Taomeow

Applying the Ashok-Denef-Douglas estimation method to elliptic Calabi-Yau fourfolds suggests that a single elliptic fourfold Mmax gives rise to O(10272,000) F-theory flux vacua, and that the sum total of the numbers of flux vacua from all other F-theory geometries is suppressed by a relative factor of O(10−3000). The fourfold Mmax arises from a generic elliptic fibration over a specific toric threefold base Bmax, and gives a geometrically non-Higgsable gauge group of E98×F84×(G2×SU(2))16, of which we expect some factors to be broken by G-flux to smaller groups. It is not possible to tune an SU(5) GUT group on any further divisors in Mmax, or even an SU(2) or SU(3), so the standard model gauge group appears to arise in this context only from a broken E8 factor. I simplified as much as I could.

Folks, we have another elemental. I remember seeing a royal chart for the first time -- that of Prince Charles -- and thinking, whoa, this is not even an organic being, this is a djinn. Trump's is almost like that -- only two phases, Earth and Fire, if you don't count one place for Wood which, under these conditions, will promptly burn down to transform into more Earth. This is a far luckier elemental's chart than that of Prince Charles though. Prince Charles does not have anything but conflict between his two phases (Fire and Water), although of course he would know how to use them either alchemically or black-magically (take a wild guess which he is more likely to resort to.) Trump's is a different story altogether -- all he has is the Self phase and the Support (Mother) phase for it. It's a lifelong situation of having your pie and eating it too. The over-representation of the Self (Earth, which is both his proprietary and his dominant) also translates into as many competitors and enemies as friends and supporters -- in this case, their numbers can reach astronomical figures. He will care about Earth and Fire, to be sure, and about nothing else. Study what these phases of qi are about and you will know Trump better than you know yourself (you are more complex, not as easy to read!) Elementals... they are all one trick ponies, or two trick ponies at best. But that's who we get to rule our species. We (many of us) still believe we elect them... but in reality, all we do is perform a ritual dance while the next elemental in line is being anointed. His chart is full of lucky stars too... a strong, powerful chart for a semiorganic (a human couldn't possibly survive one like this without major disasters -- if at all). Now I understand how what happened could happen a whole lot better. This is a royal chart, folks. Which, for our species, usually translates into a royal pain in the ass. But when you're dealing with an archon king, you can't expect peaches and cream (a different phase altogether.) All that remains is to hope for an enlightened monarch... the stars have given him what it takes since enlightenment, Light (Fire) is his resource phase. Set the world on fire? Ample resources for that too. It depends on who or what wins in realms we can't access or assess.

Far as I know, it used to be fundamental for an acupuncturist to be able to determine the underlying "wuxing type," not something temporarily manifesting in a right-now disorder but something that is the distinct lifelong qi pattern. I remember Ted Kaptchuk (who first introduced acupuncture to the West) writing about an acupuncture practitioner who might not only diagnose a patient with Dampness but infer from the medical exam that the patient lives in a damp basement, and that the configuration of his idiosyncratic qi is what led him into the damp basement to begin with, so Dampness that is immediately observable is merely a side effect of Water Excess that is a destiny condition for this individual. Personally, I encountered one practitioner, in Xi'an, trained classically (one on one by two old teachers, for many years) and very differently from how they teach acupuncturists en masse these days, who blew my mind by reading my main bazi characteristics on sight, immediately, without actually having the information. One look and he announced my "wuxing type" with absolute accuracy (per my own bazi readings). His subsequent protocol took into account this understanding of "who I am." But he was super talented as a diagnostician, I doubt this is something every practitioner could do on sight -- though looks like they used to get the training for how to do it, but not anymore. As for the "connection of the wuxing with the so-called chemistry" -- yes and yes, most definitely. Oh, a huge yes. The chemistry can be treacherous though, because the pull toward what you're missing is sometimes not as strong as the pull toward what comes easy (i.e. is already excessive). Knowing from bazi what's behind chemistry, what underlies it -- a drive toward balance or a self-destructive one -- is a big boon. As for "elements within elements," that's very true and valid, and tends to be very complex. Like all taoist sciences, this can go in-depth indefinitely, there's no bottom. So, a step deeper from the basic layout, you might have to look at, not just, e.g., Earth but Dry Earth, Swamp, Desert, Wooded Earth, Earth pierced by Metal, Fireball Earth, Fertile Earth, etc., and have to do the same for each of the remaining wuxing phases, and what emerges is a very complex landscape with its idiosyncratic climate, observed over different seasons, under different conditions (cultivation or destruction or not-doing), and so on. Each man and each woman is a planet, with its complex interactions of energies of the world. A bazi reading is akin to mapping this planet...

