Birch

Thank you GIH! And John! And Shaktimama and Cat and all on this thread. Very good stuff!

Thanks John! Sleep well

Can I ask a bunch of questions? What would happen to you if: - your definition of God changed? - you entirely dropped your definition of God? What I'm often coming back to when I do this - although not with god very often, sometimes I do it to myself in practice - which feels horrible most of the time BTW - except the occasional "bliss-dude" moment - is "I don't know". And I wonder for myself what this has to do with reason? Maybe nothing at all. Maybe reason would help me to cease this ridiculous discoursing, practicing and training? I'm feeling pretty vague today which is almost a perfect state for me to attempt the ideas I have to offer. The arguments are not as well-constructed as GIH and others but I'm training it, so please forgive. As long as we expect to be able to use words to say a specific thing in a consistent manner, why so much jostling around the definitions? Aren't the definitions already immutable? I suspect so much of the outcome of the arguments depend on whether they are or not. If the definitions are mutable, to whose service are they offered? Are they offered to the service of whoever can display the finest reasonable argument? Or perhaps, who has the most supporters of the endgame he or she is attempting? Who decides who wins? I was reading Sam Harris today on his website where he responds to critics after his latest TED talk. The guy is very brilliant and I look at him and go "wow, I should learn this stuff!" While at the same time I find some of the things underlying his discourse somewhat disturbing. Maybe I didn't understand enough and it's hard to put my finger on right now but some ideas are sort of percolating. Not all of them very good. I had a bad gut feeling about some of them. Now of course, science may soon tell me my gut is worthless as an indicator of anything. What was that quote "The five colours blind the eyes" or something? I'm sure I got it wrong. But the general meaning is that there are in fact many more than 5 colours, but saying there are only five makes us blind to the others.

Hey Scott! Yours or mine? Again, it's a total (looping?) system. Danger, I'm learning when approaching integrated approaches is my (still subtle) tendency to disintegrate them. Or make them into my way of seeing things (worse?) Maybe other people don't? Maybe TCM practitioners do, but just way better than I do? I know I need to watch out for it. It reminds me of the way we are taught to categorize in the poem, "in a dark, dark universe, there is a dark dark world, etc" like Russian dolls. Not to say there are no (and better) applications. As the old saw goes "If my arm got lobbed off by a sword, I wouldn't go to an acupuncturist to have it sewn back on" - or something like that And I wonder, what in applicative terms would preclude using digital vs analogue technologies of this type? If a wave is "alpha", isn't it "alpha" whatever the delivery mode? Sssh, I can hear Drew arriving!

Can I reply even if I haven't read the book yet? Are we talking about the "cold hard cash" type of money? Or "wealth" or "value" or "exchange" or some such thing? IME if you only look at "bottom line cash numbers" then you may be misidentifying sources of income as well as sources of "loss" Could you tell us about the book without me having to buy it ? Thanking you kindly! Kate

On the void. Another poster (whose name I never seem to remember and further often confuse with others because they all have that Calvin and Hobbes tiger, sorry!) mentioned some very interesting things that I can relate to this. It went along the lines of "cold" = absence of heat. Not "cold" = a "thing" but a "non-thing". Could "yin" be (relatively) the absence of something ("yang") ? In which case yin could very well be "void" and then I might fall over from contemplating how it is again that a "something" can be relative to the absence of itself. Never mind how it got from non-being to being... And at this point I'm confused. I had Shiva figured as "pure consciousness" and "Shakti" as something else. So I think I've got it all wrong. It doesn't change the blue/violet/dark black (yup) stuff though. Just that I can't explain it well enough Help a girl out?

What kind of exams? The kind where you just have to be able to retain a lot of facts and then repeat them once you get asked the questions? Do you need to be able to reconfigure the information upon questioning? Question the question? What kind of questions? From memory? Open book? Multiple choice? People who design exams tend to (ought to? Sometimes they get it backwards.) design the learning around them so the way your lessons are designed could be a pretty good indicator of what you need to concentrate on. Also, did you get "practice exams"? Even if the school/college didn't offer them, these can often be obtained if the exam you're sitting is recognized in some way (i.e. a state or national standard) Otherwise the other self-care suggestions are great. Not sure about Red Bull though! Some cool sites to go check out!

