Taomeow

Well, I expressed my own understanding and have to take full responsibility... I don't know what Master Wang thinks about enlightenment, it just never came up. He does teach (as part of the system) a practice of gathering some light inward, but this light is your very own -- what you personally have dispersed and lost in the world because of the way the world is (and of the way you are in response to the state of the world.) You want it back, that's the idea. Much like if you lost you health you would want it back before tackling immortality... if you lost your spiritual health, your "supernatural intellect" (ling), which does manifest as a kind of light, you want it back. Not for "enlightenment" but for wholeness, which may well be another word for immortality, since wholeness in taoism presupposes cyclic change and return, not "arrival" at any particular destination. Only things that are not whole, not complete, fall off and die. Anything that is a complete cycle is immortal. Or anyone. Light without darkness is not a complete cycle. Remember, it's dark inside every pregnant belly... including tao's. If you want anything to emerge into the light, you ask the nurturing darkness for this favor. Omit this step -- and everything dies before it ever had a chance to get born. Luckily, tao does not permit for this scenario both arrogant and deadly. She only permits for light AND darkness. Not either-or. Both. There's many schools of taoism that have been heavily influenced by "enlightenment" paradigms of different systems. I think they've simply been infiltrated... but that's just me.

Cool! I often fall asleep in different places. I fall asleep into different timelines. If I disappear from this forum, it may mean that one day I woke up into a different timeline as well. Once, under the influence of -- no less than -- doctor-prescribed in the old country -- belladonna -- I woke up in TWO different timelines simultaneously. One of them the normal peaceful moment in the one I was in when I went to sleep, the other one absolutely terrifying and requiring immediate frantic action on my part. Both equally real, impossible to choose on the basis of "which one is the real one" -- if anything, the second one was more real to the senses, while the first one relied on mundanities like the furniture in the room and the memory of this room as the one I was supposed to have been in when going to bed. If I plunged into that second timeline that urged me to, I may have been lost to this one forever. I think some cases of craziness, all-out hallucinations, etc., may have this for their cause -- the walls thinning between different timelines, the unfortunate crazy person perceiving both in equal measure, or maybe the second one better than the first, or maybe more than two all at once?.. which is why certain types of crazy people were thought of as "holy" in all cultures before institutional medicine, it was universally understood that they have access to larger realities than non-crazies. I think NLP people are of the same opinion that at least some hallucinations are caused by the thinning of the walls between worlds, not by "making up" worlds in one's head. I haven't danced drunk in a long time. The last time I did, and the only time it caused a fall, I landed with the exclamation "The UN sucks." Koan: why?

The chant is Fu sheng wu liang tianzun -- "may you be blessed without measure by all the countless taoist deities." The diagram is too blurry to tell but it doesn't look like either one of my three luopans -- little bear, middle bear, and big bear as I call them -- with four rings, fifteen, and twenty-one, respectively. A detailed luopan is assembled like taoism itself in rings of progressive complexity. The innermost ring is the Luoshu arrangement of the Nine Stars, the next one is the corresponding eight trigrams of the Later Heaven, then come their space-time correspondences (directions and seasons), and so on. The outermost ring is the 64 hexagrams of the I Ching of course, though some luopans will put the compass grade on the outermost ring for convenience.

From "The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets" : "In ancient Asiatic belief, a mother's curse meant certain death. All death was brought about by the Goddess's word of destruction, as all birth was brought about by her word of creation. By virtue of motherhood, any woman could tap the verbal power of the Goddess. The Markandaya Purana says, 'for all curses there is some remedy; but there is nothing anywhere that can dispel the curse of those who have been cursed by a mother.' Similarly, the biblical Hannah rejoiced when she became a mother, saying, 'My mouth is enlarged over mine enemies' because maternity gave her curses an irresistible power.(...) The Greek word for the effects of a mother's curse was miasma, a kind of spiritual pollution bringing slow but sure destruction. Miasma could pursue members of a clan for many generations.(...) The terrible vehicle of the feminine curse was menstrual blood, still called The Curse. To "damn" has been linked with the Hebrew dam, "blood," specifically mother-blood, the fluid of the womb, anciently thought to create one's very soul -- and destroy it. Dam was also synonymous with "mother" (ma-dam, my mother.) Elder women past menopause were thought to be the most efficient cursers, on the ancient theory that their "wise blood" was retained in their bodies, giving them numinous power to make their words come true.(...) Eastern sages believed that feminine power of the curse must be allayed not so much by opposing it with a patriarchal religion, as by treating women well, so they would not be inclined to use their destructive power. The Laws of Manu said: Women must be honored and adorned by their fathers, brothers, husbands, and brothers-in-law, who desire their own welfare. Where women are honored, there the gods are pleased, but where they are not honored, no sacred rite yields reward. Where the female relations live in grief, the family soon wholly perishes; but that family where they are not unhappy ever prospers. The houses on which female relations, not being duly honored, pronounce a curse, perish completely, as if destroyed by magic. This advice came from the place northern Aryans called Mutspellheim, the Home of the Mother's Curse, in "the hot lands of the south." According to Scandinavian prophecy of doomsday, the Mutspell would fall upon the violent patriarchal gods who ignored ancient tribal bonds and rules of morality, and instituted cruel warfare. The result of the Mother's Curse would be the death of all gods, their Götterdämmerung or Going-Into-the Shadow; thus it seemed the Mother's word of destruction meant the end of the world. Christian Gnostic writings reveal the same belief in a world-destroying curse from a Great Mother disgusted with the cruel behavior of the gods she created. In her anger, the Goddess would send a great power from the place "where the firmament of woman is situated," the Gnostic equivalent of Mutspellheim. "Then she will drive out the gods of Chaos whom she had created together with the first Father. She will cast them down to the abyss. They will be wiped out by their own injustice."

