Taomeow

Problem is, age of astronomical objects and events is something modern science had to re-think and change on 15 different occasions, and each new pronouncement was offered as "scientific fact." When a new one arrived to refute it completely, the new one was established in this status. And then the next one. And the next. It really amazes me that people buy it every time without ever remembering that they were told something else and believed that too. The ability to hold two mutually excluding beliefs at once -- e.g. that what science told them before the refutation and after are both scientific truths -- is a symptom of fragmented cognitive process. The medical term for a fragmented cognitive process is schizophrenia. Our science is suffering from that, and everybody who has been fragmented into copycatting the process of compartmentalizing parts of their own cognitive process so that they are isolated from each other and don't communicate, ditto. Bottom line is, they don't have a clue, they have a compartment containing what they feel equipped to work with at the moment. It will be sealed off and forgotten shortly. Don't worry. Earth may be many things, but a patient whom a doctor gives a suggestion as to how long she has left to live she isn't. The doctor only thinks he knows because he's mentally impaired and spiritually straightjacketed. It is not. The process in the universe is "unfolding," not evolution. Looks similar if you observe the middle but don't see the beginning or the outcome, but is not the same at all if you do. Unfolding is a cyclical process, evolution is a hierarchical one. The universe does not have hierarchical processes. These are a construct of the human mind. The universe does not see things as "lower" and "higher," "superior" and "inferior," "advanced" and "primitive" (all the operational ideas of the artificial evolutionary-hierarchical view of reality). The universe sees them as "moving," "interacting," "co-creating," "unfolding," "folding back in," or to put it in taoist terms, Conception, Growth, Fruition, Consummation, followed by the return of the cycle ("the way of tao is return"). The idea of evolution is the outcome of a desire that can only be satisfied locally and temporarily, not universally and eternally -- to wit, "I am going to rule because I am higher, superior, advanced" and all that jazz. Or, to put it in even simpler terms, it's an ulteriorly motivated tool of brainwashing, a version of the good old "heaven's mandate to rule" in a modernized scientifized plastic wrapper. The universe knows our real place in the grand scheme of things -- something that will succeed or fail unfolding into what it really is. Either way is fine by tao, the cycle goes on, something new that is the human of the next cycle will get a next chance, maybe a billion years from now, or maybe yesterday, time is loopy. Evolution, a linear idea, can't make the curve and crashes into the divider as the Way flows on... To crash with the former or to flow with the latter is our real choice.

The word galaxy derives from the Greek term for our own galaxy, galaxias (γαλαξίας, "milky one"), or galaktikos ("milky"). If they want to mix it with Andromeda, they could call it Androlactica (or Androlacticos), which would mean Milk Man or even Milkable (lactating) Man. Maybe that's what the mixing of the two is about -- a new and improved universe ?

All shamanic traditions, which is to say all human traditions before institutionalized religions and specialized sciences, had access to the spirit world by methods that varied from culture to culture but typically included ceremonial use of the sacred plants, severe quests which put one on the border between life and death, sensory deprivation settings or sensory flooding ceremonies -- i.e. assorted methods whereby the habitual "default" state of consciousness can be temporarily suspended and other perceptive abilities activated, the uncommon non-business-as-usual ones which are otherwise blocked and shut down for purposes of "normal" everyday functioning. Which is why not "some" but "all" people experienced contacts with the worlds beyond this one. Which is why afterlife was not a hypothesis, it was first hand knowledge. We are the ones left guessing, but it has never been this way until maybe a few hundred to a couple thousand years ago (depending on who you ask). The "no afterlife" hypothesis was invented some 150 years ago and given the status of a "scientific fact" on the basis of -- nothing at all.

Ditto. I was reporting on what a "changed me" might be up to. Yes, starting with personal cultivation is the only good place to start. But down the road cultivation might take one to a place where "me" and "not me" are hard to tell apart. Sometimes it's not even your cultivation that does the trick -- it's tao's very own... ask a pregnant woman how she tells "me" from "not me," e.g.. or better yet, a dragon whose head is breathing equatorial heat while the tail is chilling the tundra, whose back was broken by the Great Wall, whether the right side of her body to the west of the wall is legitimately apart from the left side to the east of it.