Wow! Thank you for that!

Cat? Or ? I find it easier to be thankful like that when I've cooled down

Hey Drew! Good to see you back;-) I feel I have to be careful about all the words because of your game. So I can't ask you all the stuff I want about the math/music theory. Which I would like to, but hey

The only one I can think of to pass on is just a phrase to consider (is this meditation? Not sure) "You are love, lover and beloved". I went to see a dervish ceremony in Istanbul. That did it for me. So did Kabir, Gibran, poems about The Mevlevi and KAP. That's quite a lot;-)

I feel that Susan is really compassionate in her evaluation of what's going on. Funny, I find her quite scary on other occasions. My own doing;-) Must be the blue ray thing ;-) It must be way easier to simply "see" people and then come around and tell them what's going on. Sort of like "hey, you look tired" ;-) as if it were your neighbor down the street or a friend you see often. Except you're not down the street, nor do you see them often... I'd love to be able to see properly. It would make many things a whole lot easier

Hi Steve F! I'm digging around in physics books as well. I think it's great to read. There's something that keeps bothering me in all of them, however, it's that there is nothing in there that someone (and generally in physics after all the experiments "someone" becomes a "we") hasn't been the observer of. I guess this might be an old argument, but if all we're ever doing is observing then the "whatever" we are observing can only ever be a product of our consciousness. Whatever it is. A supernova, a black hole, a planet, an earth, a mouse, a fruitfly, a cat, a myself. I think this is not a very well drawn argument but I am not practiced enough in them and I'd rather just say it.I hope that someone will point out exactly where my argument is bad so I can learn to do it better. Maybe it doesn't matter whether my argument is bad but whether I am in fact right...? Or maybe I do need the best argument to be considered right for a while? But isn't observing the universe through our consciousness and then concluding that the universe is consciousness kind of, well, weird?

About texts. Do you think reading that stuff AFTER effects thru practice makes a difference? I really think it does. I often think, "Look! Someone took the time to write this stuff down!" What gets even more interesting IMO is what reading that stuff will do to a person. Especially some of the "funnier" (or stranger) texts where you're reading along and then you hit a word or a phrase and you go: -aaaaragh -the world drops out -the world gets bigger (or smaller) very fast -you realise you didn't know jack about anything -you realise all your ideas about the "thing" were wrong -something else very shocking - like a) it's all just a story or you made the words mean whatever you decided. I like this last one the best. I think it's why I read. I believe being shocked through reading is an interesting adjunct to other practices. Whether whatever you're reading is the case or not

Why shouldn't these things be opposed? I didn't see the vids so maybe I missed something. I believe I often underestimate the concrete results my beliefs have. Get that process going on a collective level and, well, all kinds of stuff happens. Edit: Like religion, for example. Edited for the post-script on religion.

The stories are great! I've had variants of stuff that several posters have mentioned. IME "Kundalini" is an ongoing realization of the formless in form. Get used to it? IME, until "something" happened, probably in hindsight some kind of provocation like sun-salutes and heavy curiosity for "esoteric" practices in my case, I was utterly convinced that I was "wrong" somehow. And it hurt. Like a cat that everyone wants to see as a dog so treats it like a dog, expects it to bark when it can only meow, fetch sticks when all it wants is to sleep in the sun;-) Of course I'm still often wrong but I don't feel wrong as a person. I loved Trunks posts about it all (and he has some extremely helpful resources on his site BTW) The "biology" of it is truly fascinating and I think there's a lot of advice of how to deal with that and suggestions to integrate. Which IMO is the whole bloody point ;-) Other practices will help smooth things out. There's also context and companionship to help. I thank TTB's for so much in that respect (despite the snarky arguments we have;-)) Because it's ongoing, I would take the suggestions to take one's time to integrate and avoid burnout as very good ones.

