Taomeow

Rara, thank you for inviting me back in. The article you linked took me way back... to the year when I used to hang out with a bunch of vegans, vegetarians, raw foodists, juicers (juicing fans, not machines) and fruitarians in LA. Exploring the scene, and also maintaining some friendships, not over the dietary issues but because a couple of those vegetarians were into classical music and we had seasonal passes to the philharmonic, so I would go to concerts with them once or twice a month. Well, what can I say -- neither one of them could sit through a symphony without making a few runs to the bathroom. And, yes, the theory was "detoxing," but we were going to those concerts the whole year and they never stopped detoxing... So, if you are still looking to pick folks' brains on dietary strategies and include mine in the pool, you can probably go back and find some of my old posts on nutrition. For a quickie though: if you go back to meat, start with very small portions and take some digestive enzymes with your meals for a while. (Some of the good ones are quite expensive and some of the cheap ones are not efficient -- the cheap and decent one you could find at a HFS is made by Solaray and called DigestAway. It may come in different versions, make sure you read the label and choose the one that includes proteolytic enzymes.) Good luck with whatever you choose.

Brian, why thank you dear!

I had fermented mare's milk (kumis), fermented camel's milk (shubat), and I just remembered, slightly off topic, that my sister-in-law gave her own milk to her cat when she had extra while nursing her first child.

"Post-heaven jing," also known as "qi."

Yeah, and one needs to actually study modern science in order to challenge an ancient one. I propose you study embryology for starters -- I have. It corroborates what taoist sources say about jing -- to wit, that it originates in the Kidneys. (Mudrya, not stomach and spleen, though no arguing with the good care of these you propose, they are not the source but, rather, the recipient of jing.) The first layer of cells in embryonic development to be folded into the beginning of the first organs of the body forms the kidneys. This same layer proceeds to lay down the brain, the hypothalamus, pituitary, pineal, adrenal structures, the skeletal structure, sexual organs and glands, ears, teeth, and fingernalis -- exactly the organs taoist sciences include in the Kidneys organ-system-function. So, once confirmed thus by modern science (which however has a tendency to not notice it has confirmed an ancient one, because those who know modern science are more often than not oblivious of the ancient one due to peculiarities of our schooling), it carries over the "extra credit" thus earned (for those who need it) to its other assertions -- e.g. that jing originates in the Kidneys. Jing is a concept a tad too complex for modern science, it can't confirm or refute it because it is missing from its current paradigm due to the lack of integrative powers of this paradigm (e.g. it has no concept and no definition of "health," our modern science does not, it can't define what "health" is, only what this or that "disease" is, and so one has to assume that the absence of a currently diagnosed "disease" is the same as "health." Which every reasonable person who has experienced assorted fluctuations of personal states of physicality, mentality and emotionality knows is not even close. "Health" is something else, but what -- this, modern science has never attempted to answer. So jing which forms its basis, the basis of health, is below, above, out of range of its radar.) In the light of what Kidneys actually mean in taoist sciences and how they form per modern science (the whole embryonic layer specializing in creating particular organs and functions, uniquely distinct and separate albeit connected with other embryonic layers, and retaining its original peculiarities throughout the whole lifetime), it becomes clear that jing is the connection between what creates the blueprint for the human being (DNA and the whole phylogenic history) and what materializes as an individual (ontogenic history). So, jing is primarily memory, ontogenic and phylogenic -- memory of how to be a member of the human species, and memory of a particular organism of how to be this particular specimen of the human species. It is a plan and construction according to the plan, a program and its execution simultaneously. So it is both material and immaterial, one could say "spiritual," though "jing," understood correctly, while covering the spiritual territory, extends far beyond it into more intricate aspects of being and nonbeing. I would suggest everybody gets a clear picture of what jing is before undertaking to "conserve" it (and this may take a long while, not many good sources remain to help one understand). But I've been talking about it for years and still, because this and that "master" has planted the seeds of total nincompoopness in so many minds, semen will be retained, semen will be forcibly self-constipated, and what I just said will drown again in the collective morphogenetic field of confused shen.

No, but my teacher studied with him and his brothers.

The next step after "highly stochastic" is known as "imbued with free will." This is a comet that may choose to do doom or not to do doom. (As a Prince of Denmark almost said.)

