Michael Sternbach

The idea behind this is to make TDB more self-governing, with less need for moderator action. In this regard, an attempt to approach a Daoist ideal. Obviously, it can be frustrating for a contributor to see their posts get hidden. Needless to say, you are free to not further contribute to threads whose OP you know to use their permissions in a way that you don't approve of. The more people do this, the greater the loss for the forum will be, however. So yes, there is an up and a down side to this.

This has nothing to do with the moderating team. I took a look. Numerous posts were hidden by the OP, and one by its author. In keeping with the "owner permissions" arrangement, they can do this. The creator of a thread or post relatively speaking has far more leeway than the mods or admins, the way things are now.

Ninja

Brian, I can't find that post right now, but I recall that you asked about a lemniscate variation of the Ouroboros somewhere? Here goes!

Continuing from my post #67, we now proceed to Trump I: The Magus. Many authors associate with this card the Creator of the Abrahamic religions. But the Magus is just as much the beginning of creation itself - the first manifestation out of the Nothing. The Word or initial sound that is reverberating throughout the Universe. The Hebrew letter attributed to him is Beth, the first audible letter, whereas the Fool carries Aleph, an unpronounced letter, in keeping with his nature as pure potential. On the microcosmic scale, the Magus is the creator/creation of an individual's personal universe, that is laid out according to the conceptions and neat definitions of the mind. It makes sense therefore that the Magus is linked to the planet Mercury whose astro-psychological functions include measurement and categorization. Thus we see some kind of coordinate grid behind the Magus. But any measuring scale is based on the di-vision of a whole, as every line drawn creates two sides. While it is inevitable for the individual at some stage to define its world and itself, by focussing on a part of the whole, it separates itself from it, and the unacknowledged part becomes unconscious. More on this in my next post, but feel free to comment any time...

Done.

Thank you. There's a lot to be said about nothing, and for practical reasons, I will break it down into two to three posts. Let me get my Tarot cards out... Let's start with Trump 0: The Fool. On the yellow floor underneath him, we see a pair of children, facing opposite directions. They represent Crowley's formula 0 = 2, or to formulate it a little more precisely: 0 = (+1) + (-1). But mind you, the two children are depicted as entangled with each other. In the Primordial Chaos that the Fool represents, the polar forces at the foundation of the whole Universe are not yet separate from each other - thus they are in a state of mutual cancellation. Yet they already exist as potentials, in fact, in we find the seeds for all of Creation here. Lao Tzu says: So in Nothing, there is Everything! In my next post, we will see this coming forth into manifestation. Stay tuned...

Diamonds are forever

Tartaric acid

Stargate

Second answer:

First answer: There seems to be (not sure if "being" is adequate here though) implicit nothingness as well as explicit nothingness. You could liken these two to the states "before" manifestation has occurred, and after. The former is self-explanatory (well, is it?), the latter results from the manifest forces cancelling each other out overall (pushing electromagnetism and pulling gravitation, matter and anti-matter, apples and pears, yin and yang) - so the net result is 0.

In Zen it is said that Nirvana is right here and now! Or something like that, anyway.

curlers

Inverse square law

rampant

Comic

Unity

The Art of War

The third eye and/or the crown chakra are connected to the pineal gland. Some animals even have a physical third eye between their regular eyes or on top of the head that is linked to that gland. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parietal_eye

"Every man and every woman is a star."

Star Wars

Yes, deleting the cache might solve the problem. If not, I would suggest using a different browser, for instance, instead of Internet Explorer, try Firefox or Chrome.

Of course not. But I see now what Dawei meant when he warned me that as a moderator, I would have a target on my back. First off, it was a reply to Junko's comment, which I didn't quote because that function doesn't work with my spare cellphone, and I didn't expect anybody to set a post inbetween while I was writing the few lines. I agreed to her insofar I also don't see The Dao Bums as a suitable place for discussions about recommendable stocks, sports bets and politics that don't tie in with something remotely spiritual/philosophical whatsoever. But I hardly see that happen, plus: That's just my personal opinion.

Well, it depends. Political discussion is okay if it incorporates Daoist or generally spiritual points of view. But yes, we are no political discussion forum in an ordinary sense.