Taomeow

I know. I was not talking Starbux nor Starbucks though. It's George Starbuck, the greatest American poet of the 20th century, repressed into oblivion by the publishing corporation (which operates every bit the way Starbucks the coffee empire does) -- George Starbuck the coffee empire's accidental namesake, whose lines which I quoted above, however, mysteriously predict the onslaught of the Starbucks corporation while predating its creation.

One one one that's what god said singular singular singular infinitely outspread ---George Starbuck

Really? nothing to do with the 64 hexagrams and the yin-yang principle?

You have a head on top, heart and lungs below that, stomach and liver and kidneys below that, reproductive organs below that. Fire methods concern themselves with stuff going on on top -- upper brain, heart, breath. That's because Fire Ascends. Ascension paradigms, pyramid-like in shape and ideation, heaven-oriented, upper-mobile, hierarchical, patriarchal, are systems of goals and values that aim somewhere "up there" -- these are Fire systems. Water methods concern themselves with stuff going on on the bottom of the human being -- lower brain, liver, kidneys, stomach, reproductive organs. That's because Water Descends. Descention paradigm, inverted pyramid-like in shape and ideation, earthward-oriented, stability-oriented, non-hierarchical, matriarchal, are systems of goals and values that aim somewhere "down here" -- these are Water systems. Most of human history is Water-based history. Fire values/ideation/social structures (that caused our species to build pyramids, now discovered pretty much everywhere on Earth, contrary to the long-held myth that they are somehow endemic to Egypt) were implanted by someone or something from "up there" -- toward their own purposes. In other words, Water methods concern themselves with things human, and Fire methods, with the goals of something or someone "above human." Take your pick.

Wow, I'm so honored!

Nope, you don't have proof that the H-bomb exists. You have hearsay. However, while it was secret, with even hearsay ("what they want you to know") not available yet, 150,000 people were working on the Los Alamos project yet no information was revealed to the general population till after the fact. And the "facts" you were offered omitted some other "facts" -- e.g. that the most prominent of the H-bomb creators were occult practitioners, i.e. black magicians, and the "science" part you were offered simply made no peep about that. If you believe you could replicate their results without the occult, using "pure science," that's a belief, not a fact. The brilliant modern philosopher Karl Popper defined "scientific" as "falsifiable." I.e. there's nothing else that proves something is following our accepted "scientific method" than the fact that any results obtained via this method can be falsified. There's nothing else that fundamentally distinguishes it from any other method. Black magic, or any kind for that matter, is not scientific on our currently accepted terms only inasmuch as its results can't be falsified. This is proof of neither existence nor non-existence of a phenomenon. This is proof of the fact that a phenomenon is not following the recently invented "scientific method" steps as currently accepted and continuously revised. (99% of everything that was accepted as "scientific fact" only one hundred years ago is currently disproved by the very sciences that produced these "facts," and substituted by other "scientific facts." The process is ongoing and accelerating.) A lack of falsifiability of a phenomenon is no proof of its nonexistence, and modern scientific method offers absolutely no other venue for proving anything than its falsifiability. That's "anything," you heard me right. Everything you know as "scientific" is nothing but "what can be falsified," as opposed to a vast array of reality phenomena out there that can't be falsified. So if we are dealing with a phenomenon of reality rather than of "modern scientific method," there is no way you can "prove" it. "Proof" is the domain of phenomena that may or may not be what they are claimed or understood to be, i.e. of falsifiable phenomena. Reality does not operate on these terms. Ah, the duped generations... Proof of the pudding is in the eating. If you don't eat it, it may be made of cardboard and you will never know. Proof of magic? You would have to eat that too... there's no other way to know.

My pleasure.

The research was done with religion, not magic, but the outcome probably applies to both: both strong belief and strong non-belief are suggestible states, psychologically indistinguishable from each other, a kind of self-hypnosis that opens one up to hypnotic suggestions, whether belief-oriented or non-belief oriented. In other words, "I don't believe" is a belief system every bit as open to suggestions as "I believe," and the stronger the emotional investment in either, the more suggestible the state, and both cause manipulability. Watch out nonbelievers... you are puppets on a different puppeteer's string, nothing more. Magic the real thing, in the meantime, has nothing to do with belief or non-belief in it. It's a high level technology. So high a level that its working are indistinguishable to an untrained eye from natural phenomena, the buttons to push so as to establish connections, turn things on or off, are invisible to the unseeing, the outcome does not look like anyone's "doing," and the science behind it appears nonsensical to the ignorant. Just as this written page is nonsensical to a pre-literal tribe not familiar with the technology of literacy. Where is this technology -- in your mind or in the outside world? Is it real or imaginary? Can it make things happen? You get an eviction note, you get thrown out of your house whether you can read the signs or not. A red light at the intersection, another kind of literacy, a man-made sign, means something, if you don't know what it means, watch out... How do you know where it ends?.. which signs mean things are set up to happen, which signs were made by whom? Where does "natural" end and "supernatural" begin? What's so natural about your being able to understand what I just wrote?..

