Earl Grey

The translations aren't bad as they capture a spirit of De, though it comes across more like a Hallmark greeting card inspiration or something from the Shambhala pocket library to make it more digestible. Still, pretty good work there, so don't be too modest calling yourself an amateur, it's a translation I'm sharing now with a few friends and family who will appreciate it better as it speaks to them much better outside of its original context as the original context wouldn't resonate as much with them as they have no background or interest in classics, but enjoy a few nice quotes here and there.

Something we should be reminded of before we go any further:

Be nice to staff in markets: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/04/04/825916029/comic-grocery-workers-are-essential-and-feeling-the-strain

Noam Chomsky on coronavirus: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/04/noam-chomsky-coronavirus-pandemic-prevented-200403113823259.html

Wang Liping in his Dragon Gate book and Chen Tuan both experienced this, when in dream state meditation, they were taken by a green woman who brought them into a private chamber for learning to understand what the TTC actually meant as too many commentaries and scholars from both established schools and self-taught idiots were no closer to truth and understanding what was actually said than someone's finger on earth is when believing that they are pointing towards Alpha Centauri but upon closer inspection is pointing at Mercury.

He will say anything to look better and justify is action and inaction as being part of an imaginary master plan that his followers and supporters believe that he has. If one looks at the actions themselves in retrospect empty of his boastful words, it all looks quite ridiculous, but his acolytes will keep trumpeting him and justifying him like a gospel of coprophages. Look at how George W. Bush's supporters have forgotten him but were the loudest and most vocal at the time of his regime. Nixon of course has his apologists, but we need not go there as the man was a miserable little pile of secrets and insecurities.

Yes, tsk tsk, just like how science is used to do all sorts of things disproving some of the sillier ideas posted here... 🤠

FYI, Seasonal Affective Disorder studies show that people with excess daylight and almost no night time are more prone to suicide, as seen in Alaska and some Nordic countries. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/brain-babble/201501/reverse-seasonal-affective-disorder-sad-in-the-summer

Makasih, teman-saya.

Ah, I thought you were still back in Europe as you mentioned you were living there; didn't think you returned to Malaysia already. I have friends in Kuching and KL, so please take care of yourselves...over here, being ethnic Chinese isn't helping me either as they don't distinguish between Chinese heritage and Chinese mainlanders here....

Sorry, where is here in Europe for you now? Belgium, was it?

And all this time, people thought I was wasting my time training in the internal arts and strength to perfect health, longevity, and martial technique. It is going to come in more useful now as fights are going to go beyond arguments over hoarding at the market. Getting way more dangerous everywhere now...

Over 3,000 now. https://www.rappler.com/nation/256900-coronavirus-cases-philippines-april-3-2020

Honestly, pausing even for a minute is great. You're also doing a shorter version of Gurdjieff's 24-hour rule that he takes before responding to anyone. Your scapegoat feeling actually is eerily similar to mine, but makes no surprise because that highlights our karmic issue our conflict brought out for us. If it weren't for our conflict, then hey, we could have continued further down the spiral. As for the beta-test--it works. Like I said, Gurdjieff did it in a similar manner too.

Nice observations. I admit honestly some days I'm indifferent, other days I feel like helping, and it all depends on where I'm at in my training. I of course have my moments of stupidity and anger--remember, our first interaction here, you and I got off on the wrong foot and then became friends. So hey, people can change and sometimes it's easier when one or both sides or all sides figure something out because we have to meet partway.

2,633 cases in the Philippines now: https://www.rappler.com/nation/256766-coronavirus-cases-philippines-april-2-2020 Also, unique in the Philippines is that the Vice-President is elected separately from the President. Duterte has a contemptuous relationship, to put it mildly, with the VP. https://www.rappler.com/nation/256769-nbi-urged-probe-robredo-helping-frontliners-competing-government-coronavirus-response Amusing, given that many people fear death from hunger over dying from coronavirus--more broken promises. https://www.rappler.com/newsbreak/in-depth/256695-poor-filipinos-fear-death-from-hunger-more-than-coronavirus

