Leo

Aside from the Honey/Vinegar we've been discussing on another thread, I also take DHA. We're ovo-lacto vegetarians, and the one thing you just can't get in that diet is DHA, which is really important for brain function among other things. We looked and looked, and couldn't find a suitable vegetarian source that we liked (flax oil was a no-go...ugh!). There is plenty of vegetarian DHA even in the mainstream health food stores, but for some reason, they always put it in gelcaps. We finally found it here: http://www.vegetarianvitamin.com/shop/inde...red/prevstart// and have been taking it ever since. It is made out of algae, and is actually vegan. Vegetarian vitamin is a fantastic site, and I recommend anyone interested in veggie nutrition check it out!

I took it pretty much all last winter and spring, and all this fall and winter so far. I don't know how long for sure. In the morning, I do all my "stuff" - exercises, meditation, etc, then eat, take my vitamins, and shower. When I'm getting dressed is when I take the vinegar - so it's not on an empty stomach, and it's not exactly with food either. Incidentally, it is also supposed to be good for weight loss if you take it before you eat, and sometimes I take it in the evening to curb my hunger when I come home hungry and I know I can't eat right away. As to how it makes me feel...it feels pretty darn good on my stomach when I take it, but it's hard to tell overall. I feel pretty good most of the time, and am usually in a good mood and good health, but I also do a lot of other stuff. I think the taste grows on you, and sometimes I'm surprised at how good it actually tastes. I also don't measure the ingredients, so it's a little different each time.

If you do a quick search, I'm sure you'll come up with plenty. This remains a perennial favorite, and sometimes you'll even see it on the cover of one of those little booklets they have at the grocery store checkout. There was a book that came out around the '50's or so by a guy named Jarvis called "Folk Medicine", that extols it as almost a panacea. Aside from the good stuff that's in the substances, it uses the mechanism of the body compensating that was being discussed earlier. My understanding (which is limited at best) is that it is most desirable for the body to be in an alkaline condition. The body senses the acidity of the vinegar in the gut, and squirts out the proper chemicals to compensate thus leading to an alkaline state. Or something like that. Like I said, I don't understand it much past knowing it makes me feel good. As far as helping heartburn (which it definitely does do) the explanation seems a little more tortured. There was a guy on TV a while back hawking a natural health book, and he said heartburn was due to having too little acid in the stomach, not too much. Over the counter antacids wipe out all the acid in your stomach, thus making it produce a whole bunch more and digesting the food. Apple cider vinegar, he says, does the opposite by adding acid to your stomach and helping it. I have no idea if this is true or not, but like I said the recipe really helps many people. Lozen's recipe looks really good, and I definitely want to try it, but the beauty of the vinegar/honey is that it is so fast and easy. I drink it every morning as I'm running out the door to work, and sometimes in the evening as well, although I stop drinking it when the weather gets hot in the summer. I'm really hoping some people will try it for a week or so, 'cause I think it'll get me some rave reviews!

I'm tellin' ya....try my magic potion just once... one tablespoon of honey in a glass put some water in microwave it for 1:15 one tablespoon of apple cider vinegar stir briskly That's it. It's great for you, and I think it tastes like sour candy. I know, I know, you think vinegar is the worst thing for heartburn, but it really works. It also helps to keep your body in an alkaline condition, among other things. Just make sure to use apple cider vinegar (not white). Also I heard that Heinz is supposed to have whole apples or something that makes it better. I don't know if it's true, but the price difference is pretty slight, so I go ahead and buy it instead of the cheap kind. If you try it, let me know how it works!

