Taomeow

Thank you for posting the link, Sun, I watched it yesterday, pretty cool. I was green with envy though because the reindeer people live apparently in Altai, my first stomping ground on earth that haunts me all my life.

K, wow, I didn't realize until you pointed it out that I was THAT negative in that sentence which was supposed to be positive! Sorry. Thank you for your thoughts and feelings.

I just had this discussion the other day with a friend with whom I've teamed up to do some extra taiji together (she's a certified instructor, but we're gonna just get together to practice, no lessons involved.) She has bagua and all major styles of taiji and several forms with assorted weapons, and for Chen all of the substyles except Xinjia Erlu (a hellish form, really), and she was agonizing over having neither the time nor the motivation to study that, the only one that seems to be missing from her repertoire. I, in the meantime, am bent on doing one and only one form (well, two, actually, but the second one I just had to learn because it was created by my teacher and he was trying it out for the first time with our group, so, er, I didn't volunteer to learn that, it just happened. ). My inspiration is some top masters I've encountered who have only one form and kick multiple-arts-collectors' ass. They happen to not believe in multitasking. A good classic form is inexhaustible, and I decided to invest into mastering just one to as close to perfection as it will take me someday many moons from now as possible. Anything else I do that is not serving this goal would slow down my movement toward this goal IMO. But that's just one opinion...

I used to read a lot of poetry and write some too. I made a point of never writing about love. I felt as though there's something inherently cheap in glorifications of romantic or universal or whatever love which do not impact the world at all, just make pretty noise. A lot of pretty noise -- songs of love ad nauseam, love movies, valentine candies. I then discovered Chinese poetry -- and most of it is about friendship. Love poems exist, but very marginally, i.e. the situation is the opposite of Western poetry where friendships don't get to be noticed all that much and it's all love, love, love, all you need is love, meow meow meow meow meow. So I started thinking why. Because, I thought, a friendship is not a power relationship. It's not as intense, and not as demanding, and not as edgy. It is the middle way of human feelings. Or maybe there's other reasons. I liked the fact a lot. Poetry used to be (and in places still is) a magical art, you didn't create poems and songs "about" stuff, you created them in order to move and shake stuff. It's a shamanic art. A true spell is superb poetry (which is one reason I never got interested in modern wicca which lacks superb poetry.) So why is so much of Western art an attempt at love spells? Don't people use spells when something they want isn't there? No one creates spells about fried eggs for breakfast -- until he or she goes hungry. What happened to us, why is love supposed to be separate from power? Why does a doctor go to work every day for money or for status or for curiosity (the first year) but never for love anymore? It's only our sad state of affairs with power that makes love something you want to cling to when looking for things that are exempt from power transactions, because everybody is pretty sick of all things power as we know them... except for the powerful as we know them, who are sicker than most, but it's a kind of self-perpetuating sickness where one isn't seeking a cure and, on the contrary, defines himself by his disease, derives his image of who he is from his sickness -- in this case, the sickness of chronic power abuse. If it wasn't so, I don't think you would disagree that love is not beyond power. Don't think boyfriends-girlfriends to get my drift, think parents and children. This is the pattern of love-power later used in all relationships. Ultimately, the only, the original, the source-love in the universe is the love of the creatress to her creations, of the mother to her children. This is the only source children can learn love from. But don't buy the BS about love of the source and of everything that is universal and impersonal -- this is a big lie, a big cop out. Love is always personal. A pregnant creatress can't love a child in someone else's womb as much as the one in her own because she has no power over the child in someone else's womb. Love IS power. To use power without abusing it is to love. Everything else is lip service of the unloved to the unlovable aimed at placating the loveless, powerless, barren state of affairs in the world of power abuse. Word.

