Taomeow

So, to illustrate the dry theory... here's a real-life example of ganying at work, and of the co-creation work of tian-ren which is magic: When I just turned 8, I found myself in a summer camp with some random girls who believed in magic and, moreover, were quite obsessed with the subject. They kept telling stories of witches and sorcerers and entities they or their family members had encountered, and I kept laughing at them for being superstitious and silly and simple, and wisecracking and disproving their stories from a materialistically raised child's perspective -- my family had people with letters after their names in four generations and believed in no such nonsense. Eventually the superstitious girls got angry and I got ostracized. I was rather miserable for a couple of days, spending my time alone in the woods, talking to dragonflies and frogs and woodpeckers. At one point I found an old abandoned well and sat beside it in the shade, feeling sad and confused. Then a turtle came and sat beside me, it looked as though it emerged FROM the stone wall of the well and was part of it. It looked into my eyes and hypnotized me, and transmitted some new ideas while at it. Too many and too fuzzy to relate, besides it was a long time ago... When the encounter was over, the turtle just wobbled around the well and disappeared. I realized that my mood was considerably better. That night, timidly, I told the girls that I had a bedtime story for them, and told an "entity" story, about an entity who lived in the well and bewitched everybody who drank the water from the well. I had actually read it in a collection of Ray Bradbury's sci-fi short stories, and the well and the entity were located on Mars, but I omitted that part when telling it to the girls and instead made it into something that happened in the little town where my grandmother lived, and turned all the rocket men from the story into my grandmother's neighbors, and told it like I lived it. The girls were mesmerized. Their attitude changed immediately, and I became one of the "popular" ones and they all wanted to be best friends with me and begged for a bedtime story every night, which I delivered with ease, because I was a well-read kid with imagination. I knew magic was real ever since.

Aaron, in ancient Egypt, the head of the household shaved his eyebrows in mourning if the family cat died. The mourning period during which this was maintained lasted one year. Cats were sacred, and Bast the cat-headed goddhess, one of the most revered in the pantheon. In addition to this information from history books, Bast told me in response to my inquiry "why shave the eyebrows" that it's a straightforward symbol -- a sacrifice meant to signify the loss of a small amount of very important fur (the cat from your life, the eyebrows from your face) and thus placate the cat spirit and the cat goddess. Why this happened to you I don't know, but other than this Egyptian custom, the only eyebrow-shaving episode I'm aware of can be seen in the Pink Floyd movie The Wall, and is coincidental with the protagonist going mad AND totalitarian. Hopefully this has nothing to do with your accident and your eyebrows will grow out better-looking than ever. Shaving the head was commonly done in many cultures to denounce the world (monks and nuns), mourn a loss, prevent lice or differences (the army -- AND the monastery), or facilitate a practice.

Synchronicity (ganying by Jung's name ) strikes again -- we posted pretty simultaneously, and your explanation is very good!

One of the basics of the taoist unified theory of reality (along with wuji, yin-yang, qi, wuxing). Sometimes translated as "resonance," better understood as a phenomenon of "fractal self-similarity" of natural occurrences, both phenomena and objects, or as both a cause and a manifestation of the "holographic" nature of the universe -- or as the classics succinctly put it, "tao fa ziran" -- tao patterns itself on itself. In the European traditions, it faintly resonated, e.g., into the medical "doctrine of signatures" (later forbidden by the new overlords of medicine). In all native traditions, the deep and fruitful understanding of this phenomenon is behind all self-similarity practices of shamanism, from rain sticks of weather shamans (used in conjunction with a whole bunch of other know-how) to generate resonance in the form of a "bigger" rain, to dolls into which parts of the bigger person they represent are incorporated (nail clippings, hair, semen, menstrual blood, sweat, etc. -- these dolls are also used universally, in voodoo and in Siberian shamanism and in Australian aboriginal systems alike), to many, many other things. In taoism, ganying is what real traditional (not the bogus commercial kind mostly polularized in the West) feng shui works with. It's also the reason why taoist sword masters practice calligraphy, why talismanic sorcery requires years of neigong cultivation, and so on. That's ganying in some of its practical magical applications which, with a lot of know-how and practice, work quite independently of any "beliefs."

