Taomeow

From the article: "Rather than take years to reach sexual maturity, as many dinosaurs did, birds sped up the clock -- some species take as little as 12 weeks to mature -- allowing them to retain the physical characteristics of baby dinosaurs." That's neoteny, a developmental stop at an early stage of a species development, with features of a fetal or infantile stage, either physical or behavioral or both, persisting into adulthood and developing by self-amplification instead of transformation into the next stage normal for the original species. Neotenic species never reach true maturity and instead are forced to explore to the fullest some fetal or infantile characteristics as an alternative to growing up the natural way. This is the phenomenon whereby homo sapiens is also produced: by retaining into adulthood the biological characteristics of a chimpanzee fetus. This has been known for decades, and is observed in all domesticated species deriving from the wild ones, to a greater or lesser extent. (E.g., in domesticated cats neoteny is minimal -- they only retain three distinct kittenish behaviors into adulthood -- meowing, kneading, and purring, which promptly disappear in feral adults. In domesticated pigs, it is also reversible -- they grow tusks and harsh bristles of a wild boar within weeks after going feral. In dogs, who were domesticated much earlier than cats or pigs, it is more significant -- most of adult dog behavior is that of a wolf cub.) In humans, neoteny is overwhelming (though it may also be reversible -- remember the taoist story about a demoted emperor's concubine who went into hiding in the forest, lived there with no contact with other humans, ate of the wild fare, and was captured years later all covered in fur and uncannily strong and healthy?) When neoteny happens in "natural" species, it is always drastic -- not a gradual transformation but an explosion of gene silencers, hundreds of linked traits being abolished all at once and new functions coming into play much the way an amputee who has lost his legs to an accident (rather than a disease) develops extra blood supply to the heart and the strongest upper body. On the genetic level, this works in a similar fashion -- putting a stop to certain functions will cause certain other functions to take over and get amplified. To me neoteny does not look one bit as something that can be chalked up to "natural" "evolution." Evolution would have to make decisions in advance about how exactly to produce a new species by blocking developmental stages of the original one. It is impossible to produce a fully functional new species via this process without knowing what the goal is. Any random events of arrested fetal development in a dino or a chimp would be either teratogenic or lethal to the fetus instead of adaptive. So, neither creation nor evolution can explain a neotenic species in any satisfactory fashion, while intervention, genetic manipulation, explains it beautifully. Who did it and what for... um, whoever domesticates chickens or sheep should be able to take a guess as to "what for." The "who" question remains debatable. But someone did it, no question. There's much genetic evidence that's popping up that points in the general direction of an intervention, on top of all the hush-hushed historic evidence. E.g., 11,000 years ago (just when homo sapiens suddenly started practicing agriculture and slavery and building pyramids), we turned blond out of the blue -- a recessive gene that was as rare as a chicken with dinosaur teeth (probably picked up from our cross-breeding with Neanderthals, who were blond and had brains 1/4 larger than ours and were taller and stronger than us, according to recent findings, and may have engaged in pity sex with our kind some 6 million years ago but not more recently, according to genetic evidence) suddenly exploded and became prominent or even dominant in many populations not connected with each other. Now this, in and of itself, does not prove that Aryans (martians, blond beasts from Aries, Mars) did this to us, but it does merit a pursuit of a kind of education not available to mainstream scientists -- e.g. a double major in epigenetics and comparative mythology. We do not currently produce scientific minds capable of grasping a wider picture, alas. But some of them produce themselves, thank god/evolution/intervention.