Love is a kind of power. Like any other, it can be used, not used, abused. If you love me, honey, shape yourself into what I want -- if you don't, I won't love you. This is how love is abused every second of every day -- beginning with parents, of course, getting transferred to the rest of relationships. I love you is a spell of power one casts upon oneself -- everything in one's life will obey this spell. When the other party casts the same spell, their combined power is exponential, it is the power of the cosmic process -- Conception, Growth, Fruition, Consummation. I don't love you is a spell of power too. You need to know the context to determine whether its power is being used or abused. Said or implied to a child, it's horrendous abuse. Said or implied to an equal in response to atrocious behavior it's the use of power, or non-use if the atrocious one couldn't care less, or abuse if your love is the only thing that could stop more atrocities. Said or implied to an incorrigible evil entity, it's fair use. And so on.

Power is the ONLY issue in the universe. (I'm told by people who know Chinese better than most that the correct translation of TTC is "The Way and its Power." Makes sense.) It's not power vs. control, it's power use vs. power abuse. Power must be used when it must be used, not using it when it must be used is one way to abuse it. I've read of a telltale instance of such abuse by non-use in Crowley's biography, e.g.. He was an avid mountaineer in his youth, among other things, and one day he climbed to a higher ground and put up his tent while four of his companions who were still climbing behind him got caught in an avalanche. They hit some rocks and some were injured and some buried in the snow. They were close enough for Crowley to hear their screams for help. He decided it was not his problem, had some dinner and went to sleep. The others made it to the camp many hours of struggle later, except for one whom they couldn't dig out fast enough who was dead by the time they got to him. So, like I said, once power is abused, there's no getting it right -- someone who abuses power will abuse it by non-use as much as by use.

Cool! Okami is based on kami-no-michi, aka shinto? Indigenous Japanese spirituality is very shamanic. I like it a lot. To make a pro-nature anti-technology stance into a videogame is a bit oxymoronic though. I think I couldn't understand it until ayahuasca either. My current understanding is based on... OK, let me get to that indirectly. You know this German (?) tale about stupid Elsa (?) (lots of question marks because I think I read it when I was, like, five) who was sent to the cellar for a jar of wine and an hour passed and she didn't come back, so they went down to inquire and found her crying bitterly in utter despair? "What's the matter, Elsa? What happened?" "Oh, a most horrible, horrible thing! The staircase is steep and it's dark. I'm a young girl but one day I will get married. My husband and I might have a son. We will call him Karl. We will love him very much. One day we'll invite the neighbors to dinner. I will ask Karl to go to the cellar to bring a jar of wine. He will trip on the stairs in the dark, fall down, and break his neck. Boo hoo!!!" So, an all-important segment of the shamanic process I went through was partially like this -- I would be given a hypothetical situation and the ability to trace all its possible final outcomes in seconds, the difference from stupid Elsa's case being that every single situation I was offered to tackle involved the use of power. I was given different kinds of power to try out this way, and different extents thereof from specialized and minor to generic and absolute, and one instruction only -- "do not abuse it." Then -- high speed resolution of various situations of power applications, taking each of them to its far-removed inevitable outcome. Then you catch yourself -- "oh no, I didn't think of that! that's where I got carried away and that was abuse for sure and that's why the ultimate outcome ultimately sucks!" -- go back, start all over. Hundreds of times, maybe thousands. So that's how I know that black magicians abuse power because they didn't get the training of this nature. Put simply, they never went to school which every shaman in history had to attend. Not necessarily with ayahuasca, of course, but there was something in every indigenous culture that taught a prospective man or woman of power how not to abuse it as the very first lesson. So, that school was destroyed, and this paved the way for the ways of the black magicians. They don't know what they're getting into when they start. And once they start without having learned Lesson 1, there's no getting it right.

No, I don't play videogames at all. Why?

