User talk:Dotnetdr
First -- remember (or remind yourself) where we all come from. We all come from mothers. To be more specific -- our mothers and our grandmothers and so forth and so on. Meanwhile we can think about the Wolly Mammoth and the Ibis and where they went some tens of thousands of years ago. It certainly won't harm anyone to think of Earth and it's former inhabitants -- those that existed before we got here.
Before we can become spritual practioners we need to pass from the first 3 lower rhealms. The 4th (if we awaken to that level) is that of the heart.
The story of the birth of the Buddha begins with a virgin birth of the Buddha out from the side of his (or her) mother (from around the solar plexus/stomach region.) Out of the animal rhealm and into the spiritual rhealm delves this primordial being whom has purified his or her past.
Even the swaztika is used in Tibetan Buddhism. Don't be afraid of symbols! Traditionally the swaztika symbol is sat on because it symbolizes the ground (Tib. see 'ground/path/fruition' and/or 'one ground/two paths') This also represents the 4 elemental syllables (four 'prongs' or 'forks' of the swasztika.) The first is AUM, the primordial speech sound. The most basic component and underlying syllable of two of the most powerful mantras in Tibetan Buddhism. The second is ____________(pending editing... mp) The third is ___________________(pending editing... mp) The fourth has no name, essentially wordless and indescribable because it's meaning cannot be encapsulated. Therefore any 'thing' such as a word or avatar is not ascribed to 'it' because of ... loosely remaining the 'fourth thing'
Everything we say and communicate boils down to metaphors. Even the way the universe is laid out rests upon a universal ordering principle (Tib. -- universal ordering principle) that reflects back to us -- our sounds, myths, and waves. It is all described in metaphors of experience like 'how large or small compared to something we know about' or 'how bright or dim compared to a phenomenon that we have already measured.' Dreams are only metaphors too. Perhaps a single dreamer dreams a dream that all the other dreamers could have at one point, either concurrently with the original dreamer or many lifetimes later after being gently nudged into recognition of it's familiarity. Hmmm. Perhaps the dream projected itself up into the stratoshpere and then hung around for a few hundred years, awaiting the right dream recipient. That sort of dream sending exists and is possible just as the Native American's 'dream catching' is possible (the famous webbed 'dream-catcher' ornament given by Native Americans.)
In the word's of Paul Gaugain "I shut my eyes in order to see."