A Quetzal is this bird: http://t3.gstatic.co...xCedBj6O-HyUjHg And a Coatl is this day-sign in the Aztec calendar, meaning "serpent" or "twin" : http://t2.gstatic.co...7AWhCgiEJYEJPlQ The reason "serpent" and "twin" are the same word in Nahuatl only becomes clear if you consider the structure of the DNA -- a double ("twin") helix (symbol for snake, and vice versa), and becomes clearer if you know the holographic nature of ancient languages, a single word occasionally encompassing the whole cognitive paradigm. Quetzalcoatl is one such word. "Twin" also means "the same," "a copy," "identical," "very closely related," etc.-- and may refer to the serpent being our twin, or we, its copy. What exactly they were saying by attributing our creation to Quetzalcoatl -- our origin involving a donation of a particular type of DNA, the "twin snakes" being a generic term in this case -- or the specific snake DNA of our reptilian creator, with or without the involvement of birds (very closely related to reptiles), this I might know but may not tell, or might tell but just so that you can't tell I did... this last bit is an example of language spiraling around the subject without colliding with it directly, something practiced by shamans worldwide when they tackle matters of high complexity. The quetzal part of the name may have been used symbolically -- the plumage of this bird is brilliant, the flight striking -- the incredibly long flexible tail feathers wave and twist in a spiral-like motion when a quetzal flies... and ancient people were keen on metaphors, which modern researchers overwhelmingly miss, because the scientists among them are not poetic enough to get it, and poets among them, not scientific enough. But ultimately there's no other way to get it than by spiraling around it without colliding with it directly, painting a double sine wave in the sky with your tail feather, and knowing the twin of your creator in yourself.

Water is sometimes symbolized by a triangle pointing down -- Water descends; think of the triangle as an arrow pointing out the vector of the flow of qi when thinking Fire vs. Water. (In your face shape designations, Fire and Water are actually transposed). Metal is round or arch-like or dome-like. (Christian, Moslem, Hindu, and most Buddhist temples are either Fire-shaped -- e.g. the Gothic ones, oh and of course the pyramids all over the globe that started it all, Fire/sun god/higher off-planet power, god or gods -- the pyramids point in the general direction of "away from the earth and toward an off-planet power up there" -- or Metal-shaped with a round dome. Taoist, Shinto -- Earth or Wood shaped, pagoda-shaped. "Here, of this world.") Most Hollywood actresses of the recent decades have Fire shaped faces, with a broad jaw that is supposed to cultivate the ideal of beauty based on this shape. In traditional Chinese face reading, however, men are cautioned against marrying women with this facial shape because they are considered not only lacking in female traits but actually are believed to be "man-eaters," with the broad jaw facilitating the process of consuming everything that comes their way, including mates.

I am talking wuxing, not new age. Wood expands when a chicken lays eggs from which little chicks emerge, or when a ChiDragoness lays an egg from which a little feisty ChiDragon emerges. Earth rotates when it's the planet and when it's the soil (ever heard the agricultural term "soil rotation?") but unless you are an astronaut or a farmer, this is largely inconsequential for your personal well-being. What is of consequence is that your Spleen rotates the production of your blood and immune cells in distinct cycles of Earth qi rotation. Metal is what the collapsing core of the supernova produces. The factor limiting this process is the amount of energy that is released through fusion, which is dependent on the binding energy ("contracting qi" to a taoist) that holds together atomic nuclei. Each additional step of this process produces progressively heavier nuclei, which release progressively less energy when fusing. In addition, from carbon-burning onwards, energy loss via neutrino production becomes significant, leading to a higher rate of reaction. This continues until nickel-56 is produced, which decays radioactively into cobalt-56 and then iron-56. As iron and nickel have the highest binding energy per nucleon of all the elements, energy cannot be produced at the core by fusion, and a nickel-iron core grows. This core is under huge gravitational pressure. As there is no fusion to further raise the star's temperature to support it against collapse, it is supported only by degeneracy pressure of electrons. In this state, matter is so dense that further compaction would require electrons to occupy the same energy states. However, this is forbidden for identical fermion particles, such as the electron—a phenomenon called the Pauli exclusion principle. This is what "Metal qi contracts" really means, pal.

