Taomeow

Click and scroll left-right and up-down

Thanks for the link! What I think of it is, statistics only say "what" happened but people interpret "why" it happened in accordance with their level of understanding. Psychologists don't know, so they make it up. In this case, the made-up theory is that beliefs of the mind create the reality of the body. I hold a diametrically opposite position. To wit, that the reality of the body creates beliefs, or rather, steers people toward beliefs of particular nature, which they proceed to adopt because of a resonance between their actual systemic reality and this particular set of ideas. No one adopts beliefs that the body does not resonate with. So beliefs are a symptom of what's going on systemically, not the source. So, my take on the "why" of those statistics goes like this. People who believed they were harmed by stress and proceeded to die were people who were indeed harmed by stress and knew it. People who believed they weren't harmed by stress and proceeded to live were people who, indeed, weren't harmed by stress, and knew it. Two different kinds of people -- I call them the "too much" group and the "not enough" group. The "too much" people carry a lot of developmental stress, have defense mechanisms stretched to their limits and eventually to the breaking point, and handle any additional stress poorly on all levels. They know that stress harms them because they can feel it. It's not their "belief," it's their reality -- the "belief" derived from this reality is congruent with reality itself and accurate. The "not enough" people, on the other hand, carry a lot of developmental under-stimulation (e.g. cold, emotionally barren upbringings, strict scheduling with no room for spontaneity, social isolation and loneliness growing up, and so on). These suffer from an opposite kind of danger to their health, that of stagnation, not enough "spark," excitement, action, not enough stimuli to feel alive. These are the ones who thrive on stress. These are the ONLY beneficiaries of stress -- they happen to have been abnormalized in a way that modern lifestyles have made adaptive. Current society provides their drug of self-medication, stress, in ample supply. They are like alcoholics who always feel better when they can get a fix. The "too much" group is, currently, far less lucky. They are being, effectively, force-fed their lethal poison. Same substance -- stress -- different metabolisms. That's the picture. Does it make sense to you?

I agree with Friend that reducing sleep without reducing stress is unhealthy, and reducing stress is not always an option, whether external or internal. The bulk of stress we carry is internal, developmental -- e.g. being born prematurely is a lifelong stressor, not having been nursed is a lifelong stressor, childhood vaccinations are a lifelong stressor, and on and on -- in most modern people, the whole system is wired for stress management and mediation of pain, unmet needs, and repressed feelings from the start, and there's little room left for anything else. These systems are doing the best they can with the hand they've been dealt, and sleep of individually determined duration is a profound necessity for them to be able to cope. Sleep is absolutely crucial as the first line defense against all neurological, psychological, physical imbalances brought on by developmental stress and aggravated by ongoing current stressors. I wouldn't set a goal of reducing it even by a minute. We typically get less of it than we really need rather than more, considering what it's up against. Normalizing any function and system by some good method or other (cultivation) may reduce one's need for sleep -- or not, instead it may increase one's ability to use both sleeping and waking states productively. Dreamtime is the source of systemic nourishment, healing, balance, and power. Instead of reducing the quantity, I would go for increasing the quality of one's sleep.

TCM=traditional Chinese medicine Personal experience -- yes. I've read Dr. Chang years ago so I don't remember the details of what does or doesn't come from there, but the things I picked for myself are classics, corroborated by other taoist sources. I didn't get Deer from Dr. Chang, I got it from taoist female alchemy. Couldn't tell where the male version comes from though -- either his own modification or another classic, one I didn't come across (and didn't look for, for lack of applicability.) It is hard to practice from books. I applaud anyone who gets results this way, but I for one could always start but could never sustain a practice if a live connection wasn't there. This goes not only for books as sources for practice but for live masters too who might be, for whatever reason, unwilling or unable to offer such live connection, or perhaps unwilling/unable to offer it to me personally. Somehow indifference or even implicit negation of who you are on the other end poisons the well, and what they teach becomes irrelevant -- you won't learn without rapport with the teacher. With some, even if you don't meet them, you read a book and feel that the teacher gets you, you feel respectful and respected, you feel awe, and then it might click and you learn something practical from a book that has momentarily come alive. Some, on the other hand, you might actually meet in person and feel a wall of indifference on their part (no matter how well the warm-fuzzy public persona has been rehearsed), or even rejection, or even hostility. I am not capable of learning through such a wall at all. Don't know how everybody else fares in this respect.

.

