Other Knowing
lobster
Crusty Veteran
@Jeffrey recently mentioned the gang of five
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Tathagatas
Basically they correspond to five ways of perception through chakra or body based knowing. Most Buddhists are all in their head [tsk, tsk]
Earth based grounded knowing
http://www.mysticmamma.com/tag/earth-based-spirituality/
Gut or intuition based knowing
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-intuitive-compass/201108/what-is-intuition-and-how-do-we-use-it
Increase in Love (yep up to the Heart now)
https://noeticsi.com/thinking-from-the-heart-heart-brain-science/
Say What?
https://www.prevention.com/health/mental-health/g24066974/positive-affirmations/
and back in the mind again?
and beyond ...
https://thezenuniverse.org/chakras-and-buddhism/
What is your dominant wheely?
Comments
I tend to be more heart and throat chakra myself
,??
I’ve never been able to locate a chakra in my inner or outer worlds... perhaps they are fantasy?
I used to consult my chakras and/or the dan tiens regularly, but have not done so for a couple of years. As my path has evolved and taken new turns, chakras have seemed less useful, but I still check in with them occasionally. Second chakra or lower dan tiens most often, casting awareness down there to draw energy away from an overstimulated brain, or when just getting settled into formal meditation.
I had a dramatic experience with the crown chakra once, when I was just beginning to investigate Reiki practice - like a lightning bolt to the skull, very exciting. Lately I've been consulting the 6th & 7th chakras in attempting to deal with migraine, but that's been rather inconclusive, still working on it.
Perhaps Fantasy.
Perhaps not.
Fantasy would be mind based consciousness. So many waves of being ...
https://www.tsemrinpoche.com/tsem-tulku-rinpoche/category/inspiration-worthy-words
In a real sense, all the visions that we see in our lifetime are like a big dream
Namkhai Norbu
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_in_Buddhism
... meanwhile for migraine ... flowers ...
https://www.migrainesavvy.com/feverfew-for-migraines.html
Yeah but if you look at the functioning of the human body from a scientific point of view, there are only three large concentrations of neurons — the brain, the spine and the intestines — with which we do our thinking and experiencing. So it stands to reason that if you use the brain to do your inquiry, and there is no other way as far as we know, that you are just going to be ‘talking’ to other parts of that system.
It is well known for example that the skin maps via a construct known as the ‘sensory homunculus’ to the outside surface of much of the brain. By electrically stimulating those parts of the brain’s outer surface you experience sensations in the body, if I remember my biology well. So if you are consulting your chakras you are focussing on particular parts of the brain, and it’s an unanswered question whether that kind of consultation proceeds any further.
It’s very likely that the rest of the body is relatively ‘dumb’, other than sensory nerves, and that the chakra’s in reality represent parts of brain function.
You're failing to see the marvel of the system, @Kerome.
Modern medicine, and all you have stated, has become aware of the functions of the human body, within the last 250 years.
The Chakra system - in which every level encircles the spinal cord - has been practised for millennia, and is actually extremely accurate and effective in its premises.
Don't dismiss something out of hand, that has functioned well, and still functions, simply because modern medicine interprets bodily and anatomical functions in a more modern way, using big words and medical descriptions.
These ancient systems are still used today, alongside more modern methods.
I baulk at these ancient systems being labelled as 'alternative'. They've been around a long time. If anything's 'alternative', it's modern medicine, by virtue of its comparative youth!
I prefer to call Ayurveda and TCM, complementary.
Because in spite of all the advances in medicine made in the past 2 and a half centuries, they still work, work well, and can be melded to ensure an improved progress in a person's desire for well-being.
As some of us know our reality is constructed by where we place our attention ...
So for example the relaxing attention to higher chakras that @Fosdick entions, may allow a dillation or increased blood flow to parts of the migraine brain freeze that Thor visits with his lightening hammer ...
Heart ache is also a physical tightening that may require a camel
https://www.chakra-anatomy.com/heart-chakra-yoga-poses.html
In the body based Yoga dharma I was taught, extreme earthing came from horse riding stance and anti trump hand movements ...
Perhaps they are elusive because you don't believe or hold them in any regard? (Not that you have to). I think in all things in life, what we deem necessary or important is what we focus on. It's just human nature.
If you find a chakra based system to be effective, by all means use it, I’m happy for anyone who finds something that works for them. The human body is a marvellous thing, and modern medicine, for all its claims to be ‘evidence based’, is far from being accurate in all its predictions. Cancer patients regularly outlive their predicted lifespan by a fair while.
