Michael Sternbach

This brings to mind a continuous debate I used to have with the psychiatrist I was collaborating with back in the 1990's. I was counselling a number of his patients based on astrology and Tarot, and also treating them with the Bach Flower Remedies. An issue arose because, in numerous cases of drug addiction we were dealing with, he was more of the "tough love" school of thought, aiming to deprive the patient of the stuff they were craving. Whereas my approach was one of non-resistance and self-acceptance, as a prerequisite for understanding oneself (and that's where the clarity part comes into play) and finding sensible ways to deal with those self-destructive behaviour patterns. "Breaking the addiction" was not my primary concern, however, the outlined process generally led the patient to a more reasonable handling of whatever they were addicted to - in many cases eventually enabling them to let it go completely when ready. The "tough love" approach, however, is essentially dualistic (or you might call it samsaric) and in fact often worsens the issue, especially in the long run. The path of acceptance is loving (non-dualistic) and leads to lasting insights. This is a fundamental teaching in many spiritual philosophies, including Daoism and, indeed, Dzogchen (at least as it was taught by Dawa Gyaltsen). I think that Ilumairen's comment on your "tough love" statement ties in rather well with the aforesaid: For it is indeed "the naturally, and spontaneously, arising warmth" that has the greatest potential to induce self-acceptance, clarity and self-determined change. Would this be in line with what you mean, Ilumairen?

There are a number of acupuncture points associated with both the three dantian and the chakras. In particular, these are Ren Mai 4 for the lower dantian and sacral chakra, Ren Mai 17 for the middle dantian and heart chakra, and Du Mai 20 for the upper dantian and crown chakra (though you could add the extra-point Yintang for the upper dantian, which coincides with the third eye).

Hi Bums, As some of you know, I just love comparing the metaphysical systems of different times and cultures with one another. Frequently, I find that they have central ideas in common. Thus a comparative approach tells us more about the Collective Unconscious, shared by all of humanity. Looking at an Archetypes from a variety of different perspectives serves to illuminate and amplify it further. Chapter 50 of the Daodejing seems to be a good example for what I mean. From Robert Henricks' translation: Now, the Death card in Tarot is the thirteenth of the Major Arcana. The traveller who comes out into life and goes back into death is The Fool. He stands both at the beginning and the end of the series of the Major Arcana, so he can be attributed with both the numbers 0 and 22. Cards that share the same checksum are seen as related with each other, like Death and The Fool, since they can both be reduced to the number 4. The fourth of the Major Arcana which is The Emperor. He is another important Archetype in Daoism, but we will safe him for later and stay with The Fool. The Fool is the eternal spiritual seeker, the original Tarot Bum undertaking the adventure of Individuation. He represents our childlike and spontaneous nature that we start out and hope to end up with. He is the wandering Daoist sage so prevalent in both Lao Tzu's and Chuang Tzu's writings. Ideally, he in fact attains (a kind of) immortality. Chapter 50 of the Daodejing continues: As we see above, the tiger indeed cannot injure The Fool. He is protected by his spiritual "innocence" or state of wu wei.

Reply of no significance.

Things are not as simple as they seem. Much of Dillman's material (books and videos) is well researched and valuable. He eventually did take his claims a little too far though, which I am pretty sure he believed himself. Unlike most other "masters", he and some of his seniors did not shy away from public demonstrations on outsiders, which is basically commendable. Some of this didn't work out - and the subsequent criticism was devastating. When he and some of his students simply didn't factor in that the results wouldn't be as predictable as they thought they would be. The video assumes that there may be hypnotic induction involved in some so-called "chi knockouts." That statement is kind of funny, because how do we know how hypnosis works? Hypnotism started with Mesmerism, which involves stroking over the subject's body, and chi most likely plays a role here too. Much of what is taught as Dim Mak/Kyusho-jitsu is viable, if applied properly. Does this mean that no-touch/light-touch knockouts work on anybody under any circumstances? No. But neither does a kick to the groin. On the other hand, I have personally incapacitated people with light strikes on some occasions, especially to the solar plexus. Gichin Funakoshi in his Karate-do Kyohan got it right: A technique will be more effective if it is hitting a vital point than it would be otherwise. However, he recommended to put all of one's power into such a strike in case of a self-defence situation. He also empasized that it works best when taking the aggressor by surprise. It's true that the hit that knocks you down is often the one you didn't see coming.