Several books on zen buddhism by D.T. Suzuki.

Well, that's what I said a while ago, but given that I can't be caught agreeing with ChiDragon ... SB, it can be done in person. I wouldn't presume to "guess" at the missing Pillar without seeing, hearing, and asking a bunch of questions, applying face/body/tongue readings, etc., but I could figure it out based on this info if I had all the rest of the reading. So, either holler when you're in SoCal, or if you go to China -- I know a TCM doctor there (a taoist trained in the Longmen tradition) who looked at me, took my pulse, asked a few questions, and muttered to himself, without addressing anyone in particular, "hmm, Wood with Fire" -- which was Bazi on sight and exactly correct. I was blown away. I couldn't do it in a minute, but give me the rest of the chart and half an hour in person... I'm sure there's someone closer to where you are who could do it to, but I would seek references before trusting... lots of people like to say they can do whatever just because they can say it.

Not at all, and thank you for your kind words, SB.

funny about 7--11! With WLP you go to a Chinese place of business, and if you've been to those grocery/tea/herbs/acupuncture/massage/moxa joints in Chinatown where you talk to the owner and discover he was a brain surgeon in China, you know what they can be like... you don't know anything about much of what they're selling, you don't know if you want it, you don't know what's there that you should be wanting but aren't aware of... but it smells good! I am pretty decisively opposed to any and all ideas and practices of "enlightenment." I think they are reptilian obsessions that have nothing to do with our species. If your blood is cold you have to be a sun/light/fire worshiper, sit on a hot stone under the blazing sun in self-hypnotic immobility till you get some energy going. That's "enlightenment" stripped of PR. If you're a snake, a lizard, a chameleon... the sun goes down, darkness descends, your blood cools off, you can't do shit. That's when the hot-blooded, nocturnal cat comes out of her hiding place... and eats you. So, immortality is in, enlightenment is out. An interplay of light and darkness -- that's in. Life is derived from both, whether temporal or eternal. Exclusion of one in favor of the other is a ruse. MHO, of course. More later, gotta go...

Easy. You commit certain acts and undergo certain rites which remove some of your basic human functions (such as the ability to feel normal human feelings, and according to some authors, also your ability to reincarnate) in exchange for the ability to possess other live bodies, either by displacing their souls (with abuse, molestation, mind control, etc.), or by using transhumanist technologies that replace organic human emotions with inorganic transhuman functions, among them artificial intelligence. This latter can theoretically be quite high, but unfortunately, the host's ability to derive enjoyment from acquiring it is drastically curtailed, "enjoyment" being a function of emotions and feelings rather than of intelligence (with the exception of emotional intelligence, which however cannot be replicated by artificial means.) The ability to feel anything at all either disappears or becomes fully dependent on adrenochrome, the strongest emotion-inducing substance in existence. Adrenochrome is released by the human organism under circumstances of extreme pain, suffering, and terror, and counteracts them with feelings of profound well-being, safety, love. etc.. This is a protective mechanism of the last resort, so metabolically taxing on the body and the mind (since it has to override multiple signals of extreme distress, the actual current reality of the organism, with its own soothing messages) that it kicks in only in dire emergency. Thus it takes considerable intelligence to procure adrenochrome on a regular ongoing basis for anyone dependent on it. Because feeling anything at all becomes the main motivational drive in a numb individual, all intelligence he possesses is used exclusively for the purpose of getting a fix. A bit of a vicious circle there, alas.