Like I said, it's tricky. The reasons nothing is normal in our normal world are ancient, profound, and powerful. You can't take on something that may be older than the sun and moon and stars and win all your battles. But you can win some, lose some, and decide if you're going to ever give up or if they will have to turn you into star dust before you do, and maybe not even then, and take it from there. I've decided I'd never give up. Since that decision, I've won some, lost some. The better I get at the game, the more I have thrown my way, the higher the stakes, the more I'm "tested" (if that's what it is -- maybe "tempered," maybe "punished," maybe "educated" -- who knows?..) Still, the second I get a breather, the default happiness kicks in spontaneously. So the hope of getting back to that place whenever I'm kicked out of there is one thing that keeps me stronger than I would otherwise be (and than I used to be). And another thing is, without a "more complete picture" that I've gained while working with all this whatever-it-is for which the working term I use is "reality," I wouldn't be equipped to deal with even a fraction of a percent of what I had to deal with, and the give-up option would be something kicking in on autopilot, not a choice, not a decision to make. Then again, maybe if I wasn't equipped to deal with stuff, I wouldn't have to deal with it? I would have failed a long time ago and was of no further interest to "reality" to test, temper, punish or educate me?.. Who knows. AIl I know is, like I said, it's tricky... but thanks for asking.

Told me the same thing. Now I'm curious, is it the same card the site offers everybody or is it just you and me whose oyster the world is?.. C'mon folks, 'fess up, what did you get?

It's tricky. The default state of the human being is happiness. When the Spaniards arrived in the "New World," they were appalled to see happy people, they left memoirs lamenting the sad state of affairs with the savages who are happy and laughing all the time without giving a thought to the indisputable (to the newcomers) fact that they're all going to hell for this. So, we've been raised every which way but normally, and our default state is something most of us haven't the foggiest about. A therapist making her living "normalizing" people once confessed to me that she "wouldn't know what normal is if it climbed on the table wearing a yellow polka-dot bikini and danced a cancan singing, Happy happy joy joy Normal is here, singing and dancing for you!" And how could she know what normal is, what happy really feels like, if she herself was a sexually abused child, a woman feeling insecure inside at all times, learning a bunch of counterphobic behaviors to cover this up, gaining an extra 100 lb to feel protected, and choosing a profession that is all about "nevermind the clients, what I really want to figure out is, what the hell is wrong with ME?.." Um... only everything, through no fault of hers -- through no fault of anyone whose blueprint for unhappiness is installed so early that they live believing it's "the real me." To work oneself out of the matrix, some methods are better than others, most are useless. There's nothing wrong and everything right with feeling happy. There's nothing right and everything wrong with behaving happy and positive due to indoctrination rather than the genuine feeling. If a practice reliably (not in a neurotic outburst of a "mood" that will pass as fast as it has come) tunes one into the default happiness -- or at least stable contentment that does not rely on numbing out 99% of one's humanity for its stability and censoring out one's own heart till it's reliably turned into stone -- if such a practice is found, it's a good practice. They are rare and far between though. It's not easy to take on a whole history of "civilization" which by now you embody, not just think, and shake it off who you really are... not easy to un-carve the block (to recall Laozi's metaphor) carved to the core with alien signs and symbols, almost gossamer from too much carving. Blessed are the ones who do, far from blessed are the ones who fake it -- and accursed are the ones who make others fake it.

Yeah, thanks for the reminder. I should start taking Protopope Avvakum's warning more seriously. He was the leader of opposition in the 17th century Russia and he visited me in a dream-vision many years ago to tell me exactly this, in a resounding Old Slavonic which I translate below: "Some things can be talked about in a flowery manner and there's no sin in that; other things, let's keep silent about, for the Almighty has given us comprehension not toward many words, but toward many silent omissions." I hope I'm not over my words vs. silent omissions limit for purposes of conformism compliance, Bob. Please include the opinion of the Protopope as my guiding prototype in your report. Have fun in Vegas.

