Taomeow

I wish! but thank you. Now you are very right. The word "corporation" means "acquisition of a body," this is a technique of black magic -- to "incorporate" an evil spirit, i.e. to obtain (create with magical means, or steal and possess from the actual material world) a material receptacle, a "corpus," through which its activities in the material world can be carried out. "Incorporated" means "brought from the realm of spirits to possess the realm of the living." No victory over an evil spirit is possible if the battle is on the level of its "incorporated" manifestation leaving intact the actual source whence it is brought. This is why the history of "corporate" entities is the history of their victory and our defeat. It only appears that corporations can be broken down by legal or political means, they can't, the ones that seemingly are re-corporate as soon as they are supposedly dismantled, they merely relocate to possess a new "body." If you study the history or our current large corporations, tracing their appearance in the world and what went before they appeared under this particular name, invariably you will find that they all are rooted in absolute antiquity. They are spirits both powerful and evil and ancient, and to fight them means to fight evil itself, only the fight can't be dumb or it only causes a new re-corporation.

Um... your opinion vs. the volume in my hands... tough call. This is Wen-tzu (cited from "The Taoist Classics," the collected translations of Thomas Cleary, Volume 1). Wen-tzu is believed by most taoist scholars and perhaps all practicing/initiated taoists to be the oral teachings of Lao-tzu recorded by his student, a source at least as realiable as TTC (which some scholars have questioned in its attribution to Lao-tzu as well). I didn't say you were. I was. The reason I responded to your opinion with this quote is that I disagree with it (the opinion, not the quote), and disagree with it not whimsically and thoughtlessly but after giving the concept you presented some serious consideration and consulting taoist sources of my humble preference. (Which are numerous and not limited to TTC by any stretch of imagination.) Yeah, in the Soviet Union, we were told exactly this. Weren't supposed to value gold and gems and computers. Were supposed to embrace simplicity. Lao-tzu would be proud if it ever worked. The way it really worked... well, let's say you should have been there to appreciate the joke.

Lao Tzu (Laozi) is an immortal taoist deity of the Celestial Realm. His visits to the terrestrial realm may or may not be in the past, depends on who you know. But his presence in the tianzun (the pantheon of taoist deities) is a constant.

Wen-tzu said that Lao-tzu said that. All I'm sure of is, that's the format of the book, every chapter starts with "Lao-tzu said." This is traditional, and not just Chinese, to present one's teacher's arguments verbatim instead of interpreting them. Plato followed this format when talking about what Socrates said too. How sure anyone can be that anyone said anything is another matter. But I love Wen-tzu, and am really surprised it gets so little publicity at a taoist forum. Wen-tzu is to TTC what a mongraph is to a magazine article.

"Lao-tzu said: When people govern by inaction, this is contrived, and so it is harmful. Those who govern by inaction are deliberately being inactive, and those who act in a deliberately contrived manner cannot be uncontrived. Those who cannot be uncontrived cannot be creative. If people say nothing but their spirits are talking, this is harmful. If they say nothing but their spirits are putting on the act of saying nothing, this is harmful to the spirit that is spiritual." -- Wen-tzu, Ch. 30

---------Moderator's note----------- ChiDragon, you've been quite consistently working on belittling other members, their practices, teachers, knowledge, experience -- pretty much everything anyone has to say, you feel compelled to put down. You intervene in too many meaningful threads with condescending statements that make no sense, e.g. the one above. (No one expressed "fear" and no one saw any meaningful "questioning" from you.) When asked to corroborate your opinions with any sources at all, you refused, again in a condescending manner, asserting that your opinions equal common knowledge on the given subject. They do not, and behaviors that derail meaningful discussions with meaningless accusations of ignorance, fear of truth, and so on, constitute trolling and are not welcome here. Please show respect to other members and refrain from belittling and condescending remarks, and please try to make sure in the future that your contribution to a particular thread is not aimed at derailing it. -------TM for the mod team---------------

