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Ramsses II
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(11/27/05 11:46 am)
Reply 		Darkness Shining Wild
adastra: Hey Jana

I started reading the book last night, and it is fantastic! Such a compelling story, hard to put down - I'm a little sleep deprived today as a result. I found his prose a little hard to parse in the beginning, but soon got into it in a big way. I, too, am finding a greatly enhanced appreciation for the ego! Transcending/transforming and including it is a great idea, but the last thing you want to do is get rid of it or @#%$ it up in a big way.

I've been perusing RAM's website, and it is clear he is integrally informed. Also I notice that Sex, Ecology, Spirituality is listed in the reference section of Darkness Shining Wild (along with a lot of other fantastic books - this guy has been reading the right stuff). Since he lives in my neighborhood (relatively speaking - an adjacent city a short bus ride away) I'm going to have to check this dude out f2f as some point.

arthur

Plasmafly: Oh good news tellus all about it if/when you do go visit him.
Yea cause he thinks on a deep level his writing is a little slower read than most, its really a kind of "innerspeak." I have been hanging back from finishing the book. Get the nonduality of not running from the "loss of meaning" or the "presence of meaning." Marry that one, and you are enlightened.

Oh and get the frequent references to Da...?

adastra: Yeah, (L)Adi Da comes up a lot, I did notice that.

Here's something that resonates strongly with me:

Few topics can arouse as much aversion and delusion as our own death. Modern Western culture's denial of Death is as blatant as it is firmly entrenched: Corpses are still dressed up as if they are about to go out to dinner or to a party; appearing youthful is an obsessive, almost unquestioned pursuit; and the not-so-well-preserved elderly, more often than not, are kept at a "safe" distance or even shunned. The telltale signs of getting old - of being chronologically disadvantaged - are often greeted with alarm, as if signifying failure or perhaps even - in a metaphysical sense - an error in the System. Death reminders are avoided rather than appreciated. But since just about everything, when seen clearly, is a Death reminder, the avoidance of whatever reminds us of Death is none other than the avoidance of Life -Darkness Shining Wild, p.

From RAM's website, for those who may be interested - it seems he does phone sessions: Individual and couple sessions are opportunities to quickly get to the heart of -- and to work through -- whatever issues you may have. Sessions combine conversation with fitting practices, in an atmosphere of care and safety. Depth is invited, but not forced. Work is done -- at the optimal pace -- with your body, mind, emotions, and spirituality. What is needed usually becomes clear in the first session. The work that follows catalyzes and makes room for deep healing. Though this is not always easy, it is a remarkably fulfilling process, rich with the sobering joy of living a more balanced life, a life of wholeness and integrity. Facilitating this work with you is my vocation and privilege.

Sessions, whether individual or couple, cost $130 per hour plus GST, and typically last 60 to 90 minutes. Most sessions are done in person, but can also be done over the phone. I have extensive experience with doing phone sessions, and have found them to be highly effective.


To arrange sessions, call: (604)536-6228
or email: info@robertmasters.com

adastra: I love this:

quote:

Opening to our fear is an act of intimacy, a courageous welcoming of the disfigured and outcast into the living room of our being. Opening thus is also an act of surrender. As such, it is not a dissolution - or collapsing - or personal boundaries, as in submission, but rather an expanding of them.

In submission, we deaden ourselves, sinking into the shallows; in surrender, we enliven ourselves, dying into a deeper Life. In surrender we may lose face, but we do not lose touch. Submission flattens the ego; surrender transcends it. Submission is passive, but surrender is dynamic. - Darkness Shining Wild, p. 30-31

My favorite line is: "In surrender we may lose face, but we do not lose touch." Beautiful.

arthur

Always remember the beautiful Mystery you are.

Plasmafly: Yea I could quote half the book.

RAM forgot to do a final piece on this personal recovery tho at the end of the book...he really needs to wrap it up with how he pulled himself together and is functioning now, but then I suppose his book is about falling apart, not recovery.

adastra: Perhaps he wants people to go to Surrey and pay $130/hour to hear that part...

arthur


By the way I'm kinda getting into his poetry as well, interspersed throughout the book:

Look for me
where storms come uncaged
Look for me
where the sea carries shattered sky
Look for me
where cloudsilk weaves through your sigh
Look, look for me
where joy and pain disappear into sun and rain,
where we can only once again love ourselves sane


Regardless of its appearances to the contrary, egoity is little more than personified separation trauma, made bearable by its compensatory addictions and capacity for psychoemotional numbing and dissociation. A cult of one. Monotheism in narcissistic cameo. To move into and through fear can radically undermine our assumed identity, but what "I" would ever knowingly choose this?
-Robert Augustus Masters, Darkness Shining Wild, p. 87

I request that people please go to the IN book club vote and select Darkness Shining Wild as the book club selection. Perhaps if that book is chosen and discussed at length here, he will actually be interviewed on IN at some point. It's kind of surprising that he hasn't been already - he's way integral. He's even been known to quote Wilber on occasion, e.g.

quote:

The final fear - the implications of which are unthinkably vast - involves, says Ken Wilber, "dissolving the boundary between emptiness and form and thus awakening as all Form, endlessly [my italics]."

