Taomeow

A physicist who promises a new revolution in physics, Julian Barbour, got me onto a completely new track not with ideas and formulas I braved reading his "The End of Time" but with a single image that had an unmistakable grey, dusty, settled smell of an old forgotten truth: "The cat that jumped is not the cat that landed." This was over a year ago, and a whole new system has crystallized for me since then, which made me do things differently, think differently too, but that's not important, the important part is... ...ideas are a dime a dozen, but if you can live the way you lived before (or, rather, without) a particular idea, it was a cheapo idea, in all likelihood wrong. Or maybe not wrong but half-baked, not clear to your whole system even if your mind believes it is. An idea that makes you do things differently is not idiot-proof either, it may merely be an indicator that you do things the wrong way, by itself it's not enough to make you do things the right way. What criteria do we use? Time will tell we say. But if there's no time, and in Barbour's model there ain't any, what will tell? Someone starts a new diet based on a new idea. It works for a while, a short while or a long while, and then he or she gets sick. What has changed from the "time" when it worked till the "time" he got sick? If there's no time, there's no "accumulation" of "effects." No "because" and no "as a result." So, how does one discover that the diet "made him sick?" Change might do it. If you change the diet and are no longer sick, well... time had nothing to do with it. But what if you're so sick that it's too late to change? Ahem... "too late" is a time reference. What if there's no time? Why doesn't a change change your state then? That's the cat's meow of the whole deal. The cat that jumped onto the wrong diet is not the cat that landed sick. What we need to do is find out where the right cat went, the healthy one in whose bodymindspirit the jumping one intended to land... Find her and jump again. Aim well. Aim with precision. Time is irrelevant. Finding or not finding that cat... ...meow.

Actually, freedom is quite a bit more than a word, since the brain centers that differentiate between freedom and restraint are identical in humans and all animals with a brain and lie in the limbic system way below the neocortex (the only organ using words, ideas, concepts, and illusions.) The "blue ribbon emotions" which are primary and shared by all species with a brain are four, of which one is rage, which is a universal reaction to restraint of freedom. It is likely to have originated as the prey species' reaction to being captured and held immobilized by the predator. The rage response is the chance to regain freedom, break free and escape and survive. So, freedom is not just a word and not an illusion -- everything alive can tell the difference, except for humans of course, because of the neocortex that comes up with stories... I should mention that in animals without a brain and in plants, the freedom perceptions and the rage reactions to its removal are likely to be every bit as intense, but much harder to study with a human brain.

OK. Banana creme pie is close, but I know something even closer -- ice cream, which has no ice and may or may not contain cream.

In the taoist system, it means you are mindful of nourishing your Kidneys, and that's a good start. Welcome, by the way. There seems to be a shortage of taoist-minded French people in the world, but the ones I know, a couple of my taiji friends, are great.

So, in this model, if there's no time, what is "spacetime" made of besides space?

My favorite subject. Thank you for bringing it up. *The post that followed has been deleted by me. Was, is?.. Will forever be?.. The reason for the deletion is personal and has nothing to do with anything.

Thank you for your kind words. I wasn't sure I understood you correctly, verbal descriptions of taiji, you know... We don't lock the knees for anything, even when they appear straight, they are open internally, could be ever so slightly... The inner locks are what my teacher has me work on constantly in push-hands, they are not in any joint though, it's the center that you lock into place, and the body expands and contracts around it, goes up and down around it, back and forth around it -- without dragging it along. The tail pretty much helps stir the body around the rooted center the way the rudder on a boat might stir it around whatever other boats are on the collision course with it -- the trick being that the boat itself is anchored, so you don't stir it anywhere away from where it has decided to be. "This is my personal space. I will invade yours if you give me any force, but I won't let you invade mine." This, your space where you have decided to take a stand, is locked. Everything else can move and in fact should move -- if it fails to, the anchor may not hold if the collision is with something huge or something pushing the boat in the direction it is already going, expediting it along. I use this a lot -- lock the anchor chain, don't lock the rudder...

The tailbone is a major player, and one may want to ascertain again and again that he/she knows what the game is. The game is opening and closing, moving and settling, going out and returning, yin and yang. There's no way the same position of the tailbone accommodates or facilitates both stages. It is different for each phase. Which becomes very obvious in push-hands when you're up against either a skillful player or someone much stronger physically. In both cases, unless you have the tailbone dynamics down pat, you are toast. I don't know what position you call "pinched," Dwai, but if you mean that the J-shaped spine (which is very rare in the civilized world --- even Western anatomy books promote the S-shaped spine, the source of all back problems and not only -- and which, the J that is, is over the years created by correct taiji even in people who didn't have it before), the lower tip of the J is not pointing inward constantly, and is not sticking out constantly -- both positions are wrong if maintained constantly. It moves. It moves inward for opening/moving/going out, and it moves outward for closing/settling/returning -- constantly. This mobility is crucial. So, if you mean don't pinch it in any one position, I agree. But if you mean something else, I don't. 99% of instructions regarding the tailbone I've seen exchanged online are flat out wrong (or, more often, curved in wrong. ) . I don't know where this originates, perhaps a "master" from the time when anyone with any taiji would come to the West and make himself a name as a "master" simply because there was nothing to choose from and no exposure to assess the level of the "master" created this pseudo tradition of the wrong tailbone. Or maybe it's one of the secrets other teachers don't share with the West -- but mine does. At some point he picked up a child's toy, a rubber dinosaur, and showed me what the tip of the tail is supposed to be doing as pose transitions to pose. It was very funny, and quite educational.

