Taomeow

I think so... Power is the ultimate form of qi which is both abstract and concrete, non-differentiated, "generic" all-encomapssing qi -- tao. Wuji plus taiji, houtian plus xiantian equals power. If you think of it this way, you understand what happens when you neither store and accumulate it nor apply it spontaneously nor use it in a focused and meaningful way toward particular happenings, toward unfolding. It dissipates back into chaos, the fathomless combo of being and nothingness, the "antimatter of tao," so to speak, its antithesis that can neither exist nor not exist. The correctly translated TTC title, "The Way and its Power," reveals from the get-go that the subject matter of concern is this, power. It is either organized into meaningful units of precise application, or else gathered and stored, only to grow and unfold naturally -- however you go about it, you have to be mindful of its source and aim to imitate its ways, its how-to observed in nature. If you don't, it dissipates. Simple but not easy...

I can understand ,and I can relate. I think the remedy, as always, is consciousness -- asking, "what am I doing with myself in the world right now, and why?" from time to time. "Why," answered with brutal honesty, is sometimes a wake-up call. I believe some "taoist habits" help too -- e.g. the I Ching used to give me the "sameness with people" hexagram when I was asking about certain ideas of applying certain "powers," meaning "don't do it, don't stick out." But after a while -- a different time, a different set of circumstances -- she started hitting me with the "be like the sun at noon" line, meaning "do it now, stop hiding." And then if I don't do it and keep hiding, she might give me "you let your magic tortoise go and look at me in disbelief?.." meaning, "you allow your power to fizzle out and look at me for answers? -- don't look at me, look at yourself!"

Well, if you read all those horoscope descriptions, you'd expect a female bull to look like... well... a cow.

You know us well.... ...except "stubborn" is in the eye of the beholder, and "decided is decided," only in my dreams... I am working on "stubborn the taiji way" actually -- you know, "soft cotton hiding flexible steel" kind of a deal. Soft and yielding on the outside, but push harder and you hit the stubborn part that can't be broken. What are you, Friend?

Here's one interesting thought I had, based on my discussions of Chinese history with a descendant of its makers who is a good friend. What Laozi meant may be that the sage does not care about bloodlines. This makes sense in the overall context of historic concerns. In China, a change of dynasty, which happened many times, often meant something different from a change of dynasty in Europe. In Europe, royal blood was spilled on occasion but this seldom if ever affected the whole bloodline -- the hapless king might be beheaded but more often than not by his own son or brother or nephew who would then proceed to rule -- so change of power players very seldom resulted in the change of the ruling bloodline. Not so in China. A change of dynasty usually meant vendetta -- the war on the demoted emperor's bloodline. All its traces were exterminated by the newcomer with extreme prejudice -- all family members, all relatives down to the remotest ones, it was more the rule than the exception for a hundred families to be executed, in order to prevent any future claims to the throne by a stray member of the former emperor's bloodline. Apparently this didn't shock the sage. If you look at a larger picture, and take into consideration that here in the US, as well as in Europe, we are still ruled by the bloodlines of Charlemagne, Vlad the Impaler and the like, and there's never been a real shot at meritocracy anywhere to be had ("voting," "elections," that's circus, just like Roman emperors knew to give the people "bread and circus" to keep them pacified, the ruling bloodlines never had a reason to change that because it works... the only difference being that back then they gave the plebs a Nubian gladiator against a Thracian one and today it's a republican candidate against a democratic one... circus is still circus), looks like he did have a point.

Me too. I see it as a taoist thing, by the way, though not exclusively taoist of course. It's very un-taoist to be extraordinary all the time, or say every day nine to five. Nor is it taoist to be ordinary for all purposes without any tricks up one's sleeve. Contrasts, juxtapositions is what I like. I remember Castaneda's account of being shocked in excess of all his prior shocking experiences with Don Juan when one day he saw Don Juan wearing an impeccable suit, made to order and turning him into a dashing man of the world. Or the shock value of Madame Blavatsky greeting visitors in her meticulously bourgeois, formal and proper home, wearing conservative, proper clothes... no tools of the esoteric trade on exhibit, no externals to proclaim or even hint that she's extraordinary... Oh, and I'm a Taurus, but you would never guess by just looking.

