Orion

I know what Panda is trying to say about semantics... but the OP is "trying" to be selfless. All that selfless really means is that you're not coming from self when you go about your daily business. The societal definitions of selflessness are all about being kind and generous, but they are typically in self-aggrandizing ways, i.e. people do them to feel good about themselves. But there is root awareness always at work that does not attach itself to anything, including a "self". We glimpse it through meditation practice when "self" is sublimated back into it. That root is always present, whether a self is taking credit or not. So "trying" to be selfless is like "trying" to be empty: you're already empty. You're already the Dao. We see this dilemma when people meditate and then ask how they maintain that state of emptiness once they leave the meditation. The remedy is realizing that the meditation never ends, you just decide to focus awareness on arbitrary fixations, like how to be empty. Do you realize the irony of a self trying to be selfless?

Actually, the statement stands If you want to be in control then keep it up. Your partner will teach you what that's about. We teach people how to treat us. Whomever we end up with is in alignment. You might not like what you find out but that doesn't mean it isn't aligned.

I tried MAG during a period of life or death illness that was likely brought on by a pathogen, and it did not significantly change my health one way or another. It did change my energy body though. Gold is a solar metal and if you look at the old readings by Alchemists and prior (like Paracelsus), it has properties which affect the spirit. The stomach ache... probably has to do with the gold reacting with HCl to form a salt. In Chinese medicine, any metal given orally is heavily balanced with harmonizing herbs to help it pass through without damaging the GI.

I've found that my biggest obstacles to money making have been my values around self-worth and what it means to ask people for payment for the services I render. Anyone can learn the practical details of money making but you'll notice that the people who make the most progress on the financial ladder are the ones who have zero qualms about assuming they are entitled to financial success. It's not even a concept to them, they just do it. A lot of it goes back to how we were raised in our families and our relationship to getting (or not getting) what we wanted from our parents. Over the years I've taken 5 or 6 entrepreneurial programs, some of them long-term. Money making strategies are diverse but honestly they start to look the same the more and more you take such programs. No tips will help you though if you secretly don't think you're worth it. You really see your internal blocks around abundance and prosperity when you start networking with business people.

The realizations can be endless. They arise and dissolve just like any other state. Sometimes we get attached to them in their grandiosity, other times we move on from them quickly. I have found that the biggest challenge is to let go of seeing realizations as achievements, successes, or "new levels". There are no levels. Saying we suffer more after realization is no different than claiming suffering ends after realization. There is no formula. Maybe you do and maybe you don't. Can anyone predict all arisings and dissolvings, their timing and disposition? Before enlightenment, chop wood and carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood and carry water. *shrug* It goes on and on, it never ends.

I got really good at chess some years ago and then stopped playing. It just got boring. Eventually you get tired of seeing the same set of possibilities play out over and over. At least with games of chance you can be surprised sometimes.

You could replace "the world" with "reality". You can't get anymore into it or out of it than you already are. This present moment is all that there is. If there is anything at all left to do, then it's merely deepening this recognition.

You already are selfless. Try or don't try, the truth is the truth. You're too caught up in concepts.

A few observations... Fear of losing the magic if you lose control is its own kind of OCD. You were never in control in the first place. Flowing from one thing to the next in each present moment is all we're really doing. Karma can also mean working on yourself within a partnership, especially if there's an inbound partner who's aligned with you are. And that alignment may not at all appear like what you contrive it to be right now. If you trust yourself, then you won't worry as much about what you absorb from a partner. It's true that when you merge with someone else you're going to take on some of their stuff, but do you trust yourself to work through that? Do you trust yourself to recognize what is yours vs. what is theirs? Do you trust yourself to learn as you go, and that the person you're with is part of your learning? Honestly, it seems like you are trying to be too in control. When you meet the right partner you're just going to want to be with them and the rest will be in the fine details.

When you squat it forces the blood out of the legs into the trunk, which your body registers as an increase in blood pressure, and lowers vessel tension to compensate. The same thing happens when a person is strangled. Even if the strangle hold is released, the body already lowered vessel tension to try and relieve the perception of tension. Often times people who are strangled die anyway, even if the choke hold is released, because their body does not restore balance in time. Ok so the strangling example is kind of weird but I just remember it from med school. When you're squatting your body decreases vessel tension because the posture is forcing more blood upward. When you stand up too fast, the vessel tension is still low and hasn't adapted to standing, so you're more prone to fainting. You probably already have low blood pressure to start with. You should go from squatting to sitting for 30 seconds, and then to standing.

