Birch

Oh no! I just had a precog of the (first?) TTBs marriage (sp?) between Witch and Tulku!!! Kidding...sort of.

Heh that's funny:-) You know i think my higher self is the one in operation when the small me shuts up and follows. Anyway, apparently lots of "things" can come and tell you they're your guide or higher self. Not all of them are worth listening to IME:-) My shavite buddhists were serious pot-smokers with awful fashion (and body) sense. I think the orange trousers and silly hat were the last straw. Anyway, to be serious about it. The whole point is "know thyself". IMO dreams can serve to bring to your attention incongruent stuff that you might not have taken into consideration when awake. So the volume gets turned up until you do take notice:-)

Is it a gender thing? Or is it a supporter/agenda thing? I know that i have to hold off on jumping in when i see a TTB i generally like having an argument. I do try to focus on the argument and not the person. Straw dogs n all that. I don't know how good i am at it though.

That's interesting. I personally don't buy the pre-birth contract stuff. I don't buy blank slate either:-) I do buy the idea of co-creation though. I even buy the idea that I'm incarnated just to experience things just because. I buy the idea that early life experiences contribute to our conditioning and the only reason for conditioning is a survival one. Which is why, once the conditions are passed, one no longer needs it. But unfortunately large numbers of mechanisms exist that play back into it for self-perpetuating reasons or gain. In that category I include religions, societies, advertising, sexual predators...:-)

That was interesting. I had no idea that happened

Another one for Da Bums :-)

Yep. Spirals. Spinning things. It's neat to find that there are some common sensations. But, yeah. Made me think of My link Then there's the bouncy sensations and the uppy-downies and the 'lost in space' and my current favourite 'golden ecstatic flying dreams'. And a whole bunch more. Some of which I mention here. That we share them is awesome. What they 'mean'? Oh. Don't let anyone tell you:-)

Hehehe, Apech dipping into the naughty thread, you're so...European;-) And you said commando. And you said dominatrix And you said ring http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3ho_VWslkM&feature=related

Hur. Good questions. Why do I feel like my answers will have me painted into a corner :-) ? Did I say anything about this forum being 'male-dominated'? I mentioned in my post to Vortex about how many women actually posted. I asked him because in a thread last week Rainbow Vein had mentioned missing her female TTB's and it did occur to me then that there were only a few female posters. It's very possible there are more female readers, but I don't know:-) So I didn't say anything about "domination" I don't think I dig the diversity here. I mentioned that before too. Do you want me to say something about 'domination'? I don't understand (blank stare). And here's a nice link about asking questions :-) My link Tulku-dude, if you're seeking to get me on rhetoric, you'll probably win. It's not my strong point. My strong points are elsewhere :-) Edited for link-bleed :-)

Yes I do think the gender mix of the regular TTB's matters. I don't think they're necessarily representative of their gender but it matters to me that it's mixed for some reason. I think everyone offers different perspectives. Better? Some posts seem to me to be 'better' than others yes. But those tend to be the scholarly hoary ones:-) There are wise men and women on here, yes :-) I can't say if a female-dominated forum is better as this is the only one I post on. No, I don't know who is actually 'hiding' behind any given profile but like I said, I'm on a 'case by case' approach. Besides, given what we talk about here, I don't think there's a lot of 'hiding' going on. But that's just IMO.

Vortex, have you noticed how few women are actually posting on TTB's? Oh wait, I should go to the pit and say that there instead. Edit: I went to the pit and I don't know which thread to post in! Anyways, what I wanted to say about this one was that really, no-one can blame today's men or women for the past. Only the present. But given that's all a bit unclear for many reasons I can't even begin to untangle, I've decided to go with the 'case by case - treat each person as a different one' approach. I often get comments about 'all women this' or 'all men that' and I've discovered that looking at the interlocutor blankly (maybe even a bit cross-eyed and vacant) usually does the trick. I can't speak to BDSM or unconscious gender perceptions but I do agree that the insult is in the eyes of the insultee and if the latter makes it known that they don't dig the jibe then the insulter ought to take that as a cue to cease:-)

I dunno that there is a path. I do think there's yours and mine and Tulku's and all those other great TTB's. Now what I do find interesting is what happens when people on paths (or not on paths) "run into" each other. I think this forum is great because aside from an interest or practice in Taoism or some other weird consciousness-related stuff, there's a very diverse bunch of folks here and all at quite different 'energetic' signatures. (I say that so as not to impose any idea of level or any of that stuff, which I think is false. But I digress:-)) I'd probably never even meet half of them offline for all kinds of reasons. Some of those being I'd avoid people whose vibe I feel to be too different from what I figure is mine or overwhelming in some way. Here I can't get away. So it forces me to attempt to figure out WTF is going on with that and the answers are almost always interesting.