But how. I I-Chinged it and got four changing lines. Someone who has done hundreds of readings would know how rare and extraordinary it is, and how difficult to interpret. This is a highly stochastic comet.

Didn't happen, guys. It survived and emerged, brightened again, and is "unpredictable" again. http://www.cnn.com/2013/11/29/us/ison-comet/

Just curious -- were you old enough in 2001 to notice a major shift of energies of the world? I was, and I did. Really major, and the week before 9/11 I nearly lost my mind, so when it finally hit, I was as shocked as everybody else but also somewhat relieved to know that I wasn't going crazy, I was going perceptive... What I perceived then hasn't failed me so far, it predicted the unfolding of events to follow with great accuracy, even though everything in me tried to argue and ignore and pretend I'm not perceiving what I'm perceiving. No use -- I wasn't blessed with oblivion, unlike so many. One thing I know by now is that it's pointless to argue with those who don't perceive -- and either say nothing out of the ordinary is happening or, alternatively, make shit up so as to sound important, or make their lives more interesting, or frack knows what else for. It's like arguing ultraviolet and infrared radiation with a pit viper, who simply has organs to perceive it which humans don't. On the other hand, the summer before it happened I was cultivating like crazy, like never before or after, it was, like, three months of meditation nonstop, 24/7, so whatever made me is not biding its time either... something works against something else, and may it prevail. I don't know for a fact it will, but I know it's worth working with, because it's working against the unspeakable.

There's a root or tuber that grows in China, which supposedly looks and tastes like meat. The translator didn't know how to translate its name when master Wang Liping was lecturing on taoist nutrition in Moscow, and there was only one person in the audience, a Chinese, who knew what he was talking about. Does anyone know what that is? It was mentioned because during certain specific periods of cultivation that call for "avoidance of blood" (this includes all animal sources of food and also avoidance of menstruating women, people with any cuts or wounds, approaching hospitals or butcher's shops, battlefields, and possibly some TTB squabbles), this vegetable (tuber?) was mentioned as something to avoid as well. Not that I"m likely to unwittingly eat it at a crucial moment, but just out of curiosity -- anyone know this one?

It's not just Baolin Wu, it's the general FS premise. FS is a bridge between the natural ways and the civilized ways. As such, it incorporates aspects of both into something new, "gives birth to three," so to speak. It can only be grasped in the entirety of its approaches (which is what western and non-classically-trained Chinese practitioners miss 99% of the time) and these are like "genetic engineering of qi," it is bent and shaped to the human needs not any which way but in a healthy way so that the resulting entity is viable. Square is the shape of Earth qi. (In the spiritual realm Earth IS square, the numbers that create it make it so.) So you start with the square foundation for your FS work on location, but the location itself you have to choose prior to that (in the ideal, original scenario) is anything but linear.

I forgot to mention sea urchins I gathered among the Mediterranean rocks in wintry Italy. These were also adventurous enough -- I didn't speak any language and had to find out from the locals how to eat them (the urchins, not the locals) with a dictionary in one hand and a sea urchin in another, so I was not one hundred percent sure I got accurate instructions. You eat them live, the instructions went, open the shell, sprinkle the inside with lemon juice, scoop out with a spoon. The first one was the scariest. The many dozens that followed were a breeze, and a treat.

I see taijiquan. An interesting medical fact. The healthy heart is regular and irregular simultaneously -- a "strange attractor" is a fractal-type attractor, with greater oscillations continuously deviating a little from the central value and producing smaller and bigger waves around it (both in frequency and amplitude). A little, not too much and not too little. Too much and we get "irregular heartbeat," too little and we get "fibrillations." Both are dangerous conditions that gravitate toward a steady state -- which is death. But the worst pattern is when a heart starts behaving like a machine, losing its strange attractor properties and switching to an absolutely regular clockwork-type pattern of oscillations. This is a condition that is medically hopeless, death is imminent within 24 hours.