Yes, that's what I mean. Of course they do get it in some amounts indirectly, e.g. if they have Water missing from the chart, it doesn't mean they have no physical Water in the body, rather it means they don't have a ready direct functional configuration of the body-mind-spirit-destiny for Water qi, but they do get some Water qi indirectly from Metal -- provided they have Metal in their chart. If they are missing Wood but have plenty of Water, they get Wood indirectly from Water. But there's as many situations as there's people, and some are extremely challenging. Picture a wuxing layout with both Water and Wood missing -- so, this person might get Water from Metal but Wood will only get droplets from that secondary Water... very hard to balance. Or, Fire is missing and Water is so massive that even if a bit of Wood is there, it may be not enough to sustain the secondary Fire, because Water will keep putting it out. With wuxing analysis, one can see the overall picture right away, and then there's complexities that can go very deep... And no two charts are identical -- even in identical twins, if they were born in different Hours, there will be a difference in qi and consequently in destiny. Also this is very interesting to look at if you see the charts of all family members -- the family dynamics become crystal clear, qi interactions underlie human interactions in all cases. Who kisses and who offers the cheek to kiss, and why. Why some relationships work with some investment of effort, some, effortlessly, and some, never. And so on.

Yes, it is related to wuxing analysis of the Four Pillars or the Eight Characters (bazi), the main method of analyzing the natal chart in Chinese astrology. Wuxing, the five phases or types of qi that account for the bulk of the fundamental interactions of energies in the universe, are usually translated into English as "elements" -- Water, Wood, etc. -- but of course the "elements" themselves are only a fraction of these qi phases' manifestations, and ought to be understood as such. I.e. not just metaphors -- the actual elements, substances, are real and are part of a particular type of qi -- but the type of qi named after them is not limited to them, it's infinitely greater. They are processes. E.g. Metal is not just metal the substance, but the process of the formation of stars from interstellar gas and of hemoglobin of the human blood. Wood is not just a daisy or an oak but DNA-based life in the universe. And so on. So, live creatures typically have all five wuxing phases in their overall qi pattern, in countless types of interactions, which a bazi reader studies and analyses. In times unbalanced, like ours, many people have a phase missing, i.e. four instead of five, it's not unusual, though not ideal. Quite a few have two phases missing, which is a more challenging scenario. And then there's the ones who are missing three, or even four. These I call "elementals," it's not an official bazi term, it's from another (western) tradition, so I use it a bit tongue-in-cheek. Elementals are understood as creatures made up of only one "element" -- e.g. Fire (djinn), Earth (ghoul), and so on. When there's two (or as in the case of Trump "almost" three but, because of what phases they are, as good as two), it's something semisynthetic, a transitional creature between a one-element being and a live human being. I've seen two-element charts of "people" who are actually royal bloodlines, or else people in huge trouble (sick every which way, addicted to drugs in a hardcore way, etc.) It also depends on which phases are there. If it's a mother-child phases combo, like with Trump, this is a very strong and lucky (though not necessarily very human) chart. If it's a self/destroyer-of-self combo... this is disastrous for a mere mortal, but may be a separate subject of study and a different dynamic in the realm of the not-quite-human beings. Bazi is absolutely universal and can be applied as a tool of analysis to anything live, semisynthetic, built or created or otherwise having a beginning.

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Родной язык

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Sean spaced on the banner... Happy New Year of the Fire Rooster!

Some taoist schools borrowed the concept of karma from buddhism, but the original taoist ideas bypass this notion, i.e. they neither confirm nor deny a "belief" in karma, they are just looking at things more fundamental than karma -- to wit, basic existential energies of the world -- and seek to balance and harmonize them toward all the "good karma" outcomes which a balanced harmonious state generates spontaneously. These energies arise from the initial separation of wuji into taiji and then proceed to diversify and, in the process, may (and did) get temporarily skewed. Pretty much all genuine taoist practices are aimed at correcting this skewed state. This includes internal MA, of course, not at the beginner/external level but at the level of taiji neigong and taiji neijia. But you can go with any genuine taoist practice (key word practice, not "belief"), and it leads there if you go in-depth and don't skip steps and develop a relationship with these energies on all levels, from the beginner's "metaphorical" to the seasoned practitioner's "mastery of qi" to the sage's "roaming the root of heaven and earth."

Curious. Here's two ideas off the top of my head: Our brain is equipped with nicotinic receptors, which are ligand-gated ion channels that mediate a fast synaptic transmission of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine. (Our brains evolved with nicotine-containing plants and are consequently hardwired for it -- with demand suppressed or enhanced depending on social conditioning and a host of individual neuroendocrine peculiarities.) Energy practices can activate processes in the brain that would otherwise remain dormant. This may have happened to you. Excluding more serious causes (for which you may want to follow the suggestions of others and see a doctor), try taking niacin, also known as vitamin B3, aka nicotinic acid. Don't take it on an empty stomach and be prepared for the "niacin flush" -- it is harmless but it can freak you out if you don't know what you're dealing with. Idea number two... Did you have smokers in your life in your childhood? I'll share idea number two if you respond to this question first.