Fun, fun. Thanks for posting. For what I'm talking about: http://www.amazon.co...a/dp/0312658850 but I don't remember if this one has everybody's number... for everybody's number, good key words to start off with are "new age and CIA psyops and Gordon Wasson and Esalen... and The Nine..." -- If you come empty-handed, I'll dig deeper into my nevermind-the-source-but-make-sure-it-makes-sense search mechanism... which does retain at least some key words to start some off onto the path of critical thinking that veers off the path of brainwashed thinking, and others, to pull that warm fuzzy wool firmer and more decisively than ever over their eyes and walk confidently in the general direction of where the rest of the warm fuzzy woolly bleeting... sorry, getting carried away with a metaphor.

I'd ask to see this in writing signed by god (not by middle management). And some working definitions of "good" and "bad" as they pertain to, e.g., picking cotton 16 hours a day vs. planting rice 18 hours a day vs. sitting in traffic 2 hours a day to get to the cotton plantation or the rice paddy and only picking/planting numbers on the screen for 10 hours a day. I have a feeling the rice slave would be "gooder" by some definitions -- fewer opportunities to screw up. But some clarifications would be helpful.

A hard-working slave is virtuous? A slave owner who merely takes away freedom of the body and the soul but doesn't knock out any teeth in the process is non-abusive? So, the slave-slave owner set up is karmically correct provided each party does right by the other -- the slaves give their bodies and souls to the owner and work hard toward enriching him further, while the slave owner rewards them by not flaying or impaling them? Still does not compute.

Actually, slavery is one strong argument against the idea of karma, because it doesn't compute statistically. There have always been, and still are, about 1 to 3% slave owners per 97 to 99% slaves. What kind of a sliding scale would karma have to resort to so that every slave reincarnates as a slave owner?.. and every slave owner reincarnates as a slave?.. Looks rather complicated mathematically.

"Positive thinking" was one of the CIA psy-ops launched in the late 60s as a subversive measure against social, cultural, political, labor, human rights activism. It's a spiritual counterpart of pepper spray.

My taoist teacher (Chinese) mentioned when explaining certain practices that involve some points in the head that some minor adjustments need to be made by Caucasians because, e.g., the relative distance between the bridge of the nose and some points inside the head differs a bit from that in the Chinese. It was a minor issue, mentioned in passing. If you get to work with subtle stuff under a good teacher, you might get similar minor adjustment instructions from him or her. Until/unless you are working with a system that requires much precision (and it will probably take a while -- there a lot of "gross anatomy" to work through first), I wouldn't worry about it. I used to feel energy flowing all the way up my spine and upward at the back of my head, and then it would seem as though it gets entangled in my hair. It drove me to a very short haircut eventually. After this phase was done with, I let my hair grow out again.

All hail Discordia!

"They tell me I'm ignorant and apathetic. Well, I don't know... and I don't give a shit."

Thank you. Good idea for when in doubt. The I Ching speaks to me in a female voice (which is why I refer to "it" as "she") and I have reasons to believe she is an aspect of the goddess I am well acquainted with. She is not a spirit, and not a guide to the spirits, though she can employ these. But she can also talk to those who know who she really is directly. The 64 hexagrams are the DNA code that is universal throughout galaxies and their inhabited worlds, per my sources. The DNA Spiral Goddess is an aspect of the Mother of the Universe. The reason the I Ching can put you in touch with anything at all -- and I mean anything at all -- is that she is a two-dimensional schematic for the multidimensional multiverse, an entity beyond space and time but containing them in their entirety, and a force behind life in the universe in all its manifestations. This is not the part that blows my mind though, I understand it pretty well due to some interesting encounters in my history. The part that blows my mind is that an entity of this unimaginable immensity can pinpoint her focus to fall on an individual life -- mine, e.g., or yours -- with the same ease she creates whole galaxies inhabited by similarly DNA-based beings. This, I may never be able to wrap my noodles around. Thank you, GP!