Thanks for the illustrations, Joeblast. This explains why, e.g., Moshe Feldenkrais who was a bit of a womanizer was always looking for a woman with "dimples in her cheeks," a telltale sign that she is capable of truly enjoying sex -- and he didn't mean the facial cheeks. Yesterday my taiji teacher spent some time fine-tuning the Xie Xing (Diagonal Posture) of our Chen and its applications, and it dawned on me that the punch you throw out of this position has peng by virtue of the stance resting on an internal spiral -- you release it suddenly and that's the jin you transmit to your arm and fist, and there's absolutely no tensing of any muscles in the punch, none whatsoever. The arm isn't even there except for the ride. ("There's no arms in taiji" -- how true!) This is so not obvious until you start feeling the inner spirals. The psoa are not diagonal but the fascia are! That's where peng comes from. Tense muslces come complete with shortened, thickened fascia that start working like an inner straightjacket instead of an inner network of flexible motion transmission they are supposed to be. This motion does transmit in spiraling, diagonal patterns when tensions have been removed and structures that had been pulled out of alignment by tight fascia released. Chen is so very natural for the body that has been rid of an "inner straightjacket," it isn't even funny. Once you start getting it, you can't believe you didn't get it automatically. Feels like something your body would know ziran if it wasn't for all the misuse of many years and all the tensions and compromised functions and structures that have resulted.

Shamans have always worked for the two- and four-legged who walk upon the earth, fly over it, or swim under its waters, as well as for the one-legged who stand still upon the earth. Black magicians have always worked for themselves, their overlord of artificial light, and his shadow armies, i.e. for the incomplete (unwhole, unholy) entities that don't derive from the source of life and therefore must feed off those who do, i.e. the two- and four- and one-legged of the earth. I guess it's the same today.

The movement of the 60s was infiltrated and destroyed by agents provocateurs, as were thousands that went before, anywhere on earth at any time. (In very recent memory, e.g., during the London protests, some kids were twitting each other that some folks posing as journalists were approaching them and offering them money to start rioting and looting.) Anything anyone does or reports is suspect, we're a society infiltrated by ulterior motives on all sides through and throughout. When slavery was in full swing in the open (unlike today when it is in full swing under wraps), there were hundreds of uprisings every year, and all of them failed. Except one. The Haitian Revolution of the late 18th century (the French colony of Saint-Domingue at the time) succeeded in the elimination of slavery and the founding of the Haitian republic. (What the overlords of our world did in the next two hundred years and are doing even now to destroy the fruits of that accomplishment is a separate story.) This revolution was different from all the rest in two important respects: 1. It was led by Haitian secret societies and nothing they were doing was ever out in the open, and 2. the leaders of these secret societies were voodoo priest-warriors and magic was used extensively.

I think the point is, the cops have no accountability and those who they report to make it so for reasons worth exploring. It doesn't matter that no one gets dismembered and fed to the police dogs. What matters is, there's no indicators that there's a stop sign anywhere for the arbitrary and casual removal of people's legal rights. So it is up to the powerful to decide what to stop at. You trust them to decide it wisely on a case by case basis without any consideration for what is and isn't legal? Then what the fuck are we doing playing a lawful society if it's only the side that has no guns that is supposed to act lawfully?.. Oh, and not having a clear solution and an eloquently formulated list of demands is not against the law. Smashing one's face into the pavement for this is. But the law seems to begin and end at "no power to the people." At first glance, this makes it simple for those who are shielded from considering themselves "the people" by a relatively cushy life situation, all they need to do is make sure they support the side that has the guns, regardless of who's right and who's wrong, just support the powerful against the powerless. History teaches, however, that this kind of conformism has a propensity to turn around and bite the conformist in the ass, because you can't conform fast enough when the situation begins unfolding in the general direction of "no rights and no power to anyone except the ones armed" as business-as-usual of a disintegrating society whose cruelty typically escalates to where you wouldn't have to lament its modest scale anymore.

Sun, I was just re-reading Black Elk Speaks and your vision seems to have some striking similarities with his. He saw himself in the center of the universe, and he also saw that "everywhere is the center of the universe."