A bed of straw is definitely better to sleep on than the mattress! I've slept on straw tucked under the tarpaulin floor of a tent in the wild, and it was the best sleep of my life -- at one point (on dry clover hay that smells like paradise) everybody in our group pulled off between 14 and 18 hours of sleep in one stretch, the bodies seemed to be making up for all the sleep lost under "civilized" conditions. There's a thread somewhere where I shared my quest for the perfect sleeping surface for the spine, qi, and so on, and although it is not a bed of straw I ultimately zeroed in on, it's most definitely not a mattress that causes your mingmen area to sag (leaking qi from the Gate of Life all through the night) and is the root of much back pain and bad postures (an epidemic). As for sacrificing the knees -- no, of course not, but I think higher up the thread it has been discussed. You should never squat with your knees going past your toes, or in or out -- keep them smack over your ankles -- and you can practice (on flat surface for starters) as high as you can manage and squat lower gradually, the action is in the spine and the hip joints, not in the knees. Do stuff to elongate your spine and open your hips for a good squat and leave the knees out of it, they are there for the ride only and should not take any pressure onto themselves. Good luck.

Aren't the best of us we all!

Sorry to contradict your source but -- Chitin may be immensely hard when it is immensely thick, but it is what a shrimp's shell is made of -- and shrimp ain't no unobtainium. In fungal cells (all of them, including chaga's), unlike in shrimps, two substances are combined, chitin and glucans. Glucans in mushrooms are not "locked inside" the cell wall, they are the cell wall component, and nothing dissolves the cell wall better than the process of fermentation. For medicinal mushrooms that do not require or do not allow fermentation (and do contain beta glucans, chaga is not unique in that) the traditional process is to boil them (for a long time and in fragments if it's a hard mushroom like reishi), and then the brew is either consumed or, more often, turned into a water soluble concentrate, in the form of the (final outcome) powder or granules. I've done this myself. You pour the brew into a shallow pan and keep it in the oven on low till the liquid evaporates, then you dry off and scrape off the sediment, then you powder it and (if you like and are equipped) granulate it. But this is not done with chaga.

Chaga is alive/dormant much like, e.g., dry brewer's yeast, or as yogurt or kefir or beer cultures, and needs to be prepared by a method that brings it to life -- it's active in this state, and the nontraditional methods to use it (as tinctures, etc.) are there, I suspect, for commercial purposes only. You would want the actual mushroom, and you pour warm water over it and ferment it for 48 hours, usually it's successfully done in a thermos.

Think of it this way. The sitting toilet was first invented in the 16th century, wasn't accepted until the 19th century, and was unknown to the majority of the world population till a few decades ago, even though Westerners have been widely using it for about a hundred years, give or take. The inventors of the sitting toilet were not men of medicine. The rationale for their invention was that the sitting position is more dignified and should be adopted by the British colonists in order to set them apart in their elimination habits from the natives they ruled. We didn't evolve to do anything but squat when we need to go. The new technology did eventually eliminate the normal natural body use we've evolved for the task, but the driving force behind these new developments had nothing to do with what's healthy for any organs (the sitting toilet happens to benefit none) and everything to do with turning a rather unhealthy idea of a "dignified" dump into a commercial enterprise of global profitability. Scroll up the thread for those pictures they use to "reeducate" the Chinese right now. This was done to Europeans and Americans a hundred years earlier, is all. We actually live in a world where fubar ideas turned into corporate profits supply an environment we take for granted that dictates to us how we use our bodies from birth to death, and most of those ways to use our bodies are physiologically insane.

Ack, in English the word "enlightened" has all those spiritual connotations, and there's no other word (to my knowledge -- correct me if I'm wrong) to express something similar but strictly secular/social. In Russian it's two different words, both derived from "light" but you would use a different one speaking of a monarch rather than a sage, and it means someone who knows what's what and treats the information in a manner benevolent to his subjects. I referred to the possibility because Fire is abundant in Trump's chart, and is his Mother phase, so he can be this kind of monarch, using Fire as Light in the broad social sense... But he can actually use it any which way -- e.g as making truth visible and known... as a spotlight on himself... as favoring fossil fuel industries... as firearms, even nukes, he's got enough Fire for any of these and more. But what I was hoping for was the wise choice of how to use it. Light that results in the state of being informed (things brought to the light) and benevolent. A tall order, but one can always hope.