One of the shocking revelations that awaited me when She (mediated by ayahuasca and two shamans) took me to hell (this is common in shamanic initiations, by the way -- if not obligatory) was an encounter with a few people I know who are still living. Apparently one does not have to wait to die to lose part of his or her soul. "Soul loss" is behind all disorders in the shamanic view, but when someone innocent (e.g. a frightened or abused child) loses pieces of her soul, they are usually stuck in the upper world where they flee. With not-so-innocent adults, you sometimes can't tell, so the shamans specializing in "soul retrieval" travel both to the Upper and Lower worlds (under various names -- the Lower world is usually very similar to the cold and wet hell under the Amazon I'd been taken to. This is the reason a shamanic initiation involves a visit to hell -- you have to know the road if you're going to take on looking for, and retrieving, the lost souls in your healing practice. So shamanic journeys are never into the peaches-and-cream alone.) So, anyway... yes, and among the souls (perhaps fragments of souls) of the people I know who are still living were our guide and his GF, which surprised and shocked me -- I didn't expect to meet those two in hell at all, they were supposed to be so very spiritual, the GF is actually a bruja but I didn't know she was that kind of a bruja, and the guy, despite multiple new age deviations of the mind, presented himself as an honest seeker and in the world of the living, under the influence of Her brew, appeared god-like to me. So, well, I knew his god-like aspect and now I was being shown the other side. I was truly incredulous. Well, those two wound up cheating us out of a considerable sum of money in the end. I wasn't half as upset and half as surprised as I would have been if I didn't know by then where the bulk of their souls already resided. Perhaps a larger chunk now, after the cheating episode.

It's two entirely different things -- to believe in karma and to withhold compassion on the basis of this belief. Some (not all) taoist schools believe in karma too, but this belief is very secondary to everyday reactions and interactions. People who intellectualize someone's misfortune instead of feeling are considered numb -- bu ren.

Root unaffected, the dentist said to the drill sergeant Pepper spray.

Seeds of happiness we've all been taught how to treat. Just spray pesticides.

The hell I've been taken to for a visit by the Mother of the Universe is cold and wet, which come to think of it is consistent with the taoist and shamanic rather than Christian, Hindu or Buddhist paradigms that don't concern themselves with yin-yang dynamics. The hells of Indo-European traditions are as extreme-yang as their overall developments and preferences. The hell of taoism is yin but not extreme yin, just the amount of yin that balances out the preponderance of yang in the current civilized world of the living. So no one is going to escape it who was born into a civilized world and lived a yang-skewed life here -- because it has to be balanced, and if we fail to do it on earth, yin-skewed hell is what does the job. Nothing personal. Thank you, Universal Mother, for showing and teaching, though it was extremely excruciating to experience an educational visit there. Being a taoist, even though I forgot all about it in hell, I instinctively resorted to the taoist solution to the problems it presented, i.e. I counteracted it with the opposite energy, drumming up as much yang force against the numbing freezing immobilizing demons of hell as I could, and fighting like hell. Unforgettable.

This may be of interest: https://www.sott.net/article/234783-The-Truth-About-Hair-and-Why-Indians-Would-Keep-Their-Hair-Long

(1 more syllable needed) Quick! Pass the beurre blanc! No, not a blank stare, you fool! The bear fur blanket!

Meant to read this one -- thanks for reminding me. I've read about her... wow.

But of the sowing the lily of the valley thinks, "Detention camp."

But here's something else: the yellow butterfly lands on the yellow sub.

Added to the mix, the black sheep serves to offset cookie-cutter peers

Regarding the truncated cube, this may be of interest:

"Nope" in the sense I wanted to find out the meaning of things he painted. not the things you think he should have painted. The Western interpretation of the "square of Saturn" is curious but the OP specified the time period and the Western not Eastern symbology he's after. Whereas the square you proposed is a left-hand-path-oriented Luoshu which is at least 6 thousand years old and decisively not Western, so I had to go with "nope."

Nope, it is what it is. http://mathworld.wolfram.com/DuerersMagicSquare.html

I would like to hear the take of our venerable Western alchemists on this one:

No tax dollars spent, this was privately funded. Scroll down to pp. 171--172 for a list of grantors. 95% of our tax dollars is spent on things far more unimaginable and unknowable.