The call is nothing... it's the nagging that drives me nuts! that, and also the voice of tao's competition (?..) that keeps telling me, "don't bother," or even "don't you dare or else," and not just telling but delivering too... all kinds of obstacles that seem to be commensurate with my dedication to the practice and study of taoist arts and sciences and, especially, "results." But then, few of these obstacles can be overcome without the use of taoist arts and sciences. So I'm not sure I know what's going on. I haven't heard of even one serious practitioner who hadn't come across huge obstacles, adversities, things to overcome... maybe because the ones who have a smooth ride really "don't bother" with taoism?.. ...but then, who has a smooth ride? A snake in the grass?..

I nominate three Chinese movies -- "Red Cherry," "The King of Masks," "The Road Home." Turns out someone put "The King of Masks" on youtube, which is great. I just found it there and read someone's comment -- "best movie ever made." It may or may not be, but it made me cry and I'm not particularly responsive to tear-jerking movies, so this says something about its emotional intensity. Besides, it depicts one of the rare taoist art forms not really known in the West, one involving fajin but not for fighting. "Red Cherry" made me cry too. "The Road Home," almost. Come to think of it, it takes a really good Chinese movie to make me cry -- I guess Hollywood has lost the power.

Much like you don't need all those funny buttons on your keyboard to make the words appear on the screen of your computer -- you just need to visualize them correctly in order to "manifest," right?.. Real Western tradition of magic is not a Fire tradition. In fact, it predates the use of fire by hundreds of thousands of years. So candles may be optional, but "funny words," obligatory. As is awareness of where the North is when you want to do, e.g., polestar magic. As is a bunch of other crucials. It is a technology. What we have in the "law of attraction" and so on is a model of the technology, minus the engine. It can even be a working model -- meaning, it will hum or flash lights -- but the driving engine of magic is conscious communication with other realms and their inhabitants, and this is missing from modern commercialized versions. Consciousness, first and foremost, is missing. "Reprogramming" can be done many different ways, but a program is still not conscious even if it is a program equipped to reprogram itself to run a different program. A magician, on the other hand, a sorcerer, a shaman, a kam, a wu, a medicine man/woman -- these are all conscious beings communicating with other conscious beings -- spirits, deities, animal helpers, plant teachers, ancestral souls, emperors of the stars, queen of the Moon, tianzun, m'boga, you name it... A system that refers to "tradition" while omitting the very core of this tradition and then gets you to assert that you negate the tradition by negating this new and improved system is indeed a magic trick in and of itself, of the stage magic kind.

Wow, so many lucky people who only meet people who can handle the truth. Of course, when you are with people who can handle the truth, "just be yourself" is the best advice. They always respect it, right? Always support you when you are "yourself" even though your "being yourself" means, to them, "negating everything they stand for?" Of course you can choose the "I don't care how I make them feel" stance and wave your banner of "this is me, take it or leave it" in their faces. Personally, I believe it's puerile. I used to be like that when I was a teenager. I grew out of it. Now I ask myself, "what will this truth of mine mean to them?.." If the answer is, "it will make them feel threatened and invalidated," I keep my truth to myself and give them what they can stomach instead.

It's a technique from NLP, actually. It is used as one possible communication strategy when the goal is to avoid rather than escalate a conflict. Knowing one's own goals in the course of communication and choosing a strategy accordingly is not "patronizing." It is merely aware and conscious.

