Tom,

you know, my meditation circle is still in what I believe are the preliminaries and guess what, they are rather similar to identical to what Robert Bruce teaches. Sure, RB does not teach, say, Tara as a focus, but he teaches focusing and thus zhine. He teaches observing and thus sati (mindfullness). He teaches energy rising, no different than mahamudra. And he teaches projection of the energy body - just as Tibetan Buddhism does.

I just attended a seminar for a transformation technique that sounds suspiciously like projecting to me. The small difference is that it is done with a partner and there is verbal communication with the other person. The idea is pretty easy, one projects oneself to the shore of a river and crosses that river.

However, if it would have been just imagining it I would have had no problem. But the idea is to let symbols guide and control the visualization and I had a lot of problems with getting any "sensory" input. I mean, I could visualize myself into any scenery with a river but no river came to me when I let go. Also, I had problems - especially at first - to stay in the body. I kept seeing myself from behind or above.

It seems to me that this is also the reason why I have trouble projecting while in trance. And if I succeed I usually don't have eye sight. This problem does not arise when the projection happens spontaniously, dunno why. Anyway, what I wanted to say is that I see a lot of similarities between TIbetan Buddhism and "Astral Dynamics", especially regarding the techniques.

Quote Originally Posted by Tom
It used to be that Tibetan Buddhism in its various forms was my favorite, but it is just too bogged down with contradictions for my liking.
For example?

The nice thing about the Zen group I sometimes associate with is that all we have to do it sit down, be quiet, and look at the wall.
My husband was practicing Zen for some time and he uses to say the idea is to get so bored that you enlighten just to have some fun

When your purpose is to cut through the BS which is already in your life, it is really unfortunate to get stuck with a group that will just add fancier layers of BS to what you already have. I was practicing with a Tibetan-style group which favored Mahamudra for a while but all they do is talk and it is really depressing. They keep going on about how helpless and hopeless they all are and how anyone who feels otherwise is just lying to themselves.
Yes, that sounds countraproductive.

The Tibetan Buddhism my teacher teaches (Tarab Tulku was her teacher) is also full of healing techniques. I think it all goes well together