the1gza

I don't know if you've ever lived in the city, but what you are saying is a bit farfetched at best. By no circumstance are cities less racist, you just find yourself being more politically correct. Not calling someone a nigger or a spic does not mean you are not racist, it just means you don't use offensive language. But look at a city like Chicago, and it is easily one of the most naturally segregated places on Earth. Just because you go to school and work with other races or ethnicities doesn't mean you live in a less racist environment. I went to high school where at least 30% of the white students never, and I mean NEVER, went to school with anyone but white people. Now I'm not saying that's the norm, but this is something that many people would consider outrageous, especially for a person living in Chicago their whole life. But that is definitely the case, and it was so bad that a person honestly thought that I might have family members who had bones through their noses just because I was black. She honestly was confused, and not just her but several white wondered the same thing, and despite me wanting to be mad, I honestly couldn't be because there was no malice behind it. But it's still racist as hell, it's just a natural consequence of ignorance. The only places I have lived consistently, besides Champaign, IL, were cities. New York, LA, Miami... I've been to all these places and lived for over a year there. Trust me, this idea of cultural bustling, mutliculturalism, diversity... extremely surface level ideas. So what if you take a professional yoga class... man most of these classes aren't even good for covering the asanas beyond "working out". Have you been to the "spiritual" shops in these places? They're goofy as hell, but they look real chic and hip and "mystical". I have met people who were legit, but they were near hermits who could probably live anywhere and thrive. The stuff is very vibrant on the surface, but there is an extreme lack of depth that goes on in the city when it comes to things of that nature, or anything. Cities, because of their compact nature, are also extremely susceptible to groupthink, and the scrutiny that you are imagining goes down is far less powerful than you would think. Again, being a part of several of these groups, I was often kicked out because of deep scrutiny that was not "in line with the group", and it also helps to point out that many of these cultural flings that people are identifying are actually 7th or 8th attempts at something that started and died. So the depth is not very strong because what was started never had the backbone to stand right. I know all these type of people, I have lived with them, and I have had them all come to me for advice like I was "advanced". The only reason I could possibly think why a person would be asking me for advice, regardless of their skill levels being way higher in spiritual exploration, health practice, academics, is because I have naturally always spent a great deal of my time in self-reflection, while it seems to be a lost art for city dwellers. That's the problem, cities have so much shit there that people often have no time for inner reflection, which means they can't really absorb too much of all this stuff they are exposed to. Who cares about going to a museum if it has no effect on your personal being, who cares about any of that stuff beyond it being a "break" to life? This is when you get beyond the surface and get to know what people are actually thinking and feeling, and it's not healthy with city folks. Hey, I can say the same for more rural people, as Champaign had it's share of problems. But there was also a lot more space, a lot more open room to do things quietly, and if you got tired of clubbing and drinking (I went to college there), you could actually think without hearing a whole bunch of noise. You don't have as much to occupy yourself with, so if you wanted to do some spiritual investigation, and were honest about it, I have experienced that it was a lot easier when the places got more rural. Now Champaign isn't deep country, but in comparison to Chicago, it is. I also experienced more blatant racism there, but in actuality the honesty of it, rather than substituting political correctness as a sign of "progress" actually made those folks easy to be around. And despite city dwellers perhaps being more capable of mouthing off fancy language, as far as intelligence is concerned... yea dude, not very much difference at all. This is the thing, I feel that romanticism on either end, for urbanism or ruralism, has got to stop so folks can actually honestly investigate things. However, this is not easy to do if you are first and foremost honest with yourself, which is a lost art amongst human beings. So all these "save the world" solutions... they are useless with that skill. I would like to live in a cave or the wilderness, but I already know that there a high likelihood that I am severely unprepared for that. I don't know how to communicate with animals, with plants, or with the several force currents in the world. Since I don't want to make the same mistakes that people did in the past, I'm not going to mentally masturbate on that dream like, "OH, the glories of the wild!!" Right now, those glories would probably be disasters for me. I just try to do the best with what I got now, and move toward that goal despite not being in a situation I think is ideal. I also leave a LOT of room for changing my thoughts, because I am convinced that ideals are based on a person, not a situation. Like I said with those city hermits who were legit, anywhere they were was an ideal, perhaps even outer space. All these worldviews are distractions, in my mind, that keep people thinking about others rather than working on themselves.