You are most welcome. I don't mind agreeing to disagree. I don't do more than just skip the daisies when touching upon the subject, as a general rule I don't find it fruitful to discuss magic online. But I wanted to throw in just one clarification. When I make an omelet, it has nothing to do with my "belief system" -- I don't have any particular beliefs regarding omelets, just a basic recipe and then a lot of practice to improve on it and make it "just so," work out to my and other eaters satisfaction. It's exactly like that with magic too. I don't have any particular beliefs regarding magic... See, unlike religion or fundamentalist institutionalized science, magic is not a belief system at all. It's a technology for using natural phenomena -- such as, e.g., ganying. Do you know how to use ganying? If you did, it would be the beginning of one aspect of magical work. That you don't do this work causes you to believe that those who do this work do it out of a "belief." But ganying is not a belief. Galaxies ARE spirals, hair on your head DOES grow in a spiral, water in your drain DOES drain in a spiral, seeds on a strawberry DO arrange themselves in a spiral, DNA IS a spiral, sound vibrations DO reshape spirals in the sand, water, and strawberries (and galaxies too), words DO reshape them differently from white noise, meanings DO reshape them differently from the meaningless, order DOES differ from chaos... Knowing how to USE what seems like chaos toward a particular order by "using qi, not li" (to quote taoist classics) and then, at a greater stage of proficiency with the omelet, "using yi, not qi," and then, at the next level of omelet expertise, "using ganying, not yi," is magic. Sheesh, and I promised to shut up. Sorry...

Oh yeah? As it turns out, the encounter with the "swimmers" was the single most motivating factor for me too. Not that it changes all your dealings with the world all at once. But you can't forget for too long what is really going on, and it causes you to do or not do things a certain way every time you remember. It is "very" motivating, because it is absolutely real -- you recognize them, you know them better than the palm of your hand, but they appear in their "actual" size and you perceive them every which way (not necessarily visually) -- as big as the problem they represent really is. So, e.g., your mom yelled at you angrily when you were three, and the "swimmer" she made this way is the size of a truck, yelling numbness into your ear forever. Then imagine mom and dad who yelled at you angrily every day, several times a day, and each instance created a "swimmer" bigger than the one that went before and more numbing. Then imagine you yell at your own kid, and the "swimmer" you create is as big as all of them put together. And so on. There were many kinds, by the way, some of them you create, some of them other people create and unleash on you, some of them come from god only knows where, are ancient, older than time... and you recognize them all. Each one is a numbness where consciousness, aliveness, sensitivity, feeling used to be. As for "many" masters, not all that many... ...for the vegetalista shamans in the Amazon, it's business as usual to deal with these entities, and they don't teach you how to deal with them, She teaches you. The mother of the universe. As for taoist masters, I only asked one of them. He changed the subject...

Well, Marble, magic works because it is top science, and doesn't work when a computer is delivered to a caveman and plugged into a hole in the wall that has no electrical outlet. "Impossible" is how science of about a hundred years ago defined travel by car at speeds over 30 miles per hour, and flying of objects heavier than air. Volumes of scientific proof of this impossibility were written by top scientists of the time. Cavemen, all of them. Scientists of today whose opinion about magic is based on similar know-it-all theories are in the same boat with those other cavemen. Get outta that boat, it's going into a scientific dead end. Magic works because the universe isn't.

Why then nothing else works like that? Religion doesn't work just because you believe it works. Science doesn't work just because you believe it works. Physical forces don't work just because you believe they work. Everywhere you look, believing in things is never enough to make them work. So then what is it about magic that makes conditions for its working so streamlined and why is this streamlining not available to any other modalities?

I find it very interesting and very disturbing, in the light of my experience. I've met two people I know from "real life" among those swimmers. They apparently offered themselves to the demons as food without reservation. I was shocked and surprised to see them there. But later, in real life, these people cheated me out of some money. So then it made sense why I saw them there.

It just occurred to me that, put in taoist terms, "flyers" may be after shen while "swimmers," after jing and qi. This would explain why flyers are airborne while swimmers are water-based.