Rainbow_vein. This is a really critical question IMO. I guess that it is up to the man I'm sitting across from to decide how "feminine" I am, and vice-versa, for me to decide how "masculine" I feel he is. For me, "yang" feels like a warm sunny day, a happy smile, a sense of humour, an open heart, a sharp intellect and a solid body that can keep it together;-) The portrait you painted above of the "ultra feminine" is interesting, because it is so contrived, kind like the "metrosexual" but a female version. The "metrosexual" to me is anything BUT "masculine" IMO, worrying oneself about the state of one's femininity or masculinity per how it's "glorified" today is a false path. Ever see some of those Rubens portraits? (http://home.scarlet.be/~tpm77885/images/Rubens.jpg) In some cultures, if you are not "fat enough" then you are considered unattractive to men. The hypothetical blond chick wouldn't stand a chance

Vortex, I found your post essentially disturbing. Do you mean that the "beta" guys just basically have nowhere else to go? Are they definitively whipped by their "elders and betters" (read "authorities")? I read it that way, anyway. I didn't "get" the picture, the couple looked kind of beat to me. Not really folks I'd like to spend time with... I'm starting to find myself getting limited when imagining big dividing traits all over the sociological vs psychological vs polarities. For me they all bleed into each other, back and forth. Cat and other women on TTB's have mentioned how "male" our current society is (assuming we all live in similar ones at that) and I can see the point and yet I don't equate "male" with "fucked up, greedy and unsustainable" which is really more what it all seems to be to me.

Interesting posts! I had some other thoughts: - Maybe the "relationship" some of these guys are looking for is actually an "old-school" "man=head of the household" "controls the family" kind of deal. In some worlds, this might be out of synch with social and economic reality. - Maybe some of these guys get their sense of "manhood" from too many outside things (including the job, the car, the trophy girl - or multitude of them;-)?) - what happens to him if he loses some of those things? The more people I meet, the more it keeps boiling down to individual exchange. I'm sure Taoist practices help better than trying to script lines for a club/bar.

I tried it about 15 years ago and found it pretty trippy. But then I'd also just seen "that" movie These days I prefer the sauna if I'm going to be shut inside anywhere.

Here, look over THERE! *Bitchslap* Oh.

I consider the strength of such norms in the face of my own wishes. It's about being a good tourist. You sound slightly arrogant to me but if it works for you then great If it also works for your GF then it's all cool.

I know that Still, if I 'm going to keep doing it, with you in particular, the other stuff does seem to come (no pun etc ) into play. Of course if you've "got me" some other way (like you're the father of my children or I depend on you economically) then I'm (well, I mean "you're") screwed. The moon ain't doing nothing about that. But what do I know

I would, but I don't want to blow my What was that stuff about "sages staying hidden" or something? Have you tried HARO? He's a guy with a PR list. I can send it to you if you want. This being said. I suggest it would: - be hard (no pun intended) for a man to admit in public that he couldn't make his partner come. - for a woman to admit she hasn't been coming, when she's been (maybe, oh maybe) pretending to do so for a while... IMO that takes far too much honesty and that is the issue with being on TV (well, mine )

Did he really paraphrase that? Wow. I think this is the best TTB's thing I've read in a while! Still, it's no fun for people when their immediate context makes them end up thinking a)there's something wrong with their not enjoying what's going on (especially if they've been told from birth they ought to be enjoying it all ) and/or b)there's something wrong with them as a person if they don't enjoy it, or c) they're actually "sick" because they don't enjoy it. Rather than accepting that they're NOT sick and that something else is sick. Of course, we may all be sick, but the point I want to make is that we ALL ARE. I for (n)one am quite happy to continue not enjoying a lot of things. The list of things I enjoy disliking could get quite long. Not least of all, the many attempts (including my own) to reduce my sense of self to zero. But as I mentioned elsewhere in my private forum, the practices work and they won't take you there.