Oh, sorry... I posted this late and fell asleep. Please illustrate the following taoist concept: "The lord of the south sea was Abrupt; the lord of the north sea was Sudden. From time to time Abrupt and Sudden got together in the territory of Primal Unity, and Primal Unity treated them very well. Abrupt and Sudden planned to repay Primal Unity's kindness. They said, 'People all have seven openings, through which they see, hear, eat, and breathe; Primal Unity alone has none. Let us make openings in Primal Unity.' So every day they gouged out a hole. After seven days, Primal Unity died." -- Zhuangzi

http://www.youtube.c...h?v=YVjh02RmMnc

Am J Chin Med. 1988;16(1-2):83-6. Alchemy, Chinese versus Greek, an etymological approach: a rejoinder. Mahdihassan S. Abstract The theory generally accepted maintains that Alchemy arose at Alexandria as a child of Greek culture. It has two names, Chemeia as the earlier and Chumeia as the later. There is another theory that Alchemy arose in China. Its founder was the aged ascetic who longed after drugs of longevity. He first tried jade, next gold and cinnabar, but the ideal was a drug which was red like cinnabar and fire-proof like gold. But what was actually prepared was red colloidal gold or "calcined gold," by grinding gold granules in a decoction of an herb of longevity. It was called Chin-I; Chin = gold and I = plant juice. In Fukin dialect Chin-I = Kim-Iya. This was Arabicized, by pre-Islamic Arabs trading in silk with China, as Kimiya, whence arose Al-Kimiya and finally Al-chemy. It was first accepted by Bucharic speaking Copts in Egypt who transliterated Kimiya = Chemeia, pronouncing it as the Arabs did. With the increase of trade in silk the Chinese also went to Alexandria and helped the Greeks to translate Chin-I as Chrusozomion meaning, gold (making) ferment, instead of gold making plant juice. Consistent with this origin of the word Chemeia is the fact that the earlier Alchemists were not Greeks but probably Bucharic speaks Copts or Egyptians. The consumer of Chin-I or Chemeia became "a drug-made immortal" called Chin-Jen, Golden-Man. This was translated into Greek as Chrusanthropos. Thus the etymoloogy of two Greek words Chrusozomion and Chrusanthropos support the origin of the loan word, Chemeia as Chinese. To save space it is not proposed to discuss the origin of Chumeia. PMID:3064584 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE] Interestingly, the Russian word for chemistry still sounds almost exactly like the Chinese (Fukin) Kim-Iya -- "khimiya." (While "alchemy" contracted the Arabic article al- along the way and is "alkhimiya.")

