Taomeow

Lose one another. Ten centuries together have come to an end.

Ancients laid to rest in the Scythian land wake up. Artillery strikes.

A boy and a girl didn't call it a day didn't call it a date didn't call it -- it came they sat on a bench the night climbing down their acacia tree like a monkey in search of its edible flowers the girl and the boy had no words for what came so they spoke of technology then over the mountain a man-made mountain called terricone a flash of red light the boy didn't see it the girl didn't stop it she sprang to her feet she silently screamed farewell oh farewell so soon oh so soon I knew it would come I should have -- too late I thought not tonight farewell oh farewell they did -- they -- they did -- they did this to us they did -- after all -- before everything -- they dropped it they did they then she woke up her darkness in check her dress white with dread she never looked back -- farewell, oh, farewell...

Prickly, yes, many brilliant people are. Mean, no. It's basic alchemy. The moment the chicken who puts out nuggets of gold crosses the road to peck at another chicken (chickens have this horrible instinct, once they see a drop of blood on a peer, signifying injury and weakness, they will peck!) -- the moment he pecks at that vulnerable spot, his own nugget turns into chickenshit. A strange law of nature, this one is. But if it wasn't for this law, the gold-to-shit disintegration in the absence of humanity, smart evil would have prevailed everywhere and forever.

Ah, eloquent bullying! How deprived were we all of its multiple spiritual benefits in junior high, when all our resident bullies were tongue-tied and dumb and could only throw a pathetic physical punch in the face, not a verbal masterpiece! How refreshing, in the age of the internet forums, to finally find the bullying style we could only dream of experiencing when all our interactions with peers were in the flesh! Now that we all have discorporated (well... at least for purposes of online interactions...), its time has come. Have a blast of nostalgia and reminisce of the good old days when all you needed to know about life was, defer to the bully and you'll be safe! Now you don't even have to give him your lunch money, just your subservient comments (or a wide berth when the bully wants to make a speech you are deemed unworthy to comment on) and you'll be fine! It's like having your pre-puberty, new and improved, at your fingertips! Jolly good fun!

Caesareans are of course part of the overall tilt toward "heroic surgery" that makes the surgeon, the hospital, and the pharmaceutical companies more money than they are able to resist. C-sections used to be rare before medicine went industrial, and are still rare in countries where medical services are offered for free. They were basically reserved for life-and-death situations (e.g. a sideways-positioned fetus too big to safely perform the external turn, and the like). The process of natural birth is, among other things, a set of sequential commands to the baby's assorted systems -- turn this on, turn this off, our metabolism is getting rearranged to enter a different world. A Caesarean birth cancels a whole bunch of these programs. All basic functions have to be allocated to secondary back-up systems -- this, speaking of physiology alone. Psychological impact of such birth would require thousands of years of study -- Caesar's will to "drastically rearrange the world without allowing for any smooth transitions and adjustments" was born at that moment, when his world was drastically rearranged in this manner. This is imprinting -- something bigger than nature and nurture combined. As for the hypnic-jerk, when I was little I was told it happens when you grow in your sleep. What do you think of this peculiar idea?

I don't know -- I never asked for access to that area, I only read the political section at that forum. See, I don't want to discuss things female with just any women, I discriminate in favor of cultivating women! One can take this my-preference "discrimination" as far as she likes -- e.g. I will talk to women with later-in-life cultivation interests rather than teenage girls with their menstrual cramps of no interest to me at this point, how's that for age discrimination?.. I will even talk to men provided I know them and they come in humility to the women's sanctuary and swear that they won't sue should things I have to say inadvertently damage their sex esteem. (There was a guy here who at one point angrily blamed me for doing the lotus the way I posted I do it and getting a clicking knee as a result. Sex cultivation is FAR more dangerous than lotus sitting, so I would think twice and thrice before giving any men any ideas -- who knows how their bodies and minds work at the level not accessible to me, if even their knees work differently! ) I can ask how they validate the gender, but my guess is, they don't take strangers to that section. The forum is old (about the same age as TTB) and everybody knows everybody -- and newcomers are promptly taught to do as the Romans do or get banned with no excuses or explanations.