Oh, thanks for amending. I didn't know Dr. Chang had Deer for males -- I must have skipped right over that chapter. Generally, his material is very good, authentic and useful. In your case, one thing that I can think of is, don't do it while taking a hot shower. (TCM does not favor hot showers in general.) Deer, like any qigong or neigong practice, requires undivided awareness, full attention to what you are doing, unwavering internal focus without external distractions. Try not to multitask, avoid being busy with something else or stimulated with something else while doing it. Any practice can turn into a source of unexpected or even undesirable "side effects" if you mix it with some random unrelated activity. Good luck!

You didn't specify your gender in your profile. I've been taught that Deer is for women. I don't remember what version is taught in Dr. Chang's book -- maybe something else -- but the female classic I know can't be done in a shower. Or by a male.

Let's smoke the peace pipe! War-mongering nazis don't. Burn their uniform.

I made a new rule for myself that I share with you in case you might find it useful too: posting at TTB only "right before taiji" or "right after taiji." So far this hasn't decreased my posting, but it did increase my taiji volume. Every time I feel like saying something, I know I can't unless I do some taiji. And now I'll have to count this-here post as "right before taiji" and do some taiji, though I was thinking more in the direction of some dinner. Thanks a lot.

Non-local consorts. Emperor Yu calls collect. Accept the charges?

Says who? Source please? The way I learned it in the course of formal schooling, embryonic development proved the theory of evolution. I don't buy this theory to begin with, darwinian or neo-darwinian, whether with this or that part of what was scientific dogma just recently "discredited" here and there, only to be replaced by another dogma that gets "discredited" as soon as they stumble upon a new fact and promptly sprout a new belief. I don't change beliefs as fast as our trend-chasing scientific gurus do. I believe in co-creation, unfolding, and intervention... in other words, I'm a taoist. Reality hasn't yet "discredited" anything I believe in, so I brace myself for when/if it does, just in case...

That's a fine example of Pattern dictating availability, rather than amount. The pattern is "ownership" of land, which has nothing to do with the amount of available footage. The pattern is what makes most of the land unavailable to most people, not the amount. In terms of amount, the whole current population of the purportedly "overpopulated" Earth can comfortably fit into the town of Jacksonville, Florida -- twice. Drive across Texas and you'll be looking at emptiness for three days. Qi is available to us in unlimited amounts, if only because qi is not an "amount of something," it's "the meaning of the pattern" and its interactions and relationships with other patterns. The human pattern is believed to be a microcosm by the originators of the concept of, and investigation into, the phenomenon of qi. So whatever is available to the universe is available to us. It's how we organize it that sets the limitations. It's the pattern of use that makes it scarce. A better pattern results in a more generous redistribution. People who get "more qi" don't get more qi in the sense they get "amounts" of it in any mechanical manner. E.g., qi expenditures of the living human organism are replenished by food, but does it mean that the more you eat, the more qi you will get? This would make the greatest and most powerful masters of qi out of the biggest gluttons, no? It doesn't though...

Things happen in the world for which the human mind hasn't even formulated beliefs yet, or perhaps "yet" is a tad optimistic. Someone I know, a "materialist" and "atheist" with a bit of an agnostic streak is plagued on a regular basis by mysterious experiences that are ridiculous. Fully mysterious and fully ridiculous. E.g., useless things materialize out of nowhere after he reads about them in a book or sees them in a movie -- say a tacky cup with a mermaid on the bottom, which the next day someone returning from a trip to Florida gives him as a present. He has no use for these objects and has never been able to discern a meaning in their appearance, but the pattern is recurrent in his life. What kind of belief would he have to have to explain it? He almost wound up arriving at a belief in a prankster god, a god who likes to make you feel stupid. I occasionally feel that certain developments are leading me toward a false belief, a stupid belief, or a useless one, and take care to nip it in the bud. Beliefs feed off the energy invested in them, grow and mature and become more influential in the world as they go, so they are, in a sense, a great responsibility. Spiritual or scientific, beliefs are not any different in terms of responsibility -- it's worth examining what's in it for humanity, for the world, if you choose to believe certain things. A belief in heaven and hell, e.g., created the obedient sheeple and maintained their carrot-and-stick-based obedience for many centuries. A belief in evolution of man from ape is another example of a disempowering paradigm that stripped man of his (and her) spiritual affiliations. And a mere belief it is, rooted in no more than an opinion interpreting certain ideas as "facts" while ignoring certain other, observable facts. E.g. according to this same theory the human fetus is supposed to recapture in its development the evolution of the whole species. Well, it does look like a fish at early stages, complete with gills and a tail and a corresponding body shape, but does not, at any stage of its development, look like a little ape. However, a dolphin fetus at 2 weeks of age looks exactly like a little human baby. Put this in your pipe and smoke it, Mr. Darwin. What kind of belief I'm to derive from this observable fact, I don't know! So I don't derive any -- at least until I understand better. Would that darwinians did likewise, and creationists, ditto.