I will assume good intentions even if my view of his time as admin is lukewarm, but hey, moving forward, things can be better. What I read there in the PPJ from CT was that he was one of a few people here who wanted to use the opportunity to nudge you to dial things back a few notches, and what I read there from you was that the thread is for technical discussion only, no bringing up other things in that thread. As for bax44, he has his views on current events, though I wouldn't bother with referring to your cultivation skills to deal with him since it's like talking about one's battle scars in Afghanistan and how that made someone a wounded warrior when the topic is why people are getting sick, as though you're indicating you have insight because you've experienced every illness due to surviving a war. It's nice, but it might end up confusing some people even if the discussion ends up being irritating with some of the things other people say, as absurd as they may be. Okay, let me share a few things here I've learned about my recent history with trying to put up threads to ban Everything and @gendao. I'm tagging him because maybe he'll share some insight about what we learned from our conflict on top of what I said. Let me first say that I'm trying to reach out to you here publicly for everyone else's benefit too, otherwise, I'd stick with PM. I also want to say that as angry and hostile as I was towards gendao, a few people offered me patience, understanding, and considered what I felt, and were willing to overlook the really nasty things I said and did. I haven't hidden or edited those posts because they serve as a reminder to me how stupid I was, and I personally feel people here want to understand and get along with you if you give them a chance. Here is a clip I will use for reference for my next example: In this clip, a very powerful necromancer (or Devil Forgemaster as he is called) is talking with the ship captain about his desires. His main desire is to destroy humanity because it's rotten and people are rude and not worth it. The captain counters that he obviously has met some good people, and doesn't doubt Isaac's power. The captain then notes something significant: with all his power, he could do a lot better trying to teach and improve humanity than he possibly could by simply giving up on them and exterminating everyone. By that token, I believe that with your skill, you could potentially teach people to be better instead of throwing them to the side for pissing you off. You and I didn't start on the right foot, but we managed to do okay after. Another example, since you love Zhan Zhuang almost as much as I do. Recently, I was meditating on how to deal with this and it came to me that this forum is like Zhan Zhuang: every time I want to reply to each shitpost targeted at me, I have given up and dropped my arms instead of making it the full hour or so. Every time someone is provoking me, I treat it the way that I would an itch and refusing to scratch it until it goes away on its own so that I can get my full standing time. Those are two approaches that I have explored recently. As for what LL says here, he's trying to reach out, and yeah, the forum isn't in great shape, but why not try to do a little better by working a little of your magic and possibly even teaching a bit, if even directly from your PPJ? Just a few thoughts. I do see you and see your potential. Even if that same patience and understanding wasn't offered to me here before, I offer it to you in hopes of appealing to the part of you that will grow tired of the same dance here. See you in the PPJ.

Translation: LL doesn’t mind GSM if he would be a lot nicer and isn’t going to caste a stone or a vote. Translation: LL is trying to be amicable, and if it’s not interpreted that way, he won’t force it. Translation: ST is showing empathy and wishing GSM would understand potential self-harm. Translation: ST is explaining his view that the current course of action is harmful. Translation: ST genuinely wishes well even if the message is not understood. Translation: Hannes is saying everyone is a little crazy, but everyone is worth being given the benefit of a doubt and have better moments, calling for acceptance and compassion. Translation: dawei is praising GSM skill but notes that self-reflection might be a good skill to cultivate. Did not quote Nungali posts, but the summary there is that Nun is doing verbal Aikido and playing the mirror of the joker, hoping GSM will either eventually see the point he and others are trying to make, and how others see what GSM is saying. Now why is Earl Grey providing translations? Because I am using this as a preamble to what I wish to say about GSM. First, I will not vote because I already learned from prior threads I had created in the heat of anger and error. The lesson i learned was that asking to ban someone is the opposite of the spirit of community and becomes as dangerous as having a gated community that creates a sense of separation. Anyone who wishes to stay or go must decide for themselves. Second, the community as a whole for what I read may not be at GSM’s standards of skill and expectations of conduct, but it is not necessarily hateful towards him. If anything, what they want is to get along. Here are some obstacles that keep coming up though: nasty reactions to a post or bringing up the same issue in an unrelated thread, and GSM is not the only one doing this. He is fully capable of having a good conversation and dialogue. It is also evident some people are interested in engaging him. Might I request to GSM as a friend and to all of you as a friend as well to instead consider taking a break from sniping? GSM, perhaps we could stick to the PPJ section for a couple weeks and focus on cultivation there as everyone else avoids sniping, and return, GSM, is it not unreasonable to ask you to consider posting after you’ve met your daily cultivation goals first? I find when i stand in Zhan Zhuang for at least three hours that I am not bitchy, but then there are times when I’m being blunt that people misread as being angry and vile, for example, Heartbreak. So this way, you’ll have more accomplishment and not need to have a hair trigger reaction. Otherwise, Gurdjieff would usually not respond to things that inflamed his passion like anger for at least 24 hours. I obviously can’t tell you what to post and not to post, but I’m attempting to appeal to a possible exchange and see who is willing to give these suggestions a try. If not, we all have the freedom to stay or go, ignore, keep doing the dance of fighting words, and so on so forth, but until a mod comes, like it or not, we can’t stop anyone from posting crap nor can anyone be surprised if someone posts crap and they get shit thrown back in response (referring to the forum in general, not GSM or anyone specifically).

Healthcare professionals speak out and get fired while idiots keep saying this is no different from the flu. https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/doctors-online-reveal-bold-loud-coronavirus-truths-200401130420720.html

"Shoot [quarantine violators] dead" says Duterte. Remind anyone of martial law? https://www.rappler.com/nation/256705-duterte-orders-troops-shoot-kill-coronavirus-quarantine-violators

Here's an idea I saw over a decade ago in another forum that I think would be good here. The rules are simple: 1) Say one nice thing about the person who posted before you. 2) Say one nice thing about another member on the forum whom you can nominate after and tag them to participate in the chain. 3) The next person posting says something nice about you and nominates someone else. The chain then continues. Example: As this is the first post, there is no one before me, so I will consider Sean the person before me because he started the forum. @sean has great taste in books and is a funny, chill kind of guy whom I probably would have loved smoking hookah with in college and talking late at night about philosophy. Next, I tag the person whom I nominate to say something nice about and follow up in the chain, who in this case is @silent thunder. @silent thunder is a very compassionate and understanding guy who tries to see the good in everyone, no matter what and has good, long posts trying to pull back and see the bigger picture. 4. The next post does not have to be whom you tag--anyone can jump in and post something nice about the person before them and nominate someone else. For example, if the next person posting is neither Sean nor silent thunder but someone like Taomeow or Nungali, for example, they would then say something nice about the person posting above them, then tag someone else and say something nice about them. 5. No passive-aggressive comments--genuine and sincere wishes only. Let's see how well this experiment works.

Sifu Terry can also bring you in to his group streaming sessions and arrange to help you get your FP practice started.

Interestingly enough, I heard there were connections between Falun Dafa and Shen Yun, the performing arts troupe that mails brochures to everyone and their mom...

I will also add that considering how powerful the practice is, he's teaching it at a huge discount--you can ask him what he had to do to learn it in China.

This prospective member, who is one of many people awaiting approval to post here, @Takingcharge, sent me this and I am posting it on his behalf because @sean isn’t approving new people’s requests to use the board. Answer on this thread or PM the user himself to help out. So apologies if its a bit messy, im writing it on my phone and i dont really know how to ditscuss and describe This very consisely so its a bit of a mess. so im not a qigong guy at all - only experience i have is some basic mindfullness and self hypnosis processes. I came here kind of desperately because i heard qigong worked directly with the nervous system and that you guys have all kinds of mappings and frameworks. So all that i know is what i read here and bruce frantsiz videos om youtube So went to a hypnotherapist and did a trance process and it did something to my nervous system - this has been going on since november I somehow activated something in my nervous system locally and manually while the rest stayed untouched. This created all kinds of havoc. it was making me ungrounded, very clouded, eye pain and heavy stomach cramps. I felt under attack by my own body during the hypnosis process i was doing a visualisation process while activating a strong feeling state - looking back now - during this i deeply tensed and untensed the muscles (and probably the nerves) at the base of my skull , back of my spine and back of my upper legs. that seems to be kind of one and the same tract and that seems to be the tract it runs down. maybe this tensing untensing is what caused it to activate locally there because it activated those nerve groups and held my focus. so il just describe what is happening: so either nervous system electricity activity or actual energy, would start moving down the back of my legs (maybe just starting at the base of my skull moving down) , moving down my ankles - going underneat my footsoles - up on the front side move over my belly, solar plexus erea and get kind of stuck at my forehead / hairline . and it would only run down the middle part. The middle part of the back of my leg. so not the sides of my legs, it would move up over the middle/center part of my shins , upperlegs , the middle of my belly - over my belly button but a little braoder then that. i would feel it in the middle of my under arm and i think i would feel it mainly in the middle 2 fingers, ring and middle finger etc it would burnat the back of my upper legs, alot under my foot soles. lowerfeet/shins on the front side my ankles felt like it had a circle around it the electricity extending outwards very strange to feel. i would get severe stomach cramps as soon as it moved over my belly. then all around my head i felt huge pressure, in my head pressure. there was a weird huge crown around my head like it was actually it extending outwards. and other very strong nerve sensations . it created headaches and my eyes would feel like falling closed and staying like that. i also had severe muscle twitching everywhere looking back now what i think has happened i had activated manually a different stream of electricity locally in a part of my nervous system - while the rest of my nervous system was doing different things - it would move against the rest of thr nervous system and it would fight eachother - i had severe muscle spasms burning for months. top of my scalp and bottom of my feet is where it would collide i think, my footsoles, and the moving up on the front side had huge resistance as well , i think alot of the muscle twitching and huge burning and all the crazyness was it running up agaisnt huge resistance because it isnt supposed to run like that. somtimes it would actually win and go over my scalp and it would go down my back then i would turn unnaturally cold ice cold. and then later heat would shoot back up my back and id became fully warm again. i would constantly get icecold and somewhere turn warm again it woukd constantly be doing battle so my current state is - the intensity lessened. because it mostly seem to have won so no severe muscle spasms much anymore . it now flows very unpleasantly down the back of my legs, up the frontside of my body is even more unpleasant. it hardens my belly it creates headaches, and eye pain, i think the eye pain is mainly because it gets stuck at my hairline head era , whne it moves over the scalp down the back it diminishes and my eyes get lighter. - but it feels really off and unnatural and very unpleasant. i have no idea what to do about this? any advice, ideas, suggestions anyhing really is very welcome i fear i somehow ruined my body by the way for a while it would also shoot insidemy belly instead of over it - and it would go straight up on the iside of me and push agaisnt the top of my scalp from the inside. i dont really think its energy because from what ive read thats suppsoed to feel really good and envigorating, so its probably nervoussystem or not. i really dont know