What's up Cadejoblanco. It's good to have you here. I would like to chime in since you talked about Yoga, and it's one of the things I am familiar with. First, Hatha Yoga is not something you would learn in a studio or gym, primarily because Hatha entails far more the the foolishly prioritized calisthenics that are offered in these classes. Mainly, Hatha is about preparing the body for intense exploration of the primordial, and this only has a small part to do with asanas. In fact, a great deal of Hatha Yoga hinges on purification activities that are not "exercises" as we know them. These shatkarmas are designed to clean out the system extremely thoroughly, and it also helps to note that mudras are part of this. Pranayama is also a huge part of it which, again, you will not find taught in a public class to any considerable degree. The asanas themselves involve energetic associations that are rarely, if ever, addressed in a standard "Yoga" class. Surya Namaskar, for instance, can be described as a "complete yoga" in itself, because as you systematically work with it, you implement breath control (pranayama), concentration on certain chakras specific to each asana with mantras (dharana), which leads to moving meditation (dhyana). These aspects are very rarely introduced in classes, and as such, Surya Namaskar is considered a "warm up" for "hardcore" yoga. So if you are interested in invested Yoga, the last place you want to go is a class, at least in terms of Indian Yoga. Perhaps classes in Yantra Yoga, which is a Tibetan form, would make more sense, but since you seem to be looking at Indian Yoga, don't consider yourself missing out because you have no class. With that said, I do NOT recommend Yoga if you do not have a teacher who knows the inner workings of deeper yogas. This is not to say it is impossible to do on your own, but rather that trying to figure out the subtle nature of many yogic techniques can be pretty difficult and nerve-racking without someone who has gone through those ropes. This goes doubly for Hatha, because in Western culture, we have a tendency to think in terms of "no pain, no gain" when it comes to physical movements. Hatha asanas are supposed to be eased into, and I have personally found it hard to know what to do with them on my own. Let me ask, in your witchcraft days, did you ever learn to have tangible experiences with otherworldly entities? If so, you may want to consult that skill to learn from them about things like Yoga, and perhaps learn things that you could never find in a book, in a class, or perhaps anywhere on Earth. They can help you learn a Yoga that comes from your own inner being, and the origins of these practices really came from shamans who could access deep states of being and realize these knowledges from primordial intelligences. If you don't have that skill, you might want to take up something like lucid dreaming, that is if you trust that you can learn from entities that aren't within normative ranges of human perception. I know that in your Wiccan practices, you didn't really get that far in depth with where it could take you, but perhaps this was due to teachings prioritizing only certain things that did not give you an idea of the full potential of what you had available to you. These are just thoughts, no gospel truth here. At any rate, welcome, and I hope you find something valuable here .

Everything I am doing, aside from my special project (which I have not activated yet) comes from Stephen Chang's Complete System of Self-Healing: Internal Exercises. The Solar Plexus exercise is just a simple movement which involves concentrated breathing while pushing in on the solar plexus. You inhale facing forward, hands on the solar plexus. As you exhale, you turn the upper body to one side, all the while pushing in on the solar plexus. You also twist the waist in the opposite direction, which may be hard to picture without a picture hahaha. As you inhale, you return to the facing forward position, and repeat the motion on the other side as you exhale. That's pretty much the best way I can explain it. I feel the same way you do about the "traditions" of things, in the fact that this stuff was all made up at some point by someone. I think it helps people feel more secure if they are doing something with "history" behind it, but at a point I feel it has led to stagnation of these practices that doesn't allow for the depth of exploration that can come from the CORE teachings. Rather, the methodologies that ancients used to explore these core teachings becomes prioritized as the teaching itself, which can lend way to dogma (i.e. purity complexes, doing long, drawn out practices, continuing dependence of "universal" laws). It reminds of something EA Koetting said (a guy i think is personally a money-hungry clown, but sometimes says valid things). He pretty much pointed out that while nearly every other human discipline has evolved and changed over time - math, literature, medicine, etc., - the spiritual sciences have remained stuck in regurgitating the same ways of doing and think for thousands of years... at least those that have become publicly known. In this modern age, I think it is tantamount that people start learning to make shit up. Many things in relation to ancient practices were written, despite what the ancients may claim, in context of that time period. I'm not saying that one should not practice these ancient techniques, but rather that a person may be kicking themselves in the foot if they commit to a practice that was truthfully meant for people whose sole purpose, during the time of their practice, was to cultivate through those practices. If you got a job, a family of your own, and other supposed "distractions", you could very well be asking for a result that is far less than what the potential of these practices can offer. I am only 27, no girlfriend, and am living with my mother. I got time to do nothing else right now, but that's something unique to me. If/when I do establish these things, I will be doing it with my cultivation as the base, and can at least create a life where these things add to the cultivation, not detract. However, I am also not hinging my cultivation on being relegated to some pre-established practice if I find something through my own inner investigations. I love the work I do now, but I will be honest in saying that based on the success of my special project, I will have no problem dropping the General Maintenance without blinking. I really do like the Deer, Crane, Turtle, and Solar Plexus, and they fit well into what this project is all about. The project is based on the idea of transforming mundane activities like eating, body washing, or even television watching into activities that cultivate as well, if not far better, than the sometimes ritualistic practices of old. I feel this can offer something that is a lot more conducive to doing things like having a career (perhaps on that is pretty normal), a wife, children, or other things of that nature. I'm really looking towards this because it resonates with the idea that what we seek with cultivation is something that is inherently as natural as blinking. To me, setting cultivation up as something that is "special" or systematic does not vibe with that idea in my mind. Hopefully I was able to give you a decent enough description of Solar Plexus exercise, and overall Chang's work is something that came through for me when an obsession, and ultimately a stagnation, with Yoga failed. Thanks for chiming in a setting up the challenge!

Day 2: All of the below exercises are from Stephen Chang's Complete System of Self-Healing: Internal Exercises. General Maintenance Exercises - 1:15:00 Deer Exercise: 3x/day - (15:00) Turtle Exercises: 3x/day - (15:00) Crane Exercise: 3x/day - (30:00) Deer/Crane/Turtle combined form: 3x/day - (15:00) Solar Plexus Exercise: 4x/day - (20:00) Semen Retention: 2 days I decided to lay off on some of the facial exercises, primarily because I am working on a new, self-made exploration/cultivation that is currently in the conception stages. Since it is also not in the categories of things here, I'm not posting it... well I haven't starting hands-on practice with it anyway so it wouldn't make sense to post anyway!