This may be on a tangent, but somewhat relevant... I've read that guided imagery/visualizations used therapeutically sometimes helps people combat most serious illness, and is even credited with some "miraculous" cures. So... there was a study that compared the results of "precise" visualizations vs. "metaphorical" ones in cancer patients. The "precise" group visualized their immune system in the greatest detail possible. They studied "how it all works" and then visualized it in a "physiologically correct" fashion -- white blood cells attacking malignant cells, molecules of drugs inducing apoptosis, macrofagi cleaning up the debris, and so on. The "metaphorical" group, in the meantime, visualized something creative -- knights in shining armor attacking the dark castle, flocks of seagulls pecking away at weird mutant fish, whatever. The results were interesting. The "metaphorical" group had consistently better cure rates than patients who don't use guided imagery, but the "precise," "physiologically correct" visualization group did not -- they didn't differ in their outcomes from patients who don't use visualizations at all. "No one knows why" as they usually say in these cases, but that's the facts. I think the same outcome would apply to rooting, or any other taiji element for that matter. The body is just way too complex for "precise" imagery. The body is a fractal. When you measure a fractal, you have to make a decision about the scale at which you do your measurements. A very crude one -- say the fractal of the coastline between Del Mar and La Jolla -- will yield, e.g., 15 miles. But if you want more precision, say measure around each stone, you may need a measuring tape that's 15,000 miles long. But what if you want still more precision, say measure around each grain of sand?.. Your measuring tape will have to be light years long and still you might run out! Now then. Taiji is not just physical, mechanical, what have you, it's also very abstract (according to Chen Zhonghua who used these exact words when explaining rooting -- "very abstract.") What it means is that if you approach it on the purely anatomical level, you've made a decision about your scale -- and this one happens to be too crude, there's infinite aspects that it does not catch, "infinite" is what "abstract" is about. You could decide to follow the dynamics not on the anatomical level but, e.g., metabolic -- and measure the blood flow to various muscles, oxidation processes, lactic acid production, whatever. You could go to a finer scale yet and try to adjust the biophysical aspects -- ion exchanges, ATP production, electrochemical reactions, fluctuations in cellular walls permeability, what not. Who's to say which scale applied to the task is the correct one? Anatomical is only attractive because it seems "more available" -- but does it really make it "more fruitful?" So, imagery instead of "precise anatomy" has the advantage of bypassing this problem of an arbitrarily pre-selected scale. A knight in shining armor is not precise, but if you decide to assume the posture of a knight, you don't imitate a programmer sitting in front of the computer, you do something else -- with all your muscles all at once and your facial expression too and perhaps the heart as well -- and the whole fractal moves on all scales, in unison, not just this muscle or that. Similarly, with rooting, if you go muscle by muscle, point by point, you are likely to miss the point. If you go with an image instead -- "sitting down on a horse," e.g. (or on a dragon-cat, as I like to visualize it, the dragon-cat having huge paws with huge claws digging into the earth, the tail wrapped around the axis mundi, and so on), the whole fractal will adjust on all scales, on autopilot. That's why I read Songs of Taiji instead of anatomy books to understand the "theory" of rooting. But the theory of course is still a scale too crude, too concrete. Rooting is VERY abstract. That's because its scales are infinite... and infinity is neither concrete nor graspable by gross anatomy. Um... am I making sense?

ChiDragon, I have a request. When you post your opinions, please cite your sources, the extent of your personal practical experience, name your teachers, or else state "it seems to me that..." or "I have this belief that..." or some such. Please, clearly state the facts -- e.g., "such and such master told me that..." or "such and such teacher showed me this..." or "such and such website has a post where I got this idea that..." or "I never practiced this, but if I did, I believe actual practice would have corroborated my theories..." and so on. Many thanks in advance.

This sounds like the right way to approach these texts. The problem with academia is, they preach whatever they pull outta their arse because they don't practice anything. History can't be solved in the head. Are you familiar with Helena Blavatsky's take? I have her opus magnum but have given it only a cursory read this far. Funny how the officialdom managed to give her a reputation of some flaky cook, people usually smirk at the very mention of her name, people who have never read her works that is... those who did react differently. I was floored. Have never encountered scholarly works so exhaustively researched and referenced, so intellectually fierce, conclusions so bold without striking as farfetched. Been meaning to give her Egyptian chapters a good read.

I couldn't find it, but I remember Sean posting a picture of the Hindu goddess Durga (Kali) having a go at her "dead" husband in the same fashion.

A more accurate way to put it would be, "one person claimed he was hurt, including children, having to do with parasitic reptiles." I'm curious what your assessment would be of his current practice, teacher, accomplishments, and consequently, in hindsight, his judgement -- he switched to this from kunlun: http://makchingyuen....nts-altar-kyle/