My acquaintance with the divine power of the I Ching (rather than her mere divinational power) started rather dramatically. I was accompanying a family member on a hospital stay abroad, on a "medical tourism" trip ISO treatments not available in this country. Before we went, I asked the I Ching about the trip to that particular destination. She strongly opposed it. I ignored it (those were the times early in the day when I was new enough to this to ignore what the I Ching tells me... not anymore.) At the hospital, things weren't going all that well. I spoke with people at home every day and a friend of mine asked how I was holding up. Without listening to the answer, suddenly she got all excited about a book she had read, told me I would enjoy it and that she would send it right away. OK. She never sent me any books before or after, incidentally. So, the parcel arrived shortly, and I opened it absent-mindedly and threw the book on the bed. When it fell it opened and I saw the same hexagram from the I Ching that I got before the trip, the one strongly opposing it. I didn't realize the full extent of what happened at first, because my mind was a million miles away. I thought, how strange that my friend would discover the I Ching all of a sudden and send it to me, and how very strange that it would open to that very disturbing hexagram, what are the odds?.. Then I sort of woke up from a daze and grabbed the book. Of course it wasn't the I Ching -- my friend is into nothing like that and that's not the book she wanted me to read. It was "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency" by Douglas Adams, a funny light-hearted piece my friend wanted to distract and entertain me with. BUT it so happened that a protagonist exemplifying a new agey flake, whose superstitions are the inspiration for incessant mockery by the author, does an I Ching reading in the course of the unfolding plot, and happens to get this particular unfortunate hexagram and it is quoted in the book verbatim, with the lines and the judgment. And that's the page it opened to when I threw it on the bed. And that's the book my friend wanted to send me all of a sudden. And that's the message that I ignored the first time, the message the I Ching wanted to sink in bad enough to get THIS to happen. Now... wait a minute... just stop, smell the roses, and think... WHAT ARE THE RANDOM-CHANCE ODDS FOR THIS?.. Huh? Huh?.. We cut our trip short, recovered from the unfortunate and wrong course previously taken, opted for something else, and from then on consulted the I Ching on every single step we were to take and this time there was no ignoring anything, and she navigated us on a trip out of hell every step of the way. Thank you, Goddess I Ching.

Sinfest reads comics standing in the horse stance. A master wasn't born yet to denounce the practice as useless. If you can outstand him in this position while reading Kindle, he might consider discipleship, but make sure your legs are strong as a horse's before you take him on. Oh, and it's not just the legs. He's as simple as a fox. Watch your chickens.

Those who look for an explanation as to what divination is outside the traditional understanding (to wit, a method to get in touch with the unseen energies of the world) are being true to their conditioning. They were made to believe what they believe by exact and selective developmental measures administered -- what a former winner of the Best Teacher in New York Award calls "weapons of mass instruction." The normal and natural way for a human being never threatened with these weapons is to understand the signs and symbols. We evolved through our ability to read these signs in nature and in each other and in our communities, we couldn't survive if we ignored or misunderstood them. Adding "civilized" tools like the I Ching is the natural continuation of this human talent of being in touch with the unseen energies of the world. This talent, destroyed with extreme prejudice in most, can be reclaimed. It's like the perfect pitch -- if you are tone deaf but start practicing playing an instrument, you develop it, if you don't, chances are you're tone deaf for life. I would recommend taking up a divination practice just to see who you really are minus the conditioning, how far you can go in your new and improved connections with the energies you used to be deaf and blind to. It takes about as long to get proficient as, e.g., the violin. But it's a far more universal and natural talent than the violin. It's just dormant. Wake it up with a divination routine, get the I Ching's attention, she won't talk to you much if you're a stranger, an idle traveler through what you believe to be your own subconscious. Your subconscious is nowhere near big enough for this oracle, don't try to squeeze her into a pigeonhole, she's way bigger than you can begin to fathom until you start establishing a relationship. THEN she will blow your mind. Repeatedly, and reliably. But do be patient. You read her, she reads you, and you see just a tiny part of what she is but she sees everything you are. Do show utmost respect. Do try to get her to believe that you're aiming to be a better human being, and mean it. She has a temper, and a mind of her own. Don't count on her help if you manage to get her to despise you...

The fastest method is the online I Ching. Whether it will give accurate answers to someone who hasn't spent the prior ten years or so with the slow method, I don't know. I use yarrow stalks (can take an hour) to question the oracle on the most important matters, coins for regular divinations, online readings for whims.

