Earl Grey

I handle tuition for my own students simply: I ask for $1k a month to meet 1-2x a week, and then I ask them what they are able and willing to pay, given that not everyone can afford that much (and yet others are willing to offer much more). Some pay less, some pay what I ask for, but I give them the same care and attention. What is more important to me is commitment, sincerity, and respect.

Yes, but do their kids need to eat at Michelin 3-star establishments and clothe their kids in Gucci and Louis Vitton?

We're fine--a few people died though as you can look up Tropical Storm Nalgae. My home was a disaster--I may need to move actually. Hoping that the next storm this week is just typical rain. You end up developing a cultivator and Daoist attitude out of necessity when things like this happen. Whether someone with technical skills can impart this in addition to the practice is probably the best way to get back to OP here. Have a good weekend and good week ahead everyone!

Panda Express and McDonald’s szechuan sauce or actual Chinese and Taiwanese food? Chicken Tikka Masala or actual Chicken Masala? Taco Bell and Chipotle or the cuisines from Tijuana to Yucatan? I do enjoy all of the above, actually, but I don’t pretend they’re what they say they are. They’re a nice offshoot, good for what they’re imitating.… …but then again, Chicago Millennial popup New Orleans gumbo restaurants is an offense to many Cajuns in NOLA. Food is religion there.

There’s a study on how the Dutch approach flooding versus the Filipinos: the former is a “everyone can drown, so let’s work to prevent that” versus the latter “let everyone else (especially the poor or minority language groups in other provinces) drown first and hope we don’t”. It’s 4 inches/10cm high from the poor foundation below now. The dogs and I are upstairs still. Thanks!!

Too late. It’s a state of calamity now and the entire downstairs is flooded. We’re stranded and unable to evacuate. Thankfully we still have power in my neighborhood and some Internet.

Do you want to pay the price of a Rolex for an imitation Rolex while someone who can appraise it tells you you’ve been ripped off? Do you get mad when they tell you it’s not real and you paid more than an actual Rolex? Or is it just nice to show like fake Gucci bags in China?

Well, as you and @freeform are happy to highlight bunkum and hokum, you certainly do thankless work. He’s also not earning me any money debunking him, so I have to prioritize. We have another typhoon now all weekend and my house has leaks, so allocating ChiDragon more time than I already have is not a priority. Hope all is well in your neighborhood and with your practice!

Automatically garbage: she endorses Stephen Watson, whose Tai Chi is abysmal.

The same conversation that’s been had for years with ChiDragon about ZZ is going to repeat itself and the only thing people need to know is he doesn’t know ZZ and simply explaining it even if you’re a qualified teacher, be it from Lam Lam Chuen, another Yi Quan lineage, or even Damo and Adam, will be ignored. Just carry on, and personally, I recommend concerned people like @Shadow_self not waste time trying to explain to ChiDragon since it’s only going to give carpal tunnel syndrome from repeating the same explanation to someone who doesn’t want to listen. Have a good weekend everyone.

