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Welcome to the second installment in the ‘Baal on Buddhism’ series in which I take complicated Buddhist topics and make them approachable to all. I was not initially intending on making this the second book in the series, in fact, I wasn’t going to write this book until sometime in 2018. It has been on my list of books to write for several years, but an odd chain of synchronicities occurred in which pushed me to write this now.
I took it as a sign that my perspective on this practice is coming at the right time for many people . It also gave me the opportunity to reconnect with my own shadow self in the process. I keep myself to a disciplined schedule of writing, personal occult and meditation practice amongst other things . Sometimes, during this routine , certain things can be missed or fall to the side. This was an opportunity to slow down.
Chod is a very interesting practice within Tibetan Buddhism. Chod means to “Sever”. It is a method of cutting through the ego so to speak. In the simplest of terms, it is a practice that allows you to release yourself from the negative effect of ego. When I say negative effects, I mean pretty much anything you may have an attachment to that is causing you pain in your life OR perhaps you are avoiding. Often we are the source of our own pain due to unhealthy or repetitive thoughts that are driving us to lead lives mired in pain. This can display itself as an addiction, a phobia or any other kind of impulsive behavior or thought that is literally driving you crazy. Often these psychological patterns can stem from childhood traumas or more likely the suppression and repression of the shadow side of the self. That part of ourselves that our hidden desires and repressed feelings reside. We often suppress these thoughts because they are either unacceptable or we simply want to deny that they are even there. Often, when suppressed, they cause us to lash out in a variety of ways that destroy our relationships and even ourselves. This, in time, becomes an attachment and we start to define ourselves by these very behaviors. An addict will identify themselves as addict before anything else, a person with certain dysfunctions may completely identify with it to the point that they do not realize that they have become obsessed with it. People use their dysfunction as badges and will base their entire self on these dysfunctions.
This is called an egoic attachment. We often think of ego attachment displaying itself as someone who is haughty and self absorbed. The thing, it is that too. Ego attachment is anything that one attaches to, no matter how good or bad it might be. For example, one may be completely absorbed into spirituality that they actually become narcissists because of it. I will discuss that later in the book. That is a huge ego attachment that plagues the new age and occult circles like you wouldn’t believe.
When one uses Chod, one can get to the core of their attachments and what is causing them pain and can slowly unravel it. The method may seem a bit counterintuitive since on the surface it almost appears one is fueling the dysfunction, but in fact, the opposite is occurring. We will discuss that later as well.
In this book, we will not only discuss the History of Chod and what it is. We will delve deeper into what the Shadow is and how it can drive our desires and our negative patterns in our lives. We will also discuss how we can identify residual unresolved shadow effects after a Chod practice. I like to call those hidden machinations the “hungry ghosts of the mind”. And , of course, we will learn how to use Chod in a way that will make it accessible to all.
We have a lot to cover.
Let us begin.
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