Hi Recep Ivedic, you are not bothering me at all. Anyone who is going for to grasp the basics of taoism is doing the right thing. (Anyone who forms and peddles an opinion about them without years of study and practice is doing the wrong one. ) OK, let me try to help if I can. 1. Forget the "correspondences" with Western (or to be precise, Indo-European as opposed to Southeast Asian) system, they are sought by those who are familiar with the Western system in order to -- well, I don't know, in order to make things easier by concluding that if they know the Western system, this automatically imparts knowledge of the taoist system? In order to stay on the linear hierarchical plane where there's "lower" and "higher" "elements?" There's taoist schools that have been influenced by Buddhism (some lightly and some heavily) that will find these correspondences and use them in their interpretation of the taoist system. But Wuxing, the Five Phases (of qi, not the "five elements of substances" as Western understanding tends to interpret them), is an original taoist system that neither came from the Indo-European ones nor shares their prejudices. It is a taoist system that describes the permutations of qi in a cycle of phases which transform into each other as they go, generate each other, increase or decrease each other, control or are controlled by each other. They are not static, and they are not limited to an "element" that gave them their name. The name is not the phase of qi. The name is a label. The material phenomenon labeled thus -- Water or Metal or the rest -- is an immediately perceptible part of this particular phase of qi. Water is wet, Fire is hot. But the immediately perceptible "elements" do not reveal the whole paradigm of properties of a particular phase of qi. These are vast and need to be studied for a long time in order to be comprehended. A good place to start is with the basic properties of these phases: Water descends Wood expands Fire ascends Earth rotates Metal contracts The question "why" is an advanced one. If you practice a taoist art hands on, it answers this question better than explanations divorced from any material that relies on these . Pick one and start there, you'll understand. E.g., take taiji. If you punch someone the taiji way, they can't block. There is no block against a taiji punch because the punch is utilizing a Water principle -- it's not coming against a block like a stick against a stick or a metal rod against a metal rod. It is coming as a stream of Water. Block it in front of your face with your arm and this will not stop it -- the taiji arm willl cascade over and down and into the face, like a stream of water would when hitting an obstacle at that angle. I could give you a thousand examples, but the properties of the five phases can be grasped only if these examples had a real-life frame of reference in your life, i.e. a practiced taoist art, any authentic one will do, they are all based on the same principles (hooray! ) 2. You are right that the body is made of all five phases of qi (and, actually, even of the five "elements" -- e.g. there's plenty of Metal in the red blood cells which bind iron). In terms of "elements," the human body consists mostly of Water (70-85%), but the story of the five phases is not the story of "elements," like I never tire of reiterating, it is the story of cosmic qi -- in its microcosmic manifestations in the case of the human body. So, yes, all five in a balanced human being (not just the body, the mind too is part of the five phases -- e.g. the thinking process is of the Fire phase, which has become clear to modern science when it discovered the electrochemical nature of synaptic firing -- notice the term "firing" it uses -- in other words, every thought in your head is a mini-explosion, a mini electrical discharge -- electricity is of course of the Fire phase -- which throws a particular molecule across the synaptic gap into the arms of the neural receptor, and that's the physical basis of thinking, a Fire phenomenon.) But each of the phases of qi is present in the body in a state not easy to see (e.g. iron in the blood, Metal "element") while elsewhere it can be encountered as an "element" in plain sight (that's the source of the confusion -- the element in plain sight is "it" but not "the whole it"). Metal in plain sight is, e.g., a piece of ore, or a fork extracted from it. Water in plain sight is a river or a bottle of Perrier. And so on. Wood in plain sight is a tree or a table, but Wood qi is also the sea slug which is part plant part animal (see, e.g., http://www.msnbc.msn...UJ1LWo7FW_U ) -- a multicellular animal producing chlorophyll in its skin, to say nothing of single-cell critters that can flip the plant-animal coin any which way they like -- all the way to Terence McKenna's assertion that "animals are just something plants invented in order to move seeds around." Animals and plants are of the same phase -- and the label, the name of this phase, is Wood, but it is in no way limited to a tree or a table. It is the phase of qi whose material "elements" are biological creatures, DNA based life. Let me know if I helped un-confuse you or made it worse. And do remember what I said about study and practice -- no one can really grok what it's all about from the label of the "element" -- not even close...

Well, look around -- Life (Wood qi) goes everywhere, up the mountains and down the oceans, it's under your fingernails if you look under the microscope, it's sending roots deep into the earth and flying on thousands of designs of wings in the sky, it spreads across the land in all directions, expands everywhere -- there's my favorite creature on earth, bacterium radiodurance, that lives in nuclear reactors. And if you consider the theory of panspermia which is rather likely to be correct, you will notice that life expands to all planets, solar systems and galaxies in existence. Then strike a match and watch the behavoir of Fire. Light a candle and watch some more... Air is related to Metal because it is one manifestation of the spectrum of Metal qi properties (oddly enough, it becomes clear with some knowledge of chemistry... but it was clear to taoists who connected the Lungs with the Metal phase without Mendeleev.) Ether and Akasha, far as I know, are hypothetical. The difference between taoist sciences and Western esoterica/mysticism and "mainstream" sciences alike is that taoist ones are put to practice all across the spectrum of taoist empirical arts -- be it medicine, martial arts, qigong, feng shui, astrology, cosmology, etc., you are always dealing with the same forces and energies of the world, on the level of the microcosm and macrocosm alike. I am yet to see how Ether or Akasha are empirically used by anyone who is not Edgar Cayce. (Likewise, I'm yet to see a Western trained astronomer whose scientific training has informed him what to do when he contracts a Toxic Fire disorder, e.g. liver cirrhosis. A taoist astrologer does know -- if she's trained in astrology, she can't help knowing! -- that's the nature of her scientific training, to be able to apply everything she learned of the taoist scientific fundamentals all across the spectrum of human knowledge, without compartmentalizing.)