Yes, watches are a weird thing, I've noticed too. Aside from the Swiss one I found, I also lost a watch under very mystical circumstances which I may have described here at some point. But instead of stopping watches like you, I get them going. This is not characteristic of my overall relationship with technology items, just watches. When I was very little, perhaps 3, my grandmother gave me a pocket watch to play with that used to belong to her father and stopped in some supposedly unrepairable state before she was born -- she used to play with it too. Similar to this one: After examining it and opening all the lids (it had several as I recall) and exploring it every which way, I just started swinging it by the chain. Round and round it went, and back and forth like a pendulum... and then all of a sudden it was working again. It worked since that day for as long as I remember. It was there on the periphery of my childhood for a long time, and then I don't know what happened to it, no one in the family was interested in antiques (my great-grandmother's heirloom silver was thrown carelessly into a toolbox with hammers and pliers -- what an insult to Metal! -- because it was tarnished and no one was into doing anything about it. Today, of course, I would... I've seen lower quality pieces in the same style, from the same period and area, displayed in the Metropolitan Museum... lower quality, less interesting artistic execution, but polished bright and shiny... )

The tinfoil hat is an urban legend, but there's a Russian method to use the aluminum foil to treat various inflammatory conditions. I tried it a couple of times on something weird -- a few years ago something sharp and heavy was dropped on my big toe, and ever since, I would get episodes of intense sudden pain in that toe, which a doctor friend told me look like an inflamed or pinched nerve. Nothing ever helped for that pain, which I dubbed "the Crocodile" because the sensations invoked the image of a vicious crocodile suddenly biting into my toe. It would just come and go, quite unpredictably, and it never lasted long but it was so excruciating! So, the next time it happened, I remembered, by chance, about that aluminum foil remedy and thought, why not try it, and wrapped a piece of foil around my toe, shiny side down. The pain stopped instantly. But instantly. It returned in about a month, I wrapped the foil around the toe promptly, it stopped instantly again. I never had that pain since, it's been about a year. Knock on wood. Posting in case someone else might discover the miraculous effect.

Hetu and Luoshu. Yin yang (taijitu). From these, the derivation of the bagua, which can be considered the transition point from proto-taoism of the shaman-king Yu to taoism proper of Fuxi the civilizer. From these, wuxing, and the circular I Ching, and then the "square" one with text appearing after it was organized this way (King Wen and the Duke of Zhou), and this is the first canonized taoist text, the first "scripture," so to speak. Chakras are not part of taoist anatomy and physiology, although I'm sure they correspond to some active points on the meridians or suchlike, perhaps overlapping with this or that "Gate" -- the sixth does seem to sit in the same place as the "mud ball" crucial in taoist alchemy, but I really don't remember all that much about chakras, it's been a while...

I meant that Lower-Middle-Higher world is the prevalent shamanic worldview, and bön was a kind of formalized/scriptured shamanism (before the Buddhist conquest of Tibet), as was proto-taoism (with oral lore and graphic diagrams rather than scriptures) which reinterpreted these shamanic concepts as the Earth-Humanity-Heaven triad. Sensations and experiences are possible if you go back to shamanic underpinnings of either. In magical taoism, e.g., there's procedures that are pretty much indistinguishable from those used in many shamanic traditions, complete with journeying into the depth of the Earth (the Lower world) and invoking a magical horse to then take you to the realms of your choosing. It starts out as a taoist meditation and from there goes back into the shamanic trance. In bön, which I don't know all that well, there's its own counterparts, of which I only remember the Upper World god, known as are the White Old Man or Pehar. His thing is to turn into a shamanic bird that can take you to the upper realm. The shamanic journey motifs are very similar.

Wang Liping instructs students to remove all jewelry for meditation, this would include a watch if I wore it. I have a humongous Swiss watch (didn't buy it, found it in the bushes on a trail when hiking... had to fight off a humongous cactus to get it! A very mysterious gift...) which I only wear when I want to project a business-like attitude, which is to say, once in a blue moon.

From the wuxing perspective, it depends on the individual. For some it is very beneficial, for some it's neutral, for some it's harmful. Depends on your auspicious/inauspicious phases of qi ("elements"). The metals I wear are silver and gold, which is a feng shui recommendation for those who benefit from wearing metals. Precious and semiprecious stones are also in the phase of Metal in wuxing (with some variations depending on color and brightness -- Metal-with-Fire, Metal-with-Wood, etc.). The exception is jade, which is considered balanced and represents all phases working in harmony, with emphasis on Water and Wood (Kidneys and its "child" Liver). Jade that has some green in it is considered particularly nourishing (Wood), while white jade is healing to the bones and blood, and "warm jade" (only read about it, have never encountered it, it's exceptionally rare) facilitates magic. Don't let me digress any further, jade is a large area of study in taoism and I only know a bit. Before taoism and Chinese astrology, I used to test stuff kinesiologically to determine if it's harmful or beneficial or neutral. The most reliable version of this method requires an assistant -- and is pretty reliable with some practice and getting the knack of it. I even did a double blind placebo controlled study of this method at one point, with accuracy of about 85% (which is much higher than that for most mainstream lab tests).

That's the spirit!