I've met the "swimmers," in the Amazon. Same type of creature, but water-based. I fought with them for an eternity. The subject matter of the fight was retaining sensitivity -- what they are after is our feelings, aliveness in its all manifestations, they are numb and they make you numb with their touch, and they bite pieces out of you, pieces of perceptions, of sensitivity, their teeth and claws leave numb spots on your body, your mind, your heart, your memory, your feelings and meanings. If you don't resist, they gradually turn you into one of them -- numb all over, seeking to do this to others, hungry for sensitivity forever.

"Science works because it produces technologies that work and transform the world." Right, my point exactly. The world untouched by this kind of science lives, the one transformed by it dies, slowly at first, then faster and faster. That's why I believe that this kind of science serves the interests of whoever is working on transforming this world from alive to dead. That everybody is OK with it and sees the process of transformation as good and its practical outcome, our world dying, as irrelevant, proves to me that this "everybody" must have been scientifically tampered with. I have met people who have un-tampered themselves and also I've read their opinions (e.g. in the taoist classics), and have un-tampered myself myself, to the extent I could, and it has complicated my life. For all I know, some proteins may have repaired themselves when I un-tampered myself, but it didn't make my life simpler -- rather, it complicated it... What complicates a life is a lack of a death wish. In particular, a death wish transmitted into the world and its individuals via science and technology.

The problem with scientific inquiry as we are conditioned to understand what "scientific" means is not that it takes the spirit out of the equation -- I'm a taoist and therefore I don't believe that "spirit" and "matter" are different things, only different phases of the same cosmic qi-process (in other words, spirit is matter, energy is an attribute of both, and there's no clear-cut cut-off lines anywhere, body IS mind, not a container for the mind but mind itself, while mind IS body, not a filler for the body but body itself... and so on. Dualism is not the problem, it's a manifestation of the process, basically the source of energy... this, for another topic though.) So scientific inquiry as we are told to believe it "should" happen affects the spirit exactly as much as it affects the matter, and any of its empirical interventions into our material existence are interventions into our spiritual life, make no mistake, when you take, in the form of a pill, a bunch of designer molecules scientifically created in the lab, you are changing your mind and your spirit and your energy and ultimately your destiny, not just your material body... but don't let me digress. The real problem with what we are told is "scientific" is threefold: 1. It pretends that there's such a thing as "objectivity," i.e. it pretends that the scientist himself is not there and does not affect what he is doing, and 2. It is on the payroll of the parties whose real goals have nothing whatsoever to do with "inquiry" and everything with "keeping the slaves obedient, profitable to keep, and manageable." That's the problem. Not some developmental flaw that will be overcome as this science of ours gets bigger-better. No, it's fundamentally off from the inception, and 3. Its lack of a unifying theory (to compare, in taoism such a unifying theory exists, in the form of the taoist fundamental cognitive basics -- yin-yang, qi, wuxing, ganying -- which allow taoist sciences to unify biology and cosmology, technology and morality, matter and spirit, the human and the universal, rather than fragment it into a trillion bits of "information" none of which communicate very successfully with any of the other trillions of bits of "information" thus produced). No unifying theory = fragmentation of knowledge = schizophrenic sciences. (Linus Pauling was in agreement with this view far as it concerned "modern medicine," asserting it's not a science at all because it lacks a unifying theory of what health is. But of course it is not limited to medicine only. It's everywhere...) Nothing is wrong with monkeys in nature, everything is wrong with the way we practically treat them based on our understanding of what they are, the understanding created and promoted by creationism and darwinism alike. Nothing is wrong with the great dynamic interaction which is life on this planet, everything is wrong in our assumption that eliminating all species that are in the way of our "progress" (currently at the rate of about 200 daily) is what this interaction is legitimately about -- without even noticing that that's what we are doing, oblivious mass murder in the name of... what?.. Why do we have to look down on some parts of nature... "we"? You mean someone doesn't who is currently interacting with nature the way we currently interact with nature?.. Well, it's obligatory to pay lip service to how it is not to be looked down upon, but if "we" really didn't, the way tribal peoples didn't, then there's no way we could use pesticides, cut down the forests, poison the rivers and the oceans and the air and encroach upon life with massive assaults of mass destruction -- you think lip service to the magnificence of nature and/or its parts somehow justifies the actual deeds our theoretical concepts are allowing us to do to it? What does an idea of alien intervention answer anyway? It answers the question "why are we behaving as aliens toward our own planet." Why we are doing to nature and all its creatures great and small and to each other what we have been doing since we've become, um, "civilized." If aliens exist they must be part of nature as we are? Sure thing. When Native Americans, Australian aborigines, etc. etc., were invaded and 90% depopulated and the rest robbed blind, the people who did this were part of nature, not some semi-artificial archons... or were they?..