Completely agree with your first paragraph and disagree with the second. To understand the dynamics of money changing hands between taoists and buddhists, you have to look at history. The only periods in Chinese history when taoism flourished were the periods when the emperor aimed to curb the power of the buddhist monasteries. The latter were exempt from taxation and acquired vast agricultural lands which, importantly, were claimed as the extension of monastic property and as such, also exempt from taxation. Buddhism in China spread as a financial scam. Pointless to hold it against the heirs of this system that they don't practice what they preach -- they never did, the scam is built into the premise (suffering is unavoidable, but while this is the case, I'll see to it that the one who suffers is you and the one who prospers is me). Taoist monasteries didn't participate in this scam, and traditionally taoists made a living by serving the community in various capacities that required many years of vast studies of specialized as well as general areas such as medicine, cosmology, geography, astrology, spiritual matters, feng shui, divination, military strategy and training, politics, traditional and innovative sciences and empirical research (taoists invented things like gunpowder and paper and immunization and chemistry, to name a few), and on and on. All these have always been offered to lay folks for a fee, taoists had no other means to make a living than charging for services rendered. Spiritual pursuits and personal cultivation became a commodity when a market formed that viewed them as such; taoists will sell it to this market just as they sold everything they had to sell throughout history -- the price being determined by the interplay of demand and supply. There's never been a conflict between what taoists practice and what they preach, since they don't preach suffering, poverty, or freebies for anyone slightly interested in taoist pursuits. Long as they deliver the goods, they charge what the buyer is willing and able to pay. If what they sell is not something "everyone" can afford, it closely resembles the natural process where a mouse can't eat a tiger, a man can't get pregnant, a 90-year-old can't have the vigor of a 9-year-old, a leaf fallen from the tree can't climb back. I.e. they are not on a quest for equality because there's no such thing in the natural world. Balance, yes, each thing in its place and moving from there to another place, yes, but a static artificial imposition of should's and shouldn't's regarding where this place is and how much it costs, no.

Reminds me of an old joke about a drunk crawling under a lamppost at night. "What are you doing?" some passers-by ask him. "I dropped some money on that corner over there... looking for a lost twenty." "But if you dropped it on that corner, why are you looking for it here?" "Are you stupid? I can't see anything in the dark over there, here I have some light!" Perhaps the moon that was reflecting in that lamentably spilled bucket wasn't the moon at all?.. Perhaps it was the reflection of the same street light?.. And if so, why not spill it and start afresh -- new bucket, fresh water, real moon? TTC is an alchemical text behind a political pamphlet behind a traditional "wise man's musings" literary form that existed long before it was written. There's more layers, but at least these three need to be discerned before any "new and improved" ones are superimposed and interpreted ad lib. Without such discernment, of course anyone is free to read anything into what Laozi or whoever wrote it never had in mind. Is it "better" to see through the topmost layer of sediment left by dozens of non-taoist translators and non-taoist researchers and non-taoist aficionados? I think it is. I dunno. I would have little use for this book if it really said what most people believe it says. Apathy is a symptom addressed by the Yellow Emperor's classic. Can't do much about this being a fact. Don't bite my finger, bite the moon -- then tell me if it's really made of cheese.

Ah but the eye of the beholder may be shrouded with ignorance and preconceptions and misconceptions and therefore see only a very partial picture or a very distorted one -- missing out on all the essentials -- or see something that seems to make no sense at all?.. and superimpose his own sense where the author had something entirely else in mind? or see something incomprehensible and simply ignore it as though it's not there?..

These lines are better understood in the context of taoist alchemy -- TTC has many layers of meaning, and reads differently as an alchemical text for the initiated from the way it is perceived by non-cultivators. "Bright and intelligent" are the attributes of Heart Shen. "Dull" (or, in other translations, "murky," "obscure," "clouded, shrouded," "dark"), of the Kidneys-residing Zhi. If Zhi is involved in pursuing worldly affairs, Kidneys must send extra qi to Liver which will give it to Heart which will ignite the bright fire of intelligence. Laozi does not do that. He stores his Kidney qi and keeps his zhi directed inward. If one wants to gestate immortality, that's the method.