blue eyed snake

well, once you've seen it you cannot unsee it anymore, imho the length of that thread shows how ridiculous it is to try to explain it. Nonetheless, there are many very interesting posts in that thread, totally worth a read.

we had a thread on it last year

i struggle with the concept of de it's not virtue as we use it, it's got nothing to do with booklearning at the moment i see it as right conduct that presents itself naturally. ( writing this, that suggests that de is needed for wu-wei) looks to me that the combination of work with the body and work with the heartmind transforms/ can transform a person in such a way that she or he will grow in the amount of time/interactions that his/her conduct can be called/conforms to de

thank you, that was a gift for that little girl.

uhm... in several European countries B12 deficiency is regarded as rare, because only with a clear anemia it is recognized. Other cases are regarded as : functional - somatisation - psychosomatic and the patient wants something "real" to be able to perk up again. Also "must be placebo effect" and several even less savory ideas. ( excuses to any reading medical doctors, this is the horrid truth, please, when it comes to your department take your patients serious and do some reading up) In the Netherlands and the UK its very hard to find a doctor that knows this stuff, is willing to prescribe injections and do labwork on cofactors ( folate - B2 and B6 - in that order) and keeps doing that labwork through the years. Happy circumstance is in Germany the stuff is OTC and not that expensive at all, needles and assorted things are even cheaper. My cub ( somewhat older then yours) did not want injections, it took more then a year to get him to go on the waitinglist- the waitinglist was about a year too... Meanwhile he saw I was slowly doing better and I've explained a lot of things to him Now he calls it the water of life - depression seems to be gone - the sensory nerves needed to feel with the hands are getting better, but it will be a horridly long road as he was born deficient. I do not know how the land lies in the US B12 exists in several forms. ( following is the easiest explanation but even further simplified ) the cheapest synthetic form is cyanocobalamin - also the first form to be manufactured. Over here they do not advise it. then we have hydroxy-cobalamin - that is a form that is identical to what can be found in the body. It's the form generally prescribed. In the body the hydroxy-cobalamin gets split up ( enzymes needed here) in: methyl-cobalamin - needed for nerves - brainpower and methylation...thus for about everything. adenosyl-cobalamin ( also called dibencozid) which is needed for the muscles to get power ( hello mitochondria) Methylcobalamin can often be found in lozenges and is good stuff for vegans but not for the deficient people. With a bit of searching you can also find adenosylcobalamine or combined with methylcobalamin. so...then the lozenge thing. firstly what's in it Folate - when one has a B12 deficiency folate is dangerous, it somehow masks the B12 deficiency but in the mean time ruins the sheaths around the nerves, I got poly-neuropathy from the combination of lozenges with folate and i do not want that on anybody. . It's progression has halted but the damage is done and most of it cannot be reversed. It's a wellknown effect but sadly doctors seem to be unaware. Many patients have this and it is totally preventable by getting the right treatment right away, real sad. Now how do I now this? easiest source is the prescription leaflet that comes with every box of ampules, doctors do not seem to read those things. as an example, when my son had had injections for 2 months he had to slowly build up folate. starting with 200 mg. Me thinks he's now on 3 x 400 per week, so your cub is probably overdosing with it and making himself more ill. B12 _ what form? B6 - what dosage, it can be dangerous in higher dose, neuropathy is one of the things. Often these supplements overload on the stuff and not healthy at all. ---- I wondered about your B12 status, read up on it, inform yourself and get ready to fight for treatment that will help. did your kid get breastmilk? how did he do on it? keeping it at this for now, my PC broke down and now on another device which is not easy typing for me oh, and as an afterthought. B12-deficiency thoroughly fucks up the dopaminergic ssystem, amongst other things. we need that system to kick our own asses and feel good when we've accomplished something

