Taomeow

You mean, like, the secret government projects, Montauk, Pegasus, etc.? No, they won't let me time travel by their methods, but then, I won't let them time travel by my methods. They couldn't if they tried, because who they are is a huge brake on time travel to the best of times, they can't go there, they can only go to more of what they are part and parcel of -- atrocious times. Time is not separate from the fabric of being, you can't time travel somewhere incompatible with your own fabric-of-being. Bummer for the manipulators, really. Anywhere they can travel is just more of what they are. There's no ticket for getting anywhere else in time available to anyone. In fact, even the ordinary, "locally linear" time travel, known as aging, follows the same rule -- you just keep moving toward more of what you are, down to caricature or up to perfection, depending on the route your "who I am" has chosen. Time will manifest that, more and more of that. Whatever you are, time will merely amplify as you go deeper into that. So, choose who you are carefully... and time travel safely.

I remember, from long ago, a sci-fi short story that answered your question. A super advanced human being from the future comes to visit a young, struggling, completely unknown artist in our time, and upon materializing, bows to him in reverence. He proceeds to assert that for his own whatever merits he won the privilege of a trip in time to meet in person the greatest artist of all time. The young man goes, no way, I may have some ability, but I'm about to quit painting, it's nothing but frustration, no money, no recognition, and I'm not all that crazy about the paintings I produce, they are at best mediocre. The future guy says, yes, of course you are still immature, your great inspiration comes later -- many years from now. But when it does, this is what you produce! -- and he gives the young man an album of reproductions, which are of course exactly identical to the originals, due to advanced future technology. The young man starts looking at the paintings and nearly has a stroke. I've never seen anything this magnificent and powerful, he gasps. No way I could have painted these! Ah but you did! It's your work, revered through the ages and across the inhabited worlds, and now you see why! The future guy then basks in the presence of the great artist in his still-unmanifest state, so to speak, which he submits was the goal of his trip, and departs -- leaving the album behind. The young man, after a prolonged period of turmoil, begins to study the paintings... trying to understand the techniques, the concepts, the great spirit that moved the brush. And then he gets to work learning to paint like that... It takes him many years... So, SZ, do not sit back waiting for your engineering marvel to have already been created. For it to have already been created, you still need to create it... by hook or by crook.

I've been writing a time travel novel since the early summer of 2040. Can't seem to finish it. There were times when there just wasn't enough time to do much writing. Then there were times when I couldn't figure out the best way to allocate the time. Sometimes, being human, I just wasted a lot of time that I could have put to a more productive use, and sometimes I put in a good chunk of writing time every time, but time after time something would happen either in the outer world or inner that would get it to stall. The novel is loopy as time itself, and when you are writing about time travel in nonlinear time, it can get pretty confusing. Not exactly an easy formula thingie. I was first inspired by the possibilities of time travel when I just turned 8. It occurred in a summer camp, where I chanced upon a book, supposedly a children's book, which I normally didn't read anymore at that time (I started reading at 3 and was done with children's literature by 5 or 6). But there wasn't much to read at the camp, and I decided to give it a go. It was called The Clock of Times. I read half of it and discovered, to my horror, that it was all there was -- the book, the flimsiest of paperbacks, was torn in the middle and it left me hanging right there for the rest of my life, I could never find this book anymore, although for years, I looked at every collection of books I chanced upon primarily to see if this one was there by any chance. No. I read all time travel fiction and much of nonfiction (scientific stuff, that is, theories...) since then, but... the first cut is the deepest. I was transfixed, I was frozen in time where that book ended so abruptly, so mysteriously. I wanted to know the answers. Still do. But since then I figured that I will most probably never know what ultimately happened in that book, so I might as well write my own. And one day, in the early summer of 2040, I started writing. Just like the first time, it was in a summer camp, this one for adults, in a place called Tschurovo in Eastern Ukraine -- the name is derived from the Old Slavonic tschur, ancestor. I was writing in an ordinary composition book, using a pen and ink, for reasons unknown to me -- civilization may have collapsed in the interim, so, no computers, or I was in a different timeline where computers were either never invented or never widely used by lay folks. In any event, everything else was pretty normal. I finished the first chapter and, quite pleased with myself, went to sleep. And in the morning I woke the fuck up elsewhere, different time, different place, different me. Talk about the writer's block. They hurled a whole different galaxy in my way to try to block me. But they will not prevail.

