Taomeow

I think it's true for all secret societies that gained influence, whether in the east or in the west. To infiltrate them and to change their nature has been the main and most successful tool used by their opposition, whether by the governments (obviously) or by their moral and ideological enemies often subsidized by governments and other powerful entities (e.g. corporations). The same thing happened to the masons in the West -- they didn't start out as what they eventually became. Or the communists, once a secret society. By the way, this is a human activity that comes naturally, it appears -- every society known has always teemed with secret ones -- purportedly the largest numbers ever having been formed in Africa. I can easily understand the dynamics. When I was 8, I formed a secret society, KVP (an abbreviation -- I won't go into what it stood for, since it will be hard to translate), whose goal was to resist oppression by teachers and assorted adult disciplinarians, to embarrass and inconvenience bullies, to shock and surprise the timid by secret acts of kindness, as well as engage in assorted acts of mischief with no clear political or moral agenda, just for its own sake. We had six members, all girls. We were on the loose for three years, and never got caught, ratted out, or even suspected, because I chose my generals wisely. We also didn't move on to any criminal activities. Then my family relocated to another part of the city, and that was the end of KVP. If I had the kind of energy now that I had then, I'd do it again.

Just pluck two, in dreams -- a bald eagle, a vulture -- and undo the spell.

Minkowski cones are healthier and more delicious -- except they nourish the heart-mind rather than the stomach.

Great, this can be a very revealing metaphor if you look closely. This is in line with the view of a very unorthodox and original Chinese philosopher whose name I keep forgetting but whose view I share -- he proved that the present does not exist! -- that's where the "illusion" of this world is rooted -- but that the past and the future are real. If you look at your sheet of paper closely, you will notice that looking at it sideways reveals that it is comprised of its "past" side and its "future" side that continuously communicate and seep into each other -- there's nothing else there, no separation between the two that could be labeled "now." Nowhere to even write the word "now!" So, the only way to really "live in the present" is to study the past and project into the future. That's what diviners do "for a living" -- but everybody else does the "living" this way too, it's just that, unlike the diviner, they don't see the ropes pulling from the future, attached to the pistons pushing from the past.

In Chinese astrology, an individual reading invariably concerns the family too. The Four Pillars of Destiny contain, respectively, the "palaces" of the Ancestors, Parents, Spouse and Children. Recently I did the charts of two brothers, a newborn and a 3-year-old. The picture was that of the newborn baby being destined to decide the ultimate fate of the whole family -- and this destiny will come to pass, there's no way around it. The only way to prevent it (if there's something to prevent -- the baby's chart is very lucky, and it's not his fault that it will negatively affect everybody else) would have been to possess this knowledge in advance and move conception to a different time. Incidentally, corrections of this nature are routinely attempted in Asia, but since the cultural context has been lost, it is overwhelmingly done incorrectly, with reliance on pop astrology rather than the real deal. So, they schedule induced births on a specially selected auspicious date... duh... pop astrology meets pop technology, and chaos ensues -- there's nothing more inauspicious than an induced birth, which scrambles one's destiny chaotically, and is about as helpful as trying to improve the growth of a tree by pulling it upward by the branches. Or they go with the "year animal" -- abortions skyrocket in Southeast Asia in the year of the Fire Horse. Whereas in real Chinese astrology the Fire Horse that will destroy its family is born on the Day of the Fire Horse, not in the Year of the Fire Horse. A bit harder to calculate in advance... Destiny guards itself well from amateur corrections by the ignorami. One has to really know how to play in her playground to have a chance to make her change her mind. Remember the story about the man who fled to Samarra?.. If not, here it is: "The Appointment in Samarra" (as retold by W. Somerset Maugham [1933]) The speaker is Death There was a merchant in Baghdad who sent his servant to market to buy provisions and in a little while the servant came back, white and trembling, and said, Master, just now when I was in the marketplace I was jostled by a woman in the crowd and when I turned I saw it was Death that jostled me. She looked at me and made a threatening gesture, now, lend me your horse, and I will ride away from this city and avoid my fate. I will go to Samarra and there Death will not find me. The merchant lent him his horse, and the servant mounted it, and he dug his spurs in its flanks and as fast as the horse could gallop he went. Then the merchant went down to the marketplace and he saw me standing in the crowd and he came to me and said, Why did you make a threatening gesture to my servant when you saw him this morning? That was not a threatening gesture, I said, it was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Baghdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.