The title says animals/foods but everyone is focusing on animals? So, animals -- don't know how exotic crawfish I caught with my own hands sounds, but I ate that, cooked in a bucket of beer. And ceviche of raw unidentified critters from the Amazon (the river, not the online market). And horse and bear baliks (raw cold-smoked prime cuts). And smoked omul, a rare, commercially unavailable fish from Lake Baikal (which may have been the best tasting thing I ever had.) I think that's it for animals. I also ate two dozen varieties of Eastern European wild mushrooms, thousand-year-old eggs, cheese set on fire, ice cream set on fire (you splash pure ethyl acohol over it to accomplish this), a dozen varieties of edible wild plants (including some flowers), and aguaje, a rain forest fruit that tastes like grilled cheese. And a dozen varieties of wild forest berries. But the most exotic thing I ever ate turned out to have been inedible. It was a cactus pear that looked like those I saw in supermarkets here, but this one was growing wild, and being an adventurous and somewhat reckless eater, I decided that I might as well take a bite, see what happens. Big mistake. It was a variety that proved to have ink-colored juice inside, which stained my teeth a deep purple that for a while seemed quite permanent, but the worst part was that it created a kind of tactile hallucination in the mouth and throat, that of having swallowed a large handful of cactus needles. This lasted for a couple of hours. If you ever see a cactus pear that looks like something you might want to sample -- don't. Otherwise, happy gastronomic exploration everyone!

Wasn't talking about the I Ching. But thanks for the good laugh anyway.

Not into long term drastic predictions, but I do my Chinese astrology homework every year, and so far this has been the single most reliable source of prophecies of them all. The cosy terms it uses -- yang fire horse, strong wood, etc. -- may not sound like scientific terms to the ear trained to equate "scientific" with "Latin or English, and no older than the latest press release." Don't let the plain language used to encapsulate knowledge of dizzying depth in familiar images fool you -- this is top notch probabilistic science, and I'm yet to see a model of anything of great complexity (as complex as, um, the whole of reality) arrived at by any other means that would come anywhere near its level of accuracy. So here's a little taoist-scientific prophecy for you: the year 2014 will be challenging, and the month of December of this year will foreshadow it. The way December 2013 goes, the year 2014 will replicate on a larger scale. Pay attention in December, it will supply if not prophecies, then the "feel" for the year to come (which in a lunisolar fashion starts on January 31st this time around.)

TCM was created by folks who never had coffee, let alone an opinion about it, so all the later interpretations reflect the knowledge (or alternatively, and frequently, the bias) of the interpreter rather than the classic view. The unbiased TCM view of coffee can very accurately describe what it does in the body from the TCM perspective, and none of it is damaging to jing except under circumstances of abuse (e.g. someone using coffee instead of sleep and working at night, especially on tasks that involve memorizing stuff, intellectual activity and so on -- picture a student or a professional drinking coffee at night so as to be able to work instead of sleeping, and you'll get the picture.) The qi of coffee is very well balanced in the body under normal circumstances, both upward- and downward-bound upon entering. It enters particular meridians (Bladder and Heart), expels Dampness (and is beneficial in all Damp disorders) and some forms of Toxic Heat, and not only does not affect jing adversely under normal conditions of consumption but conserves it, due to its protective action on the dopaminergic system (part of the reproductive-hypothalamo-pituitary-adrenal axis of jing activity) and memory (the biggest player in jing preservation or loss.) It is not indicated in Dry disorders, in people trying to gain weight, or after the circadian Bladder activity drops (which is after 5 pm). Coffee is one of the substances avoided by evil entities (along with salt, camphor, copal, tobacco, sage and a few others, depending on the tradition, that are used for space purification purposes because they interfere with the bad guys' ability to maintain coherence in this-here dimension.) It can purify one upon exposure to such entities (e.g. the exorcist Mary McCarthy asserts that someone who doesn't drink a lot of coffee should not think of doing this kind of work -- too dangerous.)

They looked very serious to me at 7:30

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLd-AavULM0&feature=player_embedded

Very worth making a note of:

With an offensive post you hit the Report button -- what if it's not a post obligingly studded with quotable and actionable insults, but instead a carefully crafted derailing/trolling pattern of multiple posts in a thread? What is the best current procedure to point this out to the mods and ask for assistance? Also, if a poster was suspended before for the same kind of trolling, do the new mods check for this kind of information currently? If a poster has already been suspended for this a while ago and is at it again, are the mods aware? and if they are, how does it influence current modding action?

And this is the pattern of the heart's movement, known as a strange attractor: