Taomeow

The earliest taoist meditations were concerned with establishing connections between the Inner Gods and the outer energies of the world, chiefly stars and constellations and their progenitors and derivatives, and were actually, in most cases, much more involved than later simplifications, bastardizations, and fusions with other systems. They were derived from pretty arcane shamanic/magical (wu 巫) practices whose roots are lost in prehistory and whose documented status as the direct source of early taoism dates back 3,000 years. One of the earliest taoist meditations known to date, e.g., is the Sacred Dance of Yu, which is incorporated into some of the internal MA to this day, forms the foundation of classical feng shui (as well as other taoist sciences concerned with patterns of movement of qi in the universe) and is based on the dynamics of the Big Dipper (including its two invisible stars that were still visible at the time of Yu the Great). It is an example of a rather typical taoist-proper meditation, which is always twofold, internal and external (yin and yang), although in some cases the continuous interchange of movement and stillness involving the whole body happens simultaneously (like with the Sacred Dance or high level taij neigong and neijia) while sometimes the practice itself is twofold, with sitting-immobile parts and moving parts, and further, the sitting part may be twofold, wuwei-type and alchemical-type practices interchanging, and the moving part may likewise be twofold... to give you a rough sketch. The type of meditation favored depends on the school, but if you move farther back in history to before schools and sects, that's what you will find: shamanic/magical practices of an idiosyncratic "scientifically slanted," systematized kind, with a unifying cosmology and a strong immortalist focus. Simply put, if it does not concern itself with the Big Dipper, the North Pole Star, and immortality, it's not taoist-proper.

Second that. A particularity was present in every tribe, in the form of the shaman, who half the time communicated with spirits and/or natural entities and/or animals and often lived alone, and half the time did what made her the shaman -- full immersion in the life of the tribe, in a role greater than anyone else's but not separate from everyone else's. Shamans were not "lonely" because they were in real communication with aforementioned presences even when they weren't with anyone else. And -- importantly -- shamans were wounded, survivors of a visit to "the other side," not fully of this world. And -- importantly -- more than half the time they accepted the mission only because there was no refusing it, not because they wanted it. Fast forward to modern times. Everyone is wounded, some into autistic tendencies and some into sociopathic tendencies, but just being wounded does not make one a shaman -- and in the absence of the tribe to serve, what's the point anyway? As Don Juan put it when Carlos asked him why he keeps the bulk of his exceptional abilities secret, "what would I use them for? To scare Indians?" Spirituality used to be part of normality, and being tribal was its backdrop. People today who try to be "spiritual" miss the point way more than half the time. They might, e.g., seek to serve humanity -- as long as "humanity" is not comprised of a few dozen specific human beings in their immediate surrounding. Those are small fry. Those are to be avoided in order to serve humanity... Lofty, lofty spirituality, it is, as Yoda might say, with a probable smirk.

Yes, that too. But a very different world, where "world peace" is meaningless because there's no one who knows, remembers, or can imagine, much less start, a "world war."

I enjoyed following your train of thoughts, thank you! And "to complete the moment" -- yes, this is it. That's the cat's meow of the whole thing. "Lonely" is a state where there's no one else to "complete the moment" for/with you. Every moment. I don't know if it's possible to explain -- probably not, just as universally "loved," famous, fortunate, beautiful, wealthy movie or rock stars committing suicide with some regularity would probably fail to explain what it is whose absence hurts so bad that the pain is incompatible with life -- someone who has never in their whole life had this "completed moment" doesn't know that what's missing from his or her experience is its very core, and some hurt from this absence and some are numb to it (mistaking the absence of pain for the absence of the wound) -- yes, this is it. This is the reason for my lifelong inquiry into the nature of Time... Understanding what a "completed moment" is like is understanding everything. The "not lonely" state is a prerequisite for omniscience, omnipotence, and completeness, wholeness in space and time and beyond -- but this is only possible via one moment -- every one moment -- and the very existence of a "moment" and of "eternity" alike is a function of "not-loneliness." No, I didn't make it clearer by trying to explain, I made it less so I think... doesn't matter though. Can't be explained if it's not there, can't be missed if it's there.