This sounds like an awful lot of coconut oil and butter per cup of coffee! I only use a teaspoon. But of course I get my high-fat habit supported by using fats in abundance elsewhere -- in everything I cook and on everything I can spread them on. Incidentally, if it's hot chocolate rather than coffee, I'll put a spoonful of butter in that too, or even a couple (since I normally don't drink milk and use soy or coconut milk for hot chocolate, this vastly improves the taste.) And when I make my own chocolate from scratch... anyway, don't let me derail my own thread any further.

All hail to qigong, taiji, bagua, and i-chuan. Hear the dragon roar.

As the body burned, Iron Sand qigong progressed, sneezing subsided.* (*true story)

In Beijing, I visited a friend, a cultivator of taoist arts in my own tradition, and was impressed by the tasteful, spacious apartment his family lives in. He noticed of course that I was looking at the environment with the eyes of appreciation, and asked, "Do you think it's a nice place?" "Very nice," I replied truthfully. "Well, it's not mine. It's my younger brother's, he lives overseas." Then he laughed and said, "I've never owned anything in my life, and always had whatever I needed -- for free." Which wouldn't be surprising if an overgrown Western perennial teenager supported by parents said something like this, but the guy is Chinese and over 70. I told him, "could I get some more of that tea you've been drinking?"

Just the other day I saw a documentary, "The Dark Side of Chocolate," about slave labor of kidnapped children in Africa that goes into every piece of candy you encounter at your local supermarket. I don't know what to do about it, what can be done about it, but I know that I will find a similar story behind anything easily available to people in the "first world" -- clothes and shoes made by underage or old and arthritis-crippled, overworked hands in far-away sweat shops, never-ending hours at the assembly line, screwing on the same bolt over and over and over again, thousands of times, millions of times, a lifetime of making this one move... for what, for whom?.. Who's so deserving as to enjoy his or her life via wasting someone else's, and why?.. But it's not supposed to bother me, some will say. What I should really worry about is whether my car is an eyesore to the Joneses next door (it isn't, I'm not that brave, not that much of a revolutionary). See, for the Joneses life is not worth living if they can't waste other lives in the process of living theirs. And if I show any visible signs that it is for me, I better get the hell out of the nice neighborhood. The idea that wasting stuff is good and saving, reusing, getting the most out of it is bad, brought to you by your friendly corporate overlords, is built into the disposable brains of the disposable consumers who somehow manage not to notice that they are part of what is being wasted. They think they consume but they are being consumed instead. You need a reliable car in order to get to work so you can make enough to be able to pay for a reliable car. You need fashionable and stylish clothes so you can look professional enough for a good job that will allow you to afford fashionable and stylish clothes. Morons.

"Aryans" actually means "martians" (from Aries).

are not even from the same planet.

Well, I mostly agree, with some reservations, that an established unbroken lineage, a true teacher (not necessarily "spiritual" because this word is too broad and too vague -- e.g. my true taiji teacher has no idea that he's "spiritual," but he absolutely is -- to a much greater extent than most people who use this word as a catch-all for whatever they're into), and the useful (at least) teachings and techniques, rather than something one just happens to like or to have chanced upon (and has no frame of reference to compare to something more genuine), are among good prerequisites for good cultivation. I am of the same opinion as everybody who's anybody in the "spiritual history" of humankind until some 150 years ago when it was decided that we have "progress" (by German reformers of education who pioneered this idea, unheard of ever before, that our technological advances mean WE are advancing, getting smarter and all-around better at being human. There's never been an iota of proof, this was just postulated as an axiom, then enforced as the blueprint for all educational premises everywhere. But I digress.) The opinion, as I was saying, that the farther we move away from the source, the more we degrade, hence the quest for coming back to the original state (however it is understood -- it is, like most other degraded things, mostly mis-understood by most systems). John Dee, e.g., asserted that the greatest scientist of all time was Adam, since he had the advantage of immediate proximity to the mind of god. While I'm not sure about Adam and his god, I basically believe the same thing. To wit, that true science, true wisdom, true spirituality become available if you move as far back as you can (no, not to the accursed times that are usually brought up toward the conclusion that ours is the best of all ages, not the medieval drudgery and cruelty and slavery -- these are already modern times, the morning of the same day of the night of the soul we're living -- much, MUCH farther back.) So, the often discussed lineage vs. no lineage koan is solved based on what one believes is true -- progress, which makes lineages unnecessary and obsolete, or removal from, and loss of touch with, true wisdom of being, which makes finding an unbroken thread leading one back there crucial and all-important. As for "what counts as Cultivation in general..." Um... ...I would say it's a quest to overcome certain limitations, toward some states of being that are free of these limitations -- a quest that must be established on a solid platform of realism which in its turn must rest on the back of the magical turtle whose shell is inscribed with the pattern of Hetu, and the magical dragon-horse with the Luoshu markings on her back.