I am a member of a Russians-in-America forum that has a section for women only, completely off limits to men. Russians are notoriously non-PC and most of TTB members would be shocked out of their minds if they could see how far they can take it, but sexism of the kind encountered here is not there. It's just common sense that women might have stuff to talk about that men should not be listening in on. Even men who are pretty medieval in their views don't doubt it -- it simply never occurred to them to raise any objections, why would anyone dislocate his brain out of common sense to come up with objections? Well, now that I think of it... in this country men are present even at labor, which is unheard of in human history -- that was one area they never controlled, monitored, surveyed, supervised -- I think our current government-surveillance situation is the outcome of people having been born this way for the first time in history, with the very first imprinting stamped into their unconscious being, "don't you dare keep any secrets from daddy" -- OK, I better stop.

When the day's been thrown into the ocean like a stone, the wind confessed its sins to the forgiving field of rye, the fire-and-brimstone beast has had its feast of flesh and bone, the wounded sun has spilled all of his blood across the sky, we'll meet again. Holding empty promises in clammy, shaking hands, wearing hand-me-downs from all those ghoulish masquerades, march between the street signs "Bright Beginnings"--"Bitter Ends" while you wait for us to come like rain on your parades -- we'll meet again.

I'll respond to that, but what I originally wrote was meant to be sarcastic. It's not what I think, it's what we are conditioned to think in a pyramid scam based world -- and it's pyramid scam based globally. Not Western, not Confucian -- universal. Now to your question. I do think you hit the nail on the head with the word "energy" -- no proper leadership is possible if it's not there. A leader has to have a surplus. This is only one prerequisite for good leadership, out of many, but a sine qua non. I have to disclaim this a bit though. Sometimes, power itself supplies the surplus of leadership energy once it's obtained. An example is Chairman Mao's wife, who was sickly and afflicted with cancer, among other things, while she was just a wife. But then she managed to get appointed to a position of power in the government. Her cancer went away, she became strong as a horse, and was never sick again and extremely energetic for as long as she called the shots. A lack of power -- not just over others, most people lack the power to rule their own lives -- is very draining on one's energy, perhaps more than anything else. Now a personal story of a loss of leadership power for a second that resulted in giving it up for the rest of my life. I was born feeling like a leader, it was just something that was part of me as much as my arms and legs, I never wanted or didn't want it, I wasn't even aware of it -- it was just there. I was the one who decided where a bunch of kids I was playing with would go, what we would do, which game we would play and for how long, and so on. No doubts in my mind -- I always knew the way, I was certain, and I had the energy. Then one day there was a rebellion. I went too far. It was the outcome of a lack of awareness -- I didn't even know I was the leader until there was a rebellion. I was ten. I proposed something to do to a bunch of kids, then changed my mind as soon as they started going in that direction, which was not unusual for me, and said, no, let's do that instead, go there, follow me! And started running. I never had to look back, before that day, to see if I was being followed, I always was. But that time they just stood and looked at each other and didn't run after me. I realized it a second later, when I heard no footsteps behind me. It was a moment of enlightenment. I never wanted to be the leader of anything ever again. It would emerge from time to time because the instinct was still there, but I didn't act on that instinct anymore. And now, for the first time in I don't know how long, maybe for the first time ever, I'm looking at a situation, elsewhere in the world, where I know I would be doing something very useful right this very moment if that episode when I was ten never took place and I went on to cultivate leadership abilities instead. But the energy isn't there anymore... There's way more wisdom and way less energy -- and a lack of energy renders wisdom feckless. So, to answer your question: "what if?" -- well, nothing. Most people don't have it, and some of those who have it let it go to waste, and the former are probably better off, since they've nothing to regret. For those who let it go to waste, a day comes when they regret it. For me it's today. And this, too, shall pass...

This is global post-shamanic. East or West, top is best. South or North, it's top worth.