I have, all my life, been extremely lucky with teachers. I dunno why...if I want to learn something I call a random number out of the yellow pages or whatever, and later find out I've got some kind of mucky-muck, etc. When I decided I wanted to practice western esotericism in my twenties, it was no exception. The teacher I ended up with turned out to be sort of a leader behind the scenes. She eschewed fame, but was the person that all of the big name authors and teachers came to for advice. It had a HUGE impact on my life, and I got to run in some pretty heady circles and meet some people I would not have otherwise had the chance to meet. No one was ever coerced to stay...on the contrary. We didn't have to follow the teacher's advice in most cases, but in some cases she would insist. In those rare cases, it was invariably a change the person was resistant to, but was something that ended up helping them immensely. Everyone was expected to continually increase their personal wealth and ability in life. Poverty was considered a vice. Classes were offered for a fixed and modest fee, and no donations were ever excepted. She practiced what she preached, and I watched her become quite wealthy in her business dealings. When first starting out, EVERYONE, without exception, had to go to therapy. It didn't matter what kind, or school of thought but it had to be something. The teacher was quite knowledgeable about different types of therapy and would suggest some from time to time, but the decision was left up to the student. If she thought a student needed to go back, she would let them know. This was one of the things she insisted on. Anyone who has been around Western Esotericism for any length of time knows that the greatest danger is insanity, and I've seen some pretty spectacular examples. By the way, she also practiced what she preached here also - she also spent time with various therapists. I believe I benefited greatly from this experience, and believe anyone on the path should try out SOME type of therapy at some point, and learn to recognize when it appropriate to seek it out during their journey.

So the audience thinks they're all sophisticated and worldly, but really they're just a bunch of tight-asses!

It's funny you should mention that...we have a cat that LOVES to hear whistles (she is somehow compelled to come to a whistle even if she doesn't really want to!), so the other day the Andy Griffith Show was on TV and we played the theme song for her (she loved it). But I just got sucked in to watching it. I was standing there, in the middle of trying to do something else, and I think I ended up watching the whole thing. What you said is totally true. It was very funny, well acted, and irresistibly charming. I've watched a few episodes in the past, but not very many, so they would all be pretty much new to me. I saw an ad for a new show the other day and it had a thirteen-year-old girl snottily shocking her mother with a litany of coarse euphemisms for sex. And I'm thinking, "this is funny?" We really try to stay away from a lot of the gratuitous violence. And sex too. I'm no prude, but jeez.. some of the stuff I see makes me wonder. Ah well...I suppose we can't go back to Mayberry. But I can still see it on Nick at Nite!

In the incident I mentioned, nearly twenty people were infected with E. coli, and two children even had to be put on life support. Here is one article: http://katu.com/news/story.asp?ID=82613 Whether raw dairy helps with allergies or not, I don't know. I am sure that there is good stuff in dairy that is taken out by pasteurization, and I have no doubt that it can help some people. The question is, is it the only place you can get those things, and are there safer ways? Someone mentioned buying raw milk in an open air market where a scientist is testing it to make sure it is safe. I'm just not sure that I would trust that they could test every bit to make sure that it didn't have harmful bacteria or pathogens in it. And anyway, if I were trusting scientists to tell me which food was safe, I suppose I would trust the consensus opinion. (And no, I don't think they're all supported by the dairy industry! ) Anyway, it's kind of fun to debate, but I am by no means an expert. I do have a lot of experience with trying different ideas for alternative health, and have been excited by more than one thing that I decided later was sheer bunk. The best advice I can give is to keep your head about you, always read both sides, and ALWAYS choose safety first. If you're risking nothing but a few bucks and maybe looking foolish, I say go for it. But I think I'll leave the raw dairy to the baby cows!

I'm coming to this thread a little late but... When you consider the latest theories on allergies, they are actually a sign of a good immune system. The thinking is that as modern people our immune systems don't have so much to keep them occupied, so they may find some other substance (pollen, animal dander, etc) to attack. I've had allergies all of my life. When I was a boy, I went in for a test to find out what I was allergic to. It turned out that I was allergic to just about everything they tested me for. So I was put on allergy shots, which were basically shots full of what I was allergic to, and that seemed to help. I am allergic to cats and currently live with three. I pet them, get scratched and bitten by them, the works. My experience with allergies is to expose yourself to what you are allergic to (a little at a time if need be) until your system can tolerate it. I too was desirous of an air purifier, until I did the research. The experts say to save your money, and just dust and vacuum regularly. Also if you have a furnace filter, make sure to change it often. The only people who really need air purifiers, are those who are SUPER sensitive, and have already done those other things and still need that extra pure environment. There is also new research that says that negative ion generators may not be as good as was once thought, and may actually be harmful in some cases. As to eating raw dairy, all I can say is to check out the history of pasteurization. I love natural stuff, and am quite an herb and natural remedy buff, but eating raw dairy is just asking for trouble. I live in Oregon (where there are more health nuts than you can shake a stick at) and recently a bunch of people got REALLY sick from eating raw dairy. In Oregon you can only sell it for animal consumption, but people were eating it anyway. The people who were selling it felt plenty bad, and now they are in BIG trouble.