This is a question only you can answer. You almost certainly will never learn it from another's philosophy, and while Tolle may have some techniques that are useful... try not to overanalyze something. If you got an idea, any idea, on how to do something, try it first, give it some earnest investment, and then see if it works. I cannot tell of the literal THOUSANDS of ideas I thought of in my teens that I never actually did myself. How silly do you think I felt when I came to read these various ideas and techniques in other books 5 or 6 years after I first thought it? While I respect many people who come into the arena of exploring human potential, I wouldn't let their words keep me from exploring myself how I feel. Tolle might say something that sounds true, but the question is whether or not that truth means anything to you? Just because it is a nice sounding theory doesn't mean it has anything to do with you. I mean, you said here yourself that you want a physical experience with your body... why on Earth would you care about non-dualism? I would personally disagree that love has to be balanced by hate, or in the idea that something must have it's opposite. Love is love, hate is hate, and an apple is an apple. That they seem opposite is completely based on observation, many people find themselves easily able to continuously feel good about themselves without ever having to address something like hate. But that's not the point, the point is that if you are interested in just being a physical being. why commit to teachings that would have you supersede a dualistic experience, which is the primary human paradigm of the time? But if any of us were cool with who we were right now, would we even be here? I feel it's ok to want to create something new for yourself, and it's ok to say, "Alright, I don't like this about myself. I'm going to change it." If you wake up with stinky breath, you get to the bathroom and brush your teeth. If you are musty in the armpits, you go to the shower and, perhaps, apply some deodorant liberally. If you are hungry, you eat. There's nothing wrong with that, and hell if you don't do many of these things, life turns out screwy for you. I know plenty of people who should not be in relationships because they haven't been critical enough with themselves, and they invite new children, which they birth, into a mess they didn't pay enough attention to. So how can wanting to improve be so wrong when people make ridiculous errors because they become ignorant of themselves and possible flaws? I'm not saying anything is wrong here, but rather saying that there is something you gotta find out by being true to what you feel. If you feel like you gotta approve, don't go read someone who doesn't know you and look to them as if they should have an answer to what you should do in life. Listen to yourself, and like you said, don't "put things between you and your desire". You are interested in things like Shamanic journeying, astral projection, lucid dreaming... go do those things. Don't read some philosopher who would honestly have you not pursue anything like that, why wrack your brain like that? But hell, if you want to lucid dream, or at least do it consistently, then you gotta be able to say, "I haven't garnered a skill for this before, I'm going to do it now." If you just BE, which many of us can't even get beyond our own brain to do (and I would bet Tolle is also in that group), then you shouldn't want that either. But if you honestly do, then go ahead and do that, and if you think that being in a relationship now is not a good idea, chances are it isn't. It's not really that hard, but trusting yourself is the way of "Being" that most people never get to doing. Tolle himself wouldn't have written that book if he had just "been", so you know... do you man.

Yea man I can say that things are not always as they are written down, or perhaps that there are ways in which we can approach things that are different than they ways the ancient techniques demand. If I were to tell you that you can hypnotize yourself so that an action like, I don't know, blinking cultivate your primordial blinking in a manner that was more complete, more efficient, and more pleasant than hours of meditation, tai chi, or anything else, it might sound far-fetched or even impossible to most people. However, this could be completely possible depending on how willing a person was to accept the possibility. Again, not saying you should pursue an idea like that, but just that there are possibilities that might not be considered because of certain ideals .

Day 1: All of the below exercises are from Stephen Chang's Complete System of Self-Healing: Internal Exercises. General Maintenance Exercises - 1:30:00 Deer Exercise: 3x/day - (15:00) Turtle Exercises: 3x/day - (15:00) Crane Exercise: 3x/day - (30:00) Deer/Crane/Turtle combined form: 3x/day - (15:00) Solar Plexus Exercise: 6x/day - (30:00) Looks like that's about 3 hours today... didn't even really think it was that much, but it looks like it wound up being that much completely on accident.