Ah, so they had mother heaven and father earth. Unless the length of the arm is explained by Lemurian descent, the female arch over the male "receptive" is very much a symbol of "heaven embracing earth" (similar to some taoist art I've seen), and quite in tune with taoist sexual alchemy (the real thing) which reverses the flow of jing qi shen to shen qi jing (the real immortality practice) by giving the male a passive role and the female, the active one in sexual practices. I'm all over the place with this, but please bear with me -- I don't know much Egyptian stuff except some hands-on Egyptian magic (and even that only in theory, mostly, with the exception of some stuff picked up from Max, another Egypt buff). I think there's two Egyptian histories though, the real one -- of a civilization very ancient and drawing on much earlier sources -- and the official one. The official one is not satisfactory, the dissenting one I don't know enough of to present a coherent case. What I usually object against in our overall way to "know" things, fragmentation of knowledge that yields trivia instead of wisdom, is alas my own state of affairs with Egypt. Some things I know in some depth (e.g., the sacred geometry of the pyramids, and the fact that there's no way in hell they were built by slaves as we are taught), some I just get a kick out of (e.g. the fact that they worshipped cats for at least one thousand years -- the best years of Egyptian power and glory), some I practiced a bit (Max's Egyptian version of the Golden Flower that deposited a golden pyramid in my mind's eye quite naturally, or the Red Phoenix that gave me an idea of the reasons behind the chosen color patterns of Egyptian art), and some I have listened to alternative historians talk about (who believe Egyptians had and used portals, traveled to other planets quite extensively, and may have been Martians to begin with), but it's nowhere near clear in my mind yet. The "yet" is like a glass half full approach -- but where to look for the other half of that glass to fill it up, no one knows, to my knowledge.

The original meaning of "zodiac" (Greek: "circle of animals") was of course Chinese, the circle of 12 animals (year of the Tiger, etc., remember?), and they were terrestrial energies (of the Earthly Branches). Transporting them to heaven and associating assorted celestial entities with them while eliminating correspondences and interactions between Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches was part of the overall "heavenward" drive of all Indo-European modalities. All astrology, alchemy, religion derived thence is progressively patriarchal. Diana Lucifera became Lucifer. Father in Heaven figured out a way to get a woman (Mother on Earth) pregnant without making love to her. And so on.

I didn't say it, American Journal of Chinese medicine did. I don't know exactly who used whose word, all I know is, the origins of chemistry are definitely Mesopotamian/Sumerian (if we don't look farther back, like I said before.) There's Sumerian tablets discovered in the 20th century that contain chemical and pharmaceutical prescriptions of considerable intricacy, down to outlining the use of chemical pesticides, notably sulfur compounds. The Chinese who (contrary to what all those old dusty history books ignore) had extensive trade and cultural exchanges with Mesopotamia seem to have fruitfully combined this knowledge with their own shamanic, proto-taoist, and later taoist traditions to come up with their own version of alchemy. What Kemetics were up to I don't know, all I know is, they did not preserve what they had as a living, continuously practiced system, we only have fragments here and there, not the whole. I think it's far more likely that Europeans (whose "Greek Miracle," the beginning of our own civilized history, is 75% attributable to the Great Silk Road and access to Chinese civilization it provided) got most of it where it was preserved rather than where it was destroyed. But you have to do some comparative studies of Western and Chinese alchemy and astrology to see it.

Yes, I'm familiar with this "black earth" or "Egyptian art" version, but it doesn't take the origins of science far enough and, in the tradition of European scholarship, ignores China as nonexistent in the historic and scientific process and "isolated," which is institutionalized BS. Julius Caesar wore a toga of Chinese silk. From researching the history of astrology (inseparable from alchemy) I've reasons to believe that Egyptian and Chinese knowledge have a common Mesopotamian/Sumerian source (if we don't take it even farther back and, again in the tradition of "modern scholarship" originating in Germany about 150 years ago, ignore all things Mu and Atlantean and Naga-Mayan and so on), and neither one predated the other. Arabs are likely to have had access to both, but quite a bit later. Besides -- that's my own thing, but very fruitful in my world -- phonetic hunches are sometimes like sparks in the dark. The Russian "khimiya" strikes "Kim-Iya" with sparks and crackle-pops but not "Kemet." Sometimes those sparks momentarily illuminate a landscape long gone, never seen by scholars, but indestructible. Gurdjieff's father was an ashok, which is an ancient occupation of transmitter, in song, of ancient knowledge. An ashok learned hundreds if not thousands of songs which were histories, later reinterpreted by "scholars" as "myths." His or her successor learned them all too, and it got preserved orally and communicated to the people for longer than anyone can imagine. How long? When Sumerian clay tablets were discovered containing the great epic poem of Gilgamesh, to the delight of the literati, Gurdjieff was delighted too, because one of his father's songs telling of the heroes and their deeds of long ago was this one, the epic poem of Gilgamesh! Now from the tablets discovered, parts of the poem were missing (I think it doesn't have an ending to this day), but from his father's song, no, everything was intact there. How cool is that. So, I was delighted in my own turn, because stories like this one add some credibility to my "tuning in my ear to understand history" methods...