Thanks! Different rules. The part that works with fire and water places fire under water... well, everybody knows you do that when you're cooking something. But there's lots more there... you don't start cooking by just playing with fire and water... you start with buying groceries, right? But if they aren't selling what you need, how about you go hunting gathering?.. So, there's preliminaries of a rather comprehensive nature, and then there's alchemical work.

Cam, that was my very first impression of Max -- "he's a shaman." You know, the bridges between taoism and proto-taoism, and between proto-taoism and shamanism, have never been burned... you can still walk all the way through if someone shows you where to turn... though some sects of taoism did intermix with modalities that put a flaming torch to those bridges the very first thing they did... but not all, thank god. I don't practice Kunlun anymore because it took me across one of those bridges. I think I told the story but I don't remember if I told it here or at the Kunlun forum of way back when. Kunlun sent me to the shamans! There's an unbroken link between my shamanic experiences and my Kunlun experiences, and I know that if I touch one, the other will kick in. It's on hold because I have to wait... ... ... As for Master Wang Liping, yes, I do practice what I learned, and I'm going slowly... This may change when Water comes... it's been ten years since I saw a Water year, and I know this about myself -- I can do ten times more in a Water year cultivation wise than in ten non-Water years combined. So, Water Dragon 2012 Opening the Dragon Gate is on the way and... après moi le déluge !

I've heard the same thing from a couple of people! -- both experienced practitioners of other modalities. It's great to be attuned to yourself like that -- I do think experience with any "know thyself" modality is a prerequisite for mastering kunlun. You have to know how to read yourself first. When I was practicing it, pretty soon it got really fast -- I would sometimes take a minute to "get there" and sometimes, a second. It's very individual. A family member was practicing at the same time and the effects were very mild, very soft, like a nice relaxation routine. Go figure. Yes, but not only that. I think it also gives you a chance to become a warrior instead of an ostrich with a head perennially in the sand (or up one's own ass, on occasion, seeing only what's on display there and not much else.) It causes you to pull it out and actually see what's going on. Not just with you. With the world... But you have to see "you" first. "Know thyself" is the be-all end-all of all practices. If you run from yourself screaming "it's not me, it's THEM" in all cases and for all purposes, you will never learn to discern which part is "them" and which part is "you." It's all one big mess to a committed denial practitioner, and always, invariably, "someone else's" mess. I mean a generic "you," of course. Yes, very important. I was doing a different practice today, my walking qigong, and a bird of prey (don't know which, it was too high to tell -- a hawk or an eagle) showed up and started circling over my head and a little in front of me as I walked, staying within the same field of visibility, circling and circling in a super slow deliberate manner (displaying, showing, demoing -- taosits do believe that birds are show-offs, by the way ), as though to teach me something. I watched and I got it. What it was showing was the way precision translates into perfection and effortlessness. I realized that one feather out of alignment would disrupt the gliding effortlessness, and one WING feather out of place would cause a crash!! It's the most efficient practices that require the most precision in execution. You can jog sloppily. You can engage in "taiji for health" or "meditation for relaxation" sloppily. You don't risk much. But try flying sloppily... ...better stay home, order pizza.

http://www.youtube.c...feature=related

She commented on the picture Joeblast posted. She said, Camera by Panasonic is no replacement for Spectacular View by Mother Nature, Cell Phone by Samsung is no replacement for Community Bonds by Mother Nature, Dye by Clariol is no replacement for Glow of Health by Mother Nature, and What Corporations Have Made Available As "Human Lifestyle" is no replacement for Real Food, Real Water, Real Air, Real Shelter, Real Safety, Real Freedom, Real Love. Corporations have made What THEY Give the only things available to Humans, and TOOK AWAY everything Human Life really means, they Own everything and Substitute everything. They substitute Their Products for Human Life. Everybody has access to Their Products ONLY, no one has access to Human Life because Corporations have Taken It Away By Force and maintain this status with Violence. And that's why Humans are Stuck with Corporate Products and Without Human Life, and that's why they can't quite Formulate their Demands because what they really want is OVERWHELMING, they want their Humanity Back. Instead of the cell phones. Even if they don't know it in the neocortex and can't put it into words because their Words have been taken away by corporations too and replaced by Commercial Jingles. They search their Mind and that's all they find. And it makes them feel like Shit even if they don't know Why, and they can't quite know Why because they don't have a non-corporate frame of reference, and they don't have it because it has been taken away by corporations since before their Birth. That's what she told me anyway...