Steve, the three treasures of taoism are different between different schools of taoism -- and there's quite a few versions, the Chinese love the number three, because it does beget all things. In alchemical taoism which I study and practice, the three treasures are Perfection, Nondecay, Immortality. It is difficult to separate taoism from the rest of it but not impossible. E.g., if one reads TTC correctly, i.e. as a manual for the ruler rather than for the serf, it becomes clear that most virtues it promulgates simply do not apply to the disenfranchised. They are instructions for the greedy, not for the needy. When the needy get confused into striving to abide by those, the greedy rejoice... And my biggest problem with the whole hoopla: how do systems that promulgate extinguishing desires reconcile this position with a view of a no-desire state as desirable? and how do they reconcile the ideal of no attachment with their most tenacious attachment to this ideal? ???... They don't. They get by on fragmentation of consciousness and its resulting mandate on holding two mutually exclusive beliefs simultaneously. They get by on having their cake, eating it too, and declaring they don't really want it. Taoism proper is about unification of consciousness, which results in a firm belief that some cake for everyone is good, too much cake for some and too little or none for others is bad, too much cake for you personally will give you indigestion, no cake at all for you personally will give you hunger pangs... A unified, whole, unmolested consciousness (referred to as the state of a "real human," "man/woman of tao," "holy sage," "realized human" and, occasionally, jun zi ) has no problem coping with these situations as they arise. None of them is elevated to the status of an absolute, an ideal. If you are told that no one should want any cake ever for any purposes under any circumstances in order to accomplish whatever, that's not taoism. Taoism is situationally flexible. If I want cake, it will look into why, and how much, and where and how I intend to get it, and when I plan to stop, and what it's made of, and how much I need it and how much I deserve it and so on... rather than invalidate my desire automatically. Cake, of course, stands for "any and all situations of the process of living" here.

You have to keep in mind that taoism is an indigenous cognitive paradigm of China while attachment/desire eradication is not. If you come across these ideas inside taoism, they are invariably borrowings. Early taoism is not concerned with them, having different cares altogether -- to wit, bringing human life back into harmony with the life of nature. Nature, incidentally, runs on "attachments" and "desires," as anyone who has ever left the "comforts" of civilization to communicate with her for any significant stretch of time and awareness is likely to notice. Rulers, however, prefer a population free of "attachments and desires," and consequently robotically obedient, with no strong personal likes and dislikes... and consequently no active resistance to anything done to them... so all religions and ideologies supporting these stances have been historically well promoted and financed while the opposite, the natural, brutally suppressed. Caveat emptor.

I've read that in cultures that practice arranged marriages, love becoming a constant in the life of a couple that had been married this way (often without even having met each other before the marriage) is reported by both spouses twice as often as in couples who had chosen "freely" and got married "for love." I think it has something to do with the fact that in arranged-marriage cultures, it is also common to consult astrological charts of both prospective spouses. Here's an example of why "falling in love" and "staying in love" can be quite different processes qi-wise. I have Wood for my main phase, and plenty of Fire. People who are Fire are attracted to me because Wood is their nourishment. I am attracted to them because they are my "child phase," I feel protective toward them. Both the need for nourishment and the willingness/ability to give in one direction are wonderful in a parent-child relationship... and my relationships with Fire people can only be that. If that's mistaken for love between a man and a woman, disappointment follows, because I don't need more Fire, I have plenty of my own, so interacting with Fire people who can take from me but can't give to me leaves me depleted. So, in a perfect arranged-marriage culture, astrology-savvy parents (or their Bazi consultant) would screen out all Fire boys and make sure I don't marry one. Instead, they would seek to remedy a deficiency in my chart by arranging for a Water boy for me who is Wood deficient. He would be nourishing my Wood while I in turn would be balancing out his life's energy by providing the phase of qi it is missing. This would mean stable lasting love, because there's no depletion involved on either side, no give-and-take that takes from one and gives to the other without a reciprocal replenishment of qi. Yeah... in the imperfect world of "for love" marriage, I got Metal, who controls Wood, who can't approach my phase any other way. It's written in the stars that this kind of love can only work if I welcome being controlled. Which I would if I had a Metal deficiency in my chart. Ah but my overall layout of qi is in no need of more Metal, I have enough, any extra is excessive and counterproductive (destructive). So there... I don't believe in love as it is popularly understood because it is pretty much always misunderstood. Love is what replenishes and balances your life's energies while doing the same for your partner. Whatever attracts because the balance is skewed to begin with, so that things roll over to the side to which it is already tilted, is usually mistaken for love, and the reason it doesn't last is, it is the kind of love one feels when jumping off a cliff and flying, going, "so far so good! feels wonderful!!" -- till he or she hits the ground. And hit the ground they will in this scenario. The rest of their "love" is bouncing up and down from the impact, hitting the ground, flying up, hitting the ground, flying up... unless the impact is so severe that love goes splat from the very first contact with reality.