Thank you for the links, that was fun!

If you use this stuff sparingly, that's probably fine. I've a question about Lugol's -- I used to get mine in Mexico where I traveled fairly often, but it's been a while, so now the only thing I have is this bottle, and I don't remember how I got it but have a hunch a friendly chemist gave it to me at some point, someone who likes to get his supplements from places that cater to horses and other large animals, asserting that they're the same at a fraction of HFS costs. It is from a company named 'Polarchem' and the label says, "Iodine Solution 5% (w/v) (Lugol's Solution) and contains Iodine --4.5-5.5 g/100ml Potassium Iodide -- 9.5-10.5g/100 ml followed by a most severe warning (about the same you would expect on a bottle of cyanide). The warning is likely to be bogus (as most of them are), but I wonder if the composition is the same as on what you have. I mean, do I have normal Lugol's and can proceed as I would with any other brand, or do I have something funky?

You can cheapen your glutathione by taking a combo of NAC and glutamine instead and letting the body convert as much as it needs to glutathione. Yes, it helps with cognition too, mostly in terms of adding to your decision-making energy, sometimes making the difference between "why bother" and "why not." In my experience, it's mostly energy, which way you direct it depends on what activity you are engaged in. In my case, it was mostly emotional energy. This, by the way, can backfire. But people who have no emotional energy ("wet blankets," "nay sayers," "naggers" etc.) are almost invariably glutathione deficient. However, all this stuff is in my past (except in emergencies for which I like orthomolecular prescriptions sometimes, like megadoses of vitamin C with a cold, or HGH releasers if I slack too much on keeping my muscles in good repair, etc.). I experimented with free-form aminos and nootropics and antioxidants et al enough to know that no one knows what the main effect will be until it hits them. The main effect is, as I stated earlier, they are like a crowbar to break a lock to get somewhere you want to go, be it more energy, better cognitive powers, faster recovery from illness, muscle definition, sexual tuning, whatever -- and I used the crowbar when I didn't have the keys, and when you do that you can damage the doors you only wanted to open, and I did, and even though it turned out for the better eventually, this "eventually" had to be lived through and there was no guarantee I would, and there's no guarantee anyone going where there's defensive locks and breaking them will. When you get "better cognition," e.g., you cognize not only what you intended to (i.e. a math problem), you might cognize whatever this particular pathway that was blocked leads to, and it can lead to memories, and these memories are not necessarily neocortical, they might reside in the midbrain and lower brain and refer to the time (before 3 months old, e.g.) when you didn't even have a functional neocortex -- and parts of it weren't even fully formed till you were 5 years old -- so what do they know and what can they understand about stuff that happened when they weren't there? Tweaking with your brain can connect you to that stuff without giving you the tools to comprehend the information and (if the doors have been damaged) without giving you back the old option of just shutting it off. So, I step WAY carefully these days. None of it is, in and of itself, "dangerous," but YOU (or me or anyone) may be dangerous to probe and prod with this stuff, and not know it till you know. Usually at the stage of "now I know" it's also "but I don't know what to do about it."