As a side remark, isn't it fascinating that the ancient Chinese bestowed us with beverages called Jing Tonics? It lends proof to Douglas Adams' statements in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe:

Flying saucer

Angkor Wat

Tomcat

Not The Art of War anyway, that's why they lost the Vietnam war, said Marblehead.

The late Ed Parker was thinking of adding a gun form to the program after he had introduced a club and a knife form, however, this idea was never realized.

Barking up the wrong tree.

Hi Brion That's very interesting. My primary martial art is American Kenpo, which I am studying with a direct student of Mr. Parker's. Also, based on my other martial arts experiences, I am integrating many Kyusho-jitsu/Dim-mak strikes into my personal expression of Kenpo, drawing mostly from information provided by George Dillman and Erle Montaigue. - BTW, I consider these two martial artists the real pioneers in teaching the West vital point striking; others chimed in, but these two have paved the way.

Vegetarian hot dog

A skin is a good analogy, as it is letting certain things pass, while rejecting others. What matters is that you use an image that you resonate with.

Vegetarian

They are using the incident as a smoke-screen to impose strict restrictions on uninvolved martial artists. That is sad and outrageous.

hot pot

While there are those who would make you believe that the physical and non-physical world around you is just full of benevolent humans and entities, sadly, this is not the case. If you are very open in an uncontrolled manner, there will indeed be human and other beings hooking into to your subtle energy system and feed on it. Not unlike, if your physical immunity is down, you become a candy factory for parasitic organisms. Those aforementioned folks will too easily write your negative experiences off as projections of your own unresolved issues, etc. Whereas the Deities they invoke are to be seen as more real than reality itself. Well, the question whether "astral entities" (low and high) are real or projections of our own consciousness could not even be answered with last certainty by a magician the size of Aleister Crowley, but if they appear as real, it is generally a good idea to treat them as such. Talking about parasitic humans, they do not always mean to harm you, often they are not aware of what they are doing. However, they need something that you seem to have plenty of and are seemingly so willing to give. And why shouldn't you be? There are no boundaries, we all melt into One in the Universal Love Field. Now it would not be advisable to go to the other extreme and energetically shut yourself off from your environment. In the immune system analogy, that would be as though you would develop an allergy. Try this a simple but youseful exercise: Lay an energy sphere all around you. (I leave the colour up to you). This is your "deflector shield". It only lets energies in that are of a benevolent nature, while those wich are not, bounce off it (usually back to the sender ). By the same token, this shield keeps your vital energies in, just like an astronauts' suit would in outer space. Except for what is okay to share, of course. So make it a semi-permeasable membrane both ways. Hope to hear from you again. Michael

Always liked working out with Survivor. Makes me feel like I am Rocky. Besides, their lyrics are quite poetic, sometimes. Which is rare and far between these days.