A number of reasons far as I can tell. In many, it's the outcome of the whole culture being top-heavy, in-the-head, and unaware of the lower body from habitual suppression and neglect. It's the drive "upward," "to the top," it's "go higher," it's "upper crust," it's everything conditioned to be associated with "up" as worthy and "down" as, well, lowly (notice the word we've got to describe the unwanted -- also "base" means bad... linguistics of brainwashing for later though, for a different topic.) In some, it is the outcome of blatant sexual abuse. The extreme avoidance of turning awareness to the lower body may be a warning sign. If you get a particularly "dumb" student who just seems not to get it, step carefully, you may trigger some buried pain that no one is prepared to handle. Let someone like that use whatever they're comfortable using as their bellybutton. (I always notice that models stand in positions we are invited to view as sexy that are always about moving their pelvis far back -- if you draw a line from the baihui to the huiyin, instead of aligning on a vertical, as they should, the huiyin will be retracting as far as possible and the line will be tilted backward. So the stuck-out boobs and the stuck-out butt actually serve to tilt the vertical line and remove the lower body from contact range. To make sure it's safely as far away as possible from the nearest possibility of contact, the stomach is also sucked in. Wilhelm Reich called this pose the "no no no no!" response to the idea of intimacy, touch, and normal (rather than kinky) sex expressed in the body language, and always linked it with sexual abuse. These days, however, it may be just imitated, since we have "models" who teach us this pose.) In some, it's just overall poor perceptions of their own body, any part thereof. Some parts are neglected habitually and people spend a lifetime unaware of their existence. (How's your left ear feeling right now? What about your right middle toe?) This is cultural/poor-habitual/developmental, you name it, chiefly developmental. Infants of the tribes that carry their babies on the mother's -- sometimes father's -- body at all times in the first year and quite often, on and off, till the age of 8, do not grow up to ever have this problem, and are far more agile and coordinated from the early age. And the great felines grow up completely brain damaged if the mother does not drag them around by the nape of the neck in kittenhood. There was a zoo guy who managed to prove this and make it mandatory to drag those kittens being raised by humans in this manner, on a daily basis, so they don't miss out on this crucial developmental stage. Has to do with the body learning and internalizing the workings of gravity, motion, inertia, etc. -- the kinesthetics of our world and its own relation to them, dimensions, sensory parameters, etc.. It's funny that in Taiwan, when people have problems with their own perceived body position in space, they seem to be having left-right rather than up-down difficulties. I don't know why, it's something a friend told me who served in the Taiwanese army. He said some of the new recruits were unable to learn to march while rhythmically swinging their arms -- some could swing only one arm at a time while the other was not moving, some would go with both arms forward then both back, some could only match left arm to left foot and right arm to right foot but not vice versa, and so on.

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@ Songtsan: Interesting ancestry! Yes, agreed -- and even if we were to return to matriarchy "someday," it would be meaningless to try to pull off today, since, like I said, women and men alike would have to become different from what they are today. (One could never convince me, e.g., that Hillary is a woman, despite any anatomical or dress-code proof. She is one of the "honorary males," i.e. women who are in the positions of power which is, however, administered in a patriarchal manner and has nothing to do with what a woman's power is like. An example of a woman in power, the only one I know of, who behaved a little bit like a woman in her rule was the Chinese empress Wu, who actually had to declare herself emperor because "empress" was not a position of power. She was the one who invented meritocracy, in the form of the famous imperial exams, which resulted in the talented rather than only the high-born getting a fair chance to move to powerful positions in the government -- though it was males only still, the idea that it has to be the best males to choose from was introduced by a woman... a very female move, selective preference for the hard-working smart rather than the privileged who may have been rendered lazy and dumb by the very privilege. She also invented democracy, to the extent possible, by making it possible, for the first time in history, for common folk to complain directly to the emperor -- herself -- or her appointed officials about the wrongdoings of the feudal lords, and actually get to know the people she ruled and their troubles and sorrows. That was another female-rule move -- patriarchal rule tends to be impersonal, the rulers don't know and don't want to know their constituents, they want to know who their friends and foes are, that's the extent of their interest in the commoners' lives.) So, here's two features (out of a lot more) pertaining to power application that are distinctly female in origin regardless of whether a woman or a man administers them: meritocratic choices for positions of power instead of bloodline choices (women are not worried about "their" blood being inherited by their children, this is always guaranteed -- while inheritance of "MY bloodline" is a male concern since this is not guaranteed unless the woman is forbidden multiple sex partners; a lot of historic injustice is the outcome of this male concern, not shared by women, a lack of meritocratic societies being one of the outcomes); and personal rather than impersonal ruler-subject interactions, based on the need to know rather than the need to not know the subject's heart (this, again, is female in nature because of the original close bonding between the ruler-mother and the subject-infant -- if she doesn't know the baby's needs closely and intimately, the baby will suffer and the outcome later in life will be, SHE, the mother, will suffer, due to the lack of bonding and understanding. This pattern is automatically extended to any ruler-subject relationships in a matriarchy, while in a patriarchy it gets cancelled, since the father can afford not to know the needs of the child -- he can just accomplish obedience by force or threat of force, and in a paternalistic scenario, this is what happens with every father-of-the-nation.) So, if we were to start moving toward a sensible human society, we would perhaps need to take one step at a time away from the habitual ways of patriarchy (invisible many of them, all-permeating all of them), and determine clearly, for starters, which of our habitual ways are the perilous patriarchal ways, and start ruling in the opposite manner -- who the rulers would be anatomically given this premise wouldn't matter. A sensible man is fully capable of ruling as a mother of the nation, although it would perhaps be more challenging for him than it would be for a sensible woman. But if he can pull it off, I'll vote for him. And if "she" is, by the same token, behaving as yet another "honorary male," I won't, she's never a woman to me, as the song almost goes.