That was a bit hoighty-toighty ----disclaimer---this means in my opinion-----

Here are a few cents I like:-) Go outside and exercise. Breath in the fine clear air. Rest in the sunshine. Sleep well. Drink clean water. Don't strain your thinking. Don't overload on crap programming. Check out your diet for brain-fogging foods (mostly refined carbs). Check out the breathing threads:-)

I suppose on a Taoist forum it is indeed! What I find weird is the overwhelm of what I'd call "scary" vibes around the whole sexual engulfing thing that Witch seems to put out. I don't want to be overwhelmed or engulfed. Or crushed or raped for that matter. Which is a bit what I'd understood Witch was up to "figuratively" if not literally. Susan's energy was a bit scary to me for a while but i got over it. The bisexual thing too. Not comfortable. Hopefully you won't read my discomfort as offensive Witch or any other TTbs. I seem to be running into a lot of "heavy" sexual stuff these days and I'm trying a) to work out what I'm doing to have this "occur" and how to navigate it properly so folks don't reckon they can just throw this stuff at me and think it's fine. Hence my questions about how it works. I suppose i could go take Santiago's PSD class too:-)

Why, yes I am :-) Don't Panic. For I believe we are sitting at the restaurant at the end of the universe (well, as far as we've gotten so far anyway).

I think the more we get to understanding reaction to trauma as an involuntary process, the less hardship folks will have around it and the easier it will be to heal. I believe there's still a bit of the 'blame the victim' hanging around in various parts of our culture. Don't worry! Victims blame themselves so easily anyway, IMO, they don't need reinforcement:-) Yes IME/IMO PTSD is a physical process as much as a mental one. Ironically IMO it provides an understanding of mind/body/emotions/cognitive interactions that insight meditation methods might find hard to match, but I digress. IMO I figure anything that takes the mental pressure off it is going to help so the EFT anchoring stuff is good. The EMDR stuff is an interesting one that apparently hooks into the way short and long term memories are processed and stored. The emotional desensitization stuff that Mithstrike mentioned apparently works but it seems like a hard slog. The TRE exercises seem pretty good but I worry a bit about them setting off a cascade of unwanted panic in the very traumatized. They kind of remind me of what I read about the Kunlun stuff.

I guess if you're fed up of being told, you could find ways of studying it for yourself?

Did they thank you for all the fish???

This thread is getting weirderer and weirderer.

Not if you go ninja:-) Keep it on the DL:-) Anyway, I'm glad of this forum. I couldn't talk with anyone else much about it. But I wouldn't join a tribe either. Props to Mal for doing his standing post on a smoke break:-)

I think that realising that there are well-documented dangers associated with different meditation types is important. There is also IMO a need for better understanding of what different systems are designed to do. As for who will look after the space cadets, well if they're training a formal system with a teacher, IMO the teacher bears some responsibility (shared with the practitioner IMO) whereas if they're DIY from books and online I guess places that can recognize what's going on and help are available. AYP has a good support forum. I think TTBs is pretty good at it too. My best call would be to practice a well-balanced system that might take a bit of effort but that teaches you as you go.

Krishnamurti? Gopi Krishna? For the quote. No one cannot IME be normal and be in harmony with Dao and society in its present phase "at large". Society is an imposition on people whereas Dao is not. Smart societies understand this stuff and so build in cultural safeties. I suppose you could DIY it. Better IMO just to find like-minded folks and stay away from cults:-)

And how can an abundance of energy get misread (by me) as something unwanted? I'm quite interested in the mechanics of it.

Hehe. Does that explain so many regulars on TTBs - it ain't the philosophy talk then??