This might not be something that is popular, but perhaps you might be too reliant on cultivating in a manner that does not fit you. I'm from a background where the Torah was something that was big in my life. With all the spiritual masters there, I noticed one thing that was consistent with them: they cultivated first, then built their lives upon that foundation. Abraham was the son of a deity-maker, which anyone with a background in egregores knows requires pretty skilled spiritual training. He also trained with the immortal King of Salem Melchizedek for, I don't know, 40 years, which is where he learned alchemy. The guy practically spent his whole life cultivating and trained in spiritual disciplines, which was something that got passed down from generation to generation. What I am getting at is that most people here are getting to cultivation AFTER they set up lifestyles for themselves. In the modern world, many of these foundations are very much counterproductive to the foundation principles set forth by ancient people. Problem is, the foundation of your life at the time of gaining cultivation is likely to have a strong grip on how to prioritize things. So if you got these strong priority parameters, and you try to introduce a new set of parameters that contradict the old ones... that's gonna be a pretty tough battle that can cause more strife than it solves. So that's why you see people throwing away their old lives for the sake of cultivation. Although it's been aggrandized in many forms as being "holy", there's a far more practical function that doesn't necessitate the religious aura that influences many spiritual teachings. Practically speaking, if you got your head in parameters that you constantly gotta battle in not just the mind, but also in the environment, you can really sabotage your work... at least with these old ways of cultivation. The thing is, despite all these teachings we have, the fact is that the origins of these practices came from people on roads to self-discovery who were really just making stuff up as they go along. Why do you think that one system can drastically differ from another? The world has become somewhat enamored with the East because the archetypes of holiness and spirituality are stereotypically associated with that region. So everyone who is "spiritual" is rather practicing something from Buddhism, Taoism, or Hinduism; things like Yoga, Qigong, and various meditations inspired from these regions. But there's WAY more out there than just these disciplines, and way different ways of approaching the same end that may not require holding to priorities from those cultures. I've had some of the best experiences with dream shamans and dreamwork. I thought myself "cool" talking to these folks because I could spit all this jargon about Eastern theories and methods. I thought, "these are powerful people (they somewhat held a degree of plasticity with reality that would normally be characterized as "miraculous"), surely they know of the importance of cleansing chakras!" Much to my surprise, these are people who never consciously cared about their chakras at all, in fact they had no knowledge of ANY Eastern esoteric anatomy. Moreover, when I found out how they went about their practice, there were two things I noticed: 1) They talked about techniques I never heard of before and 2) No 2 dreamworkers went about their cultivation in the same fashion, aside from maybe their beginning work in consistently having conscious dreams. I realized that these guys were rambunctiously making shit up, in fact it almost seemed like it was too easy to be real. And yet, these were are people that demonstrated some ridiculous control over their primordial potentials, even though you would never know that they did. It also came to note that they did this rather quickly, even though they all had jobs and a pretty "regular" life. The point of the story is this: You might have to find a way of doing things that is all about you, perhaps something that you don't even know exists because you just made the shit up. If you find yourself clashing to a point of being inconsistent and off kilter, and the conflict creates more tension than you honestly feel it's worth... maybe that shit's not for you. Maybe the priority parameters of that practice aren't ones that are applicable to you, and perhaps they don't mean shit aside from the people whom they should mean something to. Maybe instead of a cultivation practice that is hard, time-intensive, and perhaps even personally taxing, you find something that is easy, fun, and continuously enlivening. Most people might not think that is possible, and maybe a practice that is easy is not for you. What I am saying though is consider that the cultivation you are looking for might be something that you have to come up with through your own ingenuity, and your own self-trust that what you conceive can work.

Well this wasn't even... I mean is this really... Corn Puffs. My response is Corn Puffs.

I hope this is helpful. I stand by this as well, in a sense that knowing yourself is the goal and the key to being unlimited. However, what I am saying is that when you get on that road to self-discovery, what is realized becomes something that is very personal. So what I find to be "natural" may have absolutely nothing to do with what you or anyone else discovers. This is completely possible, because if, at the heart of it all, "God" is unlimited, then the revelation of nature has an infinite amount of flourishings that can be realized. The problem I have is that when people talk about "nature", I find that their particular flourishing is something they consider to be a priority for everyone. However, attempts at finding a "universal" definition of nature has a 0% track record of success, at least in a recorded sense. Some folks view the "natural" as living in a more "wildlife" style of being, while others consider the current mode more than natural enough. Both have arguments that are valid when viewed unbiasedly, and both have their failures based on an exhaustive plight to have everyone believe their flourishing is right. It's been the basis of every war on Earth... "I'm right, you're wrong." So when I ask whether or not we can say what is truthfully nature, perhaps I should ask whether or not we can actually prioritize a particular definition of nature when nature holds an infinite amount of flourishings that can garner and infinite number of understandings and realizations? I could argue that the only thing that is unnatural is perhaps being defined or confined by only one understanding of nature, or pushing for all of humanity to be like that. I experience this as being the current dilemma of humankind, trying to live by universal meanings rather than living with the ability to create and experience infinite, "Universal" flourishings.

Pessimistic? I didn't say anything was bad, I'm saying that folks are hugely overestimating the work involved, and instead of talking and more importantly putting feet to the ground and working, we find the same rhetoric over and over in these things. There are actually people living in "natural" communities, but folks don't hear about them because they are sitting around talking about it, much like we are doing here... They went out and did, but they don't broadcast it all over the internet starting all sorts of "free the world" campaigns because they are busy living that life. You'd be surprised how "immediate" a situation can be solved if you stop worrying about the depth of problems you can't put your finger on. Look at these solutions... everyone presenting them is talking about what "people" need to do. These are plans that these individuals are presenting, and yet the focus is on "people" coming together, "the world" changing. Why not focus on yourself first, all these global plans made by folks who can't even master themselves. We got people on facebook and social media posting blurbs on civil unrest and justice, when they can't even take care of their own personal bills. How can this type of person hope to bring in a world of ease, "nature", and happiness, when they can't even do it for the single human being that is closest to them, themselves? I'ts not about quantum leaps, it's about priorities. I'm saying that the priority in these situations is far to global without infrastructure being placed at the foundation. It's like trying to build a skyscraper in the middle first, a few windows on the 18 floor next, may 1/5 of the foundation grout on the Westernmost point of the building, maybe some LED lights on the 15th floor rec-room. Without a proper set of priorities, who cares about the ideal? The ideal is potentially energy that produces nothing but masturbatory longing, that is unless folks get their priorities set to actually learn what it takes, and to be honest about what it takes. I'm not going to profess to know what those priorities are, because honestly I am far more worried about the priorities I have just for day-to-day living. But I feel there is enough evidence to show that things like "informing" are far from being effective without perhaps twice the effort being put into hand-to-the-dirt work towards these goals, especially the environment. If you want to get fitness advice, you find the guy who is in good shape and athletically capable. Why? Because you know he can get the job done, he's a living example. There's not even close to enough tangible work being done by environmentalist for average people to notice and say, "This is good work, I can see these benefits in real-time happening right now". You want convince people of something, or demonstrate how something is effective... you actually need something that can do the demonstrating. All that folks can offer is how "bad" things are now, but if you can't show them what's "good" about what you are talking about, something they can touch, taste, see, hear, and or feel... what good is that?