The transformed hexagram is the expected outcome of your following the course described by the changing line or lines of the original hexagram. You are effectively told by the changing line, "this is what you're getting into." And then the new hexagram explains, "if you get into that, this is what you are to expect as a result." Often you get a choice how to act. You are likely to get what the new hexagram says if you follow the course suggested by the changing lines, so if you don't want this outcome, don't follow that course, and if you do, do. Sometimes, however, it describes the expected outcome of the events that are set to follow a particular course which you don't control with your actions. In this case, you don't get a choice, you get a forecast. This, again, can be good or bad or neutral, and you prepare accordingly. You may not be able to change the outcome, but you will be better equipped to face it. It's like the weather forecast -- if they say, chance of rain today is zero percent, then based on this forecast you don't drag along your umbrella. If they say, an eighty percent chance of a heavy snowfall, then based on this likelihood you part with your flip-flops and wear some boots. You can't stop the snow or start the rain, but you can try to match the weather with your outfit once you know what it's going to be like.

There's very few matriarchal tribes left -- I sometimes think I should join one of them, or else there's no practicing what I believe in. The one I have in mind, which is part of what the Chinese government lumped together as the Miao people, is being "modernized" in a hurry so now their ways are understood by tourists as their women offering free sex, which is nowhere near the truth... but I guess if I want to get to the still surviving traditional (real human) ways I'd have to hurry, the overlords are making their move... That tribe is interesting in that no one cares who the father of the child is because women take as many husbands as they like, there's no stigma attached to starting or dissolving any of these liaisons, highly selective but never saddled with any obligations of exclusivity -- and no social or material repercussions of doing as the woman sees fit because all property is inherited matrilineally, by the youngest daughter... And according to a Chinese writer who described her mother's life with the Miao, teenage boys of the tribe dream of attracting an older woman, the way it's always been throughout our true, matriarchal history -- for how else could they learn the real, cultivational rather than recreational sex?.. We used to be a matriarchal species for 99.9% of our history. If anyone thinks it was unfair and "unequal" (if we were supposed to be equal, nature would have us propagate asexually like amoebas do, or switch sexes in mid-life like pumpkins... yes, all pumpkins were created equal, but not us -- nature gave us sexual reproduction and she gave the womb to half the species only -- so matriarchy is what she did to us, and whoever undid this was not of nature, was not natural, and did something against human nature) -- consider the fact that we had no wars while at it, no degenerative disease, no crime, no slavery, no polluted environments, no poverty, no famines... what we did have was a universal planet-wide cult of the Goddess, the one and only divine power recognized all over this earth, and it was the cult of life itself. Life on earth was perceived as constant ongoing happiness and equated to the feminine principle -- and while it was understood as such, life on earth was good for everybody, men and women. Which is one reason (out of much circumstantial evidence I've been collecting over the years) I believe that patriarchy was not only an artificial installation by the Intervention but a fundamental one at that -- it's not indigenous to our species, it's got to have been artificially implanted and cultivated to take root. Which it was and which it did. It won't be easy to uproot, but the goal of the original, unpolluted by Intervention, taoist proper cultivation, for both men and women, has always been just that and nothing but. What do you think "return to the Way" is about? Who do you think tao "the Great Mother" is?.. I don't expect the general population to radically change their perceptions anytime soon, after thousands of years of manipulative social engineering, but anyone who touches taoism from any angle must realize that your cultivation will all be for naught unless you get this one simple idea straight: to return to the Way is to return to the way of nature, Goddess, tao, the Great Mother... and none of these are guys. However you go about it, if you offend the Goddess by offending the Woman, you can never approach the Way no matter what else you do or don't do.