Scorpio-Taurus is a gas. Back to topic while incorporating the off-topic: the Scorpio I used to know had all the non-supernatural skills you can think of, his philosophy of life was, "give me a problem!" because he thrived on finding solutions. Any obstacle was seen as a challenge to his creativity which he embraced instantly, inventing skills on the go, rigging anything that didn't work so that it works, building cheap but efficient imitations if he couldn't afford the original -- he applied these skills to everything in the material world and it was a mind-blowing show of incessant resourcefulness. The downside being that the same approach was taken toward the non-material problems and people -- and this makes for a master manipulator...

Oh, you're baaaad... ...but I have to tell those who never had an intimate relationship with a Scorpio: ...you don't know what you're missing. The powers may not be supernatural, but... ...close enough...

Flolfolil, the reason some people shut down their superpowers is just that -- hurting other people on occasion when the power runs ahead of their own better judgment, as it is very prone to do. The power of not abusing power is the hardest to get. "Normally," people with "superpowers" do the same thing with these as what "normal" people do with "normal" power -- abuse it. (The non-use of the power you have is a form of abuse of power, incidentally. It's like letting good food spoil, or refusing to guide and teach a child when you're fully equipped, or bereaving the world of your creative input because you're too lazy to finish that book... the non-use of power is what Catholics would call "the sin of omission.") Nothing matters and nothing counts until the power of using one's power without abusing it is down pat. The Mother of the Universe told me so.

My elders were knowledgeable. I learned some from family, some from books. E.g., foraging for edible wild plants (mushrooms, berries, nuts, and if you're more versatile in your wild education, herbs and roots and tubers) is a bit of a local sport among some populations in Eastern Europe, and I was taken on those expeditions since I was 5, and educated about everything that grew in the forest empirically, on location. Beginning at 13, I spent a number of summers kayaking in the wilderness with a group of enthusiasts headed by my dad. Those month-long trips, moving with the river and pitching a camp in a new place every night (or staying for 2-3 days in one spot if we liked it or if there were repairs to be made) were all about skills of the forest and the river. The more esoteric arts (like making your own weapons, or moccasins, or building an Innuit style shelter in the snow) are from books. I was on the Edible Wild forum before TTB, but felt very marginally competent to participate and mostly listened (many members were Native Americans or actual hands-on off-the-grid living folks, and my mostly European wild skills are both modest compared to some of theirs, and different). Being interested in the subject, I keep accumulating information and adding some skills little by little. Been a while since I had to put them to practice, but it's like riding a bicycle... This was a gift from ayahuasca.

My father-in-law is legendary in this respect. Picture a scene: he's reading a book sitting at the kitchen table. The sink, with the stopper in, is filling with water -- he was planning on doing the dishes and decided to read a couple of paragraphs while waiting to fill the sink. He forgets what he was planning to do and concentrates on his book. The sink fills up and the water starts spilling onto the floor. Eventually the water reaches his feet and starts soaking into his slippers and his socks. The periphery of his awareness registers the fact -- but only partially. Without taking his eyes off the page, he lifts his feet onto the chair, tucks them under his butt, and continues to read. His wife finds him in this position, amidst a kitchen-wide flood, and, after summoning his attention, asks him innocently why he is sitting with his both feet on the chair. Without lifting his eyes from the page, he responds, "the floor is wet, my feet were getting wet," in a tone of mild displeasure, as though talking about getting his feet wet in a rain puddle. This is not a senile old man. This is an engineer. And this ain't no meditation. Nor a disorder. This is poor habits of use and control of one's awareness. Common among half-brainers, i.e. people who use either the left or the right hemisphere preferentially and unconsciously suppress the functions of the other hemisphere while at it. (Well, it's not as geometrically simple as left-right but the terms are used habitually to refer to certain functions activated in the brain and certain other functions suppressed by this. Meditation is actually a remedy for the condition.)