dear mama-bear please do not do any mama-bashing on yourself, it's bad enough that doctors and society at large do that. You've a sick cub, doctors do not find reason and it gets chucked into the functional bag, or in the mama has done a bad job bag. when will doctors learn to say, I do not know but I can see you're awfully sick instead of adding insult to injury by telling severely sick people their ailments are 'functional' Okay, so now that's off my heart I see you writing D3 and B12 are low. That's a big red flag to me. I do not know how low but I do know that when B12 is sufficiently too low the body somehow cannot get keep it's D3 level okay . that's well known by doctors with knowledge of B12 deficiency, go search for one , please. this is a link to the dutch B12 institute, that's were i got the knowledge and were my cub is treated, they have text in English too https://b12-institute.nl/en/symptoms-of-b12-deficiency/ now that's a longish list of symptoms and not everybody has all of them, but still.. lack of appetite, (unexplained) loss of weight nausea, throwing up, bloating abdominal pain then we come to the chicken and egg question, it's pretty obvious that when the digestive system is disordered like your son's and for such a long time that deficiencies will happen. After all, we're not what we eat but what we are able to uptake from that food. So one can wonder whether that low B12 is a result of the illness or that is is the cause. But in both cases it should be treated. and do not get fobbed off by: take those lozenges, they do not cut it. The only thing that helps when one has B12 deficiency is injections plus cofactors and for a long time too. the other thing you could/should look at is Histamin intolerance (HIT) and/or Mastcell activation syndrome (MCAS) that can be the cause for this endless nausea too. would that I had known all this stuff half a century ago. much love to you and your cub

thank you for putting this so well I have not practiced very long but after a lifechanging meditation I came out with a dent on my forehead. During that meditation at one point in time it felt like thick viscous honey was dripping over my head. I had no idea what was happening and was totally unprepared for these kind of things. With one fell swoop my ego was temporarily snuffed out . Only temporarily, it has reinstalled itself so I am again a cranky selfcentered person . It has changed me though, deeply. the dent in my forehead looks and feels like the layer between the bone and the skin is gone, it's very visible. when I asked teacher about it he just smiled and told me those kind of things can happen, " just go on training" as before this I never had any inclination to anything 'spiritual' , i regarded it as poppycock. I just did chigung because my health was failing and the meditating was intended to get some relaxation. at least for this person the physical chi exercises ( for want of better words) have lead me to the spiritual path.

you won't, you are an inspiration though, whether you like that or not. that me reminds me, long ago strange energetic things happened to my (then still juicy) body so I went on a hunt for a teacher. One of the people I met during that search had that, the predator quality. I literally felt like i had escaped when I was out on the street again, brrr the combination of being awakened with sexual offence is quite horrid Some time after I gave up my search I was introduced to my teacher, still grateful for that.

yes, that's what I said sure, on the other hand, I've listened to several podcasts. At first like, wow, he knows his stuff. But small remarks here and there gave away something that does not sit well with me. Meeting him would be hard, nowadays the corner of the street is about as far as I can go. I've the age he could me my son. Neither am i inclined to do so, it's not for me to do so and when I am right he'll have had this message before and disregarded it. I did not write this because some other bum thinks like this as you seem to suggest, it's what has come to me over the last weeks due to listening to Damo's podcasts. This thread seemed like a place to share those thoughts. oh please, do not try to teach granny how to suck eggs will you

lately I have seen some of Damo's podcasts and quite like the way he has gone deep down the hole of what works. It taught me how changes in my body came to be. He certainly ( to me) comes over as a likable and helpful person. His unraveling of the how methods work may well be his gift to the world and i have no doubt that many people profit from it. time will tell what price he will have to pay for it. But on the other hand, when gone as far as he has with methods one should expect what Dwai calls attainment. I do not see it, compared to my teacher who exuded it with every word he said, with every step he took. It's not about likability or how much he does for other people, it is whether he has found some spiritual truth ( or something, it's really hard for me to formulate my thoughts in a language that's not my own) and made an enduring connection to it. I feel he has missed the boat there and that does not bode well, hearing whom he trained with it surprises me even more.