Maybe, but they do mess with the counters. I experimented at one point by opening something very anti-establishment ten times throughout the day from three different computers, and still the counter showed 0 views at the end of the day.

SB, kindly google "Bill Gates + vaccines + microchip + depopulation." Bill and Melinda Gates are eugenicists and active (and, gasp, even vocal, unlike the rest) proponents of the depopulation agenda -- gasp again, they do admit it openly, though they offer global warming as an excuse for the "need" to kill off a few billion. They envision vaccines as the primary vehicle to be used toward this goal. The vaccine of their charity work is a multipurpose weapon -- it scrambles the immune system, spreads pathogenic, carcinogenic, mutagenic, teratogenic viruses and other substances, and delivers the wonder of nanotechnology, the microchip small enough to be injected with the needle. Now when I say this, I expect to be torn apart by everybody who was given vaccines and then gave them to their kids without thinking twice, because short of tearing apart the messenger, what other response can they have to prevent the world as they know it from disintegrating?.. So, I don't get into these discussions anymore, been around the block a few times. I only say it because someone who still has a choice might come across some other piece of the puzzle somewhere else, some other day, and go, Oh yeah, I've heard this before, there was this crazy conspiracy theorist on that forum who said that... So, that's the only reason I would mention any of this. For future reference, so to speak. My power of doing anything about global indoctrination is, understandably, quite limited. So. Please no discussions from the platform of global indoctrination, I am very well familiar with the party line, and this line I have crossed a long time ago.

Nice, Gerard. Let's take a closer look. Now that's one list important to remember, short and sweet. However, Earth here is out of a different system. There's two ways the Five Phases are arranged, one traditional circular, where they all generate each other and no phase is "special," the other one a later development (in all likelihood a borrowing from another paradigm), with Earth placed in the center and the other four in a square around it. The "balancing" Earth is from this latter system. In the original circular arrangement the qi of Earth rotates. It's not "balancing" in a circle anymore than any other phase -- it can be part of a balanced or of an out-of-balance layout of an individual chart. In either case, Water descends, Fire ascends, etc., and Earth rotates -- it is a spinning, rotating, revolving pattern of qi. (Taoists knew that our planet rotates long before Galileo and Copernicus. ). This is important to know when analyzing someone's Bazi chart, because if you are looking at someone with proprietary ('self') Earth or with the predominance of Earth among phases, or with an Earth excess or deficiency, this tells you right away what some of the traits and some of the problems are going to be. A balanced Earth will establish patterns and follow them fruitfully, it will be orderly, organized, learning by much repetition and continuously improving in the process. It may mean, e.g., being diligent in cultivation practices, performing the same actions over and over again that will keep maturing toward improvement, perhaps perfection. An out-of-balance Earth, on the other hand, e.g. excessive, will be stuck in a rut, doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different outcome... this will be a repetitive neurotic pattern quite different from a repetitive learning/cultivation pattern, but the rotating, going over the same routines tendency will still be there. Earth rotates. A deficient Earth, in the meantime, may result in a lack of routines, always trying something new and never accomplishing much before moving on to something different, jack of all trades master of none problems. And so on. More later... thanks for the thoughtful and stimulating entries.

It's god-awful BS. Don't bother. I have Thomas Cleary's translation. My problem with his translations in general is that he translates things he shouldn't translate -- e.g. jing, qi, shen should remain jing, qi, shen, instead of "vitality, energy, spirit" of his rendition. He does this all the time, so in a sense he caters to the beginner who is not familiar with taoist concepts and contexts. Not necessarily a bad thing, but I'll be happy to find out what the original word was instead of what he thought up to replace it. Which translation has the most of that? I'd like to get it.

Excellent research, SereneBlue. I've been doing this for several years too, looking for connections between things, with an additional slant -- going back in time and uprooting the historic origins of our military-industrial-political realities. I always try to determine the source (taoist training I guess ) ...discovering where things come from is quite illuminating as to what they actually are. (They don't ever tell you what they really are, they advertize what they want you to believe they are. Doesn't matter which public figure "stands for" what. What matters is to understand that they all "stand for something" on a stage, and "do the real doing" behind the scenes. If you heard a name, it means you heard a commercial jingle.) Once you start uprooting connections, they call you a conspiracy theorist though. Be prepared. No mistakes have ever been made is one thing I discovered. There's no spontaneous military-industrial-political process happening in the world, there's never been a war that just flared up accidentally because some accidental dictator started it, nor a revolution, nor an economic crash. We the people haven't done anything of any consequence ever since we agreed to divide and conquer for them. We express dissatisfaction only when we don't get our rightful crumb of whatever they have been dividing of late, but as soon as we find ourselves on the giving end of "conquer" and someone of no consequence on its receiving end, we're happy and free all over again. It's just a matter of whose turn it is to be on the receiving end of the crumbs and whose, of the bullets, respectively. I envy everyone's innocence who "understands" what is going on from studying economic developments. Being an expert in that is like being an expert in the bloodsucking habits of fleas that live on a mammoth circa the time of its extinction.