Well I'm stumped! I saw your post and ordered the book right away. The author has trained with Stephen Chang, and it seemed to elaborate on a lot of his teachings. It is very much based on the Deer Excercise which works a heck of a lot better for me than Mantak Chia's stuff ever did . He takes a lot of the excercises that Chang provides, and adds suggestions for things like specific numbers of reps, and generally organizes them a little better (that's not to say that Chang's book isn't still worth getting). I was also pleasantly suprised by all of the diagrams, and other info I didn't know I was getting. The writing style is a little dry, but it is also a translation from the German, so that may contribute. It certainly may seem a little different for someone used to Mantak Chia, and other writers that sort of follow that same type of "line", if you will. But there is definately a lineage and a background there. Anyway, if you look at the list of the guy's credentials and teachers in the back, it seems evident that he knows SOMETHING...it may not be the most popular or mainstream chi kung book...but garbage worthy????

Okay! I'm convinced...I'm gonna try it! But, more info, please. Does it work as well to take it after you've taken your regular hot shower in the morning? From what you said, it sounds like you should do it until you get used to the water...is that correct?

In my opinion, it's a fine idea to concentrate on the simple. After your glowing review of Stephen Chang's work, I started using it and am very happy with the results. In the internal exercise book, he has a version of the standing eight brocades which is also very simple (he calls them the Eight Directional Exercises). I haven't been doing them, but I see no reason that they are inferior to any other version (and after reading TONS of different versions of them, I've NEVER seen two the same!). I've been doing lots and lots of different types of these exercises both Eastern and Western for about twenty years, and have come to the conclusion that you are way better off taking something simple and really digging into it for a long time, than you are switching every six months because you found something "better". Also, the exercises he gives in the "upon waking up in the morning" section are almost identical with what I believe to be about the best version of the seated brocades I have come across, although Chang's version is not presented as a set, and takes a lot less time. If you REALLY want to check these out, I recommend you get a copy of "Qigong teachings of a Taoist Immortal" by Stuart Alve Olson, although it will definitely not shorten your practice time. I have a copy I'm saving for when I'm an old man. It will make you feel unbelievably wonderful, but it takes over an hour a day to do it right (which will suit me just fine once I've retired!).

Two things I do: Honey and apple cider vinegar at least once a day, preferably at least twice. It's easy: squirt about a tablespoon of honey in the bottom of a coffee mug. Add water and microwave it for a minute or so until it gets comfortably warm, then eyeball about a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar, stir it with a butter knife, drink it down, then dash out the door to work. Also: LONG UNDERWEAR! I work in an office, but I don't care. My grandpa swore by them, TOTALLY abused his body, and lived to the ripe old age of 93 with full mental faculties. He said you should wear them from Labor Day to the Fourth of July. I don't go that far, but I wear them all winter. If you try it, you may find you hate it the first few days, but when spring comes, I'll bet you'll wish it was cold enough to keep wearing them. Once you get used to them, they give you a warm, safe feeling. And you'll be the one with the knowing smile while everyone else is freezing their asses off!

Here's a link about exactly that: http://www.winwenger.com/ebooks/guaran.htm

Dan, you noted in an earlier post that you are doing the Deer exercise, and are ejaculating twice a day with no ill effects. That inspired me to start using the Deer exercise (I had an old copy of Stephen Chang's book lying around), but I'm curious, how old are you? (Twice a day with no ill effects is much more impressive for a 65-year-old man than a 21-year-old.)

Wowee! Well...I dunno...it LOOKS pretty cool, and I know it has a long history and all that (I have heard of it before). I did bookmark the page...but still...cutting the bottom of your tounge so you can stick it up your nose! I'm sure I'm being unduly influenced by my culture here, but I'm unsure. If it's really that sensitive, couldn't you try it out with something soft to see if it really works before you go cutting your tounge?

