Birch

That's not what I meant PB :-) What I meant was that you had somehow managed to cite the main concepts of the TTC in your own words and I thought that was pretty cool and clever (but not clever get it?)

Well, everyone is more interested in different things:-) What can I say? I'm a pedant with all of these attempts at understanding different things in intricate detail. Thanks for the suggestions. Trunk's site is a good one BTW.

It's a great website but pretty expensive! Is there a North American equivalent you could recommend? Thanks!

I watched a few other ones. It's lots of fun! Anyway, in Bashar style, if you can understand what he's on about from his "higher than mine" understanding then it ain't. (higher, that is:-)) Thankew

Ramen is not food.

That's funny. I found he sounded like a bit of a nutter! What I mean is that i reckon that's what someone who is expected to channel and be spiritual talks like. I don't know, I suppose he has his audience in that respect. Each person finds his or her teacher according to, well apparently there's the whole thing of how that happens. Many ways. Still, there is a point to speaking in an off the way manner, calling things by other names, or their old names, attributing causes to obviously disparate things. I don't think the point is that one laps it all up again in wide-eyed belief.

I suppose one could probably do similar for oneself. Putting it on show? Not very sure about that. Artistic performance? Maybe? Actual "channeling" of what? If I understand correctly, the guy is making use of himself for "something". What's the something? I don't want to get stupid, but IMO this guy is as much a "channel for the divine" as anyone else. Maybe that's his point. Maybe an example of thinking differently or no thought?

I wouldn't do it for someone I didn't know. Not that I "know" Twinner but he's been on the forum for quite some. I've been on it for quite some. We've discussed and agreed and disagreed on various things. I think that weighs on my decision. The other thing is just how much ca$h I have spent/spend on gongs and therapies and acupunctures and books and all kinds of stuff. I figure if I can do that then I can help a fellow bum.

I dunno Vortex. IME raging Kundalini does (well, you do, but that's unclear until much much later IME) a bunch of stuff. One of them being taking your latent "karma" for want of a better word, out for a resolution spin without you having asked for it. The daemon is exactly what is being released by sexual retention IMO/IME. Your reality will hit the fan. On the upside you get free "mystical" teachings for 0$. On the downside, well, your karma is taken for a resolution spin in short order. The game IME/IMO is to live in the "worlds" where this is taking place without any of them either interfering with each other or anyone else. -----opinion alert----

Thanks Rob! I'm curious about those transdermal needles. Does it help? What's the goal of having them set up that way? You don't have to go into it. Does the length of an acupuncture session matter to that extent (that you have those specific needles)?

Is one allowed to stand horizontally? It's a real question.

Molds for metal joints for stone construction. Possibly metal parts for something. That's my guess. But if there's no evidence of metalwork...

Thanks Rob. Yes, the beads/magnets good idea. I was figuring if I'm going to learn a bit and practice I'm probably better off without needles:-) Not on anyone else of course! So none of this stuff would go very deep (except maybe the magnet). I recall Trunk did use needles but he stayed at limbs (or he just didn't tell the bums;-)) I'm trying to acheive a sort of a basic "first aid" type thing with it for very minor stuff. Stuff like the asprinless headache cure for example. Or digestive things (like yesterday's chilli garlic sauce that was awesome at the time and is now burning like a mfo and possibly causing a headache in the process )

+10 Dwai

In

I'd say Disney is also time/context sensitive. The princesses were put in movies over decades. Perhaps the girl quit watching before Aladdin came out? What I find interesting is how Disney took earlier myths which were already taken from elsewhere and adapted various bits. To what end they were adapted and/or characters were tweaked is probably an area of study in itself. Personally I prefer the Jungle Book:-) But then I'm old:-)

Here's what one girl has to say about Disney's teachings. http://xxblaze.wordpress.com/2009/10/29/fuck-you-disney-princesses/