@ Uroboros: thank you for your kind words. @ Rara: you may be dealing with the phenomenon of San Niang here rather than ganying (not that it's not related... in a truly cosmic way, by the way -- it blew my mind when I first realized that it's the Big Dipper and the "stations of the moon," no less, that are responsible for those nothing-but-frustration days everyone encounters with exasperating regularity). Unlike most ganying phenomena which you can only predict if you invest a lot of analysis by methods of taoist sciences, San Niang days are regular, come like clockwork on particular days of the lunar calendar and are repeated in this sequence every lunar month. I wrote about it a long time ago... won't repeat myself, anyone interested can probably dig up that thread from under the dust of ages...

Nature's little joke: the zookeepers roaming free, the tigress locked up.

I drank it here... that's one of the glacial rivers speeding down Mt. Elbrus. The temperature of this water is below freezing -- it doesn't freeze because it moves at high speed, and roars! If you splash it on your face it's like liquid fire. A writer coming originally from this area told the story of how folks from his village would take a trip to the nearest city to see people wearing glasses. It was like circus to them. They all had eagle's eyesight and couldn't figure out what eyeglasses are for until some old man explained to them, "people in the city don't have access to the kind of water we drink, so they make special glass to put on the face in front of the eyes, which can help them see through dirty water."

Lol, liminal_luke, you pinned it down -- superpowers for what, a youtube video and everybody arguing if it's fake? Precisely! Reminds me of Don Juan flying to the top of the tree and then telling Carlos who was wondering why he never shows this stuff in public, "what for? To scare Indians?.." No, I don't think pursuit of superpowers in itself is a telltale sign -- what you pursue them for counts. A number of years ago, there was a very serious illness in my family that caught me in the middle of developing some "powers," and the first thing I did was to throw all of that into the healing, literally burning every last bit of me in the process. I never told anyone that I was doing this, but I was doing it 24/7. (I'm still mending, slowly, horrendous qi deficiency from back then -- I used up all I had and maxed out all my qi credit cards.) But then someone who can heal (or thinks he can) and will do it exclusively toward the goal of showing off, showing someone else, "look what I can do, look how special I am!" -- someone whose motivation is defensive self-aggrandising rather than love or compassion or an instinctive drive toward normalizing what one can in the world, without expecting or programming the world to gasp in admiration and awe... that's a kultivator. For me, there's a few things that distinguish the two categories, and it's not about "demonizing" or "dehumanizing" kultivators, it's merely about noticing. It is, you know, part of awareness, to see things as clearly as possible. So, to the extent I'm capable to see clearly, I see people in love with their art and people in love with themselves doing (or talking about, even more often) the art, and they are different. They communicate differently, they send a different kind of vibe into the world, they're apples and oranges. Not that there's something inherently wrong with oranges -- unless they start throwing rotten oranges at you. Which is what kultivators are also prone to do.

The artesian water I get is advertised as alkaline with a perfect PH, and comes from a town named Carlsbad after the European resort famous for its medicinal waters, because in the 19th century when the deep wells were drilled here and the water analyzed, they decided the composition was similar. Some Czechs started a European style water spa there that flourished till the Great Depression, which did it in. Now they have a watering hole for the public there, and it's a blessing, because this water is definitely better than everything else I tried locally. For a while I didn't even know it existed, I found it via a site -- http://www.findaspring.com/ -- that helps find all sources of good natural water available to the public in your particular location. Some of these are on private property, others may be public but very low key, it's an excellent resource.

Now I'm an expert. Kowtow, and cough up the dough, or it's a no go.

You're the bravest I guess... As for beans recommendations -- I would have to quote William Saroyan's novel, "Tracy's Tiger," whose protagonist seeks a job as a coffee-taster (count on an Armenian to come up with this version of the American dream!) His prospective employer interviews him and asks him about the difference between good coffee and bad coffee. Tom Tracy gives a thorough and detailed account. "All right. And what's the difference between good coffee and the best coffee?" "Advertisement," he replies. So I would have to reiterate what I said earlier: start with whole beans and grind them only right before you make your coffee, one portion at a time; medium or light roast only; arabica or an 80/20 arabica-harari mix; organic if you can afford it; shades (rather than suns) if you can find them; as fresh as you can find it (use your nose -- even if it's vacuum sealed, good coffee smells strongly and deliciously through the vents in the valve the package is equipped with -- if it doesn't, don't buy it); never buy any flavored beans (if you want to flavor your coffee, do it yourself, frack those industrial chemicals no matter what they are supposed to imitate); practice your ibrik techniques to perfection; use the best, purest water you can find (I take a trip to a town within a 25 minute drive every couple of weeks for the best water in the area -- artesian -- not just for coffee of course... tap water in our neck-of-woods is atrocious and wouldn't think twice of destroying an otherwise immaculately conceived and executed cup of coffee); and that's 99% of your success. Most of the rest is advertisement.