Right, but I was referring to the situation in the USA where most practitioners of "Western taoism" currently reside, the only country in the world circumcising the majority of male infants for non-religious reasons. American males who are in their 40's today happen to have been born at the peak of the trend when 90% of American male babies were circumcised. You got lucky in England because even though the practice was first introduced there in the 19th century as a "cure for masturbation," it didn't take root and disappeared rather quickly. Here, it got cultivated by the medical establishment, under assorted (and frequently changing) "medical reasons." Here's one article I googled up: http://www.circumstitions.com/USA.html

I dunno, I'm not a spiritual Darwinist. I'm a taoist. We have two traditions and are free to follow one, the other, or one and then the other and then vice versa: Leaving the World, and Coming Into the World. So, what I watch on youtube these days is in the "coming into the world" taoist tradition, so I'm not worried, not violating any spiritual taboos of my religion or anything, I ain't no detachment junkie. You may have missed the point of the first video though. To my knowledge, this was the first time ever the Bilderberg group was mentioned by an official source. In the same breath as "conspiracy" at that -- though the extent of this conspiracy was downplayed to "between the members and the media," i.e. about a billion times, but still. If it's not a provocation and not a glitch in the Matrix that will leave no trace once it's fixed, this is the tip of the biggest iceberg to ever sink a civilization floating right into the EU parliament, of all places. This could be the beginning of the end of a beautiful oblivion. As for the second video, I just wanted someone to get interested in what's going on in New York. It's been going on for a week and there's thousands of people involved and dozens arrested and the cops seem to have a brutality mandate and the media is not reporting.

Please see post # 43 in this thread.

No, he did have a big problem pushing with my 150 lb teacher, because their respective skills are on about the same level -- and at this level of skill which I (and Mal) are talking about, i.e. top notch taiji of a few decades, weight does not matter, size does not matter, nothing matters but the skill. To convince me, the 300 lb guy didn't "tell me," he showed me. I.e., after three hours of "pushing against a wall of emptiness," he finally had mercy on me and showed me his root -- with a little hint -- and that's when I sent him flying like a balloon. I weigh 130 lb. Go taiji!!! Of course I could never do that if he didn't show me his root. But only because my skill is nowhere near his level and won't be for a long time. For a moment, he let me experience what it's like to have a higher level of skill, i.e. he showed me the hidden root of a high level player which normally only a higher level player would be able to find. One of the most memorable sensations of my life, this moment of "borrowing" a much higher level skill and producing something not that short of a miracle in the physical world. In taiji, weight doesn't matter against skill. Have you ever heard of "using the opponent's own strength against him?" Why do you think I objected against your "tense the legs muscles" admonitions? Because to a highly skilled opponent, any and all tense muscles scream, not just whisper, where and how to redirect. You don't have to "listen," you can't help hearing the yelling from those tense muscles -- "I'm tense, I'm tense, I'm not sensitive enough because I'm tense, I'm unable to react to a change fast enough because I can't sense it, so please go ahead, just change a bit and my own momentum will topple me! Come on, it's easy, you don't have to do anything, I'll do it all for you!" Against a high level of taiji skill, you tense anything, you fly, it doesn't matter how much you weigh, it doesn't matter how much stronger you are, I'm not using my li, I'm using yours -- that's what taiji is for. You want to use tense muscles and li, do an external MA. Just make sure you never try them on a high-level taiji player and you'll be fine.

Have you ever pushed hands with a 300 lb guy who's been doing taiji for 40 years, whose teacher is reputed in parts of East Asia to be an immortal? I have, and that's the experience I was referring to. What experience are you referring to? Please share. And I do mean please share your experience, not a dictionary entry.