Yes, one can use an electronic microscope to hammer in a nail. But that's not its primary function. How to use it to see into the invisible is its primary function, and for it to function this way, you need to adjust a screw here, a lever there... One way to avoid having the I Ching reiterate to you what your subconscious is prompting your hand to transmit to the coins is to shake them in a metal container (this is traditional) so that the container prevents your personal micro-impulses from influencing the outcome. And, also traditionally, you can ask someone else to throw the coins for you, someone with no personal interest in the outcome you get. All these, however, are precautions for the initial stages I think -- though I still use a metal container, because it has the eight immortals on it and is cool, and also to be on the safe side of my own unconscious -- but generally, once you have developed a relationship with the oracle, she will know how to overrule your impulses and give you the real answer no matter what you want or expect to hear -- even, if you are not asking the real question of the moment, an answer to the question you should have asked instead. This happened to me many times when I needed to know something important but didn't know I did and asked something unimportant. In hindsight it became crystal clear what the question I should have been asking had been. Now, if I get an answer I can't understand, I re-ask: what do I really need to concern myself with at this time? And then it makes sense. Also, I've asked about things I definitely couldn't know about -- or got predictions about things I definitely couldn't know were coming -- so I have no reasons to believe I'm pulling the answers out of my own psyche. (Incidentally, I'm not one of those people who believe they make all the choices in the universe themselves, not one of the you-are-my-thoughts almighty gods of all-that-is... When I point a finger at the moon, I don't imagine I'm projecting the moon out of my finger.) And to the OP: If you get too many changing lines, it's a sign that something is in disarray, that the qi of the moment is badly entangled -- either in the subject of inquiry at the moment, or in your own life at the moment. If I get more than two changing lines, I start looking around to see which areas of my life and environment, whether physical or non-, need uncluttering. Once some order is restored within and without, I ask again.

I think it's very widespread for people to have no clearly delineated gender to call their own -- partially it's scrambled values (e.g., in order to behave "professionally," a woman is meticulously conditioned to behave like a man; in order to be a "good father," a man is expected to be away from his children every day and never let their lives distract him from his career; and on and on); partially it's scrambled chemistry (xenoestrogens in the environment and contraceptive pills in the women's bodies create a metabolic milieu where a male fetus can't be fully convinced he's male on the hormonal level -- that's why sex change is more common man to woman than the opposite, the mismatch between anatomy and the deepest self-identification is triggered by excessive estrogen at gestation. If we were exposed to xenotestosterones instead, e.g. if the toxic, carcinogenic, mutagenic, teratogenic, stroke-promoting, health-destroying contraceptive pill was something the man had to take rather than the woman, the picture would have been opposite -- to wit, there would be more women feeling that they're men trapped in female bodies. That's the price we pay when we tax one gender -- the other one invariably pays as well, so the absence of interest in a contraceptive pill for males has this inadvertent outcome, more men being born without having had the benefit of male-specific fetal development. But don't let me digress.) So, I'm not hopeful that we can solve anything at an online forum, we're dealing with trouble at the core of existence in the stand-off of sexes that is completely unnatural, and a stand-off of bogus sexes at that, men who are not what nature meant by that and women, ditto. The minor band-aid to apply to the situation I see as disastrous would be an enforcement of common courtesy, a rule against hurting people's feelings. (Incidentally, I realize I'm hurting someone's feelings by writing what I've been writing, my excuse being that I'm being an equal opportunity offender in this, I am not singling out any one gender or sexual orientation, I think it's our common sorrow, so whatever someone finds hurtful, is the outcome of this actually being everyone's problem...) The forum can be like a nicer part of town or a dangerous part of town -- which would we want it to be? If it's dangerous to be whatever you are here, people who don't want to expose themselves to unprovoked attacks will leave. Did in the past and will in the future unless... well, let the ones with a finger on the demolition button sort it out. And godspeed to them too.

I just bought two books written by a Wudangshan taoist nun on the secret practices of female and dual sexual cultivation, translated into Russian, not available in English. I'll be damned if I share any of that at the general forum. The women-only section is where I might. Immature creatures of indefinite gender (those who substitute their stereotypical mental constructs to project onto both women and men, and are consequently unable to have any meaningful relationships with any women or men because real people don't exist in their world, only stereotypes projected onto women and men which blot the real person out of existence) -- these are not ready for sexual secrets of taoism, and would fuck them up if they tried to apply them, just as they fuck up all their gender-specific cultivation because they don't even belong to their real gender physiologically, much less psychologically, due to the stereotype in their head blotting it out of existence. They are perhaps members of their sex anatomically, but that's not enough for undertaking taoist sexual cultivation. Applies to both sexes -- we don't only have too few women here, we have a drastic shortage of men. Those of the anatomically correct ones who however are not developed as men, don't function as men physiologically, psychologically, emotionally or socially, don't count.