John, my apologies in advance -- I am going to use your entry as a pretex to finally verbalize my position regarding the recent (and recurrent) evolution vs. creation debates in which I never made a peep... but after I've done so, I will also explain why I am not scientifically impressed by the defective proteins... so it's not completely tangential... Here's the two-pronged path of our genesis I do believe in: 1. Co-creation 2. Intervention While creationism presupposes we are some pathetic nothing, dust, clay, any random shit until we get to get created by someone/something bigger-better, evolution presumes we are, again, some pathetic nothing, monkeys, shmonkeys, until we get to evolve, from something less-worse, via getting better at cutting each other's throats than the average monkey. Co-creation, a taoist (and also shamanic) concept, posits as our default state that we matter. We have never been any pathetic nothing. We are the creator-creation. We are the evolution, or rather, the unfolding (because "evolution" presumes "from lower to higher," another hierarchical pyramid scheme, while "unfolding" means "realizing your inherent aliveness to the fullest," "becoming what you already are all the way," or simply "being complete, whole, real.") Whatever you make of yourself is already made and yet not ready-made, you co-create what you are, who you are, you don't make yourself from scratch but nothing can scratch what you make of yourself off the face of reality. You are reality. Intervention, an ancient myth that is being vigorously explored by some viciously marginalized alternative thinkers of today, presupposes that we have been disrupted, tweaked with, changed, modified, transmogrified. This information is not readily available and conclusions it leads to are not easily provable. I'm not going to try here and now. Suffice it to say that at this point it seems like the only explanation for the current and historic human condition that makes any sense at all to me. So, in the light of these convictions, I assess any "new evidence," "new research," etc., from the point of view of "which paradigm it serves" -- I am not a believer in "innocent" science -- it lost its innocence thousands of years ago, and the science of today is a veritable whore -- for it sleeps with whoever pays and doesn't do its thing out of love anymore -- only for money -- so in the light of "which paradigm it serves," the defective proteins theory serves the paradigm designed to convince human beings that they are defective, a really pathetic creature with violence for the unconscious and 95% junk for DNA and so on ad nauseam -- and that's a sure sign to me that it can't possibly serve any other purpose than to whisper into our inner mind's inner ear once again, "you are defective, you are pathetic, unworthy, and powerless." Again and again I've heard this message from our "science" (as well as from our "religion" -- the same, absolutely the same!) Till one day I realized it's not "our" at all. It's "their" science...

Oh, sorry I forgot to mention that I enjoyed your scholarly offering too, very much. Fu sheng wu liang tianzun.

