I noticed a comment or two where someone might be offended. But I think it was obvious that they were not said in a way to offend or belittle anyone.

Putting all arguments aside over misunderstandings of comments..

I want to attempt to frame both Daniel's and Sharon's points of view in relation to my own.

First of all, Daniel gave his understanding of consciousness as it relates to facets of intelligence, comprehension, intelligence, intellect, and things of that nature. By Daniel's definition, he believes that humans have a higher capacity for consciousness. Sharon responded by pointing out that the definition of consciousness refers to "knowing wholly." She used the example of how animals connected into a consciousness where they know wholly their environment and how to be in sync with it. It is a sense that they consciousness is not limited or tainted to a degree where an wild animal would destroy the ecosystem it lives in.Her idea opposes the way that humans destroy their own ecosystems and thus might not be as "conscious" as animals.

 

I have to say that I cannot disagree with either of them but that I have another viewpoint. The thing I noticed with both of their viewpoints is that they are limited to a certain degree. My viewpoint that I will present is also limited until someone else points out what I miss. However I think it incorporates and expands on both viewpoints. Thus, I agree with Daniel that consciousness deals with intelligence and some of the mental capacities and limits. I also agree with Sharon on the knowing wholly idea; and that animals are very conscious as they are connected to their environment, and even more connected to it than most humans.

This is where I add my thoughts: I believe that humans are conscious no less than animals. I believe that humans are conscious enough to know wholly, and to be connected with their environment just as much as wild animals are. However, I think that humans are unique in that their mental capacities allows them to defy their connectedness to nature. Humans have the intellect to choose not to be connected whereas animals only go on their instinct and consciousness that forces them to be connected.

Furthermore, humans have the capacity to be connected to more than just nature and their environment. Humans have the capacity to know wholly and be connected and conscious of oneness and all aspects that persist beyond this physical life, and these physical limits.

I realize Daniel and Sharon didn't get the opportunity to continue expanding their definitions as I have here. They probably both could have elaborated even more if given the time and place. However, I just wanted to point out the aspects that could summarize and build on their definitions.

 

What do you think?

i have read some of the comments, on this event, and this is what i hear.I hear the back sweep of two types of approaches.AT this rather post nine 9/1l pre 2012 cosmic heart beat.I think these two different approaches are not at odds, but are more about the resonant clash of symbolic and harmonic dissonance.Between a mind that has plunged into the shamanic/philosophic/cultural nexus, and one that has been drawn into the new vegan karma/dharma community of gentle practice. obviously these two approachs are going to sound strange tones and some octaves of the nada, that are beyond the normal hearing level.Make you feel a tad rowdy rowdy in mucho buckola seats.

No Blame. cross the great river...my two hay pennies tossed in.

Interesting stuff. There does seem to be a conflict between those who seek to avoid conflict and those who embrace it. Maybe, as Heraclitus wrote, "character is fate," and the shaman and the yogi are both right to behave as they do - the one seeks to change the world, the other seeks to renounce it, and maybe in another incarnation the yogi will be a shaman and the shaman a yogi. The adventures of a soul in eternity...

 

Yeats, in his books of occult philisophy, speculates on the reasons for the widely different destiny or fate of various passionate great individuals who had achieved, in Yeats' words, "unity of being." We might today call these people "self-realized," recognising the truth of Heraclitus profound statement that "character is fate." In other words, why do men of extraordinary sensitivity and sensibility, like Shakespeare or Dante or Eliot not renounce the world of illusions, of maya? Why do they continue to act within it? Yeats suggests that they are in fact great saints, but because of the nature of their character, of their soul, they plunged into the world of passionate action - into theatre, love, politics, culture, warfare, and following their true being found enlightenment strengthening its hold on them, transforming them even though or perhaps because they acted in our world of illusion. Yeats himself, who was deeply involved in passionate political action - and yet also translated the "ten principal upanishads" and was intimately familiar from adolescence with Patanjali's work - conceived his task to be the restoration of ancestral heroism and defiance to the subjected and shamed Irish. Can we say that their vision of being is less accurate than that of the great renunciate sages? Yeats has a famous line, "Hatred of God may bring the soul to God." Who can say what consummation in eternity would occur were an individual to take up that eerily numinous machine gun of Daniel's analogy? How many of us would refuse out of fear of death. Maybe for the SS guard those bullets might be a blessing - releasing him from his suffering of ignorance into the transparency of understanding and forgiveness. A thorny issue.