Feng shui people have a lot to say about basements, but not much about living in them except "don't." It surprises me no end that it's become the acceptable living arrangements for a son or daughter of the family to live in a basement. There's many places on earth where this would indicate that the world is coming to an end. The sought-after commodity may be privacy, but the actual product one gets is feeling "low," "below," "trampled upon," or even "buried." If I were you, I'd try to negotiate a room above the ground. Good luck.

OK, gotcha. Why don't you try this one: http://www.amazon.com/The-Master-Margarita-Mikhail-Bulgakov/dp/product-description/0679760806

Define what's good fiction for you, maybe I'll have an idea or two.

Detachment is not that you should own nothing. But that nothing should own you. --Ali ibn abi Talib

Roadside Picnic! Don't know how it came out in English, but in the original, it blew my mind, so long ago, so far away... I read it as a teenager, picture this -- winter break, no schedule, no parental supervision, silent heavy snow behind the dark window, a tray on my bed with a large cup of tea and a plate of buttered chocolate cookies (yes, I have always buttered my cookies) -- and this book, through the night. And knowing that I'd sleep till 3 pm and ice skate the rest of the day. And praying that they don't screw up the ending, because there's so many books that fizzle out, way more than books that don't. Happily ever after won't work here, how will they do it?.. And they did it right, and I go, Yesss! on the last page -- and it's seven a.m., good night... Hated the movie though. Maybe I should see it again, now that I'm quite a bit older and quite a lot different. On my coffee table now (I don't read in bed anymore, so, no nightstand): The Voynich Manuscript (well, it's been there for a year, and will be there for years to come I fear) Amazon Magic: The life story of Ayahuasquero and Shaman Don Agustin Rivas Vasquez I Ching Numerology, by Da Liu I, Claudius, by Robert Graves

Eye, thank you! What a pretty kitty! I see. Well, yes, I have to agree with your disagreement, in that taiji is more yin compared to hard MA, but that's because taiji is yin-yang balanced, while hard MA are skewed toward overwhelming yang. This, incidentally, is one reason taiji strengthens one's body over time, while hard MA strengthen the outside while gradually weakening the inside (yin) of the body. Hard practitioners become pretty decrepit as they advance in years, while taiji folks become better at their art and often healthier in their old age than they were in their youth. I remember a passage from a Chinese MA novel (by the great entertainer Louis Cha, who is among other things a very serious researcher into the history of Chinese MA, and surprisingly enough, a lot of his most far-out stuff comes from historic sources, though one would think he makes it all up) -- as I was saying, there's a scene I remember where two young rouges are considering an attack on a certain target and discover the place is guarded by an ancient-looking couple, a very old man and his wife, whose posture tells the young guys they're taiji. One of them tells the other, oh drats, we have to get there no matter what, let's attack anyway. The other one says, are you out of your mind? Can't you see how old these people are? Could well be in their nineties! We have no chance against their taiji, they'll kill us. As for whether Systema can make one a mystic -- no, perhaps not if the ferment of mysticism isn't there somehow, but neither can taiji by itself -- a mechanistic view is not uncommon, and one will have no mysticism and no real taiji as a result -- but if this "something" kicks in, it's a different story. Taiji will support and develop it, no question. I think if "something" is "there," it may even be enough as a mystical practice, Zhang Sanfeng became an immortal doing only that. But how.

That's the thing -- like I said earlier, the powerful do use the supernatural, a lot, all the time, never stopped. I've been researching for years. Collecting books on ancient signs and symbols, studying them... then reading corporate logos and country seals and flags and all manner of insignia on all things state, military, corporate, medical like an open book of black magic. I wouldn't know where to start telling you its plot... and most people who've heard of these things heard of them from the infamous David Icke (and his now countless clones) who's on a mission to hijack anyone's budding interest and take it for a ride to the la-la land of genetically modified truths thoroughly intermixed with a crock of shit, smearing truths with shit so no one looks twice at them anymore... I dunno... try Peter Levenda, try Jordan Maxwell, i.e. a taoist and a pessimist, for a better researched and far more accurate introduction to the occult practices of the overlords. And what do we have? What they told us to have -- skepticism, i.e. the "na na na na na, I'm smarter than you, I don't believe in fairy tales, conspiracies, hidden agendas, supernatural phenomena, anything not approved by my overlords for my consumption" stance -- and the badge of superiority it confers: "I'm better than you, better educated, better provided for -- look, we rule the world, you bite the dust, na na na na na." Plus the new age monkey wrench thrown into the inquiring minds. Pleiadeans, lightworkers, channels, galactic federation of this and that, angels, positive thinking, indigo children... I'm going to go rinse my... er... keyboard. So, you see the world is going to hell in a basket and fast, and accerlerating -- and this proves what?.. I think it proves what I've just said. They're abusing power, we're not using it at all. They work really, really hard on becoming efficient at what they do. Do we? No, we don't. We make a joke about it and we don't make a dent. I don't mean you personally, of course. I mean "we the people." They got us good... But I'm not throwing in the towel. Not yet. Not ever. I know their number. (spoiler: it's not 666....)