Yes. In a nutshell, Indo-European systems leave out the phase of qi (not "element") of Wood. Now Wood is the kind of qi that propagates life in the universe. It is the intermediary between matter and spirit, corresponding to the taoist placement of Human between Heaven and Earth. What Indo-Europeans notice is that there's Air between heaven and earth, but people, animals, plants -- they don't see! Meanwhile, Wood (people, animals, plants in the grand scheme of wuxing, though each individual human will have all five of course unless grossly imbalanced -- Prince Charles, e.g., has only two, Fire and Water -- and each individual tree will have Wood phase dominating but all others present too) -- where was I? -- oh, Wood is a legitimate and powerful force of nature in all its manifestations, a distinct phase of qi whose property is to Expand, and biological life/Wood, the Expansive phase of qi, is also interesting in that it is a self-organizing kind of expansion, unlike chaos. It is the only force in the universe working against the second law of thermodynamics that posits the non-decrease of entropy -- life actually organizes things instead of disorganizing them as it expands. For the Indo-European hierarchical systems, the invisibility of this phase of the cycle has everything to do with the overall philosophy of belittling and disdaining life. Where these doctrines begin, animal, plant and human unity ends, and next, whole groups of animals, plants and humans are singled out for extermination, and next, the whole phenomenon, the whole phase of qi is forced out of cognitive paradigms, it isn't there anymore. This is why today we live in a world of Fire and Metal, a grossly imbalanced one with continuous deforestation, unprecedented mass extinction of species, and steady deterioration of human DNA that keeps accumulating gross mistakes with every new generation. This, we call (or rather "they," our non-biological rulers, the semi-synthetic archons, according to gnostics et al, have duped us into calling) "progress." It does make building artificial hierarchical structures easier when a natural expansive process of self-organization is cut down. Hierarchical arrangements partake of the Fire qi property -- Ascend. This is the model offered by all Indo-European cognitive paradigms, religious, scientific and social alike. Of course Fire burns Wood. Of course life on this planet has been burned... Have no fear. We can and will fight back. Wuxing can be thrown off kilter in some places some of the time, but being a universal cosmic process of qi manifestations, it can't be distorted like that forever.

You got what I said backwards, alas. I didn't "admit for a change" that taoist sciences are primitive compared to our scientific progress. I said the exact opposite. To wit, that modern scientific background may lead one to taoist sciences which are the next, superior level of science. People who are not very well educated in modern sciences and think these are superior because that's where they get their TV and their computer from may not arrive at this conclusion. In our age of specialization, few people have a broad enough scientific background to grasp the advantages of avoiding reductionism in science, still fewer (perhaps some Karl Popper's aficionados) are equipped to discern the problems with reductionist methodology as a general approach, and fewer still are lucky enough to find its viable alternative. That's where taoist sciences enter the picture -- for those (of whom I mentioned a few, too bad you ignored those names) who happen to combine a decent (or, more likely, superb) modern scientific education, a mind equipped to integrate and connect rather than merely collect information (wisdom vs. trivia), and a bit of luck to set them on the right track. That's what I admitted, and nothing else.