I believe this thread is exactly reflects exactly what I am talking about here. None of these solutions are flawless, and require changes within people that have far more to do with changing internal value structures and not simply building new things or living with nature. This is what is missed in all these global solutions; people have been ignoring the profuse amount of psychological overhaul and transmutation that is necessary to make these proposed changes. Nope, let's just go back to being farmers and stop killing animals. Let's build some nice-looking eco-building, but make sure there's a lot of trees around it because we want it to be "Green". When it gets down to it, however, we have to think about just exactly what that means... hell, even on a structural level, do you know how much work it would take to tear down these cities we got? Take that couple it with the psychological work... it's about a whole lot more than statistics and ideals. There a ridiculous amount of work at the smallest level of humanity that, like I said, requires a transformation into a human being that wouldn't even resemble what we know to be human now. If we think we are going to make a "New World" while acting and thinking like we do now, and having the priorities that we have now, then I think that would be wishful thinking at best, if not outright foolishness.

And my sermons are officially done... praise Jesus (hey, I'm not Hebrew anymore).

Well the thing with Jews is something I already stated: their true faith is in concepts of what the Torah is rather than just simply living by those precepts in your own way. Like I said, the worship of Jews is based on rabbinical interpretations of what the right type of practice is: how to pray, how to celebrate holidays, etc.,. Much of this has nothing to do with the Torah at best, and in many ways is terribly counterintuitive. I mean, go to a synagogue service, and there seems to be anything BUT celebration in the air. Funny thing is, in Torah, only priests really handled temple work because they were trained in various methods of prayer that put them in tangible contact with "God". The regular person, however, would do better to be playing music, eating food, and perhaps get butt-in-the-air drunk. I can say this happens just as much with science, in a sense that people claim to have "proven" things because of their investigations. Yet, the notion of proof would mean the a phenomena would flourish in the same way every single time regardless of a perceptual framework. Yet, we know that this is impossible because the only species conducting such experiments are humans, who have their own fixed perceptual ranges that are unique to not only humans, but certain types of humans. So what is observed by a human scientist may have no bearing whatsoever on a cat, dog, insect, plant... none of these perceptions are taken into account when investigating scientific inquiries. So all that is proven is that a certain situation is perceived to happen in a certain way based on a particular perceptual range. That's not proof of any holistic happening, a happening that is the same for everything regardless of perceptual range. We can see it in everything that people do, including spiritual work. Taoism and Yogic thought talk about a similar, if not same "Inifinity force" that permeates everything yet is beyond all boundaries and definitions. Yet, Taoist cultivation theory is abound with "natural laws" that must be adhered to in order to get to a Tao state of being. Likewise, the same can be said with Yoga; all sorts of techniques and avenues must be taken, and in fact several forms of denial are taken for the sake of "purity", which is the "true nature" of Samadhi. So Brahman is everything, and yet things are impure and therefore not conducive for it... what? The Tao is beyond definition, and yet it can only be reached by definitive adherence to definitive laws... c'mon now. I feel that perhaps the problem with faith is that people don't have faith in what they say they believe in. Surely an approach to unlimited existence should have an unlimited number of approaches to it, and yet these sciences toward the unlimited follow strict, defined ideals and practices that are in no way more "unlimited" than taking farts. Are they ineffective? No, not by a longshot, but the superior exclamations are things that are still based off of what a few humans experienced. Likewise, despite the claims for superiority, those who have practiced often fail to get to the goals they want to achieve anymore than those who take vastly different routes. So for it's claimed superior nature, it's not very much superior to anything. Science, in my opinion, is vastly more stagnant than it could because one's got to fight "The Clergy of the Whitecoat Proofs" just to establish something new as being scientifically valid. Like I mentioned with cigarettes, no rocket science was needed to demonstrate just how harmful these things were, and yet it took 30 years of hard research for it to be accepted by the human populace scientifically. Moreover, if something has not been discovered yet, it goes through brick walls of criticism based not on discovery, but based on adherence to previous perceptions. So folks can't accept a way of healing someone that isn't established as "real" by the medical community, even though that medical community was founded on learning to see things that were previously unseen. I won't hide that I fail to see that humans have achieved much of anything impressive on the general level. I feel that is mostly because people lose faith in their unknown goals for a predisposition to having faith in only what they can perceive right now. I feel that is the basis of stagnation, and that a belief in something new, that hasn't been perceived yet, is what allows humans to actually do what the things that allow them to reach their potential. Whether it be learning to cultivate energy, or learning to train your muscles to become stronger, you gotta have some belief that you can experience something that you haven't experienced yet. That, to me, is faith plain and simple. It is an "illusion" of the mind, but it's an illusion that is as real as every other "illusion" we perceive here.

