocean of unconditional unity. The way I see it, compassion cannot be used to comfort wounds and such, but rather offer an alternative, which is a form of detachment--from self. Often detachment is seen as unfeeling, but here it can be selfless feeling, a force that compels positive actions.



And one has to go through hell and back (I think) to get to the place of no pity. When you have no pity, you can experience unyielding compassion in that moment. If you don't release your identity with wounds completely, you become a righteous crusader (for the wronged victims). Nothing wrong with that, but there's more for us, to be completely free. And by no means do I think it happens over night nor is it something you don't constantly have to work at. But from my own experience, shifts do happen suddenly, granted its probably initially due to years of effort (like that which you express here) that finally give way to a breakthrough. And once you see it happens suddenly, you know future expereinces can happen this way and you intend it so. That is, you prefer the swiftness and wait for it because you intended it.



And yes this is my perspective and that only which is from experience, and I realize you have yours as well.

[Lunoor]

[Lunoor]

Od bless King Crimson : D

[Lunoor]

Oh ****, and elephants too, big and small, Od bless them and the person who put together this video, aren't we lovely?

[Lunoor]

Wei Shan Yang wrote:



"Its only a perceptual experience of such (so the potential to be completely free is available)."
name me an experience that
doesn't include perception...

"And yes it helps us evolve in the relative sense."
The whole idea of evolution is fulcrumed on the perception of pinpointed occurrences relative to other pinpointed occurrences of relative beings and other
relative phenomena-ing  in linear time and is a paradigm created by relative beings to describe what they think they see...which is elephant talk for: how can one evolve in an un-relative sense?
"I was embracing my childhood "wounds" as powerful imprints that helped me become strong. "
That's not how I look at it, if I were to put it in similar terms I would say something more along the lines of "my childhood wounds suck! Damn those conditions coupled with my genetic tendencies held this deliciousness back for so many years, and still puts a pinch on now and again, OUCH that HURTS!" and by experiencing that where I am atness as the feelings occur a some while later I can laugh and sing somehow. But that is a reduction--on with complicated life!
"That was how I viewed things then. You can see now my view has changed."
No I can't see that wei shan, I am reading that you say your view has changed but since I have very short term experience with you I haven't been there to witness that.
"When you have no pity, you can experience unyielding compassion in that moment."
What good is a breast that doesn't yield? When no milk flows how's the babe to grow?

" If you don't release your identity with wounds completely, you become a righteous crusader (for the wronged victims). Nothing wrong with that, but there's more for us, to be completely free."
not this not that without this without that
"And by no means do I think it happens over night nor is it something you don't constantly have to work at. But from my own experience, shifts do happen suddenly, granted its probably initially due to years of effort (like that which you express here) that finally give way to a breakthrough."
I agree that shifts can happen suddenly, but they won't become integrated in the experience if the work isn't being done leading to imbalance in one's person.
"And once you see it happens suddenly, you know future expereinces can happen this way and you intend it so. That is, you prefer the swiftness and wait for it because you intended it."
Yeah it can be motivating.

"And yes this is my perspective and that only which is from experience, and I realize you have yours as well."
Yes