Earl Grey

It specifies in each exercise. The seated meditations from basic meditations 1-3 have their own number of minimum repetitions while the MSW series is 7 repetitions. If you don’t have the DVDs it is best you watch them first because these are answered there and also in this thread multiple times.

I think this is actually a much better idea than the one I suggested, and probably one most people would be happiest with then.

FYI I am not part of their group nor do I practice what they do (see on the side panel that I list my practices). This thread is about trying new things for the forum and I was actually trying to suggest something as a means of allowing people to bury the hatchet with those guys and give them a playground for themselves here, and to avoid threads being derailed by the topic or people's reactions to them bringing it up. I'm just brainstorming here while trying to outgrow old paradigms that led to unnecessary conflict before and also to maintain the focus of the site.

Makes me wonder if a section just for Mo Pai should be made for all mentions and discussion of the topic to be there, all things considered. Anyway, moving forward...

Here's a thought: should there be a section for reporting scams and historical archives of past scam attempts from banned members or sources that have proven to be frauds?

That reminds me of what Phillip K. Dick wrote about in the original Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? that inspired Blade Runner. The world went to hell and the few animals that remained were signs of wealth and luxury, and many had synthetic imitations to show they had pets, as a foreshadowing to the Replicants for humans. McKenna is a fantastic mind and I can read his books and listen to his lectures day after day. I do not believe this is the kind of cybernetic world he imagined or the resurgence of the Divine Feminine he and Robert Anton Wilson spoke about, but I do believe that they both still hit upon it with frightening insight that we would do best to revisit before moving forward.

Payment might be a bad incentive especially as the level of skill is hard to measure. That payment should also in my opinion go to funding the site's costs. Here's an idea: a volunteer gift drive from members to offer what they can, from donations to even an illustration or calligraphy or free lesson in whatever, or a postcard--whatever, something to show appreciation. I'd offer for example free Akashic readings at the very least and an advanced Zhan Zhuang lesson from Xin Yi Liuhebafa Yi Quan for anyone who does the mod stint if we went this route.

Yes, as Sean says, the apolitical stance can be dangerous--it's the equivalent of not caring as long as it doesn't affect you, until they come knocking on your door. I'll quote something my uncle used to tell me: "Stand for something or fall for everything".

I can't really agree with what you've said and don't know how you've arrived at this conclusion, but I've already stated my points from a spiritual and philosophical viewpoint and from a cultural appropriation stance in earlier posts here. Given that, I'll just have to say that we can agree to disagree on how we view New Age and leave it at that as far as I am concerned since I've got nothing new to add on top of what's already been said (and it would also violate the three-post limit that I give myself if a discussion doesn't look like it will go any further or learn anything new). PS: the Sport Yoga I speak of is used by many New Agers--just go to Santa Monica or Orange County, and go around Metro Manila as well. You'll even see it in Bali and Singapore, as I have. So there goes your point saying it's not New Age--it is appropriated by many of them, but a lot of sporty types don't necessarily do it for things beyond fitness, if Diamond Dallas Page Yoga is an example of non-spiritual yoga, even though it is still appropriated.

No issues at all. Pick up and play with the forms and volumes (though you may enjoy Volume 7 more if you have a foundation in Volume 2, but Sifu Terry can respond better). One member, ridingtheox, started with Volume 4 before doing the earlier volumes and he was just fine.

Thank you. New Agers to me are welcome to come here, so long as they are more of the former, the "spontaneous modern expression of an archetypal syncretic impulse" rather than the latter "shallow personal indulgence without intention for real depth of transformation". Dialogue is good, but talking over one another and indulging in the authority of one's own words rather than considering what someone says and where it comes from is not so good.

I think it is ridiculous to equate the Right and Left here. The "Right" as they have been represented here on the forum by primarily Far Right and the "Left" on this forum who have opposed them, and even then, there are still very few actual Leftists. The "Left" as characterized by the Far Right is as Sean earlier said closer to being Center Right. Who is calling for a "humanitarian border" and denying climate change while seeking unilateralism and supporting a demagogue with narcissistic personality disorder? Caging children and separating them from families, raiding immigrant families without proper documentation and ending aid that would actually help fight the root of the problems in Central America that causes refugees to flee to the United States? This is the Far Right and the hate they are promoting while bafflingly joining a forum on philosophical studies and spiritual growth is quite strange. The "Left" or rather the opponents of those views are by no means equal because they are not ignoring the science of climate change, they are not characterizing immigrants or Muslims as terrorists and vermin, they are not supporting a tyrant who has been disregarding the rule of law and has a revolving door of Yes Men to fuel his megalomaniacal tendencies and Ego-Fear complex. Again: The Left is not doing anything remotely close to what the Right has been doing for the past two years on this forum. The Left is only more vocal now than they ever have been because they are not going to be gaslit, trivialized, insulted, or ignored and ridiculed, especially when one of the prime instigators of that behavior was one mod who I do not need to name as they have already been identified several times in this thread.

Or we could go with another Platonic ideal of the Philosopher King, the Noble Tyrant who is one who is best suited for the job but doesn't want it, yet takes it because anyone else would be inferior and bring more disaster. They would lead others until someone better comes along and thank them for taking over and relieving them of the burden. I have pondered being a mod now that the old guard is out as I do not have the good reputation of someone like Taomeow or the levelheadedness of thelerner. But also, frankly I will say I am not objective, I have a very traditional bent due to my training and the most modern outlook I have is that of an anarchist 1970s punk rocker. Let the Philosopher King come forward because the job needs to be done, not because they want power, and may he or she wield it responsibly as we give him or her at the very least our gratitude.