How often do you see your gynecologist? Did you try any TCM herbs for morning sickness when you were pregnant? Have you practiced ovarian breathing lately? Do you regulate your periods with the Deer exercise? Did you accept or reject an epidural when you were in labor with your first child? Do you feel the Mayan uterus adjustment practices have made you a more balanced... um... man? How do you use the middle dantien to maintain healthy breasts? What should you eat to avoid the symptoms of menopause? Would you deem these and similar concerns sexist or moot, best let go of and forgotten?

I beg to differ. Being passionate about all the right, humane, compassionate causes does not mean being judgmental and hostile. It means being a deeply feeling human being. As opposed to a numbed-out brainwashed conformist. For a frame of reference: I mostly avoid discussions of this kind, not because I've nothing to say but because as soon as I start typing, it's expletives and nothing but -- so I have to abort. Expletives and the angriest of diatribes, directed at bigots, misogynists, racists, homophobes, anti-Semites, and occasionally some less-regular varieties of nazi-huggers, those who get creative by putting down younger people, older people, even, for fuck's sake, Russians recently, non-vegetarians for chrissake, and certainly political and conscientious nonconformists on a regular basis -- our enforcers of political and conscientious orthodoxy are quite vigilant in this respect -- and I hate, with a passion, everything these folks stand for. I don't hate the people, mind you, I hate the hate speech, and the masked, indirect, implicating kinds more than the open and direct ban-inviting kind. So, let it be known: I hate and despise, with a passion, all the great malicious murderous soul-defiling evils bigots have perpetrated against this world of ours in the millennia of their disgusting, cruel, numbed-out, self-serving, inhumane, inhuman rule -- and by the same token, all the pusillanimous petty evil deeds the lesser of them, those with no power save for the power of hate speech, have committed on this forum. (Yeah, they don't have the power to take these petty evils on a larger scale -- they would if they could though, they would if they could...) Not that I can do much about it, the entry is being offered just for information purposes. Just so anyone who ever wanted to know what this-here poster thinks of them be informed: if you've been bashing, directly or on the sly (especially on the sly) a gender, race, nation, sexual orientation, skin color, nonconformist stances that exclude the use of a convenient, traditionally endorsed scapegoat (there's a variety of bogus nonconformists who enforce the orthodoxy by using the designated, state-sponsored scapegoats thinking they're being iconoclastic -- this kind is the most pathetic of them all IMO), if you are one of these, I think you befoul the ground you tread upon and poison the sky over your head. Whether you'll ever be banned for this I don't know, but that you'll be eternally damned for this, I fully expect.

The best thing I've learned from taoism: I don't have to invent that bicycle after all. I can just ride it.

Yes, exactly -- the weapon becomes the expression of your phases. The ones you are able to manifest -- for a beginner; and the ones you choose to manifest for a seasoned practitioner. I watched the James Brown movie yesterday. At one point the godfather of soul throws a tantrum trying to explain to his band what it is he wants them to do with a particular song. "What is it?" he asks the drummer pointing at his instrument. "Er... it's a drum." "That's right." He turns to the next musician: "What is this instrument you're playing?" "Um... it's a guitar." "NOOOO! It's another drum!!" he yells. Then he asks the next one: "What is it that you're playing?" "An oboe..." "NO!" "Oh... a drum?" "Yes!! Yes, dammit, it's a drum!" he yells. "Now I want all of you to remember what instrument you're playing here! You are playing a drum, understand?.." And then they finally did -- and played every instrument as though it was a drum, and as soon as they knew that what they were expressing in that song, no matter what the instrument, was the Rhythm of the Drum, they produced the sound that blew everybody away.

I would surmise it depends on the moves you execute. Each weapon can represent each of the five phases, depending on what you're doing with it. The wuxing phases are primarily types and vectors of motion (and more, of course -- all phenomena ultimately arise from these, if you throw in the bagua directions and yin-yang, they pretty much describe everything that can happen to anything.) The taiji weapon in motion will manifest the interactions of the five phases, the eight directions, and the yin-yang dynamics. To a total of 26 types of taiji energies, times all their possible combinations. What I call a "taiji energy" is not li and not qi, it's a combination of a wuxing phase of qi with a direction of the bagua and the yin-yang dynamics manifesting at a particular moment. Our physics is not equipped to describe this kind of complexity. Biophysics might, someday... if it adopts the taoist approach.

Yup! That's where my jian comes from!