This happened about two weeks ago but every time I tell the story to someone new, they laugh and so I laugh with them all over again, so today, again, a friend called and asked, among other things, "how did your cats adjust to the move?" -- and I had to tell her... ...Vulgaris, our semi-feral, athletic, adventurous, humans-shunning young cat, went out to explore the new environment and didn't come back that night. Nor the next day. I went looking for him and calling him and heard a faint meow from high above. Vulgaris was sitting in a tree at the third floor level, afraid to climb back down. A real-life incarnation of the perennial cat joke. I tried calling the fire department, but they said "he'll come down on his own eventually" and hung up. Another day and another night. We made a contraption, a basket on a long pole (brooms, curtain rods, etc., tied together), and reached Vulgaris from the third floor walkway, inviting him to climb into the basket and get delivered to safety. He meowed his apprehension and refused. We put a can of tuna in the basket. He ate the tuna, stretching beautifully to reach it but refusing to step into the basket. Another day. We bought a long two-by-four and made a bridge between the third floor walkway and the branch of the tree where Vulgaris was sitting. Sturdy, cat-friendly, but the cat was afraid to cross. We pushed a can of tuna onto the bridge using the broom/rod contraption of the day before. He ate the tuna, but wouldn't step on the bridge. After many fruitless phone negotiations with assorted animal organizations, we finally located some animal rescue volunteers willing to come take a look. They were supposed to have an adequate-length ladder. A guy and a girl came, propped the ladder against the tree, me and the girl were holding it from below and the guy climbed up. As soon as he reached the end of the ladder, just about close enough to Vulgaris to touch him with an outstretched hand, Vulgaris, terrified out of his mind (a predator he was wary of to begin with is climbing up his tree to get him!), predictably but frustratingly went higher. Higher, the tree was thinning into nothing, Vulgaris was hanging on some flimsy branches and vocalizing his distress. The man (a real hero in my book) climbed off the ladder and onto the tree! Vuglaris went higher! The man climbed after him! Onto the trunk thinning into the thinnest upper branches and into nothingness! Me and the girl started panicking and calling out to him to be careful. The tree was shaking furiously. Vulgaris started screaming in an almost human voice -- "Oh!.. Ah!.. Yikes!.." The man instructed the girl to get a pole and poke the cat a bit from below. She produced a telescoping pole and reached Vulgaris with it and poked him. She was looking up with her face upturned to the sky, the man, and the cat, and saying something. When she poked the cat in the belly, he got scared even more, and peed. He got her in the face and in the mouth. The girl started gagging and spitting and cursing, and I was apologizing like crazy for my cat, but she was taking it very personally. She said she'd rescued about a hundred cats, was hissed and spat on, bitten, scratched, but never peed on before. I kept apologizing... In the meantime, the poke did redirect Vulgaris a bit to where the man was able to grab him with one hand while hanging dangerously off a flimsy branch. A lot of screaming and fighting followed. "Yikes!.. Ouch!.. Noooooo!.." Finally the man managed to stuff the cat into a bag he had attached to his belt, climbed down, handed me the bag and started comforting his assistant. The girl, in the meantime, was using her cell phone to call someone near and dear to complain about the cat peeing on her face from high above, and hung up promptly, upset even more than before. "They just started laughing hysterically," she complained bitterly... I was instructed to take the bag with the cat to the bathroom, shake the cat out and slam the door shut, let him sit there for an hour or two thinking of his behavior, then let him out when he winds down. Which I did. Two weeks later, Vulgaris is the best behaved cat I've ever known. He still doesn't go outside though, the adventure may have turned him into a house cat, for all I know. Happens to the best of us...

Thank you

I think I know what you mean. "Stuff" and stuff. Why indeed do they let some of the real stuff seep through the cracks? I'd like to believe it's a sign of their weakening and our getting stronger... but then, they haven't lost an inch of the territory yet, the green and pleasant land they've taken away from us, they haven't given an inch back and they are grabbing more and more every day... so often I fear they are using these trickle-down little droplets of the truth to let off a bit of steam here and there, is all... and they do take care to mix it with a lot of mind-control chemicals and electromagnetic pollutants and what not, nano-busters of comprehension, biomechanical spirit implants, feeling circuit-breakers, meaning erasers, AI mind prosthetics, DNA entanglers, sensory silencers, all that infinite toxic crap... so very few are actually gaining any access at all to any of the real stuff, the wells are polluted and then some... But then, it can't work "at all times on all people," can it?.. ...so let's look to the ways of the old, the ways they are trying to erase -- the very things they declare laughable, obsolete, denounced, left in the dust of our "progress" (what a concept! to the climber of a pyramid, it's "progress" that matters... fewer layers pressing down on you from above as you go means you're getting somewhere... somewhere from where you can press down on those down below... that's "progress!") -- those things are the ticket. Pick them up, dust them off, look for the missing pieces, use your most delicate senses and your most careful touch to restore them to their original splendor... and behold the gem of truth!