I lost mine in my teens, and that's how I discovered the joys of thinking. Used to be completely unnecessary. The five senses plus the kinesthetics informed me of absolutely everything. I think I had an atavistic mind of a pre-neoteny human, which was doing just fine without all that arrested-development nonsense that comes with the neocortical stimulation at the expense of the rest of the brain. (Do you guys know that all functions of the neocortex inhibit all functions of the midbrain, the lower brain, and the brain stem? That's one problem I have with "modern science" -- it utilizes the human brain in a way that puts stop signs on hundreds of thousands of processes it could engage in, and a "go" on just one at a time, and only involving the topmost layer of the brain, and spending 85% of its energy on repressing 95% of its functions -- what a waste!! That's why "modern science" can be done without involving the body. Taoist sciences can't be done like that. They aren't for the head alone and they are not concerned with events happening to the gadgets outside the scientist's own systemic perceptions. Taoist sciences actually happen to the scientist. That's why a brain steeped in these is capable of things linear-trimmed ones think of as fiction.)

I only have master's but I come from four generations of Ph.D.s -- physics, engineering, biology, medicine. My father had me recite a treatise on thermodynamics by heart when I was 4, just to amuse the guests. I knew the books medical students study from when I was 8, also by heart (I had photographic memory and learned to read at 3). Stosh et al, the point here is that for some of us -- key word "some" -- taoist sciences is not a cop-out resorted to due to a lack of "modern" scientific education, understanding, and ability -- rather it's the continuation of these into the next, superior, more advanced level. I know it's hard to stomach. But that's exactly true in my case, and I believe Steam was trying to say something similar.

You have a whole bunch of points there which are not so much invalid as IMO misapplied. Let me explain if I can: 1. Condescending stances toward taoist sciences as "primitive science" are ubiquitous, you are not the only repeater of the repeaters of this premise. You got it from a rather universal type of indoctrination modern pseudoscience and its popularizers routinely use when addressing what they don't have the foggiest about. To repeat mass-indoctrination slogans with the enthusiasm of a maoist chanting from the "little red book" is not scientific, it's merely compliant and conformist. Neither you nor others who repeat this line have done modern AND taoist science in any depth to have a real frame of reference for what they're talking about. Haven't compared approaches, haven't understood the real difference (e.g. the interesting fact that taoist sciences are primarily concerned with time, an area of scientific research Western science has been either blind to or not equipped to tackle with its methods), haven't integrated what they learned, and haven't arrived at this "primitive" conclusion as a result of any such scientific investigation. Those who did, however, like Niels Bohr, e.g., one of the greatest modern physicists, do not call it "primitive." On the contrary. Bohr is the author of the assertion "top notch theoretical science" in application to the taoist theory. When he was knighted for his accomplishments, he chose the taiji symbol (yin-yang) for his coat-of-arms. I've read works by modern scientists who did learn taoist sciences as well, and therefore had a chance to understand how far from "primitive" they are. They are my source of opinions because they are experts rather than repeaters of repeaters. Fritjof Kapra, the author of "The Tao of Physics," got his Ph.D. in theoretical physics from the University of Vienna in 1966, did research in particle physics at the University of Paris (1966-68), the University of California at Santa Cruz (1968-70), the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (1970), Imperial College, University of London (1971-74), and the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory at the University of California (1975-88). He also taught at U.C. Santa Cruz, U.C. Berkeley, and San Francisco State University. Johnson F. Yan, the author of "DNA and the I Ching," after receiving his PhD from Kent State University, did post-doctoral research on computational chemistry of biopolymers at Cornell University and taught there, and does research in the area of interpretation of DNA and protein sequences. Gilbert Ning Ling, one of the founding fathers of the science of biophysics... Lotfi Zadeh, the father of the mathematical theory of fuzzy logic... Benoit Mandelbrot, a pioneer of complex-plane mathematics, fractals and power laws... Roger Penrose... to say nothing of a whole host of scientists who started out completely mainstream, Ph.D. degrees from top universities, peer reviewed work in mainstream fields, and then went away from that and toward things more esoteric (like taoist sciences) as an outcome of their scientific evolution... Terence and Dennis McKenna... Nassim Haramein... Are you familiar with any of the works of the above mentioned scientists? Of any scientists who didn't limit themselves to standard indoctrination? If you are not, I would recommend it highly. 2. Yes, it's true that the new age crowd talking about taoist sciences doesn't have the foggiest. That's because they are not taught to the general public the way science that hasn't been demoted is taught, in any thought-through step by step sensible curriculum, starting from the basics, progressing to the complexities and to creative work. The general public gets snippets and rumors and distortions of taoist sciences. It says something about their availability (scarce -- taoist scientific works in physics, mathematics, geography, geology, astronomy, cosmology, medicine, metallurgy, and so on have been consistently illegalized, removed and burned by emperor after emperor -- Mao was not the first one to do that, nor was Rockefeller, with his influx of billions of dollars beginning in the early 20th century into dismantling taoist sciences in China, closing any and all institutions that taught them, and substituting his own "superior" brand of science). A persecuted science is seldom primitive or irrelevant. It is usually persecuted because it's dangerous. Because its truth might undermine the lies the ruling archons find better suited for their purposes. Which usually have nothing to do with scientific truth and everything with control, domination, and profit. A science they waged a war on for two thousand years trickles down to a modern aficionado in paltry droplets. That some people still feel these droplets are precious and try to build their own understanding on this drastically limited influx is not a sign of the inadequacies of their thinking as much as of some instincts still functional and homing, as best they can, on the real deal... but, alas, few get to any genuine sources, that's why you see so much confusion. Choose who to talk to about these things wisely -- judging the state of the science by what a random "just anyone" cut off from its bulk knows about it is like deciding to have brain surgery and inviting the first passer-by from the street to perform it. There's more I wanted to comment on -- maybe later.