Ah, thank you. I have a French friend who is exactly that, entouré, in a way different from "not lonely" of other people I've known. It is transactional though. She will often do some of the things I described as the state of "tribal" I used to know and sorely miss, except she will never do them unless there's something in it for her, and will expect things in return and keep the accounting on who did what for whom and who owes her and whom she owes in meticulous order. Interesting. Seems like a cultural phenomenon more than an individual trait, but I'm not one hundred percent sure, never lived in France (though I did read tons of French literature...) What you describe is a state of affairs that follows a recent enough destruction of the tribal way of life. In those parts this aftermath is still crude. In the West, where it was demolished a lot earlier, it has been refined -- here (or in Japan for that matter) it will manifest as "corporate culture," cliques and gangs of "professionals" whose criminal activities have long been legalized and institutionalized (by gangs specializing in this particular trade, like politicians, lawyers, law enforcement and intelligence communities, etc., to say nothing of exclusive clubs and secret societies.) I.e. the first thing that happens is, people whose natural (for all humans everywhere at all times) tribal lifestyle has been artificially dismantled instinctively try to replicate it, by forming bands, groups, societies -- but since their natural life is no longer legal, the more determined of them go south of the law, become assorted shades of gangsters because original tribal laws are no longer operational while the new ones is what they defy. As time goes by, the strongest of these criminal groups usurp power and become the law themselves. That's our present situation. Africa, Mongolia, even Russia are on the same path, only various distances behind. I don't think dantien breathing is the answer. I think if the mother who gave birth to you (or me, or anyone) had been breathed on with the love and joy of her whole tribe when she carried you, it would come naturally. It is the answer to something though... but not to this.

Thanks for trying. Buoyed is not interpersonal either... I used to love to swim to a buoy wherever a lake or river had them, and grab on to it to just relax and rest and indeed feel supported... but supported by a hollow metal dummy and my own effort exerted in reaching it, come to think of it. A buoyed feeling is a nice feeling, but you were still alone with that buoy that is not human, and if you happened to feel lonely, I doubt it would do anything about that. Incidentally, not theoretical for me in terms of what feelings may surface and hit you like a ton of bricks as you are trying to cross a wide river and suddenly realize you're in the middle of it and there's nothing but water to your four directions and the sky to the fifth, no buoy is not a problem, but all of a sudden there's no human being in the whole universe... in my case it hit me, for the first and only time, in its worst form -- a profound sense of "alone in the universe" -- in the middle of Sozh. I'm guessing most people here have never heard of it, yet it's the third longest river in Europe, and 10 kilometers wide at the mouth -- the spot where this existential loneliness suddenly, without a warning, became the only reality there is, was about 3 km wide, I planned to cross it and felt very comfortable until the sound of perhaps a motor boat miles away that you could only hear when your ear was in the water... the sound knowing nothing of you, you knowing nothing of why you hear it amidst eternal silence... but I digress.

So, I went to dinner with my Chinese friend and asked him the "unlonely" question. He said, nope, no such word in Chinese, it's simply "lonely" with an addition of the universal-reversal "bu" -- not, no, no such thing. But he had an interesting explanation. "Not lonely" is normal. It does not need a special word, because it's an implied state of affairs -- like what you breathe is air but you don't specify that you "breathe air," and what you walk on is "Earth" but you don't specify that you "took a walk on Earth." So "not lonely" is a default state you didn't need to specify. Whereas "lonely" is an abnormal state, and that needed a special word to describe it. Like "breathe smog" or "walk on the Moon." @Spotless: Thank you for the list. Curious: do you ever feel lonely? And if you don't, which word from this list best describes that opposite-of-lonely feeling -- "inhabited," "chaperoned," or "neighboring?" Matter of fact, you can share sorrow or have others share your sadness when you're not lonely, but this doesn't make you "cheerful," "jolly," or "festive," much less "blithersome." And you are not necessarily "coupled" when you are not lonely, and you don't have to be "hopeful" or "encouraging." The list is of words that may be associated with some instances of moods and emotions for which loneliness may be an obstacle, but none of these words are even close to the antonym for "lonely" I was after... and when I said it does not exist, I didn't say it lightly, my primary education is in comparative linguistics...

me 5 -- and Firefox on a Mac didn't let me connect to the site at all. Presently using Safari to write this, which allowed me to "connect to the site anyway" but then directed the post I wrote in another thread straight into the nearest black hole, so I don't know if this one will make it through.

Yes, "lonely" is a nuanced word... so should be its opposite. A friend of mine, the one I mentioned earlier in this thread, who lives in Moscow, is one of the most social beings you'll ever meet, but when we had a get-together after not seeing each other for 11 years (meeting up in Europe), she told me that our reunion made her feel "not hollow" again, and cried because she would feel "hollow again" when we parted. Then, a couple of years later, she found a new lover (she's always had lovers, her husband is a bit of a monster so I don't blame her), and reported back to me that this, finally, was someone with whom, aside from physical intimacy and not contingent on it, she feels "not hollow anymore." This "hollow" -- "not hollow" feeling -- I know exactly what it is, but for that "not hollow" I also need a word that is a nuance of "unlonely" that does not exist. I hope people who know Chinese or Japanese might chime in. I would expect a word for this, a specific word, to still exist in those languages because they are so designed as to preserve their history, and their history is that of "unloneliness" having long been the first and main goal in people's lives. Perhaps their notion of "face" in the social sense has something to do with it, but it's far from a complete overlap. I'll try to ask a Chinese friend and his son who knows some Japanese today when I see them.