The part about consuming more precursors to neurotransmitters, like 5-HTP for serotonin, has mostly been debunked in recent years. The blood brain barrier doesn't accept more precursors than are needed by the brain. You can't boost the levels by simply adding more precursors, you have to increase demand for them at the source. But the issue is that more neurotransmitters doesn't necessarily mean a healthier brain. For instance, excess dopamine has been witnessed in schizoaffective disorder. I also question the premise of the book. The brain is highly resilient at adapting to change. Minor damage can be bypassed with learning and effort in a lot of cases. An MRI an determine where the brain was damaged but not if the damage has been bypassed through other neural networks. MRIs are also interpreted by humans with imperfect filters. Yes we should listen to experts but what I'm saying is that we are still relying on human conclusions to tell us how we should be functioning, which may or may not be a clear picture of what's happening. At the end of the day you still have to deal with your own consciousness regardless of what's happening.

I watched a movie recently called "Night Will Fall". It's about Alfred Hitchcock's only documentary that he made about the death camps of WWII. When the Russians and the allies first entered the camps, military filmographers were instructed to document everything they could, resulting in thousands of reels of footage. Hitchcock underwent the laborious task of compiling this all into a single documentary, a piece which was unreleased (effectively banned) for 70 years until recently. We can see why... the movie is a very graphic portrayal of what the soldiers found on arrival. Tens of thousands of dead bodies in various states of decay, strewn around the camps among the living and the half-dead who were living in unfathomable conditions. One filmographer described it as literally being in hell, and that if rescuers working in the camps didn't find a way to mentally detach themselves from what they were doing (i.e. digging mass graves and hauling countless bodies all day), they would have gone insane. It's a movie worth watching, but not for the faint of heart. For me, the movie was disturbing/awakening on another level and it has taken me more than a week to put words to it. At one point a witness said that the bodies were like lifeless dolls, nothing like living people, yet they were once living, and it was hard for the mind to reconcile this. After watching the movie I found myself seeing people out in the world this way, like walking dolls filled with narratives, stories, and egos of purpose, contrasted against the memory of mass graves in the movie. It's a life where nobody is special, but does that mean we're unimportant as well? Let me point out that I've seen dead bodies before. I've seen loved ones die, but that was different. There were rituals surrounding their deaths, like funerals, proper graves and rites, etc. Seeing countless naked humans tossed into mass graves is a completely different story. The whole thing is stripped bare. The Nazis meticulously saved everything, including hair, personal belongings, dentures, eyewear, etc. It was all repurposed in factories that the S.S. had investments in, and then the materials were re-sold back to the camps or to the war effort. In 2009 I visited a death camp museum in Phnom Penh, from the Pol Pot / Khmer Rouge era. I remember seeing all the personal belongings next to the skulls of some of the victims. Thousands of skulls. Nearby were the rooms where people were tortured every day, often to death. The floors were still stained with human contents. Everything was preserved for posterity. All of these items were part of the costumes of the living, part of the living narrative. And all this past week I keep seeing flashes of the graves of mass bodies, reflecting on my own nothingness, and trying to reconcile the inescapable free fall of an ultimately narrative-less reality. These thoughts have begun to permeate every aspect of my life... like how much food one person eats in their lifetime, the amount of jet fuel required for a person to go on vacation on the other side of the earth, the countless daily activities we engage in and that we tell ourselves have purpose, how many babies are born and how many people die. It's a ticker tape that goes on and on. It's dizzying. It's also a bit crazy-making. How the people at the death camps who were near-dead skeletons themselves could suddenly be revived with the right resource, and begin behaving "normally" again as their faculties come back into play, also shocked me on some level. In death we are all dehumanized yet the staples of survival and civility allow us to construct a sort of safety and comfort. Less than a year ago I was like a skeleton, laying apathetically in bed preparing for the end; apathetic to my own stories, and awake to the pure awareness of emptiness. Then I was nourished and healed. Now I can be any story again, or no story. I am having a lot of trouble reconciling these lifeless dolls with a so-called meaningful life. It seems like there is no escape, and any escape is really still partaking in it; and that you can't get anymore into it no matter how much you try; and that all you can really do is abide in any given moment, whether it's a suffering one or a blissful one, because there is no goal. The downside is: you're free. The upside is: you're free. How do you transcend it when it seems like there is clearly nothing to transcend? Do you put faith into the soul? The subtle mind? Enlightenment? An afterlife? When you turn off a computer, does the software go to heaven? What about turning off a lightbulb? What "leaves" and "comes back" when a person is revived from beyond the pale? When lightning strikes the Earth, does it become something else when we no longer see it or is it just done? Why are humans supposedly any different than that?