Qi is the "Ruler of blood" or "General of blood." Blood flows where qi goes. Yi is the ruler of qi. Qi flows where yi goes. This is the basis of all taoist cultivation routines. You learn first to discern the natural cycles and then to take control and manage their flow as you see fit, moving blood with qi, and then as you advance, moving qi with yi. Longmen pai, e.g., offers one practice in particular that first makes you aware of the natural flow between the material internal organs moving the qi in a five phases cycle (the blood following this movement) -- kidneys to liver to heart to spleen/stomach to lungs and back to kidneys, etc.. This is followed by engaging yi to modify this pattern (increase the flow of qi and blood to the organs that are deficient, taking from the ones that have excess). This is followed by voluntary control of the gross anatomical internal organs (they all have vast and magnificent mobility both in space and in function unknown to modern man and to modern science -- in a modern human they are "stuck," arrested in one place and in functional ineptitude, due to lack of conscious control due to massive blocks of unconsciousness built into a modern human system by developmental aberrations from the natural way). This is followed by steadily growing voluntary control of yi, qi, blood, and internal organs' gross anatomy and physiology customized to the goals of the practitioner -- martial, healing, alchemical, magical, artistic, altruistic, or all of these and more. Mastering the five phases within the microcosm turns a mere human into a taoist sage -- a force of nature in the macrocosm. Getting the natural cycles of the five phases right is an early prerequisite for this work. The condescending "modern science has made progress since then" stances is something I find highly amusing. No it hasn't. This is the ultimate science of the energies of the world. There's no physics Ph.D. who knows enough about the energies of the world to voluntarily move his or her liver to a different location, or stop and start the rain the way you turn your computer on and off, or manifest a spontaneous live grid over a city of 13 million where everybody who is practicing this system is located at an equal distance from the next participant, e.g.. I've seen this done, with the energies mastered through this ancient science, not through any modern ones.

While we're on London -- do they use "buddy" to address a female there?

You want to lift your huiyin point, your testes will follow when they see fit. Don't know if Chia explains this. If he doesn't, I'd tell him he should. Met a couple of ex-Chia guys who feel compelled to run to the bathroom every fifteen minutes as the chief practical outcome of their training.

Buddhists... stick their lotus everywhere. A rose by any other name is still a rose. The Greeks thought of the lotus as the source of forgetting, oblivion, and either had or asserted the gods had (don't remember which) a drink made of it, nepenthe, the elixir that erased memory. Definitely not a taoist thing.