I love wearing shoes with leather soles (Italian shoemakers must have retained the knowledge of how to make a comfortable shoe since the time Roman legions marched and conquered the world ), but I don't have any practice shoes like that, though you just gave me an idea to convert a pair of flats with leather soles into practice shoes, I think it's doable (would need to attach ribbons like on ballet shoes, otherwise they will fly off the foot when a kick comes up.) I absolutely agree about energy felt and exchanged with the earth with bare feet much better too. I practice walking qigong (which I learned from Master Wang Liping) on the beach (of which we have miles and miles in straight walkable stretches), barefoot, wading forth on the edge of the water, with ocean waves washing in and out of my path. This can get rather psychedelic. The other day, after an hour of walking-breathing-wading, the waves turned into a herd of wild water-dragon-horses running at me in all their exuberance and strength. I'll try to keep it up till the ocean gets prohibitively cold.

And hiding yours. People who didn't get top notch taiji can't root, generally. People who got a few years of top notch taiji root rather obviously. People who got a few decades of top notch taiji... sheesh. Their center is everywhere and nowhere. You can't see it, you can't feel it. There's an impenetrable wall of emptiness and you push against that and all you can feel is mighty stupid.

Well, as you rightfully noted, "this is incredibly heavy." I have spent several years researching stuff, and then if I want to compress even one-tenth of one percent of what I've learned into a forum post... um... which part am I going to use to prove my point? Any one example can be brushed off (bah, conspiracy theories!) and I don't have several years to post "everything" I learned in several years... so I usually limit myself to pointers, something that is brief but MUST ring inherently true (the word "incorporate," e.g., means exactly what I said it means -- my sources include Latin, by the way, which gives a good handle on the original or implied or hidden meaning of many Western concepts we are used to using mindlessly without really understanding what they represent, what they stand for.) But... not to leave you hanging ...here's one example (not because I don't have the rest, but because I don't have several years to address them here ) of an ancient, powerful corporation that has come by its power and wealth via means most decisively occult -- this, from "THE VATICAN BILLIONS" by Avro Manhattan, and this is from over 10 years ago, and is in all likelihood even more staggering today. "In the United States the Vatican has large investments with the Morgan Bank, the Chase-Manhattan Bank, the First National Bank of New York, the Bankers Trust Company, and others. The Vatican has billions of shares in the most powerful international corporations such as Gulf Oil, Shell, General Motors, Bethlehem Steel, General Electric, International Business Machines, T.W.A., etc. "Some idea of the real estate and other forms of wealth controlled by the Catholic church may be gathered by the remark of a member of the New York Catholic Conference, namely 'that his church probably ranks second only to the United States Government in total annual purchase.' Another statement, made by a nationally syndicated Catholic priest, perhaps is even more telling. 'The Catholic church,' he said, 'must be the biggest corporation in the United States. We have a branch office in every neighborhood. Our assets and real estate holdings must exceed those of Standard Oil, A.T.&T., and U.S. Steel combined. And our roster of dues-paying members must be second only to the tax rolls of the United States Government.' "The Catholic church, once all her assets have been put together, is the most formidable stockbroker in the world. The Vatican, independently of each successive pope, has been increasingly orientated towards the U.S. The Wall Street Journal said that the Vatican's financial deals in the U.S. alone were so big that very often it sold or bought gold in lots of a million or more dollars at one time. "The Vatican's treasure of solid gold has been estimated by the United Nations World Magazine to amount to several billion dollars. A large bulk of this is stored in gold ingots with the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank, while banks in England and Switzerland hold the rest. But this is just a small portion of the wealth of the Vatican, which in the U.S. alone, is greater than that of the five wealthiest giant corporations of the country. When to that is added all the real estate, property, stocks and shares abroad, then the staggering accumulation of the wealth of the Catholic church becomes so formidable as to defy any rational assessment. "The Catholic church is the biggest financial power, wealth accumulator and property owner in existence. She is a greater possessor of material riches than any other single institution, corporation, bank, giant trust, government or state of the whole globe. The pope, as the visible ruler of this immense amassment of wealth, is consequently the richest individual of the twentieth century. No one can realistically assess how much he is worth in terms of billions of dollars."

Um... I don't talk to rude hostile dudes.