Hi WD, Thank you for the idea. Yes, it has to be a word, just like we have a word for "chair" or "salary" or "headache" -- a word that pretty much means the same thing to most people, rather than being wide open to individual interpretations. A word that means the state of being surrounded by people you have a connection to, heart, mind, physical body and hearts and minds and physical bodies they are connected to that are part of your immersion, a presence that is the opposite of the state of being alienated/disconnected from or mutually indifferent to other people. A default state of being that creates a feeling -- "lonely" is a feeling, not a physical fact (unlike "alone") -- opposite of "lonely," for which the word is absent. That's because the phenomenon is almost extinct, or not so much "because" as they are two sides of the same coin, the absence of the word and the absence of the phenomenon.

@ dwai: the Himalayas... well, that's going to be quite a trip! Please note I never said what I'm after is "social contact," I have plenty of that, and it's not where it's at. I said "tribal life" -- perhaps I have to give a few examples to explain what that is, at least in the form it existed in some people's consciousness and experience I was part of... Example 1. When I was in my 20s, I contracted a stubborn infection that required, after all other treatments proved futile, daily trips to the clinic for IV injections for a whole month. The injections felt weird and scary when done right, and were dangerous in case of imprecision on the part of the nurse -- the substance injected was safe when it hit the bloodstream but would cause necrosis of any muscle tissue on contact if any of it leaked outside the blood vessel, not an uncommon complication with that particular treatment. However, they were working, so I was tolerating the trips and the daily dose of fear -- until I told my friend, an MD, that I have to use a lot of willpower not to panic on a daily basis. She said, I work with a male nurse, he is so good with injections that no one, even the raging psychotics (my friend was an emergency psychiatrist), can help feeling calm and safe when he administers one. I'll ask him to come to your house before or after his shift and you'll see, there will be no discomfort and no fear. So the next day a huge, King-Kong-sized mountain of compassion and kindness knocked on my door, IV kit in hand, and continued to do so for the next three weeks, every day. And, yes, he was so good that I almost looked forward to his daily visits. Keep in mind that no money was involved and no "I do this for you, and you'll do that for me, or else owe me." None of that. Whoever could help, helped. It was not the exception, it was the norm. You actually felt bad if you weren't in the position to do something of real value for your friends, not the token make-believe thing like a "thinking of you" postcard from a vacation spot to make them envy your spectacular vacation (today it's FB more than postcards, of course)... something of real value, sometimes on obvious levels and sometimes involving intangibles, that required of you to engage your own network of friends and people who would do things, often time-consuming or even bordering on personal sacrifice, for a stranger -- any stranger -- only because a friend asked them to. You looked for a chance to be of service because it was what you longed to be. Of real help to your friends. That's tribal life. Not "social contact."

Interestingly, I was looking for the antonym to the word "lonely" in English and in Russian the other day, and in neither language it exists. Newspeak is old... The fundamental notions that originally couldn't have been anything other than the main definitions of what human life on this planet is about -- belonging to a tribe, being immersed in the life of a group as its organic part -- have been erased from the language and (consequently? simultaneously?) from people's consciousness. That antonym that does not exist -- that's where life is real. A small town, a big metropolis, a hermitage -- are all just different versions of its nonexistence IMO. The main behaviors of all life forms, from amoeba to human, are "seek" and "avoid." To move somewhere toward avoidance -- of pollution, noise, overall techno-craziness, being severed from nature -- is half the battle. The other half -- to move somewhere in search of that antonym, toward what so many people don't even realize they ought to seek, due to those artificially created gaps in consciousness -- and to find it -- if someone has a story of this kind of a move, I'm all ears.

My college roommate and best friend who has lived all her adult life in a hi-rise in Moscow meets friends in an Italian cafe daily after work. Moscow is every bit as hectic as New York, but many people still build their lives around friendships, close ties with other people, often maintained a lifetime. For many it's still the main social value, although it's rapidly eroding. That's closer to the kind of life I've lived -- a combo of both worlds. The hectic/busy/nonsensical rat race by day, a tribal gathering by night (plus weekends, vacations, holidays) around the sacred fire -- not necessarily physical -- with storytelling, laughter, tribal dances, a sense of belonging that is taken for granted until you discover that most of the modern world does not live like that and a sense of alienation prevails, and no one seems to have friends (only people to "spend time with" which makes it about the time to spend -- like a form of money, if you have it, you look to spend it -- and about the activity, but not about people.) A classmate from the school I went to between the ages of 7 and 11 recently found me on Classmates. She was never a friend, I barely remembered her name, and not much else, and she, likewise, barely remembered mine. So to establish some inroads into memory, to place me in context, the first question she asked was, "Who were you friends with?" This was what gives a person tangible reality, existence. To be a ghost in a nice place where you go for a simple life or a ghost where you rush about a hectic life is the same to me. Tangible real existence is tribal. Did that woman who moved to an Italian town succeed in belonging, or are those coffee/TV/food gatherings still a "spend time" thing for her? I wonder...