Dread may seem to be planted far from a nondual perspective, but it is not. In its miasmically jagged shadowlands, "I" is not only exaggerated - mostly through its increased tension and knottedness - but is also infused with a sense of unreality (which increases its odds for giving up the ghost). -RAM, DSW, p. 86

If he is interviewed post (or during) IN book club, perhaps we will have the opportunity to put some questions to him, or he might address matters that we bring up in the discussions.

Darkness Shining Wild is without a doubt one of the most interesting books on spirituality I've ever read.

arthur

marianthi: Hi again adastra,

I did vote for RAM´s book after reading up his website, after locking into it through your post. Of course, I´m prejudiced cause I have bodywork (the deep tissue kind, unblocking emotions locked in the structure) as my second occupation and have seen how effective it is when combined with other means of psychotherapeutic work.

Thanks so much for the reference. I will order his book shortly too.

hugs,

Marianthi.

Crystallake: I started reading 'Darkness Shining Wildly'. Super book. I have only penetrated the first two - three chapters. One drawback is I don't have access to the drugs he says he used. If I did, I would hesitate to use them. If his drug experiences were part of the methods he used to "shine wildly", then his teachings may not be all that accessible to many people. Any thoughts?

Dan

adastra: Keep reading, and this should become more clear. He was a great teacher before taking the 5-Meo, but had significant shadow issues. The 5-Meo experience seems to be something his shadow manoevered him into because he needed to be blown up real good (which he certainly was) in order to address and reintegrate shadow in his own psyche. His personal shadow also caused significant issues in the worldwide spiritual community he founded, necessitating it's downfall - and it promptly fell apart the same time he did. He addresses all of this with impressive candor towards the end of the book.

Prior to the 5-Meo he had only had half a dozen enthogenic experiences in the 1970's, and had one Ayahuasca experience shortly before the 5-Meo. Entheogens do not seem to have had much to do with his path.

5-Meo-DMT is a legal entheogen, and you could have it couriered to your door with a guarantee of purity. Most people I spoke to who used it decribed it in glowing terms (e.g. "it was like a 20-minute fullbody orgasm" and "The entire universe passed through my heart chakra") - but considering what RAM describes, I'm surprised you'd even consider it. One person told me it was like setting off a nuclear weapon (or the Big Bang) inside his head - didn't your Mama ever tell you not to set nukes off inside your skull?

So, did you vote for Darkness Shining Wild book club poll?

arthur

Plasmafly: RAM was already into the embrace of shadow prior to his dissolution experience. It was not his shadow in particular that was the problem, but the patriarchal-ruling model under which his community was built that was the problem, so it was a communal problem. The same problem exists in the real world but is amplified in spiritual communities. There is perhaps no community on the face of the earth that does not suffer from this exact problem.
Because it is just an extension of the ego-ruling the being problem that faces each of us individuals. In alchemical terms the red King must be boiled and dissolved in the great vessel-womb (regressed as the neurons dissolve themselves) in order for the "wounded King" to be transformed into the Universal King. Its the main principle of all alchemical treatices that refer to human transmutation.

According to the Tao, the greater the King, the harder the fall because there is more a substantially strong tenacity to the brain and sense of self, so there is a need for a stronger force to "perturb" that in order for the death and rebirth to occur. A lesser man would not have had to go thru such an ordeal because it doesn't take such force to reduce his brain to zero-point, that is to dissolve it down in the great vessel-womb of the void.

To not be identified with our egoity is not about existing in some impersonal state bereft of idiosyncrasy and individuality, but rather is about being present both as our unique somebody-ness and as self-transcending Being. Even at the same time. The point is not to negate or minimize our selfhood - which is less a noun than a verb (selfing) - but to permit it such rich transparency relative to our fundamental nature that it cannot help but colorfully and fittingly represent us, however superficially.

However, when we let "I" do the driving, we usually end up wandering like hungry ghosts through the I-gotta-be-me malls of distorted or overfed desire, shopping until we're broke, sated, or diverted elsewhere. Even so, it's crucial to not prematurely cease such wanderings. It's so easy - as when we are in the spineless throes of spiritual correctness - to make an ideal out of being "good" or "spiritual" and a villain or scapegoat out of our darker impulses.

To transcend yourself, be yourself. - RAM, Darkness Shining Wild, p. 179

Can't get much better than this huh, I think we need to come up with a new world to explain RAM. Oops I meant "word" to explain RAM.
Inclusivembrace
Allok
RAMousness
EquiRAM

I don't know how he does it, at the same time that he is ruthlessly exposing and riddiculing lower methods of behavior he is also saying they are ok too; and he is equally ruthless with false claims to high behaviors.

One wonders what is left after all our compensations and camoflages are penetrated; is there a life at all if we are not doing all this secondary work of trying to prop ourselves up, defend ourselves or kill ourselves?

adastra: My guess is at that point life becomes Perfectly Ordinary, and you just keep on doing whatever you're here to do - but you're probably much better at it, or at least more present to it.

I'll let you know, once I get to that point.

arthur





Edited by: Ramsses II at: 11/28/05 4:04 pm
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