 

For Yeats, every man or woman has a fate and quest and salvation that is theirs alone. It is a view of life that is fearless and joyous, conceives of eternity and immortality, yet also embraces the profound significance of flesh and blood action and experience. It is ultimately a vision of diversity, in that one woman's salvation is anothers damnation. Passion might drive a man to meditate for decades over some religious mystery or it might equally drive a man to struggle for social justice - "for spirits" as he wrote, "do not tell a man what is true, but create such conditions, such a crisis of fate, that the man is compelled to listen to his Daimon." If that man listens with sensitivity, and honesty, he will hear things that only he can perfectly understand.

 

Those that I fight I do not hate

Those that I guard I do not love

A lonely impulse of delight

Drove to this tumult in the clouds...

 

We must strive to recognise from our immediate psychic context exactly what our authentic action must be. For one man that may mean turning the cheek, but for another may mean taking up the sword and casting the money changers from the temple. Authentic action unifies the being, inauthentic action scatters it in fear and sorrow. The key is the development of an inner sensitivity that can discriminate between the babbling wants of the fragments, and the authentic needs of the Daimon - that elusive often silent true self that exists free of time, indifferent to fear and death, and recognises no authority but is sufficient unto itself. Difficult of course - as Omar Khayyam writes: "only a hair's breadth separates the false from the true."

 

All the world's a stage...

Semi-new lurker posting for the first time.

This may have been covered already, but I feel the need to address the "elephant in the living room", namely Sharon's actions at the outset of the talk. In my opinion they were attention hungry, childish, and rude. (I hesitate to describe her actions as childish because i love kids and their energy but the description still fits. I wouldn't watch a talk on Ayahuasca with Daniel and a three year old.)

If you're going to splay out on a mini-elephant, fine. Just bill the talk as "I'm fabulous and splayed on a mini-elephant" not Ayahuasca and Asanas. At least I can then make an informed decision about weather or not to watch it. I'll leave it at that.

Daniel, I don't know if you read these comments, but if you do I'd recommend you checking out Derrick Jensen. He shares what I can gather is your thinking around the passive tendencies of the New Age movement. I'll share a common analogy he likes to use.

You are locked into a room with a psychopathic killer. There is no way out and you've already seen this person kill others in the room. What do you do?

The killer is a metaphor for the planet killing culture and you are of course you. I'd love to see you two share a stage together, as long as you both got Elephants!

http://www.derrickjensen.org/

Wow... There's so much here. I feel like I could have interjected in at least a dozen places here, not to offer ideas on the subjects, but to point out the failures in communication taking place.

To summarize, it looks very much like a masculine vs. feminine communication battle going on here, where one person says something in feminine language and the other hears it in masculine language, thus distorting it in interpretation.  And vice versa as well.

One other small point. At one point, Daniel mentions "you have to make distinctions." And naturally what Sharon is focusing on is the complete dissolving of distinctions to recognize the wholeness and connectedness of things. Again, I see a dichotomy of languages being used here. Daniel speaks in distinctions, individualities, and Self-based language (that is to say, not talking in Collective language).

I find myself caught smack between the two kinds of communication and even here I do not feel that there is a good balance.  Unlike these two, I do not perceive myself to have strong language skills that can be used to my advantage, though I'm open to the possibility that I'm wrong (I've never tried to prove it much).  Rather I tend to speak either in multiple/mixed gendered language, or more often I speak a single wrong language to the wrong crowd.

I think the contention (or just tension) that arose from this discussion is the fact that the audience seemed to be charged to both ends of the spectrum. This is just a perspective from the video (I was not there), but it felt like there were ardent supporters of Daniel there and ardent supporters of Sharon there and few that were neither or both.

This could be an interesting lesson in communication for everyone, especially Daniel and Sharon, and anyone that organized this gathering.

My raw food freak friends somehow don't want to hear about raw meat. Why not raw, organic meat?

How many ayahuasca using tribes are peaceful vegetarians? How many of them do not hesitate to kill, animal or human prey, if that is necessary?

Does the Ayurveda not teach that each person is made of different proportions of energetic elements (water, air, fire) and so each of us requires a different diet?

Does it not follow that not everyone can be vegetarian, regardless of what ethical trips they are on?

Are many modern vegetarians sufferring from protein deficiency and malnourishment, leading to a weakness of mind and morals?

Has the ego of "spiritual" people in the west expanded so much as to fill all available space?

Are many "new" agers actually crypto-judaeo-christians, still regurgitating the same failed metaphysics and morals of  religion?

Is modern man a perpetually frustrated and depressed being, because his hunting instincts have been suppressed?