I get where this mindset comes from, I really do, but the reading of it feels hollow. There's no denying that pain and pleasure are guiding forces in our lives, but it can't all be reduced to that. There is such a thing as self-sacrifice and altruism, versions of which transcend their self-reflexive pleasure mechanisms, versions which place love above all else. Maybe our world doesn't have enough examples for us to really know this and so we turn to reductionism and biology to explain all our impulses. The quote about the Buddha... we have to be careful because sometimes he is talking about suffering in terms of pain, and other times he is referring to "dissatisfactoriness". The latter arises in all situations no matter how contrived we make them in order to avoid the inherent emptiness of existence. Even people experiencing bliss eventually experience dissatisfactoriness.

Robert Bringhurst. Forgot to put his name in there One of my favourite poems.

You can be in action but have a passive observance of the action. You can be in physical combat but be in a state of acceptance. The external state doesn't necessarily reflect the internal state. Acceptance does not mean passivity. Do something or do nothing. Try or don't try. The Dao is ever present. All this said, there are no rules. "All positions are prisons. No truth is true. No instruction is certain, no knowledge complete. If I speak for the serpent, the serpent may speak for the bird. My position is that I have no position. This too. All fictions Are true."

In terms of human "psychic" attacks, first ditch the word psychic because it's too ambiguous. Energetic attacks from other people come in all forms, from every-day people draining you with their non-stop talking and needy latching onto you; from people's jealousy, anger, envy and hatred projected at you from a distance; to actual left hand path kind of stuff where people intentionally come after you. If you don't deal in magic circles and live an otherwise mundane existence, the chances of the last one being a problem are slim. If you are aware of your own energy body because of a consciousness practice, it will register as a "disruption in the force". Some people aren't even aware of what's going on, they just think they're having a bad day. Luck may become infinitely worse to the point where you are dismayed at the bad string of things happening. Your health may wane. You may feel crazy in a way that's hard to pinpoint. You may have feelings of self-loathing, helplnessness and woe that you misattribute to your own psyche, but if you're self-aware enough you will sense an underlying foreign-ness to it because its energy signature won't match your innate one. You may feel foggy, confused, ungrounded, and unclear in ways that don't improve through material means. Depending on the severity, you may feel uncontrollable terror, torment, and vulnerability. If the attack is rooted in anger and malice, you may feel as if someone or something is trying to kill you and nowhere feels safe even if your surroundings are stable. In fact one of the tell-tale signs is that your feelings won't match circumstances. IMO most people curse themselves with their own thoughts and it's not actually the deeds of others. You have to be really sensitive to truly get slimed by the sludge of the world. Most people can slough off a bad day with some good food, exercise, a bath and a good night's sleep. If you take on someone else's shit it's usually because you have a blockage already happening in the area that they stab you in. Like attacks like, usually. If you've done the inner work then a lot of stuff bounces off or passes through. I'm talking every day shitty interactions. If someone is attacking you magically that's another story.

I've had amazing tantric experiences with other men, some of which were not even penetrative, which demonstrates to me that it has more to do with one's energy body than physical anatomy, something that people often conflate together. Lust is lust and waste is waste, doesn't matter who is partaking in it. I feel that when hetero people talk in absolutes about spiritual sexuality, it's because they have been strongly glamoured by their own sexual reality, compounded by societal reinforcement -- just like how homosexuals subscribe to "gay". We are hardwired to feel good about our sex drive so that we copulate. My experience is that cultivation is not limited to one's physicality. A Daoist "master" once told me that tantric copulation can only be achieved by a man and woman, once the tip of the penis touches the tip of the cervix because men are more yang and women more yin. I laughed. People really believe their own narratives about sexuality. The best thing you can do is debunk your own narratives. Ask questions rather than seeking answers and you will find that a lot more is possible than you formerly thought.