Starbuck

Expanding on my previous post: While the Steady State model may capture certain aspects of the cosmic truth, nature's processes are generally moving in continuous cycles (as especially Daoists should be quick to admit). In this regard, Conformal Cyclic Cosmology is very interesting - one of the latest theories, proposed by none other than Roger Penrose, co-founder of the Big Bang theory, together with Vahe Gurzadyan. According to CCC, the universe will continue its expansion, although after something like 10100 years, all matter will have either turned into electromagnetic radiation (light, basically) or been sucked up by black holes. And even the black holes will evaporate eventually. Once that process is completed and only light fills the universe, something mind boggling (but mathematically rigorous) happens: Time and space expand into infinity. Metaphysically, it isn't a far stretch to say that the universe has once again been dissolved into Divine consciousness. (Though, when I confronted Penrose and his colleagues with their theory's metaphysical implications on a congress, they told me that such speculation is outside their scope - well, fair enough. A few people in the audience were sympathetic with my thoughts, however.) This infinite expansion is, according to CCC, equivalent to infinite contraction. Mind you, the universe in this model doesn't gradually contract, as in the Big Crunch theory. Rather, there is a direct transition from the infinitely big to the infinitely small - the extremes touch one another seamlessly. So there you have another Singularity as point of departure for another cosmic expansion, that is, once again, a Big Bang followed by another aeon of existence. While CCC speaks of previous and future aeons, I am not sure if this is entirely correct. It seems to me that,these consecutive universes would be separated from each other by infinite spans of time. Or maybe they could be said to exist simultaneously within Divine consciousness? In keeping with the notion held by some metaphysicists that, ultimately, there is no time, and everything occurs simultaneously. Be that as it may, CCC is rather close in outline to the Hinduist theory, according to which the universe - after an incredible number of years - relapses into a state of chaos (Pralaya) and returns to Brahman, just to be born again, in endless cycles. Penrose is adament that it is not the same old universe getting "replayed" again and again, but that there is actually a series of consequtive universes. Is there any room for an evolutionary process from one universe to the next? In other words, is there some "karmic" information passed on from one of its incarnations to the next? An approximation to this within the framework of CCC may be the assumption that the gravity waves produced by colliding black holes in the late stages of a universe "inform" the structuring of matter in the subsequent one. These gravity waves are theorized to leave circular traces in the cosmic microwave background. In fact, such circles have been observed, however, cosmologists don't agree with each other as to their meaning. On aforementioned congress in 2012, I also asked Penrose if it might be possible to look into the previous aeon via the cosmic microwave background, even though I was aware that physicists model the beginning of the universe as a state of total entropy, thus it would seem that no information could have survived the Big Bang. Penrose seriously doubted it for the same reason, however, more recently, he seems to have changed his mind, as in 2016, he and Gurzadyan published an article discussing the idea of information panspermia from one aeon to the next, that is, information being passed on to our universe by highly advanced civilisations existing in the later time of the previous aeon. Personally, I would think that there should be some kind of "genetic code" at work, seeding a subsequent universe. In what way (or ways) this might take place, however, is an open question to me. I am not sure if Hinduists likewise assume there to be some kind of information transfer from one universe to the next. It would surely be a nice parallel to human beings processing karma left over from previous lifetimes in their current incarnation. Any Hinduists here who would like to say something about that?

This conception is tantamount to Fred Hoyle's Steady State model in modern cosmology. Nothing is in a hurry in that kind of universe. That goes well with Buddhist equanimity. Hoyle did not deny that the galaxies are drifting away from each other (as evident from their red shift), but thought of it as more of a local phenomenon rather than as the result of a Big Bang. However, for keeping the universe from thinning out, new matter has to be continuously created. Which is, in principle, in agreement with ancient alchemical theories, still put forward by some contemporary natural philosophers.

God is the "zero point" which existed before creation began. So in this sense, yes, God is beyond "good and evil", the split-up into positive and negative forces, or into the forces of construction and the forces of destruction. "Before" is a bit incorrect though, because it implies a time flow. But in fact, time started flowing when the universe began, so, rigorously, there was no "before". Also, since God is timeless, "he" still exists today (no matter what Nietzsche has said). Time and space - and everything else that has ever been and will ever be created - exist within God. It is not the other way around. From another perspective, God is the Great Attractor or omega point (Teilhard de Chardin) towards which the created world evolves, so in this sense, "he" is indeed the constructive force - the "good" - per se. Of course, for creation to unfold, an interplay of constructive and destructive forces is needed.

Why one would want to be immortal? Think of how much one could learn. And how much one could accomplish with what one has learned. Rather than having to start from scratch over and over again (if you believe in reincarnation).