What was Country Joe Mcdonald thinking of when he wrote and sang:

And now my friend we meet again and
We shall see which one will bend
Under the strain of death's golden eyes
Which one of us shall win the prize
To live and which one will die
'Tis I, my friend, yes 'tis I
Shall kill to live again and again
To clutch the throat of sweet revenge
For life is here only for the taking.

http://www.tranceparents.org/

The empire rises and the civilization falls the words have always been written on the walls when the hangman blows through the heavens when trees bow low to global disease when the last hope comes in two's and threes and the last pope hires exorcists to move locusts and when plagues are blamed on hurricanes and signs of the times

spin like mad and the bad is bad and the sad is sad,the civilization rises and the mire falls, the empire never died as mister Philip K. Dick spake,

oh no matter how insane the upper crust of Rome, they all ate lead and then they led the people over the cliff they were all on the take and the gods were too,

nothing left to do but vote for Hillary or Obamba,will the real fall guy or gal please stand up for the people, because the very foundation of this world is calling for justice and a way of life that is truly good for all living beings and the other dimensions too,

if the summer of love ever comes again if beauty and innocence are not called a sin and the leaves in the trees smile true green and the skies shine stars that are not covered in pollution and when the oceans ever get back their luster and there are no more cluster bombs if the native people are allowed to make this earth a paradise and harmonic sanity can once again rain into rivers that sing with wild salmon,

then we will all breathe deep and say a word of praise again

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

i've read that there's a lot of energy being sent down to Earth at this time (through many different dimensions that we humans with our limited frequency range can't see). so this energy is being sent down to do many things for one to change our dna or reform our dna back to the 12 strand helix. this is being done through light. and in order to hold this new frequency in our bodies some good things to do are one) clean out any blocks (massage, body work, meditation help this process) two) remain in a posture that stretches the body which allows the light to flow in more freely (yoga). so yoga helps us hold and adapt to this light, this new frequency. then shamanism and the ceremonies/rituals further awaken this process of our dna reforming since ceremonies/rituals naturally awaken this old knowledge within us. they help us remember who we are and bridge the gap between this dimension and the ones above. so we more fluidly enter an altered state where we begin to settle into. we then again hold this frequency and since the whole world is connected this frequency that one achieves and is able to continuously hold ripples across and impacts all. and they state that in 2012 or simply by the time we reach a critical point where enough of us are holding this higher frequency we will pass into another world which will simply be a less limited frequency or the world of Spirit-light. so this mess that has become our 3rd dimensional reality will be complete and will no longer be where we reside.

Are you serious?!! The essence of the "debate" in my opinion is what exactly is the point here? I can turn on the TV for the same dose of ego-driven idle chatter. I don't need to see this again, and I certainly will not spend more $$ at "Mc-Jivamukti" in the future. You should PAY ME to show up at the next one!!! ; ) If you expect me to fall for this pseudo-controversy, you are insulting me along with all the other people you are trying to reach.

I personally did not attend the event, but I did watch the video and I read the advertisement. Nowhere did it say that a lengthy, amazing, enlightenment-inducing lecture was going to take place. It was advertised as a discussion. It was a discussion. And if it wasn't what you were hoping for then perhaps you should see if you could put together a better presentation if given similar circumstances.

 I understand the concept behind "Mc-jivamukti" and yes, there are some hippie-dippie people out there with their heads simultaneously in the clouds and up their asses and there are some schools and some people out there that are buying all the mats, straps, and balls they feel necessary to keep up with the trend. And the sad thing is I know people personally who feel that this alone, along with regular classes, has somehow given them a karmic advantage. And there are others who are very devout and don't take their practices materialistically and still hold the same superior attitude. To a certain group of people it does incite elitism, I could not agree more with Daniel on that and I think it needs to be addressed because some people truly need a reality check. However, I do not agree at all that that egoism was present in this discussion. I think, if given more time to elaborate, Ms. Gannon would have better explained how she felt about that subject, but because of the setting and the polarized audience it wasn't possible. Seriously, shesravingmad, if you had a problem with the subject matter it was more likely than not your perspective that was causing your unease, and not the content. That appears to be the case with most more often than not...

..

well this is great-

sharon exudes fear like a politician....

 i guess all the sucess of the yoga business has made her hold on to her 'eastern' traditions....  

it's a pretty box, but still a box. 

 

.. 