A bit of a different situation, but as a healer I have struggled with this. In the beginning I felt guilty about charging people money for healing because they were suffering and I had skills that could help them, so I kept my fee low. Eventually I started to get burned out and I also felt that people undervalued my work based on the monetary value. More often than not people would not entirely follow my recommended protocols, or they would ignore my advice entirely. Now I charge more money and see fewer people. Everyone who sees me commits to the process. I do charitable works and give some treatments away, but I ask for the full free from everyone who can. Having said all that... there are some teachers charging outrageous amounts of money. There was a Qi Gong school I was interested in within the United States that was charging $2000 for a 4 day course, which was part 1 of 4 parts. Each part was an additional $2000. While I believe that high rates ensure commitment, I also believe it's unethical to have no options for low income people who also want to commit. It's a throwback to the classical period where only nobles and gentry could get educated. It makes it seem like that best knowledge and personal attainment are only for wealthy people, which I'm 100% against. We live in the 21st century, get your act together. If it's your path though, you'll come up with the money. I've found that most of the best teachings I've ever received have been in reciprocal friendships where we share our attainments and gifts with one another before eventually parting ways. My path in this life does not appear to be guru-centric like it is for some.

Can someone give me a summary or synopsis so that I don't have to sift through all those links? Are we talking about a state sponsored coup or something?

I used to enjoy porn in my 20's. Now it seems primitive. Maybe it's because I've had rich, deep, physical relationships with real people that had so many more dimensions to them than could be realized by watching people fuck on a screen. Not to mention, a lot of the stuff they do in porn to seem visually appealing is not the least bit pleasurable IRL.

I've done publishing before and if you really want to break into "the industry", prepare to have your work modified by powers greater than yourself. The corporate model has infiltrated every aspect of living. If your work is not structured in a way that is known to sell according to established models and statistics, it's unlikely that your work will be given the time of day. The "agenda" is built in by most people who are willing to sacrifice a bit of their values in order to have their message reach a broader audience. When you also factor in that being a writer in the 21st century only pays if you engage in mass production of material, you have the reasons for the current paradigm. People who want to do things their way and preserve their original voice either have to do at-home publishing (which is actually a lot more feasible now than before), or they need to create their own publishing startup to make it happening. However, most startups quickly realize that in order to remain competitive and adhere to the almighty growth model of business, they need to start adopting the very corporate models that they claimed to be against at the start. Everything that is unique and small-time in the business world gets obliterated by mechanistic models if it becomes popular enough.

Some people are jacks/jills of all trades. Some are specialists. If everyone was a traveler then nobody would sit still long enough to develop societies. If there were not travelers, societies would stagnate and not network with one another. We need every kind of person, beyond a categorical way of looking at it, for humanity to thrive. Nature thrives on diversity and divergence, not one-size-fits-all. The second you look at it, it has already changed.

Who was it that said... if you can't explain something simply and clearly, then you don't really understand it?

Thanks for the differing perspective. Good read.

Trump is gagging and gutting the EPA at the same time as approving the pipeline. It's pretty obvious which way the winds are going to blow on this one. Whether or not the DAPL goes through or the location gets changed, it's clear that in the future activists won't be able to rely on regulatory bodies for evidence or appeals of any kind. In the future the government will look more justified in stopping protests because there will be no "real evidence" to counter it. Trump was a blue-blooded democrat 15 years ago, schmoozing with the Clintons and supporting all the leftist ideals. Then the neo-cons came to power and he changed his tune. Trump is only in it for one person: himself. He won the election by pandering to the so-called alt right, a demographic that the establishment politicians were too busy ignoring. He's an expert at reading audiences and giving them what they want. Right now the GOP is in control of everything so naturally he will do things to appease them, while profiting at the same time. Trump is a RINO. That doesn't make him any less dangerous but it does mean that he is somewhat predictable.