Beliefs are useful if used consciously, like everything else. Most beliefs people hold are unconscious -- they believe because they were conditioned to, and they don't know that it's someone else's constructs in their mind that they believe in. This is harmless in some instances, not so in most. Conscious beliefs are, however, different. They are, indeed, choices, as someone pointed out, and they are different from unconscious uninformed choices in that they engage all human faculties. I.e. they don't merely reside in the head. They affect your physiology and in some cases even anatomy. These are not thought, they are done. And they do co-create reality. The reason for the existence of all temples, churches, shrines, cathedrals in the world is that their creators believed that a god or goddess or saint will descend and inhabit a home you provide, since none of them have physical bodies in this dimension. So, you make a "body" for them to inhabit, and then if you don't screw up along the way, they will inhabit it. The same can be done on the level of one's own body if it is offered to a deity or spirit to take residence in -- all invocational systems operate on this premise, and in this sense there's no difference between a devout Christian manifesting stigmata and a Voodoo priestess possessed by Erzulie for the duration of the ceremony. Belief is a starting point -- then it's a matter of technology, technique, and the qualities and talents of the "technician," the "craftsman" or the "woman of the Craft." Much of subtle anatomy depends for its development on beliefs too. It isn't not there and it isn't there -- you make it be there or you stunt its development, depending on what you believe in, not in the head but by doing or not doing your beliefs. You make it possible to juggle six tennis balls by first believing it's possible, and developing new neural pathways for brain-hand coordination that do make it possible, that weren't there before you started believing in the form of practicing. With dantiens (e.g.) it's largely the same. If you don't believe in them, you won't get them. But by no means does it mean that they are imaginary. Imagination (another word for "belief") is just the first of the many tools in your tool box, but a sine qua non at that.

You (the generic you, not the OP) can't get an answer to this question if you misunderstand what qi is. Is there a limit to the number of ways you can use words of the English language to form meaningful sentences? Is there a limit to the number of ways you can rearrange items in your fridge? The answer to both is no. However, you run out of options very quickly if you are asked to form meaningful French sentences out of words of the English language. Ditto if you are told to rearrange items in your fridge just so that the distance between any two of them is no greater than one inch. Qi is about patterns. "Energy" it is so often mistaken for arises from these but ain't it. The English words "Shoot to kill" have plenty of qi (sha' qi, to be specific -- killer qi) if they come from a military commander addressing them to his soldiers. The same words don't have any sha' qi if I address them to my cat while he's playing with a rubber band (his favorite pastime). Qi arises from context and both gives meaning and energy to, and gets it from, spacial and temporal configurations, both forming their interactions and being formed by them. Example: last week I wasn't feeling well and decided to make myself some ginseng decoction and drink it every day for a few days. It worked and I felt a lot more energized and stronger and overall better. Did the ginseng decoction have qi that it imparted? Yes and no. Yes -- in the sense it could interact with my own system to produce it. No -- if you administered it to someone who's dead, it wouldn't increase his qi. Qi is the medium and message of meaningful change. This mantra is worth repeating daily, it unconfuses a lot of confusion.

Oh, so it is a huge ibrik. Good shape though. A perfect vehicle for making coffee for 2--3 people. Now I understand what happened. For one person, for the recipe I offered, the ibrik would need to be half the size of yours or smaller than that. So, you have two options. Make coffee for at least two and roughly double the amount of everything -- 5-6t coffee, 2t sugar, and enough water to come to the narrow part and stop there. OR make two cups this way for yourself but don't drink both -- if you're not used to this strength, it's going to be too much. Refrigerate the second one, in a covered container (don't just let it sit in the open) and use for Café Glacé later, with Haagen-Dazs vanilla ice cream. If you make it too strong for your taste by doubling the amounts, you can Americano it. I am not a fan of this method, but it might otherwise be a tad strong for someone new to this. OR you can keep this one for the start of a future collection and get another one, half the size or smaller. I have a modest collection of ibriks (a dozen or so), and use one of the smaller ones on a daily basis. (If I want two cups of coffee, I make it twice.) It's a handmade miracle from Armenia, which is decades old, stays new, and is made of something that may be either silver or high-silver-content pewter. The rest of mine are copper, brass, enameled, and stainless steel, but nothing comes close to the favorite. I wouldn't know where to buy something like this today, it's hard core vintage, practically antique, with the Soviet era price stamped right into the metal on the bottom -- can you imagine?.. It says 18 roubles, which used to be a lot before the collapse of the CCCP -- about as much as you paid monthly for a 2-bedroom apartment, e.g...

