Taomeow

Sorry... didn't mean to scare you under the bed! The classical feng shui/taoist-astrological approach is first and foremost diagnostic and preventive, it's like visiting a doctor, you don't go see a doctor to get a bunch of compliments and "positive affirmations," you go to find out what the potential problems might be. If someone who gets an ECG is told "you have a weak heart valve, it's not life-threatening but you shouldn't lift heavy weights," that's not a prescription for staying in bed, more like for not working as a mover dragging beds around. If one wants to hear "you have a beautiful heart full of love and fragrant like a rose," they don't go to the doctor, they go to a new age positive thinker. But then they'll learn nothing about that congenital valve defect and might unwittingly expose their beautiful hearts to avoidable risks. Taoist tradition is the tradition of caution and care. That's why a traditional reading will focus on warnings and dangers rather than on avoiding "negativity" and saying nice things one wants to hear. "They were careful as someone crossing an iced-over stream.Alert as a warrior in enemy territory.Courteous as a guest.Fluid as melting ice..."

It is specific to the individual chart, of course. As for generic advice -- minding the stars and placing some feng shui fixes in strategic places is good, minding the Grand Duke is important... north-west this time around, keep that part of the house quiet and don't sit facing that direction -- for a fleeting time is fine, but I for one had to rotate my north-west-positioned TV, otherwise, if I sit there watching a movie, I'll "challenge" or "offend" the Grand Duke -- one should never stare boldly and insolently in the eye of a ruler whose mass far exceeds that of all other planets of the Solar System combined. I repositioned my pair of pi yao (Jupiter's pets whose presence curbs his wrath) that were sitting in the west all through 2017, and will spend the next couple of days moving my other protections to appropriate places, I've had them for years and move them every time the yearly stars change. But I have one of those charts that are a lifelong challenge and a continuous work-in-progress. Someone lucky by design may get away with cultivating nothing. Not me. Aspects of self... again, depends on the chart. Qualities to cultivate... I'd say sturdiness under pressure this time. What can oppose a mountain? Nothing. What can appease a mountain? Perseverance. But not of the dumb kind where you are trying to push it aside, or imagine you're Mohammed and it will come to you to do your bidding. Respect for the energies of the world, and restraint in judging them. Yes, qigong is great this year and every year. Dark chocolate is fine, but fat chocolate is better. Most dark chocolate I find too gritty and sort of meh taste-wise because cocoa butter content (far more important than the "darkness" of it) is usually totally insufficient (it gets stolen at production stage, to put it bluntly, just as all those "low-fat" and "fat-free" dairy products are just products of stealing fat plus stupid hype glorifying the theft). RL is no nutritionist though, "antioxidants" are his idea of healthy nutrition, mine is... well, that's for another thread. Briefly, in the year of Double Earth, exercise caution so as not to overnourish the Stomach -- that's sweet flavor in all of its manifestations -- Earth gains weight easily and parts with the gains very reluctantly.

There's a tree on the left they can use, I think one of them is already eyeing it with interest. Of course they would have to fight the wolves to get to it, but when you have to go, you have to go.

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I'm not talking about that dog. I'm talking about this one.

I like mine better too.

It worked! Thank you, dogs providers!

My favorite dog too!

Regarding taoist approach to menstruation, according to my taoist teacher, most of the time it's a non-issue, however there's periods in cultivation (in our school of alchemical taoism specifically, it may be different elsewhere) when the practitioner, upon reaching a certain stage in the process, and only for the duration of that particular stage, must stay away from menstruating women if he's a male (if she's a female, the point in cultivation under consideration will not coincide with her period); stay away from all blood -- don't cut a finger, don't walk by the hospital or a butcher's shop, etc.; abstain from all animal foods for about a week; avoid a particular vegetable that is "meat-like" (which one, I have in my notes, but it only grows in China, so, no worries regarding consuming it accidentally). Also, female cultivators are given detailed instructions as to what to do and not to do in the course of their monthly cycle, and males are advised to follow the same practices. Males are supposed to have cycles too but they aren't obvious to desensitized moderns, which is why their best bet is to piggyback on the wife's cycle and do as she does when she does it, or abstain from doing as she abstains -- let her call the shots and this will improve his health and his cultivation.

Ah, thank you. Had a vision of a dog in his mind in my mind.

No. It is real, but it is not something you can find in any one place, within any one school or sect -- what makes it primordial is its existence before these. Practices that retained taoist fundamentals are scattered across the whole landscape, though some schools and sects lost sight of them completely and got sidetracked into god only knows what. The ones that went with this or that monastic fad of Indo-European origins like vegetarianism or celibacy have nothing whatsoever to do with them. Taoists arranged themselves into monasteries when it became necessary to curb Buddhist monastic land grab and the resulting outrageous competition fueled by money and power -- Buddhist monasteries were exempt from paying imperial taxes but allowed to keep serfs to work their fields, and grew disproportionately fat. The whole monastic doctrine was political and economic in nature, nothing to do with "primordial" anything. Fundamentals? Hetu, Luoshu, wuji, qi, yin-yang, wuxing, bagua, ganying, I Ching. Best explored via a taoist practice. No practice, no understanding, no matter how many books "about" one reads. Don't believe everything you read. Including online. Happy discoveries to you.

This is not taiji, but I can't help thinking that making taiji a commodity might well send it on the way of all other fighting arts... like this one https://www.facebook.com/100013442415101/videos/401787366946007/

Is there life on Mars?

I don't usually go to youtube for that, so I don't maintain a "collection." My teacher posted a couple of applications videos when youtube was young https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WPQJoqmGPo&t=11s As I recall, Chen Xiaowang, Chen Yu, Chen Bing, old Ma Hong, don't remember who else, have some fighting applications videos posted, you can look for them. (Ma Hong's videos were made when he was 85, so worth checking out just to illustrate my earlier point... I don't know if any are subbed, but it's not important -- without practice they won't explain anything anyway to a beginner. Chen Xiaowang has some with subs. )

Ah, got it, thanks. No, you don't go on faith with taiji, once you get the preliminary/beginner work done -- this takes a few years -- you can move on to practice with partners, the more the merrier, and your focus may (and I believe should) shift from basics to applications (though you never stop working on the basics, because there's no bottom to taiji skill.) And you want a teacher who can show you what martial taiji can be down the road, not tell. I was fortunate in that on a number of occasions early on, a hard MA practitioner would come "check out" or even "challenge" my teacher, and I saw what great taiji can do with my own eyes, no faith necessary. At the time it looked like magic to me. Well, some of that "magic" I can now do myself, but I hardly touched two-person drills for ten years before I deemed myself ready. You may be ready sooner, I started late in life, someone younger might progress faster. But please don't rush it if you want the real deal -- not rushing it is part of the deal. With a good teacher, you will get your taiji-as-a-martial-art eventually, but if you want it right away, it is not going to be taiji and it is going to be inferior to almost any other MA, any art where people gain experience working with a partner/opponent. If you want "at least something quickly," don't count on taiji for this. I've met many people who start practicing with a partner too soon, and they don't progress all that much, they get stuck at a very primitive level. And every time I encounter someone who impresses me in push-hands, I ask about their training history, and invariably they will say something like, "don't compete, don't try to win the encounter, let them push you, learn to absorb the force, work on your sensitivity, relax, relax, relax!! -- let them do whatever they want -- relax, relax, relax!! -- let them press and push and pull and grab and jerk and lock and do whatever they want, you want to learn to not tense up anything anywhere in response, this takes two years." Magic number. You start making amazing discoveries if you work with many noncooperating partners like that. I was pretty much famous for being "so soft, so sung" when I only worked with forms, then come two-person drills -- and only by doing them this way did I start discovering where I do tense up when the opponent uses force, where I lose structure and how, and where and how to correct, reset, reset again and again till the body-mind-spirit get it. And once they get it, it's so much fun. No one can do anything, they are exerting supreme effort for nothing. It's mind-blowing how much fun it is. That's another aspect... Working with energies of the world (which is how you come to see your partners) is great fun. Working against the opponent to win, to overcome, to get the satisfaction of being better can't compete with this far as emotional gratification goes. Competition can't compete with this kind of fun. But you would have to experience it to believe it, and that's the only part that requires faith -- that if your mind and spirit are reset to a different frame of reference, your body will discover the kind of fun it didn't know existed -- the thrill of being at home among the energies of the universe, and competent there. But of course this takes a lot longer, and a good teacher (can't emphasize that enough), and the right mindset. Is it worth it? What else is there that's worth being patient for?..

Oh, they're allowed to see your private parts, they're a doctor.

What you describe did happen to me before, so I know better by now -- but this time it was different. I just went to a different tab for a moment, to google something up, go back and the page jumps to another thread and poof goes my post in this one. I have had mysterious no-way-you're-posting-this-Jose episodes on occasion, almost invariably with posts that I would later be likely to have doubts about making public myself... do I really want to expose what I really think/know to whoever might read this?.. But this one was... I mean, it would take the kind of AI (or whoever/whatever ate the post) that can put two and two together, something rare even among humans these days, to perceive it as a cognitive weapon it was. Kudos, AI. Or whatever you were.

Whoa, what has just happened? I wrote the post of the century and just when I was about to hit the "submit" button, the page just went ahead and flipped to the "Talk Trump" thread??? and my post disappeared without a trace!! I shudder thinking of the size of the toe I must have inadvertently stepped on with that one...

That "taiji master" was not a master and had no taiji. Good taiji is rare. Caveat emptor. Some people get very fortunate and find the real thing, but it's a treasure hunt, not a commodity purchase. Don't expect the real thing everywhere they hang the sign. Research, seek out, the real thing. There's no substitutes. Taiji differs from mock-taiji as diamond differs from cubic zirconia. The difference may look like nothing and is everything. Your last paragraph, I don't understand. Could you explain what you mean?

Instant results -- go hard, best results -- go internal, in my experience. With TKD, I learned how to fight/self-defend in 9 months. With taiji, it's a work in progress after 13 years -- but the results, albeit far from "instant," suit me. Currently, I'm yet to meet a hard practitioner (of any level) who wouldn't seem too slow, too obvious, too vulnerable. Their "instant results" are snail-paced from martial taiji perspective. You can literally do anything in the space of time their brain conducts commands to their muscles against all that tense resistance. You read them like an open book -- whereas they can do nothing because they can't read you. There's an interesting rule at work -- anyone tenser than you can't feel you. This is worth repeating. Anyone tenser than you can't feel you. And you can feel everything they are doing before they know they are going to do it. That's a tremendous advantage. Of course a mountain of trained muscles is always to be reckoned with, but in taiji, you learn how to use their muscles as your tools. You don't have to drag your heavy toolbox with you at all times. You pick up a mallet when the opponent hands it to you. Or a lever, a screwdriver, a sack of potatoes -- whatever they're offering, you've learned how to handle. They've been training your tool box, is how I see it these days. It all depends on your priorities. If you want to look ripped and kick ass, but either don't know the price to pay later in life or don't care and live for "right meow," vs. if you want to stay healthy, keep getting (hopefully) healthier and stronger as you grow older, with your skill steadily going up no matter how long you live rather than reaching peak performance in your prime and then downhill from there... there's a choice therein. If you don't mind losing ground later as long as you got to a peak position at some point vs. you don't care about the peak position but care about steady progress that never stops (gods willing and practice invested), that's a choice. And so on. Either mode has its advantages and its attractiveness -- different for different people. You decide.

Here's the Himalayan way that still hasn't been destroyed -- although the National Geographic (second video) is confident it will be, in no time now... https://www.facebook.com/tinytinysecrets/videos/874906262648120/

Your tiresome chronic ad hominem "arguments" just disconnected you from the last vestiges of my interest toward anything you have to say. Welcome to my Ignore list of one.

Those living bridges are a great illustration of the way matriarchal societies do things differently. No one stops them from cutting the trees -- you can make a bridge with logs much faster. But walking on violence and death wherever you go does not seem attractive... Patriarchy does not mind walking on violence and death toward any and all of its destinations.

Yup... And about the owl too, though not here.