A few. I've never eaten any myself though, so the information is either hearsay or observation without participation. Grasshoppers are said to taste much like shrimp, and I did observe their chitin turn red just like shrimp's when exposed to heat (a couple of unfortunate grasshoppers hopped where we were cooking in the forest...) At a rainforest market in Peru I had my chance to purchase some grub kabobs but didn't have the guts. And in China I saw these but had to pass too:

I have many powers of living in nature and off-the-grid survival -- I can make fire in the rain, quickly build a shelter in any environment, make a simple trap for a small animal, a bow and arrows and a stone ax and knife and a sling and a fishing hook and line and sinker, can spot and know how to prepare most European and many American edible wild plants and mushrooms and many medicinal ones, can knit and crochet and weave and make moccasins, smoke and dry meats and fish, make pemmican, summon and control the rain... no wait, this last one IS supernatural... sorry... got carried away.

BKF himself is in the bay area, isn't he? http://fyibayarea.us/marketplace/north-bay/businesses/b-k-frantzis-energy-arts/

Bright moon over lake. The tiny whistling wood frogs sing, "One, two, 3D!"

Yeah, it's a good documentary, and indeed there's several ways (at least) to get its "message." Here's mine: in the taoist view I am most familiar with, cultivation encompasses the triple realm (earth, humanity, heaven), AKA lower, middle and upper, of which each one also has three levels, lower, middle and upper, to a total of nine. Most people seeking out and finding a guru of any denomination proceed to cultivate the lower level of the lower realm, that of people, things and events, with varying success. On this level, "the guru within" or the "accidental guru" or even a "fake guru" may well suffice, since this level deals with externals and is rooted in externals, and so one is quite equipped to affect them when one undertakes to work with these. So, in the true story told by the movie, the guru is put together of a few externals -- costume, hair, accent, a mellow disposition and presentation -- and this suffices to affect the people involved in a way that causes them to change, positively in many cases, some of their own externals. There's some success in body and body image improvement, relationships and attitude improvement, some elements of self-reflection affecting decision-making in everyday life, an opening up of some new venues of interacting with the world of events and circumstances. So, if anything, the experiment proves that cultivation on the lower level of the lower realm is indeed a process available to anyone and not contingent on the guidance of a genuine teacher. ANY guidance by anyone who pays you enough attention proves beneficial. This, in a world of non-problematic family relationships (long gone), would be provided by father and mother, older relatives, siblings... That's the function of a "fake guru" -- to be a temporary stand-off for what was missed out on. And, well, it works, as the first step it does. To draw any other conclusions from this would be unwarranted. Just because you don't really need a teacher to teach you how to tie your shoelaces and can figure it out by observation and contemplation does not mean that you don't need a teacher to learn how to design a rollercoaster, and becoming proficient in playing with Lego blocks does not automatically translate into being able to play with adenine, guanine, thymine and cytosine blocks.

I say "El-oh-el" but El-oh-im correct me: "We're plural -- The Gods."

After much ado that would qualify as "spiritual experiences," I've come to believe that there's only one spiritual experience worthy of its claims: that of permeability of consciousness. This is the state which I (and some researchers) believe was our primal state, before the advent of whatever came to destroy it (the jury is still out as to what it was), before the demolition of native cultures. Permeability of consciousness means you are neither stuck in your individuality, "ego," separateness, nor unable to perceive and manage it. You can be you -- and you can permeate the not-you. You can talk to trees, to ancestors, to weather phenomena and have a meaningful sentient experience communicating with all aspects and manifestations of reality. You can turn into a tree, channel an ancestor, become a force of nature. But you are not stuck there either, as you are not stuck anywhere. To turn into a tree or to revert to The Huntress, to be a tender mother to your child or the child to the Great Mother -- you are what you choose/need/are told by your environment to be at any given moment. This is the "spiritual experience" that used to be business as usual. It was not an instance, it was a constant. I remember...

You will enjoy the next phase then... the body so sensitive that you can drink anything you like and transform it into whatever you like, eat anything and benefit from it, take drugs only to prove they don't have any effects on you, and be around any kind of areas, people, music without being bothered. Alas, this is a state that also does not stay put... there's strong currents in the "now" and once the flow takes you to a troubled spot (and it's eternally troubled, has always been and will always be... your best hope is not to get stuck there, to keep moving on with the flow...), you lose all you've gained and marvel at your own ordinariness, or worse than ordinariness, as though nothing magnificent and mystical has ever happened to you. And this, too, shall pass...