Can anyone honestly say they know what nature is though? If nature is only what you perceive and reason, then how can we say for sure we whether or not we are living according to "nature" or not? Does nature honestly fit into a dualistic framework that is perceived through normally narrow perceptual ranges? Not to say that folks don't get to this Wuwei through their naturalistic efforts, but can it be said that how we live now is actually unnatural? Can we say that some other way of living, for sure, is more natural for the entirety of a group, village, city, nation, planet?

Hey man, you can feel what you want, and no one is telling you that you don't have the right to do so. I'm just pointing out that there are some heavy and pretty isolating components to the views that really push them far out of the realm of "universal". I mean there's assumptions about things that can't even be verified to be truthful (I've experienced plenty of consciousness from grass) and only considers things humane because what we look at is closer to us. I can in now way consider killing a plant more humane than an animal simply because it does not resemble me as much, or because it isn't as "big" to me as something else. But that's me, and hence I'm not taking activist roles because I realize that my thought pattern may vary drastically from others. If I'm going to talk about "what's good for humanity", I gotta be able to take those things into account. The question is, does your ideal honestly come close to that if you are capable of looking at it from a perspective that has not already accepted it yet? And despite all this work activists have done, how much less racism, violence, sexism, or prejudice is there out there? Who's stopped Monsanto from monopolizing seeds, or throwing farmers off their land due to legal back-handing? With all this environmental work, why are pollution rates continuing to escalate to monumental proportions? I'm not saying they aren't doing work, or what they do is not working, but how can you say they are so effective at pushing humans forward when the very things people "activate" against are stronger now than they have ever been? And I'm asking because this is a forum I attend to, and quite frankly it would be useful if people write about topics that can actually be applied, today, by people who attend the forum. I also personally have experience as a vegetarian, vegan, and raw vegan (raised since birth as a vegetarian), so I at least got some 2+ decades worth of living with a lifestyle based in the dietary ideal you are promoting. So I'm posting questions trying to learn your angle, and giving my opinion, which is all it is, based on my experience. If it's problematic for you... just let me know.

There's nothing inherently wrong with Magic, folks just get out of hand. Of course, many people with purity ideals will think so, so that's up to them to feel that way. But the whole idea of karma itself being based on meritorious acts.... that's a very religious way of understanding that really isn't completely based on the actuality of the word. But this is for others to figure out or not, it's all good at the end of the day. But if I have ever been "punished", it's because I refused to enact "magic" in this world. To each their own.

Ummm, aren't plants creatures, who have also been proven to do things as sophisticated as to respond to human language? Come on, as a raw vegan I gotta say that vegan ideals are far from "universal human ideals".

I know several people who are vegans, raw food vegans, fasters... several of them are unhealthy with several issues that make them just as "sick" as "SAD" eaters. When I got to know these people, I found that there was a common thread: lacking self-awareness. They could quote every health ideal out there, but that was about all that was healthy about them. When it came to them being honest with themselves, seeing that what they followed caused great deals of stress and strife for them, not to mention self-depreciating thoughts from reading all these books who told them they were "bad"... it wasn't a good look. I'm not saying this is the case for everyone, I know several healthy people who follow all the above diets, including SAD. But it wasn't because of actions, it was because of the current of person that took those actions. Mass world uni-action where everyone has to do the exact same thing... this has been attempted since the dawn of time. It's the idea behind pretty much every form of oppression out there, even though many of these forms of oppression are birthed from "righteous" ideals. I think people might have to admit that the "New World" that folks are looking for requires a "new human" that people can't conceive of right now. As such, we can only do what's best for ourselves, and try to learn what those things truthfully are. Worldwide veganism is a possible answer, but so would be a people who could learn to systematically fast for 2 weeks or everyone learning to cultivate their inner selves. But if you honestly try to push others to do it just because you think it's right, rather than creating environments where people are capable of doing what's right for them... it'll just be the same story.