But a lot of the old systems were based on nothing but superstition, and age is no predictor of quality in medical thinking. If you look at ancient European medicine, it was based on the humours of the body, not all that different from some of what’s in Ayurveda, and they could be downright dangerous to the patient. Their favourite treatment was ‘bleeding’ through the application of leeches. It’s easy to be romantic about ancient knowledge, but it’s not an accident that life expectancy has gone from 40 years in ancient times to 80 in the modern era.
Leeches are actually used in some spheres of modern medicine today, as are maggots. So while I totally acknowledge that Ancient European medicine was based on a lot of assumptions and superstition, much of what emerged then is in use now. Derivatives of foxglove, willow and feverfew are used to treat heart problems and headaches, and pulmonaria is so-called because it was believed to relieve chesty coughs. so herbs and natural remedies provided a lot of useful medications. (Belladonna DID make women go blind, though...)
And a lot of the sayings we have today are based on anatomical foundations.
I can't stomach it, digest information, sleep on it, chew it over, foot in the door, a man after my own heart, a no-brainer, a safe pair of hands, a shot in the arm, a sight for sore eyes, a skeleton in the closet, a word in your shell-like, about face, achilles' heel, all fingers and thumbs...
The big difference is education, research and scientific curiosity.
European Medicine (if we wish to categorise it in that way) has certainly moved on and improved from the days when a certain cure for illness was arsenic and old lace.
But the traditions of TCM and Ayurveda have stood - and withstood - the tests of time, and providing you find a reliable and knowledgeable practitioner (which goes for any medical discipline, even that used in the West!) you may well find that the improvements to health, while slower, are just as effective, and at times, more so.
The difference is also that patients of TCM and Ayurveda, are encouraged to take personal responsibility for their own well-being and progress.It is recommended that they change or improve their lifestyles and make efforts of their own to change things for the better.... Sadly, here in the west, we notice we're ill, unwell or diseased, then put matters entirely in the hands of the medical profession, and expect to be healed by them, while continuing to indulge in things that might have led to the illness in the first place!
Doctors get paid for healing the sick.
in TCM, Doctors are paid if their patient is in good health.
Subtle yet significant difference....
European medicine is very good at diagnosis and increasingly preventative. No doubt.
We do tend to have dominant approaches or centres of being. They also balance or swirl into each other ...
Many cures and treatments have been found in the active ingredients of compounds that come from plants. As we deforest the rainforest we may also be getting rid of cures that we haven't even discovered yet.
I agree, I think complementary medicine works very well alongside modern medicine and it has certainly benefitted me greatly.
I’m hearing from friends about efforts to make a modern system of thinking about how food benefits health. But these efforts are being stymied by government rules and the medical profession, neither of whom want to cooperate.
There's no money in it, and a natural alternative therapy threatens the big pharmaceuticals. A huge amount of money, and a huge amount of clout, goes a long way to preventing natural remedies which do work, from being widely available, or even permitted.
I honestly believe a cure for some cancers exists. But I think such cures are being concealed behind 'ongoing research' which keeps donations from the public rolling in, and cancer charities profiting from their generosity. I have a very good friend who lives in Sweden, and who is a pharmaceutical researcher. I'm going by his information, not a paranoid assumption on my part, by the way.
I don't have time to go through the thread right now, which I'm interested in and intend to do. I just appreciated this one as I completely recognize myself, I listen to my gut all the time as a way of knowing. What I've found though is that intuition is powerful but it also needs to be fed, it can only put out a product of what has been put in. And just as smart and wise as it can be it is also very subject to motivated reasoning (this is the conclusion, what are the reasons why it is true? Rather than these are the reasons, what conclusions can we make?) tribal loyalties (these are my people, why are the things they believe right. Rather than these are the things that are truly right) and many cognitive biases that are all in effect outside of our conscious control. So I've come to the conclusion that it is important to unpack, reverse engineer, show the work of intuition to try to root out those things that can cause it to go wrong. It's work, but as you say in your other thread really insightfully, it is more agreeable to argue with yourself (and, I would add, allow others to argue with you) than to be wrong.
I'd still really like a gratitude emoti to go with the awesome, insightful and lol.
Thanks @Lobster. I just heard about something called butterbur last week and now you turn me on to feverfew. There are veggie capsules with both in them so I'll be looking for them come payday.
If it works for my head, I'll be in your debt.
I quoted the wrong post but hey.
I wish you well @David
Tayata
Om Bekandze Bekandze
Maha Bekandze
Radza Samundgate Soha
Buddha Medicine
Here they wish to implement ...
https://www.nhs.uk/news/food-and-diet/
fuel
https://www.thoughtco.com/foods-that-fuel-your-chakras-1729246