Behind the Green Mask: UN Agenda 21 by Rosa Koire Continuing education in "what's really going on." Seeking the Spirit of the Book of Change, by Zhongxian Wu Shamanic roots of the I Ching explored. The Secret Oral Teachings in Tibetan Buddhist Sects, by Alexandra David-Neel and Lama Yongden Old stomping ground (from before taoism) I feel like revisiting because of a quote I came across that intrigued me, concerning the nature of Time (perennial stomping ground). Poems by Nikolay Gumilyev (n Russian) Chinese Characters: Their origin, etymology, history, classification and signification, by Dr. L. Wiegler. First published in 1915... the original and, according to some scholars, the best.

More than your kisses, black clouds, thunder, falling sky, lightnings say you're mine.

I'm referring to "Where can I buy..." in The Rabbit Hole. I only posted it once. But now I've discovered it has acquired a partial clone. One version contains all the replies, while the other one, just a partial quote of one reply (Brian's). I'm 1. officially weirded out, 2. asking to remove the clone, please.

Thank you, Kar3n! Now I hope... well, I hope for something.

meh...

This would seem logical, although it never happened on any of the 7,000+ prior occasions. However this wouldn't explain Brian's post with a partial quote of himself in one of the threads while his fully fledged post that quote is from exists in the other. This doesn't actually qualify as a ME, rather it may be (unless there's a less farfetched explanation) a case of a "glitch in the matrix," the two overlap only partially. I.e. a ME may or may not be a glitch; while not every glitch is a ME. I don't "believe" in it, I am "affected" by it. It's not the same. There's nothing to "believe" or "disbelieve" about it until you come up with, or accept from someone else, a theory, an explanation, etc.. A theory you can believe or not. E.g. there's a theory that the flu is caused by a virus, but TCM, two thousand years ago, posited that this kind of affliction is caused by a "pernicious influence" and manifests as "toxic heat," and you can believe the former rather than the latter, or vice versa, and either one constitutes a belief, because you, personally, have never seen either one entering your body and giving you the symptoms. However, the flu itself, if you happen to contract it (may it never happen), is not something you can believe or disbelieve. If you're affected, you just know. When there's an epidemic, some people are affected and some are not, and all of them know who they are. That kind of a deal. Well within your pay grade. P.S. Occasional mistakes in diagnosis do not render an epidemic a "belief." Some people who think they're affected by ME merely have poor memory, or faulty education. While some people who think they have the flu actually have bacterial pneumonia, or anthrax.

I currently dedicate the bulk of my practice time to the next/advanced level Instructor training in Chen style taiji. Many of my taoist practices are a lifestyle. I arrange my schedule around daily consultations with the yearly Chinese Almanach and, e.g., will never call a dentist for an appointment without having it in front of me. I don't sit facing the Grand Duke anywhere I sit, and maintain a personal gua compliant direction for any practice or non-practice, be it meditation or computer or sleeping. I eat according to yin-yang principles and build my wardrobe around my Four Pillars. I seek or avoid people based on their idiosyncratic qi phase. Oh, and I ask the I Ching to make more than half of my decisions for me... ...incidentally, just read an article on cognitive neuroscience confirming, in "breakthrough" research, the benefits of minimizing decision-making instances toward greater health and happiness... apparently humans find themselves in a better place when they don't have to make too many small decisions and instead make a few big ones and stick it out. The scientist who was studying these things wound up rearranging his own life toward not having to choose even from the restaurant menu -- the decision made once and for all was to always order the second item on the menu. Richard Feynman did that too. Order dessert or not? Once and for all: always order dessert, and always make it chocolate cake. Never have to spend your jing-to qi-to shen on thinking about it again. I, however, might ask the I Ching first about a general approach to dessert, and she might tell me "always" or "never" or "doesn't matter." And that's what will be chosen once and for all, unless she gives me the "inquire again later" line. Of formal practices, I follow Longmen Pai. Some "other" practices are less regular and can vary. They include taoist studies (almost exclusively directly from sources, almost no academic material and no "research" by non-taoists -- I only want empirical knowledge of taoism, not its interpretations by non-practitioners.) These tend to be broad -- from talismanic calligraphy to herbal medicine to divination systems to Maoshan magic, to name a few.

Look! Big yellow moon. It's made entirely of cheese. All you need is grate.

Makes no diff'rence now balls have zero to me to me to me to me

I looked at a sample of their exchange... let's hope all they're trying to do is learn to write haiku...

By Chang, you, now me -- it wasn't loading properly. Blame technology.