This statement made it clear that ChiDragon, who is semi-bilingual and positions himself on this forum as a font of Daoist knowledge, had obviously never made a serious reading of readily available Daoist writings, and clearly could not have received any sort of oral education in Daoism. For those who are new to these things, here is an analogy: not having heard of xing and ming practice in Daoism is a bit like not having heard of a concept like "communion" in Catholicism or "kosher" in Judaism. These concepts are utterly fundamental and they are widely known to people with only a cursory knowledge of Daoism. If a man who wanted to teach you about Catholicism yelled in all caps "I HAVE NEVER HEARD OF COMMUNION IN ANY CATHOLIC TEACHINGS" would you believe anything else he had to say? If the answer is that you would, well, then ChiDragon has many lies that he would love to pour into your ears. Anyway, there is a story to see here. Please note that the above exclamation was made by ChiDragon in on November 13, 2013. Not even two months later, January 2, 2014,ChiDragon wrote the following post (bold added by me): Somehow ChiDragon went from yelling about the nonexistence of this subject to acting as its representative in just seven weeks. This was merely the start of a worsening trend, probably one predicated by untreated mental illness. I feel pity for ill individuals who need treatment, but I do not think pity requires we be politely silent and watch disasters unfold (especially if that means watching the a disaster repeat itself). This disaster of lying-mixed-with-false-spiritual-teachings continued to unfold on January 2, 2014, when ChiDragon suddenly began presenting himself as a representative of Quanzhen Daoist (全真道, often called "Complete Reality Daoism") teachings. He wrote the following: "DCXM" is an acronym that ChiDragon invented during this time period. It stands for "Dual Cultivation of Xing and Ming." Recall that two months prior he had "NEVER HEARD OF XING GONG OR MING GONG in any Chinese Classics." Now he was teaching it. The next day, January 3, 2014, he wrote (bold text again is my addition): Obviously, there is no way that ChiDragon could go from "I HAVE NEVER HEARD OF XING OR MING" to "following the principles of the Quanzhen Dao" in a mere seven weeks. At the time, if I recall correctly, he did not even live in China, but somewhere in the suburban or rural United States. Even if you lived on Mt. Wudang or Mt. Qincheng, you would likely not be able to find a qualified teacher who was willing to transmit introductory xing-ming cultivation instructions to you within seven weeks of meeting you, and you would not be able to tell if this teacher had given you genuine instructions or not in such a short amount of time. ChiDragon most certainly had not spent seven weeks wandering from temple to temple in the mountains of China. He had, at best, done some clicking around Baidu, before inventing his own "practice," stealing Daoist terminology, and inventing an acronym for it. So, when exactly did ChiDragon come up with the lie that is "DCXM?" It turns out he did that on November 21, 2013. That is, to be exact, not seven weeks but eight days after screaming "I HAVE NEVER HEARD OF XING OR MING." 8. Fucking. Days. On November 21, ChiDragon created a new thread entitled "Taoist Important Thoughts and Canon." In this post he literally copy-pasted blocks of text from Baidubaike, which is the online encyclopedia portion of the Chinese search engine, Baidu. It was only another week before ChiDragon began offering advise about cultivation in his thread. It started with: Egged along by some too-easily-impressed-by-a-bit-of-Chinese board members, ChiDragon continued his descent into megalomania. By November 27, 2013, somehow he had magically developed enough expertise to begin offering a detailed roadmap of what "DCXM" practice involves. He wrote: Just a month after not knowing what the words xing and ming mean, by December 11, 2013, ChiDragon had lost totally touch with reality, making statements about what an enlightened mind thinks, implying he personally understands these things. This is, speaking plainly, delusional false enlightenment psychosis. The reason I am making this post is to make sure this record stands right alongside the new offerings of "ReturnDragon." Newcomers, it would be extremely dangerous for you to follow the "Daoist" teachings of a mentally ill person like ChiDragon.It is, certainly, a tragedy that he is insane, and I would be overjoyed if he had a massive turn of fortune in this life that allows him to return to sanity. However, since that has not happened yet and he is back again giving out terrible qigong and neigong advice, I feel a harsh warning needs to be made. Here is what he wrote about the "true mind" on Dec 11: ChiDragon did not limit his campaign of lies and false teaching to the above thread. His new month-old "DCXM" obsession immediately began spilling all over the forum (he had over 7,000 posts) and soon he was using an expert's voice to make blanket pronouncements about the entire study of Daoist internal alchemy (also known as "内丹/neidan"). Nine months after "discovering" the concept of xing-ming on Baidu's encyclopedia, on August 4, 2014, he wrote: To make another analogy for newcomers, telling people that he knows what is the "best method to cultivate the 'internal [elixir]'" less than a year after screaming that he did not know about xing and ming would be like a person on a Buddhism forum telling you he knows the best way to reach enlightenment just eight months after screaming "I HAVE NEVER HEARD ABOUT THE NOBLE EIGHTFOLD PATH IN ANY BUDDHIST SUTRA." When you encounter a man like this, beware. He is on a downward spiral, and as they say, "misery loves company." He does not want to drown alone, and he is actively recruiting naive, gullible, credulous people to drag down with him. The saddest thing about such a descent is how much will and stubbornness is involved. The more you try to stop him, the more he slams his foot onto the gas pedal. Part of this illness seems to be a perverse notion that plowing ahead no matter how much other people disagree with you proves you are right. Catastrophe for such a person is not merely unavoidable; it has already arrived. I am content to finish this post with a final quote from ChiDragon which should suffice to make it extremely clear just how deluded and (to a practitioner who follows any of his advice) dangerous he is. On August 4, 2014 he declared himself to be a realized being. He wrote: Self-deception that has reached stratospheric levels is merely a pity. Stratospheric self-deception that attempts to blaze like a sun and redefine clearly established facts in order to aggrandize a malignant-tumor-like ego and create a following is something for which the word "crime" is probably not too light. In conclusion: A self-declared realized being now using the name "ReturnDragon" has returned to the forum promulgate a vision of Daoist philosophy and practice whose foundation is built upon fantasy, dishonesty, and a desperate need for attention and affirmation. I strongly urge: Do not be a victim. Do not be an enabler. Do not let yourself be hurt. Do not let yourself be an unwitting assistant in another man's harmful behavior. 祝 道安

Balancing on a wooden board and claiming it ZZ and arguing everyone else is wrong.