I recently viewed the talk between my teacher, Sharon, and Daniel, whom I highly recommend all of my Jivamukti yoga students in New Orleans to to get to know through his literature and practices. I myself have recently had the tremendous blessing of experiencing the medicine with a group of people that live the Mayan calandar in the land of the Maya. After viewing the video, I thought of a friendly link that could  possibly segway Sharon and Daniel's view on Ahimsa, which is always going to come up in full force if you ask Sharon about it, which Daniel did. It has been my experience and those that I know of  that take the medicine that the vine will always reveal some dietary tips that cause the least amount of harm to all wild animals including yourself, and as a result, the planet. Diet is a huge topic in Ahimsa as well. It is interesting how both the vine and Patanjali find this to be such a hot topic, and one that comes up right away in it's order of importance in both practices. Both Patanjali and the vine are very clever in revealing a sequencial order of obvious conscious practices that we do daily that could perhaps be tidied up a bit. I have also found that the vine may ask you purge yourself of any meat eating and consume raw plants days before the ritual, so that we begin the process of detoxing and aligning with the high frequencies of all plants so that we are able to listen with crystal perception. The vine may be alluding to something here if we look beneath the habitual surface.  One thing I also wanted to let Daniel know about his comment "turning the other cheek." I recently spent some time with Ram Dass and Michael Beckwith in Maui. This popular and very misunderstood biblical slogan came up and was discussed. What I got from it was that turn the other cheek does not mean "go ahead and beat me some more, I love to get smacked around and can not stick up for myself". It is instead showing the cheek that has not been beaten yet, and saying, "look, you can not make me hate you, even if you are trying to send hate in my direction. Lets try this again. This cheek is unsoiled. I am reflecting love to you now. Can yo handle it? Even if you send hate in my direction, I will not hate you." From this vantage point we participate in love and do not anticipate more violence. Pretty brave, wouldn't you say? So is listening to the instructions of the ayahuasca, ahimsa, and remaining connected to the earth, which is the practice of asana. Coming from New Orleans, which has felt and is living the repercutions, I am finding this to be more and more important. Namaste.

DP simply asks critical questions, and I appreciate that. Lots of "leaders", be they politicians or yoga gurus, aren't used to being questioned in their supposed moral and spiritual superiority. It helps us get past the whole naive "new age" rhetoric that ignores socio-political inequity. Yogis can repeat their mantras and teachings all they want, but perhaps what we need is more old-school Socratic clash.

wanderlust

 

I think Pinchbeck held back really from making her look like a complete fool (while turning her back on the audience thinking she was there for some spiritual mumbo jumbo). Maybe she didn't know Pinchbeck like she thought she knew him because he wanted a discourse that really goes to the meat of the marrow... dig until you can't dig no more... dig?

Anyway he could have beat her down but he let her stand or lay upon her own folly of a belief that plays the game of all faith and no action except to run away inside (People become wallowers when they do this). Thinks the whole mind game of suttleness will will the world into a grand new day... Yippi hurrah.

Turn the other cheek? Maybe once but after there are no more cheeks to turn you got to let um taste there own medicine. Because after they get done with you they won't stop slapping until finally some warrior slaps them back.

I think Pinchbeck showed us what a fool she is. Enlightened us all I believe. In her speech about elightment is mere folly... nothing about justice in the real world in which most of the issues lay in the shade of gray -- sometimes you got to pull the string of the bow for the justice of surviving. You just have to do what you have to do to -- help yourself and others survive in this wacked out world we live in... Zen for me.

Love? Seeing yourself as your own self? Love (unconditional) is not judgeing yourself but giving yourself limits so you yourself or others around you will not be harmed. And one of those limits to self love is to not allow yourself to be slapped around. Instead of turning the other cheek, become one with them, grab them in a big fat hug and wrestle them to the ground?  Or you can really do it in a non-violent manner without ever touching them... spit... it's only a dab of water from your mouth.  Never hurts anyone except those that have huge egos. Sometimes that does the trick.

Now, I got to go eat my buffalo burger.  

Today is part of forever.

Hello all: there's a pretty cool new documentary showing on History Channel- April 19, 2008 at 10:00pm. Peyote to LSD: A Psychedelic Odyssey traces the life of psychedelic pioneer and explorer-botanist Richard E Schultes: the 2 hr. show features Wade Davis, Bob Weir, Dr. Andrew Weil- and native peoples across the Americas and the Amazon; see clips on You Tube- including Ayahuasca preview...Peter von Puttkamer, DirectorGryphon Productions www.gryphonproductions.com

It was like listening to two people who knew alot but could not hear each other, hence left brain vs right brain. I liked listening to each for their own knowledge but they heard NOT each other. They did not answer in the same arena the question was posed. I thought sharon was even rude in the beginning and daniel showed more restraint. Next time let her talk -shutup- and then have daniel talk. (what's with the subtle power struggle anyway? I get both however, and both seem right depending on how you are looking at it.. The superior way is your own way. Thank you and keep sharing,love you nyc,jez

this discussion has had me thinking, my thoughts after digesting, is that we have rooted down long enough, now is time to rise up.