The cat I loved and lost as a little girl did give me a full blast spiritual experience, which I expressed in a poem, whose free-form translation I post below (the Russian original is rhymed iambic hexameter). "Bars" was his name, it means snow leopard in Russian and Mongolian. My Bars, I've had a great mystery revealed to me, so I've come to believe in paradise with a sign over the entrance that says, "Pets OK." I am willing to share the vast spaciousness beneath the eternal celestial dome with crazy cat ladies, spinsters and bachelors, mad Englishmen, with anyone who'd loved a cat or a dog for their devotion and devotedly shares paradise and ephemeralness with them, my Bars, philosopher, sybarite and Casanova, I had a dream, a far-away future year carved in a tombstone and above that number, my own name, but, Bars, you won't ever be a senior's cat -- with you, I will be ten years old again, so wait for me biding your time, hunting the pious rats in the fragrant groves, and pray, as is the local custom, for the sinful and the mangy, the skinny, the stealthy, the stray -- for they're all kin after all. There's fluffy herds of your lovers roaming around, or rather packs, and there's hundreds of ladders and roofs and windows, and, my Bars, I believe in a paradise that never shoos cats away -- if it exists it does not, and exist it does.

yeah, and I saw it as metaphorical too... Governments and all their institutions operate pretty much like this -- whatever they are supposedly busy attending to, whatever they manipulate the public to pay attention to serves a different purpose altogether, a deeper one... bowl deep.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=H_NWBh7nseg

Whew, finally I get to this thread -- been busy away from computer -- thanks for trusting my take, LL. 1. What schools follow this progresson. That's a tough one for me to answer because the number of schools I'm familiar with is limited. It is my understanding that the process is twofold, and every school that "gets it" will start with the process I roughly (very roughly-- we're dealing with most complex concepts and phenomena here) described as "shen to qi to jing," and from there, at the next stage, proceed in the direction a particular school or an individual advanced practitioner has for its/his/her goal. Which, at the second stage, might mean the conversion of unified qi-jing to shen, or else something else entirely... Technically, converting everything to unified jing-qi is the stage of conservation, one can stay there or use what's been conserved, it's a choice from then on. Know those stories about immortals who find a nice tree in a quiet picturesque spot, lie down to get a nap, and sleep for a thousand years? because, well, it's perfect enough for the time being? Or the ones who live as Water immortals, water dragons of various denominations, even turtle or frog immortals? These guys/gals are in no hurry to convert jing into anything, they store it and don't use it. Apparently it's a satisfying way of being for some -- perhaps for a long time, a very long time... But there's ways to go from there, like I said... One thing I seem to understand (unless I'm mistaken of course) pretty well is that there's schools that start out with the wrong premise due to an ideological (shen) defect built into them. (Shen is the "commander" of the whole alchemical process from the start, it "ignites" qi and jing. In my practice of lingbao bifa one has to gather and unify shen first... it becomes clearer from there.) The wrong premise some of the schools are based on (and they are, without exception, very far departed from taoist basics toward assorted other influences) is that since there's "higher" and "lower" phenomena and jing is "lower" and shen is "higher," one must immediately set the goal of getting from "lower realms" to "higher" ones -- mirroring in this approach the very flaw I mentioned, that of hierarchical ideology. So they rush into conserving and storing jing with a goal of transforming it to qi and to shen with assorted interesting methods (e.g. semen retention, a practice based largely on a popular misinterpretation of what jing is, which, without a clear understanding of what it really is, accomplishes some prostate and bladder trouble and an accumulation of "dead jing" and all the ensuing frustrations and disappointments.) They conserve what has not been unified and made ready for conservation, and then attempt to transform it the way a camel would try to push his way through the eye of the needle in order to learn to fly. The problem is, OK, will have to finish later, the trumpets have sounded...

http://www.wimp.com/dogrhythm/