Thank you, this makes total sense. A loofah-like texture to the body is actually reality, not just a metaphor, everything is permeable to everything and connected throughout, mind to matter, brain to brawn. A while ago I read a solid book on cognitive neuroscience titled Wet Brain, nothing there about taoism but the human mind emerges from the cutting-edge studies as exactly what our old taoist pals have always said it was! -- a liquid in assorted states of aggregation, from hard ice to the finest mist and beyond... On a more humorous note, when I was in China, I accumulated a small collection of bizarre English writings on assorted Chinese products -- god only knows what they meant, but I used to buy toilet paper there trademarked Mind Connects to Mind. Go figure. The Purple Rose can be found in "The Complete System of Self-Healing: Internal Exercises," by Dr. Stephen T. Chang. If you don't have or don't intend to check it out, I'll write it up if you like. It's a neat book, actually. The gourd meditation is a standing one. You perform it by visualizing a luminous small gourd hovering over the top of your head. Slowly the top of your head opens to its rays, melting away, and the gourd starts descending into your head and down the center of your body, illuminating everything as it goes, penetrating with its light into all the deepest darkest corners and dissolving all obstacles in its way. You not so much bring it down as feel it slide down, very slowly. It leaves clean luminous emptiness in its wake. You release it into the ground, end of story. Another version (which is very peculiar in its effects and a tad strong) is to bring the gourd down to the genitals and then slide, guide, or even shoot it back up through the top of your head, and do it a number of times, in a pumping piston-like fashion, speeding up as you go -- all the way to lightning-fast flashes. Not recommended except for seasoned folks who know how to handle an overwhelming surge of eventful energy.

Thank you. I feel compelled to explore this. What is spongegourd skin? I was once taught a gourd meditation supposedly from a Native American tradition. It has many similarities. You visualize a small luminous gourd (egg-sized in its wider part) descending on your head. Then there's two ways you can use it -- one is to let it sink through your head and down your body, sliding smoothly and weightessly. Another one is to move it down and then up a number of times. The butter egg is also reminiscent of the taoist Purple Rose meditation, but seems much easier. The Purple Rose method is extraordinarily difficult for visualization (you basically place the North Pole Star on your head, no less, orienting yourself in physical space first by locating it in the actual sky and aligning the top of your head with it). It is also used primarily for healing.

and thanks for posting a nice video of my teacher.

They are not opposite, actually. The organ that is insulted by another responds by humiliating it. TCM sees relationships between organs as similar to human relationships in a family or in an organization. If a boss insults a subordinate, e.g. by giving unrealistic tasks and demanding adherence to unrealistic schedules, without taking into consideration the actual situation and conditions, the subordinate will respond by humiliating the boss, e.g. by sabotaging his work, badmouthing the boss to co-workers, and so on. In the case described by Kev, the two processes happen simultaneously. The solution is not simple because the situation is not simple, but I would start with dietary changes (drastic ones), a good qigong practice, and a whole bunch of Chinese herbs prescribed by a knowledgeable professional, with perhaps acupuncture on the side.

Ted Kaptchuk, OMD, was the first Westerner to study TCM in China, where he was adopted into a Chinese family. He proceeded to practice it in China for many years before writing his books on the subject, primarily for TCM professionals. "The Web That Has No Weaver" is, according to several English-speaking doctors of TCM whom I asked many moons ago, the single best intro book for the beginner who wants to find out in some depth what TCM is about. Kaptchuk is the co-author of the English translation of the monumental TCM Materia Medica. He was single-handedly responsible for introducing the West to acupuncture, its acceptance, its being granted a legitimate status, and the eventual creation of professional organizations for practitioners and students. If HE is a "confused source," I am Quetzalcoatl.

Some Native Americans had two terms for what we call an individual (though their definition was much broader): "Walks-in-skins" and "Stands-in-skins." All humans, animals, insects, birds, fishes, etc. were Walks-in-skins. Trees, bushes, etc. were Stands-in-skins. These were all entities that possessed an individuality distinct and separate from that of any other entity of the same kind. All the differences between one Walks-in-skin and another, in their entirety, were thought of as the part that comprises a unique individuality, and all things he/she/it had in common with other entities were part of his/her/its broader affiliation -- Human, Wolf, Eagle. Similarly, an individual tree was an individual, with its unique way to Stand-in-skins, and simultaneously a member of Tree, as well as another category -- Poplar Tree, as well as another -- Female Poplar Tree. There's thousands of Female Poplar Trees but only this one grows right here, with her trunk bent slightly to circumvent a rock in its way, with its shade falling over that particular spot where a certain Walks-in-skins has chosen to build his house because of that shade. That shade is part of this particular tree's individuality, only its very own, no other tree can take its place while it's living. They believed it's exactly the same with each Walks-in-skins. I.e. something each of them has that no one and nothing does -- e.g., particular childhood memories, not interchangeable with those of any other child -- that's individuality. It's neither a "good" nor a "bad" thing, it's a normal thing for anything that Walks-in-skins or Stands-in-skins to be an individual. Then there was another category of phenomena, all the rest of them that don't have skins. River, cloud, rain, thunder, summer heat, winter cold, dawn, dusk, day, night, love, hate, life, death, ancestral spirits, fire, truth, reality, the Great Spirit and so on. These have no skins and no individuality. If someone told those people that there's Walks-in-skins who debate "individuality," it would puzzle them as much as a debate over having skins, hides, fur, scales, feathers, chitin or bark.