I will speak of one good thing for New Age systems though in spite of my criticisms: they at the very least introduce people to common vocabulary and interests across paths. Depth, however, is another matter entirely. I do have friends who are New Agers, but for them, they are not interested in depth, they're more interested in spirit work than soul work, and that differentiation is something that isn't even anything I've seen in Taoism, nor is it unique to spiritual paths, but heavily derived from Jungian psychology. Interestingly enough, soul work is more important for the common reason I see people gravitate towards New Age practices: emotional well-being and the innate need for man to find meaning beyond This world and into the arms of their gods. It's worth repeating: spirit work takes you high (and you experience drug-like highs as well), but you will be like a dandelion in the wind; soul work makes you go deep like a tree rooting before it grows, a foundation as below so above and as above so below.

Open the invitations every quarter. A lot of people I spoke with would have loved to join the mod team but didn't even know that admin needed more volunteers. I was invited by PM last year and it was already too late for me to join because it was later than when I was willing to commit and I had lost interest then with that team.

Speaking from another vantage point outside of being a practitioner--I speak as an Asian and Asian American here. When I refer to New Agers and disdain for them, I'm referring to the suburban whiteness of yoga and how there's cultural appropriation that is now commercialized and diminished into a fitness regiment. Not to say there is no sincerity, for there is--I just won't go looking for depth there, especially when someone talks about the lower dantian as needing to balance one's masculine and feminine and demonstrates a spectacular level of ignorance and zero understanding of neigong or TCM. Besides: I've held disdain for the New Agers since I started seeing blondes on campus wearing bindis and giving themselves mystical names (Sanskrit or Japanese names) while telling everyone to chant "Om" into their water and telling others to go vegan if they want to be true "yogis". And this is from me who used to think shouting at Hare Krishnas begging at airports before was mean. There's no problem getting information from bookstores or even checking out what's online--it's the self-appointed authority people give themselves I am referring to, if that wasn't clear above. One notorious practice that many seem to find themselves self-designated authorities on besides the dantian is Zhan Zhuang. The naive can be naive as you embrace their sincerity, but it can also cause serious damage when people do things like one individual who tried to combine reverse breathing with Mo Pai breathing and Flying Phoenix not long ago. Now if they're receptive to feedback and help from people who actually are able to help (and in some cases willing to pay the price for it because true mastery is not free), then it's fine for me as well.

Look up the Vedic concept of the Upaguru to understand the formless teacher.

How about one to commemorate Marblehead by calling it Wondering Taoists?

I think studying on your own for the philosophy is fine. I am referring to people taking a New Age approach and not actually grokking Taoism in itself but retrofitting New Age ideas into Taoism. Their participation is fine in Taoist threads, but when they take a fundamental approach to it to suit New Age or Christian or “Buddhist” teachings (quotes to emphasize they don’t seem to grok Buddhism too strongly either), and start talking over others, it becomes harder to have a serious discussion when people don’t want to actually learn or like being pointed out that their understanding of basic foundations of the philosophy are misunderstood. As for systems and lineage, I don’t mind people doing self-study from DVDs, but I’ve seen more than a few people who piece together ideas from threads and somehow think they’re masters of alchemy. The formal study i talk about (and realize I should have specified earlier) is thus not the philosophical part because the site itself can help with that, what I refer to is formal study of martial or qigong and neigong.

Is it too much to ask (or perhaps too hard to identify) all the people with New Age appropriation of Taoist practices that use Taoist terms but aren’t actually Taoist be assigned their own section? They could call it New Age Taoist (NAT) or something like that. My guess is that they’ll still hang out in Taoist threads but they tend to say some very funny things showing their self-taught and self-assured views derived from being YouTube and pirated PDF masters. It is hard to have serious discussion when someone who has tons of DVDs comes in and starts refuting people who’ve actually had formal training in the systems they talk about as one example of a NAT.

Well, if bothsideism takes into consideration that what a lot of misinformed people call "Left" is closer to center right without actually being Left and "Right" is already Far Right (but none of them will ever admit that), then the concept of bothsideism might make sense...but it's a stretch. It's a stretch because it's a false comparison to equate all the shouting and vitriol, the stonewalling, and us versus them mentality as being the same thing because they come from a different place, where one promotes the philosophy of Otherness towards immigrants and Muslims or critics of their views, and the "opposite" (referring to center right with pop culture self-identifying but not actually being left) is mostly identifying what's wrong with that hateful rhetoric, although they do venture into some funny territory like saying all classic pieces of art pre-Wokeness (The Breakfast Club, Archie comics, Friends, and All in the Family to name a few) are nothing more than abortive filth. So no, bothsideism is false comparison and to equate the hateful rhetoric and subcultures that have become the norm from the Far Right is not ever going to be the same as what they call Left, even if both sides shout at each other. Now please continue eliminating the self-serving logic and rationalization that makes people think it's okay to allow the horde of horrible peoples to parade such absurd ideas that equate white nationalism with not being racist and building a border wall with being humanitarian! I'm all for a better place for discourse than to have morbid drivel and misinformation (and even disinformation) so we can focus on Taoism and practice!

Capitalism with kindness is known as social enterprise, where stakeholders have more importance than shareholders, but they both have to work together in order to mutually benefit. One example of social enterprise is where in Cambodia, a place I wrote about when I was doing some freelance journalism is summarized here in the defunct Chicago-based webzine Destra, which I am copying and pasting from the archived site as I do not want people to know my name from the direct link:

Here @wandelaar: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/08/8-chan-mass-shootings-new-zealand-poway/

I think it's appropriate that they should see this because wow, they are tone deaf. Especially because of this: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/08/06/748767807/mass-shootings-can-be-contagious-research-shows Showing off guns at a rally is like handing a Sears catalogue to a sociopath. Anyway for emphasis: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2019/08/06/748778300/a-doctors-insights-into-gun-violence-and-gun-laws-around-the-world