My guess would be, people for whom "know thyself" is the first priority minimize the chance. Skewed kultivation is never a conscious choice, it's driven by unconscious impulses. There's something there to defend, something that feels small and powerless at all times and for all purposes -- something so vulnerable that it must be hidden from the world and from self at all costs. Once you know what that is (it's you, only much younger... an infant, a small child... completely in someone else's power and not necessarily benefitting from it any), the sheer absurdity of defending that with a facade of power and glory and wisdom that doesn't help the actual target of this fortification (you, only much younger, not the current you) might giggle back at you from the mirror -- and heal the gap in consciousness between what you're doing and what you're doing it for. When I said "not on the same planet," I didn't mean space. I meant time... The emotional age of a "kultivator" is anywhere between three hours and three years old, at most. They do not inhabit the current current of time, they inhabit their unresolved time, whenever that happened.

I agree. I can also see how one can go this way or that way, I mean, it's a bifurcation in the road for many, a choice -- no one is completely immune, and no one is completely hopeless. To look at things from this perspective adds a new facet to the age old advice --"get a teacher, choose wisely." A teacher can stop a potential Kultivator dead in his(her) tracks... or deliver a decisive push if he is a Kultivator himself. One thing that happened in my shamanic endeavors was that She showed me several people in their "true form" in the multiverse. It was a shocking surprise to experience the sides and dimensions of those folks I never suspected, not in a million years... and yet the moment She showed me, I knew without a shadow of a doubt that it was the truth. E.g., She showed me a domineering, forceful man who always manages to occupy maximal amounts of space, whether physical, mental or emotional, as a bear -- which immediately put a lot of his traits in perspective -- and then as a bear-shaman, ancient, strong, wise, dangerous. And a few others in their respective "otherness" too. But She never showed me me this way. I think that was in and of itself telling. I'm left with trying to figure out why. Is it because I'm not ready to know, the knowledge might turn me into a Kultivator, similarly to what your friend did with the information?.. Who knows. I try to remember that this information was withheld from me by someone who knows all, and I think it's a reminder that I don't that is overall doing me a favor... I hope...

Glad you liked it! However, my TTB nick predates not only my Chinese studies but TTB itself. As for different facets of the same diamond, this is probably not what you the good-hearted one meant, but the first thing I thought about when I tried to picture what those might be was those taoist, bon, shinto and shamanic masters who cultivate the ability to eat demons and other evil entities. The demon-eating exorcists are among the most efficient and by far the most fearless members of the profession. They actually look forward to every encounter with evil because they view it as a dinner invitation.

I want to come back, the toothpaste cries to the tube. Where's the time machine?

Oh brother. You are way off.

"You are the one letting it affect you" sounds as a response to something I never wrote... Oh, and not all of them are just human. Talk to a native shaman if you don't believe me. Most humans are just human, but the ones responsible for the sad condition of the human mind, body and spirit are, occasionally, not.

Just playing with assorted ways to express some diffuse ideas via wordplay. K in Kultivators -- there's no such word, I made it up -- is analogous to spelling America as Amerika, with fascist/nazi connotations. Cultivation that turns Kultivation in this sense floats as a cloud of meanings in my mind: the words that pop in and out of the cloud are cult, kult, culture, kulture, occult, okkult, and even some Russian ones (fizkultura, kulturist, these refer to exercise and bodybuilding), and a long string of alliterations -- Colt, ku-klux-clan... The impulse for the formation of this cloud was provided by viewing a couple of TTB contributors as Kultivators, big on the Kult of Personality (their own), but this could go elsewhere -- occult (okkult) practices of the nazis and the elites, e.g.. "Ailian" is the Chinese version of my name given to me by my Mandarin teacher -- it means "love lotus," not "alien." @ Flotfolil: what about modalities that view human as a defective, degraded, or illusory phenomenon? Do they "dehumanize" themselves and everybody else, or someone who happens to have noticed?..