Except the information of the "element of the year of birth" accounts for 1/8 of the reading, namely the Heavenly Stem part of the Year Pillar, and by itself has nothing to predict about the interactions of all the five phases in the Month, Day, and Hour Pillars. Just knowing that you were born in the year of Fire leaves out 7/8 of all the information about the Wuxing layout of your birth and your destiny. Just think for a moment. If it was the way you say it is, all people born in the same year would be very similar and would need to seek and avoid the same energies. I can assure you this is not the case even with twins born within different hours! Of course there's scores of books that have been written by the unscrupulous and the ignorant that base all kinds of predictions and psychological portraits and advice on the "year of birth." Shame on their greedy, dishonest, or clueless authors.

This can't be compiled into lists, it has to be analyzed. Basically, you do an individual reading, and start your analysis by determining the lucky and unlucky phases. "Elements" are only part of "phases" -- e.g. Fire is not just the "element" of Fire but the phase of qi associated with all kinds of "burning," i.e. expenditures rather than conservation and consolidation of energy, electricity, upward motion, faster motion (of molecules, chemical and electrochemical processes, metabolic processes, as well as physical motion too), domination of yang compared to other phases, mental as opposed to physical, the visible as opposed to the hidden, clinging as opposed to nonattachment, heat, the sun, pyramid shapes, the heart and the head and intellectual activities, consumption as opposed to production, and on and on. And all of it is only relatively and generically true, not "absolutely" -- a nuclear bomb explosion is "cold" compared to the sun, an Earth person is nourished rather than consumed by Fire, and so on. In other words, you have to know all phases and all their interactions to have a definite opinion about the behavior of any one of them in any particular situation. Next you need to determine the extent of seeking-avoidance of all those activities you've mentioned based on whether they relate to a phase that is lucky or the one that is unlucky for a particular individual. All lists that give generic prescriptions are bogus -- you need to look at the individual interplay of phases in every case. You can, however, determine the nature of an activity based on what phase is predominating in it "under normal conditions." In some (rare) cases it's easy and straightforward -- e.g., a fisherman is engaged in a Water phase activity, and an electrician, in a Fire activity. Living in a forest gives you more Wood than living in the desert. But a banker may also be involved in a Water activity, and a farmer or a lumberjack, in a Fire activity, believe it or not. To understand why, you need to study the energies of each phase -- notably their patterns of motion and the way they change as they interact with other phases. It can't be compiled into lists, you need to get a handle on the nature of the energies involved, and then you begin to discern them in each phenomenon you are dealing with.

My experience with form/fighting is radically different. I think your opinion may derive from the fact that there's teachers out there (the majority?..) who teach the form without its martial applications. Not the case with my teacher. Every single move in the form is always taught in its combat applications, you do a "for health" meditative form and you do the "for to kill" weaponized version and you also do both simultaneously (sic!) -- to quote BKF, "it's all one snake." Of course you need to practice with partners to learn all the hands-on applications of the form. Taiji without push-hands is very superficial and you stop growing very early in the game -- but push-hands without a very well-internalized form is a joke. Of course push-hands is not just fighting. It's also communication, sensitivity training, perceptions honing, all the good things. I spent much of my childhood getting into fights, but the last time I had to throw a punch and bloody someone's nose was when I was 13. Hopefully I won't have to get into "real combat situations" anytime soon, and if I did, I'd much rather back up my taiji with a gun. However, sensitivity, perceptions, communication, "getting" other people, reading the mind from the body language -- these skills come in handy every day. They are not hypothetical/theoretical benefits of taiji sparring. They are current. So, you have to have the form in order to spar (if you don't, anyone who does will be bored pushing hands with you within seconds), and you have to spar in order to have all kinds of perceptions fine-tuned, and these will feed back into the form, by the way... all one snake.

Good idea to avoid Siberia in winter. I've never been as an adult, except in haunting dreams, and memories of early childhood. Someday... The very first dream I remember -- I was about 3 -- is of a snow-horse. It was very shamanic.