Ok...so I have avoided posting about this topic until I knew for sure that this works. I have seen many of you are interested in various exercise programs, including weightlifting. Well, there is a guy named Pete Sisco, who is the editor of Iron Man Magazine, and he has a radically different way to approach weightlifting. The problem, as he sees it, is that too many people try to follow the "3-day-a-week" method, and end up getting stuck. Usually you will see quick gains that then plateau because your body can't recover quickly enough. Pete's method completely reverses this in a big way. You begin by lifting a couple of times a week, with progressively heavier and heavier weights. As the weight increases, you need more time off to recover. The workouts are also very short - 30 to 40 minutes. What's more, the exercises are all done in your strongest range to avoid injury, and he also advocates static holds so that you are lifting the weight just a few inches, and holding it with each second counting as one rep. As time goes on, your workouts are farther and farther apart. His most advanced trainees are going to the gym once every month and a half! I have to admit I was skeptical when I got the ebook, but it seems to work. I know that because Pete insists that you keep a record of every lift, every rep, so that you know scientifically whether it's working or not. I started the program in June, have now been doing it for 4 months, and am going to the gym for about 45 minutes every three weeks. On Tuesday, I leg pressed 310 pounds for 83 reps. Did I mention that I'm not even 5'2" tall? Although I'm not into the whole "weightlifter" thing, I have to admit it's kind of funny to see the big guys all split as soon as I start lifting. I'm also benching 240lbs. The big guys stand around with looks of disbelief as I put the weight on the bar, and as soon as I lift it they're gone in a hurry! To be fair, they may not realize that I'm doing strong range partials, and they could probably lift as much or more. So, anyway, I think it works, and I hardly ever have to go to the gym. You can buy the ebook here http://www.precisiontraining.com/ebook.cfm for like 30 bucks, which at first I balked at, but now I think is a killer deal (he points out that a personal trainer would probably charge at least that much for one session). By the way, I should point out that I am NOT an affiliate, and I don't get any benefit if any of you decide to buy the book. But if you do, you may want to coordinate it with anyone else that wants to - a day or so after I bought the book I got an email that said I could get a second copy cheaper.

In western alchemy sulfur is considered the masculine to the feminine of mercury...kind of. The sexual interplay crosses back and forth (kind of like yin and yang, where they each have a dot of the other in them). I think mercury is a little more androgynous, but sulfur is pretty much always masculine. In my limited understanding, mercury is kind of the etheric behind everything while sulfur is the pattern (the will) that molds the etheric of the thing into the shape it is. While the idea of salt (a later inclusion) is sort of like the primordial matter that everything is made of. The famous formula of "Solve et Coagula" means to take it apart and put it back together again, the idea being that you pull the matter (or yourself) apart into it's constituent pieces, purify them, then put them back together. Of course, that probably doesn't have too much to do with taking msm (which seemed to help my sore knee once). For the best western alchemy website ever (IMHO), go here: http://www.levity.com/alchemy/index.html

I have a question I've been wanting to ask for some time, and I'm hoping to get as many opinions as I can. Yoda touched on it in the recent thread on the finger lock: How much jing is lost through ejaculation, and roughly what is the effect on cultivation? I know that there are plenty of opinions in the old Chinese mecidal texts how often a man can/should ejaculate for health reasons at various ages/states of health. But I am interested in what you all think specifically in regards to cultivation. In Yoda's post, he mentions someone's opinion that you can still make progress ejaculating every 1-2 weeks. What are people's experiences? Also, as I have mentioned before I am pretty into Bill Bodri's stuff right now. He seems to say that a cultivator should never ejaculate. Am I getting that right? And what if, for instance, someone cultivates for 5 years and then accidently looses it? Or maybe has to give a sperm sample for some medical reason, or whatever. Do they loose the whole 5 years? Could that really be? I know you're supposed to be refining jing into chi at some point, but what if this guy is just a mediocre cultivator, and he hasn't been able to do that yet. Does he loose it all? Maybe some of you all who are more familiar with Bill's stuff know what he might say in that case.

I've always faced east (especially w/ my background in western practices). I read one idea that if you face south (which would place your head in the north if you lied down) you would be magnetically alligned with the earth. But that same person said that the sun trumps the earth, so it is usually better to face the sun if it is daytime. Since I usually do my stuff in the morning, I continue to face east.

It's interesting you ask that - Pete Sisco says a lot of people are concerned with that, especially women who want to work out, but don't want to look like body builders. What he says is that the whole "definition vs strength" thing we always hear is a myth. He says a muscle can do three things in regards to size: in can get bigger, it can get smaller, or it can stay the same. The difference between looking bulky and looking "shredded" is just the difference between more and less body fat. I think genetics also plays a role. If you have a wiry build, I imagine you will always tend to have wiry build, even if your muscles get bigger. Also, the gains you get happen slowly, so whenever you get to where you like it, you just maintain that level. If you ever felt like you got too "muscley" I suppose you could just stop exercising for a while. Btw, I was always told that muscle would turn into fat if you stop working out, but evidently that's nonsense. Muscle doesn't "turn into" anything. What can happen, is a person could get used to eating a lot to maintain a more muscular build, and if they quit exercising, but don't cut down on their eating, they could get fat. In my case, I haven't noticed a huge difference in my external body - my measurements seem to be about the same, although I look a little different, and my clothes seem to fit a little differently as well. My muscle size hasn't really increased too much, although they seem more toned and firm. But my strength has increased big time, and in a very noticeable way. Some of that is genetics - I've always been strong, but never had the big, showy muscles. I knew a guy in high school that could do hardly any exercise look like Sylvester Stallone, but then I could beat him arm wrestling, so go figure!

What is it about us that we think that older is better, or more authentic? Don't get me wrong, I do it too...I catch myself thinking that way all the time. Then I have to reason with myself that newer can be better, even an improvement on the old. But there is some human idea that seems to be universal, that we're all looking for the "original" teaching, and that somehow everything else is an adulturation of that. Maybe it IS some sort of collective memory of a lost civilization we're all trying to rediscover. For what it's worth, my understanding of the Atlantis story, is that the first stream of knowledge went to India, and from there travelled East, and the later stream, which was both more degraded from the earlier ideas, but also more refined with newer improvements, went to Egypt and from there travelled West.

Theodore and Simon...and the constantly annoyed human is Dave. Btw...This curculation has been done by the Golden Dawn and it's various offshoots for quite some time. It is called The Middle Pillar, and involves intoning "words of power" at various locations in the body, after which the light is curculated up the back and down the front, down the left side and up the right side, then up the inside of the body and out the top of the head like a fountain. Some versions also invlolve wrapping the body in light, like a mummy. If anyone is interested, it can be found here: http://home.earthlink.net/~lyam/RITUALS.htm

I think Bill's stuff rocks! I purchased a copy of White Fat Cow some time ago, and am using the excercises in it. It is basically designed to change your fortune by generating positive karma, among other things. It also uses stuff like goal setting, and conscious changing of personality traits. Even if karma doesn't exist, you still will end up being a more decent, likable, disciplined person. One of the examples he uses is the "Four Lessons of Liao-Fan". This is a very famous text covering the same subject, and you should be able to find it online. It is also available from The Corporate Body of the Buddha Educational Foundation (they're the ones that publish those free books). Their website is here http://budaedu.org/en/ and they call the book "Changing Destiny". I've never ordered anything from them, so I don't know how it works, but if you have a Buddhist temple nearby, they may have some there. Also, I seem to come across their books in seccond-hand stores. Anyway, I read that before I read White Fat Cow, and it seemed to help. As far as "Measuring Meditation" goes, I also recently purchased a copy and have been reading it slowly. Like many of you, I seem to suffer from "read-a-buncha-books-at-once" disease, so I haven't gotten too far yet, but I would love to read it and discuss it with others...any takers?

I'm not sure what the answer to your question is, but the phrase "Son of God" is one of those things people commonly believe began with the Gospels, but didn't. To become the "Son of A God " was a common goal of magicians at the time. We know this because we have found many different sets of instructions from that period. If anyone is interested, they can find the instructions in "Hermetic Magic: The Postmodern Magical Papyrus of Abaris" by Stephen E Flowers, and also in "The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation : Including the Demotic Spells : Texts" by Hans Dieter Betz. Also, I could recommend some other good resources if anyone is interested. Although I would point out that I have already been down that road (although not quite that far), and have chosen Buddhism as the clearer path. The people around Jesus would have been totally familiar with this phraseology, and when they were asked who they thought he was, it would have been natural for them to answer "The Son of A God", or, for monotheists, "The Son of God". It is interesting to note that Jesus seems to carefully avoid referring to himself as The Son of God. He usually calls himself "The Son of Man", meaning, "I'm a regular guy". Although when Pontius Pilate says that others are saying Jesus is the Son of God, Jesus says "That is what you say", which was an old fashioned version of our colloquial "you said it!" or "right on!"