There's nothing "unnatural" about cities, for honestly how could there be anything that exists that is "against" nature? I feel that one of the problems is that we look at nature in a certain romantic ideal: greenery, "the wild", uncivilized... all these ideals don't allow us to see other things. There are plenty of things about nature that very much unpleasant, unhealthy, and potentially life-threatening things without any help from us whatsoever. Volcanoes are natural, and yet no one would want to live there. So first I think there needs to be some serious review of just what it is we think about the ideals that we have in regards to many matters of "a better world". Hell, let's just take food for example. Many of us are so worried about the food crisis without realizing certain fundamental things about our eating habits. Humans eat everyday, and they eat several times a day. In all honesty, this isn't something that is seen in the wild amongst mammals, especially those with relatively weak digestive systems like humans. Lions and tigers go days without eating, and their metabolisms can be quite high. Moreover, their lifespans are a 5th of ours, whether healthy or not. So in actuality, if a lion fasted for 3 days, it would be like fasting for 2 weeks. But hey, even if we didn't fast, there still a ridiculous amount of food out there in the world. But humans, having only prioritized a rinse-and-repeat style of living, actually clear land that already has food on it to make way for food that is privy only to that rinse-and-repeat style of living. Agriculture has been damaging to the environment FAR before GMO, pesticides, and corporations. It's just that industry has allowed people to do this far quicker than it did in the past, but people have been in the business of taking land and transforming it to serve a rinse-and-repeat form of eating and living. This has always involved eliminating natural wildlife and facilitating processes that are "unnatural". Nowhere in the wild do you see fields of the exact same plant grown devoid of other plant, animal, or fungal life. So there are many things about "natural" living or "vegan" living that are pretty "unnatural". I'm a raw vegan myself, but in y work living this way, I found it ridiculously hard to even come close to living the raw ideal. Organic food isn't a solution; it's still been mutated from centuries of mutation due to cultivation in a monocultural environment. I tried being a forager, but honestly it wasn't worth for me PERSONALLY. I realized that I was severely outclassed to live according to the ideals of raw veganism, and I was supposedly hardcore because I didn't do it with a dehydrator, a masticating juicer, and on a budget of less than $30 a week. I don't see cities as being unnatural, but rather a reflection of perversion and insecurity can realize a nature that generates harmful results. I personally live in Chicago, and while there can be interesting things to take in, at the end of the day people are too cramped, too noisy, and despite this, too distant from one another. I could care less about "art" when the air is dirty. And even with all the different cultures living next to each other, people rarely even know each other well enough to actually "mix" cultures. Hell, Chicago is segregated as hell, to a point where literally crossing the street can be the difference between "affluence" and "ghetto". A lot of people think that the mixing is going on, but that's because they are moving so fast in life that they can't even see things from a quiet perspective. So folks just assume that a weekend with 40 shootings is normal, even though there are more than enough obvious stressors to exacerbate the problem. But the results of city life are all natural: crime, pollution, lack of personal needs... these natural consequences of living in such a way. Moreover, it's a reflection of the height of rinse-and-repeat living, where things have been streamlined for convenience. Everything that is prioritized by modern human standards is easier than ever to get in a city, which is why it's so easy to find a "good time" that can"take you away" from the troubles of life. However, the very reason why you get enjoy those distractions is why city life is bad: "real life" is considered a trouble. Work, a bother. Family life, a bother. So there are things wrong with cities at the fundamental level that goes beyond what we are seeing as "the problem". The city is the height of that rinse-and-repeat way of living, and perhaps that way of living is the most unnatural thing that humans work from. However, most of these naturalistic ideals are based off the same principle, just with a different principle. In order to save the world, everyone has to be vegan... well goodbye world or goodbye considerable-percentage-of-human-population. We got to look at the root fuel that drives an action, not just an action itself. Eating animals isn't wrong, but eating animals when you are steadfast to rinse-and-repeat principles... that might be another story. That's why I also feel that worldly solutions that don't involve self-realization or self-discovery as the fundamental anchoring medium for change will never garner a change that benefits the whole world. I'm not talking strictly cultivation of primordial force, although I think that is a natural consequence and equally capable of being done without all these ancient manuals (which are far more varied in thought and technique, and priority than most like to admit). Hell, if folks could just be honest with themselves, and not be afraid to do so because the truth does sound like the standard definition of good... just that alone could offer far more change than picking up some new way of doing the same thing. It's not action so much as the personal framework that fuels action

Yup. pretty much what I'm sayin'. Until you work it, you are going off faith, which is completely fine. Hell, I don't know how you can't have faith and be someone who tries something new. We all take some ideas into us that we don't work directly, at least not immediately. In my opinion, that's faith, at least until you work it. Even if you doubt it (and many "faithers" have far more doubt than they admit), if you can accept it as possible enough for you to explore, there is a faith element that says, "Yea, this can work!" If there wasn't any faith, I don't feel you could believe something was real, or not real. Even with it having preceding people who work that theory or interest... until you do it, that belief is grounded in something that is rather faith, or contains very similar elements. I just feel that too many people claiming faith have relegated it to something in the "unseen" realms, so we aren't aware how prevalent and normal it is to have faith. Most of us believe we will wake up tomorrow alive, and that's certainly not a guarantee by a longshot (at least for most of us, there are some who can "guarantee" that).