I'm glad I posted it here:-) While I don't think putting pee on my forehead is helpful (I use contraception that alters that whole thing anyway;-)) I was reminded of perfumers art by your post TaoMeow. The perfumers advocate very specific points to apply perfume (prior to which must have been actual essences, most of which are now banned substances or on their way to extinction so synthetic versions are being made) I'm currently working with a non-local chi-twiddling insightful therapist dude. Do I explain how this functions? Not very well (I have a banal pragmatic explanation that I can sort of muster if anyone wants one though) Also reminded of mapmaking and the different types of projection used (not sure why that came up) and constellations (a but more coherent but still!) The shouting thing could almost make sense. Our more scientific friends have found that chi-cultivators who use it for healing produce low-vibrational sound which is what does the work (not electricity or anything like that). It's online somewhere. Engineers know about resonance and wave amplification and all that too. Anyway, what I'm trying to get at is that many many 'categories' of point application seem to be in use for different reasons. Some of them 'working' on several levels at the same time. My other question was if you want to maintain multiple acupressure points all at the same time (like you'd use multiple needles in acupuncture) what's best?

Right, because people need controlling or they'd all do terrible things. The way I read the TTC is that people only need controlling (or coercion) when they "lose Dao". So if you're a ruler of some kind whose culture/civilisation requires a loss of Dao to function (for you and your buddies) you ought to start making shit up to justify whatever you're doing. Thing is, we can concede that not everything can be explained at any given time because we can't observe all in all cases. Causality eludes us so it's only a matter of degree and attribution to convince. Frightenly such causality then becomes real for many. Edit: I went through it again. Does this guy still have a job? The piece makes it look like he's allowed to say what Christ is "really" about to his "flock" while admitting to the journalist that what the organisation he represents is about is "control". The church scene shows him telling his congregation about personal responsability. Ok, now I'm confused, is the message "it's your own fault you gave up your personal control to us"? Y'know, history, forgetting...

@Seth I meant kindlier as in helping people to navigate states rather than leaving them to figure it out ALL alone. Sort of like the difference between throwing someone into a pool to "teach" them to swim when they've never even taken a bath before and letting them play in the shallows with floats on. I don't see any merit in unecessary injury. Even tiger cubs get to play at killing before killing. Yeah, the DSMV is an, er 'interesting' codex. Irony being they've recently included culturally-specific stuff like "qi-deviation" (I think, you'd know better:-)) but what happens when a Westerner gets spontaneous teachings from a dream master or meets their spirit guides or massive synchronicity becomes almost a banal constant (cough cough) or they decide to pretend to be various mythical characters for various reasons (not just for fun)? The current bottom line advice is "Don't mention it" and my take is that if people are having trouble with the "neighbours" as you put it, they ought to be able to mention it and be taken quite seriously. Reasoning being, that mental illness like other illness very often resolves itself, if indeed it is illness and not just a different expression of being, but gets worse if you arrest the state with whatever. I'd also like to point out the relative increase in grey-world of what I'd call "flat-world adaptive syndromes" like Aspergers and autism spectrum diagnoses. Also that it's likely that our cultural selects for pathological leaders (as in "no capacity for empathy" per the latest neurobiology experimentation).

Well, me neither (attribution of demonic or holy power) but it doesn't always seem to bring out the best in people so I dunno. I don't think it's the only book that does that either. I've read some Coran which seemed heavier into the social sciences and study on human "nature" than the little of the Bible I could stand reading (forever associated with chilly churches, moralizing, condescending, lack of fun, quite nice coloured windows, bad singing). There was a fun website that asserted that the Bible had evidence of space-ships and ultra sophisticated weapons (like some people say about the Vedas). Holy nuclear power plant!

Sorry!

Well, it's sort of begging the question a bit and I apologise for that but what I want to point to is "how" did/do people get to where they can't understand or integrate these experiences? What if we started out with a kindlier approach? What seems insane to me is we seem to have cultivated this huge repository of fantasy "outside" of ourselves to get involved with (movies, books etc) and ironically ultimately interact with (avatars) and then we call someone who meets similar entities by themselves in a non-mediated encounter nuts. Hehehe, I'd look again at some of those elves people think they made up:-)

It's interesting that you'd say the power lies in the book. I hadn't looked at it that way. I'd seen it as people using the book to imply power (do US courts still make people swear on it? Are they allowed to swear on something else that represents something to them instead?) Aside from the probablity that most people have not read most of it...yes why does it have such status? I think it's crazy personally but I wouldn't go around saying that everywhere.