I had it in capsules, so I don't know what it tastes like. You can encapsulate yours if you like -- there's cheap little plastic contraptions for the purpose sold at HFSs and empty capsules too. The load dose protocol started with somewhere between 6 and 10 grams in one single dose plus don't remember how much choline and either NAC or glutathione, it was a while ago, and this was topped off by a hefty handful of antioxidants to clean up the metabolites (backed up by orthomolecular medicine's lore). Then I think you start the normal dosages at 2g three times a day and then start tapering off, shaving 500 mg off the last daily dose, then off the second, then reducing to 2 daily doses, etc.. And it's one month on, one month off or something like that. I would go to Dean/Fowkes books on smart drugs for precise recipes, I'm pretty rusty, so please don't take my word for it. I've used Piracetam on and off on a number of occasions, usually to better recover after a mind-numbing stressful period (it doesn't help with stress at all but it helps recover the energy expended on dealing with stress afterwards.) It used to be very mainstream-medicine in Europe (don't know how the medical picture has changed there later), and the uses were sometimes dramatic (e.g., administered intravenously, it gets people out of shock, coma, alcoholic delirium, etc.). My MD friends gave it to their children and aging parents, it was very safe. I don't think the FDA likes safe drugs with no (or minimal) side effects, but of course it's not the reason it's not been approved, the main one is, the whole class of nootropics is a selective blind spot of American medicine, they are simply not used here because, well, they can actually treat stupidity, poor cognitive skills, poor school performance, stuff like that. In other words, nothing to hang a diagnosis on. "Stupid" is not a disease. It's a patriotic duty.

Harmonious, I agree, the labeling of thoughts is a good way to stop them. (The labeling of anything is a good way to stop it. Call me something and you've eliminated everything that is not included in the label. Call a product a "painkiller" and you've eliminated from consciousness all information about what else it does, even though it's also "kidneys irritant, blood thinner, immune suppressor, hemoglobin depleter, white blood cells buster, stomach lining eater, ulcers promoter, mutagen, teratogen, carcinogen" and so on. Labels are weapons of mass destruction. That's why it's so efficient to apply them to things you are trying to destroy. Politicians and corporations live off labeling stuff. To label is to control consciousness. So a meditator ISO controlling her own consciousness without meddling in anyone else's can use it successfully too.) I used this method on occasion (my labels were "right, wrong, later" -- the last one for thoughts that need a promise I will get back to them when I'm done practicing or else they will keep trying to get my attention over and over. A promise to deal with them later has to be kept though or your thoughts won't trust you and therefore won't obey you.)

Hey Cam, good to see you! I'm sure you and China will enjoy each other's company! I was in China last summer, but spent 6 weeks of my stay in Xi'an and only a few days in Beijing. Xi'an is a provincial city of 7 million and I learned its ways only to find that in Beijing much of what I'd learned does not apply, it's so different. Beijing reminded me of Moscow -- hectic, busy, flashy, polluted as hell, modern to the max on the outside, but inside -- ???... Well, looks like you'll have a good chance to find out what it's really like. Do keep us posted if the spirit so moves you. As for Yoda, the last thing I heard about him was that he became an apprentice of Mak Tin Si after the latter helped him dispel some negative energies which Yoda attributed to kunlun. (How's your kunlun, by the way, still going or in cold storage?) Mak Tin Si has a site, you may try tracing Yoda's current whereabouts if you visit, but I don't have a bookmark for that, google it up.

That's exactly right. That was external alchemy (also a taoist pursuit, in fact a taoist invention -- e.g., immunization shots we think of as "modern western medicine" were invented by a taoist nun in the 13th century), then came internal. That was zen, this is tao. Should go somewhere in gold letters. Then of course the very "oneself" progressively mastered expands (yang) and deepens (yin) and becomes like that shaman whose job was to tell the hunters where exactly to go hunting, who, when asked by an anthropologist how he knows where the herd is, responded, "how do you know where you toes are?"