Yup, the original meaning of "evolution" was exactly this, unfolding -- it would still be used as just a synonym if the word itself was not hijacked by the peddlers of the idea of "progress" which does not correspond to any natural phenomena whatsoever. It came to mean what it never meant to those who originally used it, and what never occurs. Yet that nonexistent meaning referring to nonexistent phenomena is exactly the kind of the dusty wool 99.9% of the "scientifized" modern minds have been stuffed with. Anyone who doesn't believe me, go out and ask a random pedestrian what "evolution" means. They will say "survival of the fittest." Fittest for what? Um... er... ...oh, for survival, of course!! The vicious circle of circular logic complete, the compartment sealed and separated from the rest of the cognitive process. Another bleeting sh... ...er... scientifically educated modern highly evolved product of spectacular progress of the highest species in existence repeats the repeaters repeating other repeaters who were told what to repeat so as to sound as though they have higher cognitive functions and a scientific mind to boot. Very convincing.

Really? Last I heard, we "evolved" from a "lower" species, according to the theory. Last I heard, all species that aren't us are "lower" but some are lower than others -- it's not the natural environment that decides which ones will die because they are too "low on the evolutionary scale" to reckon with. No. WE decide, and whatever we decide to kill is "lower," that's the only thing we need to know, per evolutionary theory's logic. If we want to kill it, it's proof enough that it's "lower," "primitive," and if, on the other hand, we see it as "lower" and "primitive," it's proof enough that it's OK to kill it. Last I heard, people who believe what I believe -- shamanic tribes -- are "primitive" in scientific terms. Until you have enough money to buy a TV and start consuming what it tells you to consume, you're "primitive." Otherwise you are failing to adapt to your environmental change. Meaning, you are going to be bombed out of your cave, burned out of your forest, kicked out of your land by the "higher," "advanced" version of your species. If you believe that "evolution" the way it is offered to the public is about the change of eye color in fruit flies, you haven't been paying attention. The legitimate process that is really happening in nature, morphogenetic adaptation, is not evolution by any stretch of imagination, incidentally. It's merely unblocking of some genes and silencing of others, activation and deactivation of particular digestive enzymes, stimulation or suppression of certain receptors in the brain, and so on. It unfolds in response to environmental changes but there's no natural environmental change that can cause a car to evolve into a plane, an ape into man, or a strawberry to splice itself with viral hepatitis and luminescent jellyfish so it can better tolerate Roundup. If we were apes and became humans, that's genetic engineering. If there was no genetic engineering, apes were apes and humans were humans, apples and oranges. Evolution theory makes no scientific sense, but it makes perfect sense as a tool of domination, one of many, used by pseudoscience (that's the ruling science, by the way, always a pseudoscience, because it stopped looking for truth and started looking for new and improved methods of entrenching itself, of ever-greater totalitarian dominance.) Unfolding relies on this distinction, evolution can ignore it and work with the artificial "now" that has no developmental history and no clear idea of where it's actually going. Natural processes don't work like that. Think back to when your mom was pregnant with you. If you were to rely on the "now" mentality, you would have to ignore the fact that it was a moment in the process of unfolding, and that it was close to a certain "beginning" in the process of "unfolding of a human being." If at that point someone asked you, a fetus in the womb, how tall you are, you would honestly respond, gollump, gollump, gollump. Evolution theorists, "now" theorists, however, don't seem to be this honest. They say, "forty-five centimeters." If they want to think of something or someone as the "outcome" of "evolutionary changes," what's to stop them from choosing this random "now" moment in the process of unfolding and announce that Steve is a man forty-five centimeters tall?.. And that's exactly what they're doing with every phenomenon they please because the beginning, middle, outcome, return are not part of their "scientific" model. Due to, as I mentioned earlier, catastrophic fragmentation of consciousness.