My teacher's cat just begs to be stabbed. I'm new to the sword, but the cat knows me well and has come to expect me to control my taiji enough to accommodate his twirling around my legs while I'm doing it, he especially likes to engage in this while I Repulse The Monkey and am stepping backward, also kicks are his favorite moments. I've learned to allow for the possibility of a cat in my path, no problem. But with the sword he's taking crazy chances -- e.g. he thinks a downward thrust is an invitation for him to rush in and explore the tip of the sword. And mine's not wooden, and not all that dull. But since he's the master's cat, maybe he knows what he's doing... I hope he does...

I've met quite a few former hard MA stylists, very serious fighters some of them, who switched to taiji after their first encounter with a true master. ( I've never met anyone who did the opposite.) The stories they tell are always fun to hear -- and the wonder and awe in their eyes tell an even better one. One of my taiji practice partners comes from many years of TKD, and she now has her first taiji students, among them her former TKD master, who is well over 70. She says he's very enthusiastic, and very grateful that he didn't miss out on discovering taiji, even this late in the day. And thank you for yours. I collect taiji stories from all sides of the fence... ...but the grass is never greener on the other side, so far.

I gave the OP a "like" because I like it when people question things that have the power of affecting them emotionally (in this case, by annoying them ), not because I agree with the premise. And disagree I must, for some of the following reasons: ASoK, surprisingly enough, Systema is pretty mystical, it's just a "different" kind of mysticism. (There isn't only one, you know...) Not unlike that of Miyamoto Mysashi, who maintained a truly mystical relationship with life and death, did not subscribe to any doctrine yet incorporated much zen and taoism into his inner world, and was, basically, a poet of unperturbed, courageous and cruel indifference to life and death, someone else's and one's own alike. This is the kind of mysticism that is pretty hard to test empirically if you don't live the life of a medieval samurai or contemporary Spetsnaz. It is idiosyncratic... you have to have been there been that, can't grasp it from the outside -- like any mysticism. It's every bit the same with taiji. That its fighting value draws its appeal from a unique mystical quality thereof may annoy someone on the outside, but from inside the art, it's quite legit. Soft overcoming hard -- how counterintuitive it is in our world, how mysterious. One ounce moves one thousand pounds -- how mysterious it is to feel, not just talk about! Don't use your strength, use the opponent's strength -- how many people know how to do something like that non-mystically? Use qi, not li -- the shorter the jin, the deadlier -- to fight with Chen is to control peng -- I could go on and on. Taiji is mystical in its fighting aspects, is what I'm trying to say. Yin is mysterious, yes, but yang is mysterious too! -- a very different kind of mysterious, but still... Taiji is a constant interaction between the two, there's no such thing as "yin taiji" vs. "yang taiji," any taiji worth its name is yin-yang, always. I've reasons to believe it's the same with bagua, though I don't have first hand... er, first foot... experience with it.

Here's some more food for thought: apple has rich mythology around and inside it... which seems to be based on intimate knowledge of the energies of the world by the ancients. It is primarily associated with the Babylonian goddess Ishtar and her Roman parallel, Venus, and the symbol for both was the five-pointed star, or pentagram. Look here:

Traditionally, superpowers were used to help the community. E.g., I have a book of several hundred Russian spells, some of them extremely ancient and nearly all of them oral transmissions in their origin, collected over many decades, that were being used for centuries for exerting supernatural influence on the natural world. Most of them were designed to protect (people, livestock, homes), to improve health, to save lives, to bring about luck (very many for hunters' luck), to relieve pain, to get love, to stop the loved one's cheating, drinking, or being impotent -- and on and on -- every single problem, danger, difficulty has its supernatural antidote, which is how people lived throughout all of our history till very, very recently. I.e. till it was decreed by the rulers that supernatural powers must be monopolized and consolidated in their hands, leaving nothing unaccounted for in private hands. Much like Starbucks did away with mom and pop coffee shops. Our rulers, in the meantime, have always been occultists, and rely on the supernatural to fetch what they're after without fail. Research the Bohemian Grove for starters, the Cremation of Care ritual and so on -- to ease your way into the simple truth of our time: the supernatural has been hijacked, taken out of public circulation, and the public was informed there ain't any such thing. A country whose recent troubles I've been following closely lost its gold reserve -- all of it -- so now there ain't any. So now they are told gold is a "six thousand year old bubble, with no intrinsic value." We are always taught to belittle things that someone has deemed too good for us to have. We are told they are worthless to begin with. Think twice before discarding something you were oh so logically and so relentlessly prompted and pushed and ridiculed into discarding. You may be throwing away your gold reserve...

How is "The Classic of Dao and De" a translation? It's merely a transliteration. This is one of those cases when you can't translate from studying the vocabulary -- you have to study the context. The context of early taoism whence TTC comes (regardless of whether it's written by an individual or a whole bunch, at one time or over a period of time, it still draws on the earlier tradition -- I've read taoist classics predating it which it practically quotes verbatim). The source of early taoism is proto-taoist shamanic tradition. And there, the concept of Power is absolutely central, under various names, central and globally universal. Be it "medicine" or "the great spirit" or "Tengri" or "Sachamama" or "tao," the idea is not the word, but translating the word as "power" relays the idea more accurately than any which other way. De, incidentally, is a form of power -- integrity, tao's main attribute and one of her "virtues," per taoist classics. If one considers its opposite, bude, fragmentation, disconnection, compartmentalization, this might take one even closer to the understanding of the concept of "power" as Laozi et al mean it. The way of tao is the way of power -- unity, integrity, sincerity, naturalness, and ultimate invincibility. You can't defy tao -- no one and nothing can. That's what true power is like: nothing can overcome it in all of creation and in all of eternity. Knowledge, wisdom, skill are all aspects of power. Their opposites are aspects of powerlessness, of having lost The Way of Power.

Yup. This surprises people who are used to the connotations of the word "power" associated with its abuse -- and, indeed, this is the context in which we typically encounter it, unfortunately. But this is not its primary meaning. Its primary meaning is in the correct translation of Tao Te Ching -- The Way And Its Power, or The Way Of Power. So what I said was a direct quote from Laozi.

The view of taoism I subscribe to holds that taoists are the best-educated people of their generation, polymaths who routinely surpass specialists in every area of knowledge and/or empirical application thereof they happen to get interested in. A European counterpart would be Leonardo da Vinci -- painter, sculptor, architect, musician, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist, and writer. He was also active in politics, and enjoyed worldly success. These last two options is what a taoist can take or leave -- and "take" is the more traditional choice, the image of a taoist as a kind of social misfit is both overrated and historically wrong. That taoists "embrace simplicity" is usually a reference to how they act, not to what they are. "Watercourse" -- well, water happens to be the most complex substance in existence, with close to a hundred "aberrations" in its behavior compared to other substances in the world, with the most versatile range of behaviors of them all, and the least understood properties, many of them. Its appearance of something plain, bland, tasteless and colorless, mundane, "simple" is the non-contrived outcome of staggering, mind-boggling inner complexity. Taoists emulate that. Knowledge is power. The way of tao is the way of power. Don't think tame chlorinated water in your tap -- think the ocean. Nothing is more complex, nothing is deeper, or more fertile. When they say "be like water," think "be like the ocean," not "like the puddle," and any knowledge you may acquire along the way will seem as a mere drop... This, too, is taoism -- to understand, via knowledge acquisition, the depth of one's ignorance, and thus avoid inflated ideas about one's own erudition and the ridiculous circus pride a one-trick pony might take in being good at his trick.

Something I learned when teaching someone to ride a bicycle. He was a grown man who never learned how to ride a bicycle as a kid. We were practicing in an empty parking lot where there was one sign post at the far end, and a planter nearby. This man alternated between riding smack into the post or splat into the planter. Over and over again. I kept wondering why, since there was more than enough room to avoid them. He told me he keeps looking at them, trying not to lose sight of them, because he's worried about hitting them. That's when I formulated the First Rule of Mastering Any Skill: "If you focus on the obstacle, that's what you're going to hit." So, when people say that "supernatural abilities" are yada yada yada, fill in the blanks... I ignore this completely. If I focus on "it's not real," it won't be real. If I focus on "it's not what taoism is about," it's going to be some non-taoist pursuit. If I focus on "don't go there," I'll go there. And so on. What supernatural powers does a taoist develop if she does not focus on the obstacles?.. Whoa, surprise me. I can't imagine anything that can't be accomplished. If I could, it would turn into the obstacle to hit. Taoism is process-oriented. That's how it differs from the goal-oriented practices. And that's how it surpasses them. Hope it makes sense -- if not, carry on, I don't make obstacles to focus on of things I say that didn't make sense to anyone but me... I just say something else next.