I would say I got a lot of faith, and yet I don't get had by many gimmicks out there. Primarily, I tend to be very cerebral, which honestly can be a downside when it comes to putting one's foot down into a practice. However, it did lead me, eventually, to the right type of practice for me, because I stayed faithful to what I felt. Even though millions of people claimed otherwise, and thousands of years of history regurgitated, I felt keen that what I felt was real. By accident, or by necessity rather, I stumbled into picking up my practice (currently working with Stephen Chang's revitalization works) as a last -ditch effort. Turn's out it was vastly more powerful for me than any Yoga I was doing, which fascinated me despite it's doctrines being so out of context for me it was too ridiculous to laugh at (even though I laugh at it all the time). So the faith was very worthwhile, even though I had no consistent basis for it other than what I felt. It's my experience that people often lack discernment. Due to that, what they have faith in generally has little power for them, because it can often lacks not only experience, but discernment. Many "science" people, for instance, claim to believe in "science", and yet have never practically conducted a laboratory experiment a day in their lives. But because outing off several scientific theories can be considered "smart" in society, they trick themselves into thinking they have done better justice to scientific exploration than the religious types in churches. They don't even possess the discernment to realize that science is a mode of active exploration, not regurgitation of someone's discoveries as their guiding light in life. That's religion, even if it can be perceived by the status quo individual. The same can be said for the church/mosque/synagogue/temple/"insert-holy-building-here" enthusiast. Despite many religious teachings saying that the connection with God has to be tangible and a way of life, most folks only follow the most bare minimum ideas of a religion, if even that well. For example, I was raised in a Hebrew home, and it wasn't until I was 20 that I realized, "Hold on, where in the fuck does it say that I got to read these set of prayers in the Torah?" The Torah is honestly extremely relaxed when it comes to worship, and most of the time you are supposed to be partying on holidays. Yet, Talmud, which is nothing but a Torah commentary, gives all these ridiculously rigid guidelines that have nothing to essentially do with the Torah. Yet, Jewish culture, at least European-style Jewish culture, does nothing but worship Talmud like it is "Torah - 2.0". When I pointed this out to my family, which took me about 3 years to build up the courage for (being raised in a profusely religious family is one thing, but being raised in a profusely religious family that is also militantly Afro-centric... yeeaa), it was a 2-month battle which led me to leaving the religion entirely. I couldn't get with something where people would say that they followed one thing, and yet prioritized something that literally had nothing to do with the thing they followed. I can't even say they have faith in the religion, because they are prioritizing things that are labeled meaningless my that religion. The lack of discernment in the pseudo-spiritualist, like the pseudo-scientist, was the key factor. I'm obviously not a master of discernment, after all, it took me years to get out of my Yoga obsession to accept something that fit me a lot more suitably. However, I have enough to know that it is a deciding factor in whether or not your faith really produces something that is truthfully worthwhile. Whether or not it is supported... you will never get the support that is important to you until you try it. Like you said, what others say is possible means little to you, even if it is something that can supposedly be viewed by the naked eye. I haven't viewed an atomic structure with my own eye, and most of the people I "learned" the theory from haven't either. So until then, I will use that idea because it makes conceptual sense, but it is not something I will rule myself by. Many people tell me that life is hard, and that good things come from hard work. Yet, the only time I ever produced anything of value was when my work was fun and seemed to complete itself through my hands. It was truthfully easy, yet all my attempts with hard work have ended in explosive, traumatic failure. So no matter how important that ideal is to others, that shit is useless to me. Even the Stephen Chang, which is more than challenging enough, is still easy for me despite the fact that it is challenging, despite the fact that I got some work ahead of me before I master anything in that book. Yet, I easily find myself wanting to do ore of it, whereas I couldn't wait for my Yogic sadhana to be over.My health, energy control, and energy awareness experienced more strides in 3 days of less than 30 minutes of work per day than I did spending 5 hours/day with Yoga. I still think Yoga is great, it's just not something that I would recommend to anyone who doesn't feel a strong pull towards it. And for me, it just wasn't worthwhile at this time of life at all, because its priorities were 100% against the priorities I had experienced working for ME well. It appears reality is really in the eyes of the perceiver... at least me in my experience.

That's why I prefer conversations where people talk about what they do, and what they learned from that. This way, it's direct experience learning that gives a more organic element that just trying to reason theories about things that probably span beyond our language to express. I mean, folks are gonna do what they are gonna do, I just find that work-based knowledge is far more useful to people than mulling over matters that are based largely on conceptualization. That's just me though

I guess the thing is what is even the definition of faith here? Even "faith" is going to mean something different... there's a huge stigma of faith being an ideal strictly relegated to religious thought based on things we cannot readily see. For me, faith is not relegated to that, so I feel there's going to be issues with communication because the definitions and associations to terms can vary greatly.

I think that's the funny thing. If I were reading my experiences 2 years ago, I would almost certainly think, "Oh shit son, dis nigga got SKIIILLLZZ!!" Fact is, I was just exploring and felt that I could at least get something out of it. I also wasn't truthfully scared. I had contrived concerns that I borrowed from books, but at the end of the day, I never really feared what was going on even though I thought I should. There was always this background laughter at the idea of those fears, so I couldn't really sustain them even for a moment. But these experiences are hardly exclusive to "divine" beings, and I have found that these entities are FAR more interested in folks experiencing their divine nature than they are with the "purity" of the individual. Unless you got complexes that attract negative entities (I have yet to have an attack from a "shadow" being, and I've been vulnerable and "reckless" enough that they could attack me), it's rare that you will have to worry about such things. Problem is, many of these attacks come from people misinterpreting what they experience, or corporealizing fears into tangible form. I've never really been scared of the non-normative realms, nor ever felt they were for special types of people. So that may be a factor as to why people can have these experiences without being "incarnate divine beings" (I'll be honest, I don't even know what that means anymore. I used to have a lot of terms, but it's hard for me to find "good" terms for these levels of human realization anymore).