Now you're telling me! Too late to be careful with that concept, I'm already back! -- as a taoist all over again, 'cause the last time around, my buddhist friends, who happened to be Amitaba Buddhists, failed to convince me to chant Amitaba Amitaba and get the hell outta here and into the Pure Land when I discorporated a few of my shens. Well... whatchagonna do! I miss my Po of the previous life, which was pretty tame and quite housebroken toward the end... that life was a long one... but I'm having fun with the new Po in this one, although it started out pretty wild and gave me a lot of trouble, and bit the hand that feeds it many times... my hand, to be specific... still it's a fine animal, I wouldn't put it down before its time, no worries.

Gotta take up kechari mudra I guess, maybe it will help me with my tongue-in-cheek techniques. "The way of tao is return." To ban reincarnation, they would have to ban tao. Of course "they" often pretend they did... one way or the other... but... don't take their word for it. I remember... many billion moons ago... when I walked or not walked in skins as I pleased... when they called me Uwedhe... that's when they tried real hard, with the deadliest tools at their disposal, the kind Justinian or Rockefeller don't have. Even Zhuangzi, who lived billions of moons later, heard that famous story, the one about the two kings, Sudden and Abrupt, who made a hole in Primal Unity. According to him, Primal Unity died. But I remember differently. It died all right, but then, of course, it reincarnated all over again. The way of tao is return...

So China is catching up with the West?.. In Europe, the emperor Justinius banned reincarnation in 553 AD, and imprisoned the last Pope who maintained the doctrine. It was not OK for Christians nor for anyone under their colonial, political, military, economic power to reincarnate ever since. Our "science" that is the direct continuation of political control mechanisms eployed by Justinius et al merely followed suit. So everybody who is currently standardized and installed/entrenched in their "scientific" approach, the legitimized, respectable biomechanical fundamentalists currently enjoying the position of superiority that was formerly associated with other institutionalized beliefs, should know... ...that what you believe or don't believe is the outcome of political manipulation dating waaaay back, rather than of some "pure innocent scientific knowledge." Things that don't "get in line" get banned, is all. If you are only a believer in what's sanctioned by the officialdom, you are in line. Congratulations. And the line stretches way away from the nonlinear truth. All the way!

I don't quite understand how kunlun can cause one to lose his friends, his job, his health, and his girlfriend if the premise is it does nothing. If it does nothing, what is the reason for connecting all these losses to the practice? Let's review the logic formally... Thesis: Kunlun causes all kinds of losses. Antithesis: Kunlun does nothing, it's all you. Synthesis: You are causing kunlun to work against you. Anything you use, even something that does nothing, you somehow cause to work against you. O U C H.

"The subject matter of a delusion is not its cause," as a brilliant Russian psychiatrist, Korsakov, noted way back in the 19th century. A personality prone to obsessive disorders will find what to obsess about. To link the problem specifically to the "subject matter of a delusion" is psychiatric stone age. In which we are, sadly, stuck as a society. Or rather, into which we have been railroaded. Every ten years, more new diseases are added to the list, institutionalized, and "managed" (not cured, god forbid!) than were known to mankind in all of its prior history. The parties who benefit from this practice abound, but patients are not among them, alas.

Dear Manitou, first of all, I wish your husband and you to get out of this in health and safety. As for your triangulation points, to a classically trained taoist, this is a very standard ganying (resonance) situation with feng shui overtones. Trouble with water in the house affects/is affected by/resonates with Kidneys (not just the organ but the Water qi phase and the whole organ-system-function thereof) and can overwork the Lungs (because Lungs/Metal are Kidneys/Water's Mother phase -- Metal generates Water -- Mother taking care of a troubled Child can get into more trouble than the Child, hence Water/Kidneys trouble can manifest as Metal/Lungs trouble. A rather widespread TCM situation, this.) The fact that your husband did the ritual the way he did it is, again, symptomatic of Mother energy working too hard -- again it's his Kidneys/Water and water in your house going all wrong that are the original/simultaneous/ganying-resonating troubled spot. Fix that plumbing problem asap. I did a very quick and dirty I Ching reading for your husband (can't do a serious one right now, I've just moved to a new place and am swamped with boxes in need of being unpacked and all the rest of it) and got Chapter 59 -- Dissolution. Don't even have the time to analyze it, but looks promising. Check it out. Much love to both of you.

************************************************************************************* "There is always something new coming out of Africa." -- Aristotle