It's, um, all one, right? Make me one with your money? It's mine anyway?

Let me guess. You have always been young and healthy so you have no reasons to believe this could ever change. Your grandparents and your parents have always been in perfect physical and mental shape, never sick, never functioning below their optimum, never unhappy, never making anyone else unhappy. So your approach is, if it ain't broke don't fix it. I can understand that. If any of the above is not the case though, food choices is the first place I would look for the reasons why before investigating any further. In quite a few cases, investigating any further proves unnecessary. Change your food, change your body; change your body, change your mind; change your mind, change your spirit; change your spirit, change your destiny. That kind of an idiosyncratic deal.

Playing hide and seek with an irksome grain of sand manifests a pearl

If you want to stay away from grains but eat other starchy, carby stuff like root veggies and legumes, I suggest higher saturated fat additions to your diet. So, butter on your potatoes is a must -- carbs consumed with no fats are one of the most welcoming invitations to insulin resistance. Ghee, coconut oil, palm oil, cocoa butter, and animal fat are your best friends. All your carb dishes will be richer and more satisfying and healthier too -- and I guarantee you won't gain weight by increasing your dietary saturated fat, nor do anything bad to your cholesterol. If you avoid dairy because you were told to by someone but don't really have a problem digesting it, get it back, but not in the form of straight-up pasteurized homogenized non-organic horrors. Get goat and sheep cheeses, raw imported ones are the best (though the price is atrocious... but when you don't feel like cooking, they are one of the best solutions.) Also kefir -- whole fat, organic, preferably LIfeway (they are the only company that gets the taste somewhat close to the real deal). And bone broths as the base for all kinds of quick soups that you don't have to work too hard to cook. I buy organic marrow bones and always keep a supply in the freezer. Omelets can be made interesting with all kinds of stir-fried veggies -- and this is semi-cooking because it's so fast, doesn't take much longer than to make a sandwich, really. Stir-fry some mushrooms, plus whatever else is handy, top it off with cheese if you like. (Don't eat eggs after sunset! -- sounds superstitious but I believe it because this particular folk taboo is cross-cultural globally.)

I always knew their anatomy was weird, but didn't expect it to be this weird...

..

One place at a time, times the same in all places: the New World Order

Thank you, Juliank, I'll check him out when I have a chance. I was mostly (though not exclusively) referring to something like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5oyFbbT-Rg

Wholesome laughter is very rare. Most modern laughter is about someone getting hurt -- either as explicitly as in "America's Funniest Videos" or as indirectly as in all the jokes, whether verbal or practical, based on denatured sexuality, someone's stupidity, inadequacy, greed or poverty, sickness or cowardice, a mistake, a blunder, a faux pa, someone being taken advantage of, and on and on. Try to think of a joke that is not about any of that off the top of your head! Wholesome laughter is something entirely else. Growing up I had a best friend, a girl whom I saw at school every day and with whom I spent time after school almost every day too, who was unbelievably funny at no one's expense -- not her own (she wasn't the kind of funny that is really a version of pathetic, inadequate, etc.) or anyone else's -- just naturally funny. There was an aura of mischief around her that was implied, not explicit, and she laughed a lot and made people around her laugh a lot too. The main thing about that aura was that she didn't "work on it," she never "tried" to be funny or to see the funny side of anything in particular, she just reacted this way to the world -- as a funny place. An example: after school, we parted and went home, and then had to run some errands later and bumped into each other at the same grocery store. She nearly died laughing from just seeing me there, and I nearly died laughing because she immediately pulled me into that mood -- how funny it is, we thought we parted and were busy with something else but here we are together again! Hahahahaha! That kind of laughter. Not for no reason, and not for a reason that is a "conventional" kind of funny -- a reason clear to the insider of it, an intimate kind of funny -- it's really funny that the universe has to bring us together again, unexpectedly, that it couldn't wait more than an hour or two to do this, isn't it?.. Well, it isn't in most cases... unless you are two years old and haven't been damaged out of the fun, funny place yet, or right from the start... or else were lucky to relearn a bit from a "natural" a bit later.