Tom Paine wrote:Seeking---If you want to read palms at a distance, have the person xerox
their hands and label them right and left. Then have them xerox the edges
of their hands to get the lines on the edges. Have them adjust the light/dark
adjustments to get the faint lines as well as the deep ones. Then have them
mail the copies to you (along with a check!) and you'll be remotely reading!
Now, for those who were looking for a definition of PASSION, read the posts
of The Mighty Zenden. (meet me at the temple at midnight, babe, I'll bring
wine and cigarettes)
And Antaeus, since you like to refer to Nirvana a lot, here is the real definition thereof:
The Yellow School of Magic considers the Universe not as neutral, but as definitely a curse. Its primary theorem is the "First Noble Truth" of the Buddha– "Everything is Sorrow." In the primitive classics of this School the idea of sorrow is confused with that of sin.
The analysis of the philosophers of this School refers every phenomenon to the category of sorrow. It is quite useless to point out to them that certain events are accompanied with joy: they continue their ruthless calculations, and prove to your satisfaction, or rather dissatisfaction, that the more apparently pleasant an event is, the more malignantly deceptive is its fascination. There is only one way of escape even conceivable, and this way is quite simple, annihilation. (Shallow critics of Buddhism have wasted a great deal of stupid ingenuity on trying to make out that Nirvana means something different from what etymology, tradition and the evidence of the Classics combine to define it. The word means, quite simply, cessation: and it stands to reason that, if everything is sorrow, the only thing which is not sorrow is nothing, and that therefore to escape from sorrow is the attainment of nothingness.) ---Aliester Crowley
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I read something interesting once along the lines that what it is that we utilize from the material in making up our physical bodies, is actually something that not only returns to its constituent base and even diffuses throughout wherever it may. This is as well with the energic aspects of whatever sublimated matter, or more ethereal manifestation that we utilize. But, where I'm leading is that the above is remembered and returns whenever we manifest. What I'm suggesting is that what matter we use to make our bodies is matter that we use over and over again. The exact same elements that made up our bodies in previous lives, we stick with. However far and wide these elements may range when we are away. Our Divine aspect remembers each element with loving loyalty never forgetting nary a one. The following is a reply to Tom Paine:
"Section III
Buddhism has always been greatly misunderstood in the Occident, and this misunderstanding has arisen almost wholly because Occidental scholars themselves have misapprehended a large number of the most important teachings of the religio-philosophy of Gautama; and because these Occidental scholars imbodied their misapprehensions in their studies in and of Buddhism, and because such studies were printed and published, the reading Occidental public followed suit as was only to be expected; and thus it is that there is perhaps no single world-religion known today which has suffered so greatly in this respect as Buddhism has.
It has at times been called a religion of pessimism, simply because Occidentals have not understood its profound intellectual reaches nor its proper placing of the values of the material side of life. In the Occidental view, to teach that a man is an impermanent composite of elements of varying ethereality, and that when he dies this composite is dissolved, and that its component parts then enter into their respective realms or kingdoms or spheres of Nature: all this signifies to the Occidental mind that such a doctrine teaches utter annihilation of the compounded entity as an entity; for, consciously or unconsciously, such Occidental critics ignore the unifying and binding root of being of every such entity which brings at periodical intervals this compound together again out of the identic life-atoms that composed it in former existences.
Occidental scholars so think, or they think that they so think, because they do not understand that this very 'root,' or element, or subtil bond -- call it what you like -- i. e., the individualizing energy which brought these samskaras (40) or compounds or composites together, is, when all is said and done in argument, a unifying and therefore individualizing force; and that this unifying or individualizing force, no matter what we may call it, remains after the dissolution of the compound, and likewise has its own cosmic reservoir or kingdom or realm to which it returns; nor do they understand that this unifying or individualizing force the Lord Gautama in his great wisdom called the 'Buddha,' the inner originant, for which an equivalent term in the Mahayana of Northern Asia is Dhyani-Buddha.
It is quite true that from certain Occidental philosophical standpoints, the teaching of Gautama the Buddha may formally be considered 'pessimistic'; but only so if one judge it by Occidental philosophical standards alone, and ignore the intrinsic meaning of the Buddha himself; and is this either wise or fair? Ignoring a factor in a problem is not solving the problem properly. Can it, one asks, then be rightly done? How can we judge something which arose in the Orient and became the Law of the more civilized Oriental world for its own time-period, and successfully passed the examination of the keenest minds and the most astute intellects of ages, by the changing and therefore biased standards of Occidental scientific speculations, with a vague background of European philosophy, which speculations themselves are only some three hundred or more years old in their origin, and probably not more than seventy-five years old, or less, in their present form?
There was a time, not so long ago, when one teaching of the Buddha, that of the Nirvana, was considered by Occidental scholars to mean that the Lord Gautama taught that annihilation, utter, complete, was the end of every living conscious being, when that being had attained unto the stage of inner growth where it entered into this nirvanic state; and they pointed, naturally enough, to the Sanskrit meaning of this compound word: nir, 'out' or 'off,' and vana, the past participle passive of the root va, 'to blow': hence 'to blow out.' As they sagely and logically enough said: "Nirvana means 'blown out,' as a candle-flame is 'blown out' by the breath!" Ay, so it does. But what is it that is 'blown out'? What is it that ceases to exist? Is it the unifying spiritual force which brings this compound entity into being anew in a serial line of succession which has no known beginning, and which the Buddhist teaching itself shows to be something which reproduces itself in this series of illusory, because compounded, vehicles? This is impossible, because if this individualizing or unifying energy were 'blown out,' i. e., annihilated, it obviously could not continue to reproduce itself as the inspiriting energy of newly compounded bodies due to its own working. Therefore obviously enough what is blown out is the samskaras, the compounds, resulting from, i.e., born or produced by, the karman of the individual. This karman, therefore, and speaking with strict logical sequence of thought, which the doctrine imbodies, is the individual himself or itself; because the Buddhist teaching is that what is reproduced is the karman of the preceding individual, i. e., that any composite entity changes from instant to instant, and that at each new instant, the change is the resultant or effect or consequence of the preceding instant of change. Thus, then, the individual is his own karman at any instant in time, because that karman is the totality of what he is himself. When a man's composite parts are 'blown out,' i. e., 'enter Nirvana,' i. e., are 'extinguished,' rendered extinct, as the just previously existing compound, then all the rest of the being, that deathless center of unifying and individualizing spiritual force around which these composites or samskaras periodically gather -- lives as a Buddha.
This is exactly and as far as it goes (because there is much more that might be said), the teaching of Esoteric Theosophy, of the Esoteric Tradition. All the evil and lower part of us must be wiped out, extinguished, 'annihilated' if you like; in other words the karman that produced these illusory composites must be caused to cease; and new composites, nobler ones -- the products or effects or resultants of the preceding composites -- those henceforth joined to the Buddhic essence of the being, that spiritual force which is the inner Buddha, will then continue and on its own high plane live, because no longer controlled by the veils of the world of Maya, Illusion -- the worlds of impermanent structural composites. The being thus become a Buddha because of its delivery from enshrouding veils, has now reached the state and condition of passing out of the impermanence of all manifested existence into the utter permanence of cosmic Reality.
The matter of the real meaning of the Nirvana has thus been elaborated, albeit in somewhat sketchy fashion, in order to show that the supposition of many Westerners that the teaching of the Nirvana is a pessimistic doctrine because meaning utter extinction into the abyss of non-entity, is baseless. Hence, far from being pessimistic, the doctrine of the Nirvana is one of extraordinary hope. The word 'optimism' is not here used, because it is as subject to adverse critical comment as is its antonym 'pessimism.'
Far from being a religion of pessimism, when properly understood the religion of the Buddha is a religion -- not of optimism indeed, but of wisdom. These words are used advisedly, because it is certain that unthinking optimism is as foolish in its way as is unthinking pessimism. Neither is wise, because each is an extreme. The teaching of the Buddha was so wisely given by that Great Sage that it showed to men a pathway which went neither to the right -- to one extreme -- nor to the left -- to the other extreme; but chose the Middle Way, the way of Truth, avoiding the falling into the extremes of either side. All extremes are unreal, no matter what they may be, because unphilosophical; and it is the great subtilty of the Tathagata's teaching which has rendered it so difficult for Occidentals to understand. One often reads essays printed in the Occident by Westerners who have become Buddhists; and one may admire them for the courage with which they work in their new field; but, with no wish to hurt anyone's feelings, it is difficult to avoid being grieved by their usual lack of understanding of what is after all the heart, the core, of the great Buddha's teaching. The letter indeed of the Buddhist scriptures has been grasped -- more or less; but the spirit, i. e., the Buddha's 'heart,' is rarely or never understood. The Eye-Doctrine, in other words, is comprehended to a certain extent; but the Heart-Doctrine, the hid part, the esoteric part, is not seized, or only grasped intuitively and to a certain extent only at the rarest intervals.
Section IV
Ay, there is such a thing as esoteric Buddhism (41), despite the denials of this fact by very eminent Occidental Buddhist scholars. After all, what value is there in..."
Good judgement comes from experience; experience comes from bad judgement.
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You have to believe in the impossible in order to become.
A dirt poor average nobody schmoe in the deep south who died an untimely death. And before that, it was more average schmoe lives from what I get. But then we get to Egypt, where I apparently abused my power....which is certainly more interesting than just being some average schmoe, but it's nowhere along the lines of being some regal high-end noble "temple priestess." It's just some Egyptian schmoe wielding their power in the wrong way. Which probably led to all the average schmoe lives that came after with untimely deaths. 
I love to dine on them schmoes when I go camping, too! I thought what kept High Priestesses out of the Kingdom was due to the misfortune of bumping their lofty heads when they attempted to go through the Eye of the Needle? 
A line that runs vertically up the palm, in the direction of Saturn, is called the Fate line, or the Career line. Not everyone has one, but it’s a good line to have. Without one, a person is totally aimless in life and has no direction. 