Remembering that early session where teacher told us to visualize a ball... It was like.. huh... how could i have missed that. same for get your awareness to your feet the first time I did standing posture. Maybe it is not as much visualize it but: become aware of it. But visualizing the inner energy-stream looks rubbishy to me, especially when that needs to be done year after year.... After I dunno how much visits to the dojo teacher told me: next time you practice put your tongue at the palate. At that time i had never even heard of what is customarily called the microcosmic orbit. It was as if a dry riverbed suddenly filled with lots of water after a long freeze, it literally roared through my body. Still, i suppose there was a trickle there which maybe one could be aware of, no idea.

oh yup, forgotten about that.

yes, not defining what we talk about is often reason for squabble I have no idea what Jhanna and samadhi are for instance and do not want to plow through buddhistic texts to find an answer. I've long called my sitting sessions meditation, then, somehow the sense of me fell away after some time of sitting. The recognition dawned on me that maybe that is what is meant with the word meditation. So now I call the sitting sessions preliminaries, when that falling happens, it's meditation. just my personal take on it. anybody here that can explain the terms samadhi and jhana here in simple English words?

mindfulness is not bunk, but it's not meditation. like the singing of mantra, it's not meditation but it's not bunk either. No idea were there place is in the spiritual practice or what theoretical ideas underpin it. When first I fell ill i have had a period of about half a year that I was not able to sleep, the singing of mantra saved me from becoming psychotic. Mindfulness is a very useful technique for curbing the ever chattering monkey-mind, just like the singing of mantra. I would not call that bunk. when it is sold as a mediation technique, that way of selling it earns the name of bunk.

I was taught to meditate/ practice without visualization and checked box other. How can I judge something I do not know. I can well imagine that it can help in the beginning to keep the monkeymind busy so you're not starting to ruminate on things. Also things like maps like Apech mentioned. sometimes there is 'visual scenery' when these visions repeat themselves, do they repeat "by themselves" or does my memory of them make me visualize them. it's not clear-cut to me

that was interesting, thanks for posting

Everything, stone, root and leaf, animals and humans alike are an expression of 'consciousness' ( for want of a better word, DAO is unspeakable after all. You cannot experience that, as when that 'realization' hits the experiencer is gone, but there is awareness and the memory of that awareness. so yes, were all the same, you are me and I am that lousy dog on the corner too. All equally unimportant, strawdogs.( or dogs of grass.) https://tao-in-you.com/lao-tzu-tao-te-ching-chapter-5/ The perspective of I, me, mine, that you're inhabiting gets lost, it's null and void. An earth immortal ( whatever that is) is equally unimportant as a homeless man. The difference might be that the immortal is aware of that were the homeless man is not. (btw, from the perspective of I, me, mine... I do not think a homeless man is worth less then someone who has accumulated enough wealth to acquire a home, I've known very worthy homeless people and lousy guys with a lot of money. On the ordinary plane the acquiring of wealth has no relation with morality)

you think Damo has read your thoughts?

yes, sad it was a row of majestically large poplars, when I saw the guys with the chainsaws my heart cringed. Although expertly pruned ( and not chopped down as i feared initially) they will not survive, the damage was too large, the regrowth is too small. I can understand though, the new owner rightly decided that a western-storm would let these big ones fall onto his property. Every year small groups of starlings will come here, fly around their old gathering-place, sleep there for a night or two and leave again.

strawman

I've not done Neidan but some other brand of Chinese practice, I found that the first ' things' that are mentioned, such as the dantian and the the circulation through Ren and Du meridian are very real and tangible once developed. I only found out later as the guy that taught me disapproved of reading this stuff ( at least for beginners), just practice. Them old Chinese wizards knew much more from the human body then the average modern man ( and woman ) can grasp.

yes, for navigating they use electromagnetic field. but for this swarming behavior me thinks there's something else at play, just like fish can swarm and form balls These birds swarmed here in the neighborhood, for decades I've observed them. then the big trees they used were cut back in height and the birds left us.

When I pay close attention, I am still engaging with that particular bum, at least it seems that way to me.

no need to say sorry, you're helpful. I knew ther was no way to cut off one user but if ever come big changes that would be a nice addition. Should have looked at the settings before, will never get handy with these sort of things. I've cut off the sound from the notifications button, much better

That is a nice way of putting it. Thank you.