Your taoist said exactly what mine did, except my taoist learned from a teacher who explains things, and yours has learned from a teacher who doesn't speak much English.

1. Don't make a big production. Shrug it off. Let the student figure it out for himself. 2. Instruct the student to thank the spirits -- unless the student has a way of knowing whose money it is, in which case it should be returned to the owner. 3. Depends on the culture. Some cultures encourage ratting out the cheater. Some never side with the institution against the individual, regardless of the extent of the individual's transgression, and despise the snitch more than the cheater. Some punish the cheater too severely, some punish the snitch too severely. Ask the student to figure out what type of culture he's in, and whether he likes its general approach to these matters. If he does, encourage him to follow his culture's expectations. If he does not, encourage him to choose his battles wisely. 4. Don't.

Yes, anger is natural, but it is a reaction. Love is also natural, but it is a default state. A reaction to the upsetting of a default state is an emotional reaction, a natural one. Restoring the balance is impossible by withholding or redirecting the immediate natural reaction. So when I say "anger is frustrated love," that's what I mean. And "rage is frustrated aliveness" -- this is first experienced at birth in our civilization, since the woman in labor, even if everything else is fine (which seldom if ever is the case), is forced to lie on her back instead of squatting. This impedes the infant's impulse to move toward life, since in the natural scenario, gravity works with the baby, helping, guiding and pulling toward aliveness in the world. When mom is on her back, this automatically creates an impediment to this impulse -- hence rage, a vigorous systemic protest against being denied the smooth flow of aliveness. If this is shut down as early as this stage (epidurals, etc.), the baby is born with the instinct of shutting down in response to danger rather than protesting, becoming numb and withdrawing reactions. Mission accomplished. This is what Reich either missed or chose to miss because he had a working theory which this foray into earlier events would throw off its main course -- but one of his students, Otto Rank, did discover birth trauma as the root of most imprinted aberrations in the human psyche. The mistake he made though was to think that any birth is traumatic (a forgivable mistake since every "civilized" birth indeed is). No -- but traumatic birth is traumatic. Agree with you that hate is not a feeling. It's one of those as-if loops that begin and end in the upper brain. Anger does not -- it starts in the lower brain, is mediated in the midbrain, and may or may not manifest in the upper brain (which is why so many angry people don't "consciously" know they are angry.)

I started out by asking what it is, and suggesting two versions. No one agreed, disagreed, or offered their own so far. So I reiterate. What is hate? What is it people talk about when they use the word? We all know, more or less, the surface meaning of "anger" -- some may know its real meaning too, I certainly do, from an excursion into deep feeling body-inclusive therapy many years ago. Anger is frustrated love. Another thing I found out "there" is that rage is frustrated aliveness. But hate -- I don't know what it is, not in the direct, experienced, systemic way in which "anger" and "rage" were revealed to me. "Hate" was not -- that's because I couldn't go as deep into that, there's no depth to whatever I know as "hate." So I suspect it's superficial, something in the neocortex. Not systemic. And therefore does not reflect anything fundamental about a human being, only something cultural. I was just reading of a tribe in the Amazon that's unbelievably cruel (Yaqui), and they don't have hatred -- they just have cruelty, cold-hearted cruelty, without emotional involvement, much like the way our own civilization is cruel, minus the cover-up -- stark, direct cruelty. E.g., prolonged illness is not tolerated -- if you don't recover in a "reasonable" time, they burn you alive. Same with children who are showing "deformities" -- they are not just burned but roasted alive, on low. The Yaqui are cannibals; they abuse women; they consider themselves spiritual, but choose to associate with malevolent spirits, because benevolent spirits are not helpful to a warrior in their world. Something went wrong with them far as I'm concerned -- and I believe their example shows that "cruelty" is also cultural, it's not part of the inherent human make-up. It was a good idea to examine "hate" (thanks, Dusty), I never quite thought of what it is, but now I may have figured it out.