Just a counterpoint about people's teachers: "By the fruits, ye shall be known." I may have stated this already, but it bears emphasis and re-emphasizing because it's so important that looking at one's students rather than one's teachers says more about what is taught. I get you're fond of your teachers and respect them. I also know that like the late John Chang, everyone will look for a certain teacher for the suuuuuper zecret techn kneeck! You do fine for us to assess you, your practice, lineage, community, and system--we all are representatives whether we like it or not because for better or for worse, you are the public link to your studies.

In Tibetan Yoga and the Secret Doctrine, one of the signs of a superior man is to take any technique--incomplete or not--and be able to make something good out of it. The opposite of this virtue is to have something complete and good and be able to achieve nothing good out of it. Quantifying some of their claims is something I agree might need to be done, though the two questions about this are if 1) they are willing, 2) how they'd even be able to do so. I've mentioned that having someone with a PR background make suggestions, but they believe it is fine as is. I personally feel if they're going to quantify something that to many seems esoteric like magic, go by a traditional definition as emphasized by the user Zhongyongdaoist: magic, like magi from the the three wise men, means wisdom. The study of wisdom and the esoteric studies might be a better way of presenting their work, but how they choose to market themselves and what they present is their decision. Notwithstanding, I maintain my default stance on all practices as quoted by Robert Anton Wilson: "Be agnostic about everything to save yourself heartbreak." Having gone through a few scummy teachers but still being able to get some good even from the worst of them and a lot of good from the least worst of them, I will say there are a number of things I don't necessarily agree with, but I've at least benefited from both discussions with Neirong and the one technique he made available to me as a foundation. I can't comment on the whole course as I haven't done it, but we shall see.

I have no quarrel with you three @freeform @Neirong @Shadow_self, but I do find no technical difference between an avatar and a curated public image of an individual, be it Damo Mitchell or Bill Cosby, and the actual individual behind that persona. Avatar or public persona, show me their work and their students, friends, enemies, and how they treat the working class and animals, and I’ll decide what to make of them. For what it’s worth, I’ve done Neirong’s 100-Day challenger meditation as their foundation technique and can vouch for its impact on all my practices.

And Uyghurs and Tibetans in their concentration camps don’t exist because not only do we not see them, they’re being hidden from us. Out of sight? Out of mind? Good New Age bookstore Buddhist with Om tattoos subscribed to some macrobiotic recipe channel on YouTube! Enlightened because we bury our heads in the sand and everything is fine until someone dongchims us (https://www.the-sun.com/lifestyle/travel-old/153374/dong-chim-is-the-bizarre-south-korean-game-where-children-are-allowed-to-poke-you-in-the-bum/)

Solipsism.

Steve is a jerk and bully too. Anyone who had worked with him talks about trying to show off and basically setting rules he doesn’t follow then thinking he’s tough. This is a common martial arts bully tactic: tell people not to punch in the face, but you punch their face. Tell them to defend against your punch and then you kick them.

Even with the stories I know of him being an abhorrent person, these self-aggrandizing claims remind me of a particular kind of con artist I’ve encountered before. Yes, I’ve met internal workers (not artists) who make grandiose claims but can’t back it up. They remind me of homeless bums who talk about how great they are and how nobody can recognize it. Frantzis has now crossed into this territory of con artist, pathological liar, megalomaniac, and insecure bully. People continue to follow him in spite of what is known and only quote from members here who praised him without realizing these members are hardly realized or developed internally to make these appraisals.

Right, we’re the problem, not animal abusers, pedophiles, warmongers, and so on. Frantzis is problematic and it’s “our” fault according to you. Surgeon general’s warning: solipsism is dangerous for your health and everyone else’s sanity.

www.authenticneigong.com

This would be the fourth instance then. He either doesn’t listen or never learns.

k