Wow, what a practice you have ahead of you! Here's a strategy that has worked for me in similar situations: 1. Whatever they tell you, respond with much feeling, "I agree with you," "this sounds great," "oh, it's so very true," "you are absolutely right," and so on. They will run out of brimstone in no time, guaranteed. 2. Whatever questions they ask, have a few of those items prepared in advance that in my college years we called "cucumbers." I will explain. Where I come from most exams we had to take were oral one-on-one grillings by the professor, not multiple choice written tests. In case of ignorance, you masked it with a routine that went something like this... Q: What role did the Roman Catholic church play in the south of France during the Albigensian Crusade? A: The south of France is a region with a long and rich history, the culture is ancient, and agriculture, e.g., was practiced for many centuries predating the Roman Catholic church, due to the fertile soil of the region and warm Mediterranean climate. As we know, many crops grow well in such climates, and eggplants, tomatoes, and cucumbers have long been staple vegetables in the area. Cucumbers are actually creeping vines that will grow low on the ground but can also climb poles and fences. The flowers are large and usually yellow, although there are varieties with white or orange flowers. The crops can be gathered throughout the warm season, and the best plots yield ten pounds of ripe cucumbers from every square foot in the course of one summer. Cucumbers are mostly eaten raw in salads or pickled or marinated, although in parts of Asia they are also fried. In China, cucumbers are often eaten straight up, like fruit, the way we eat apples. People with kidney problems often benefit from adding cucumbers to their diet. Cosmetically, cucumbers can be used for facial masks, their juice soothes irritated skin... ...and so on. you have to know everything about cucumbers, and you don't have to know, or bring up, anything else. No matter what they ask, turn the answer to the subject you know best, which is a safe one too. Cucumbers. Or whatever else you choose in advance to use... think it through and stick to your drill, and you'll be fine.

I feel I need to expound a bit on my statement above -- "Resonance means you interact with things that have similar 'existential signature.' " This should perhaps read "interact harmoniously." Besides resonance, there's also this other phenomenon, dissonance. If your drives are unconscious, you may be putting out 10 units of whatever energy (e.g. the energy of intent) toward harmonizing with a certain flow of events while your unconscious is putting out 100,000 units of its own energy toward harmonizing with something different that happens to be in drastic dissonance with what your surface consciousness thinks it intends. What will the practical outcome be? Which frequency will be drowned out? This is absolutely realistic in biological terms, because the lower brain commands infinitely greater resources of energy than the neocortex. Brain functions that get preferential distribution of energy in any form -- innervation, blood supply, electrochemical and neuroendocrine activity, etc. -- are those of the lower brain, unconscious in most modern people -- to say nothing of your body which has a mind of its own, also unconscious in most modern people (BKF put it in harsher terms in his recent interview, asserting most Westerners -- though I wouldn't limit it to Westerners, I would say "most modern people" -- are "dead to their bodies.") The organs of communication between the neocortex (the part of you that thinks and believes stuff) and the body (the part of you that lives your life) are the brain stem and the lower and middle brain, and these parts are the chief consumers of your overall cerebral energy. If there's a disconnection there, i.e. if your neocortex can only "want" things without having access to these lower brain control rooms, it will never succeed directing the resources of its intent where it "wants" them to go, because the energy of "wanting," "thinking" or "believing" is very low compared to the energy of "living." If you can't convince your organs in charge of basic life functions -- heart rate, respiration rate, thermoregulation, blood pressure, oxidation, cellular communication, etc. etc. etc. -- to communicate with your organs of "thinking and believing," your system will summarily ignore your "thinking and believing" as insignificant in the grand scheme of things as it understands it, and just go about its business without paying any attention to your "wants," "beliefs" and "bright ideas." And so on... big subject. Larger than life. Gotta stop somewhere though.

Hey Suninmyeyes, wouldn't this eliminate free will one hundred percent?.. Since you trust it to "exist at some plane of being/life" (as do I), this premise would take us once again into the domain of incompatible beliefs... i.e. "the law of attraction is the law of attracting karma-action" or, to put it in traditional terms, "the law is the will of god." To a taoist, the valid concept is "ganying," resonance. You don't necessarily attract stuff, you can repel it, create interference patterns within it or experience it as interference patterns within you, your life, even your afterlife, etc. Resonance means you interact with things that have similar "existential signature" -- new age people like the (rather mechanistic) term "vibrational frequency" but leave out characteristics that turn "frequencies" into music: timing, tempo, tembre, pitch, an infinite variety of instruments that can produce the same frequencies resulting, however, in quite different melodies (or mechanical noise, as the case may be), and above all polyphony, co-creation. It's as though everyone who believes that when you put out love you get love in return and when you put out a desire for money you get money forgets that they aren't playing solo... This "law" as presented by its proponents presupposes a self-centered mind successfully ignoring the "existential signatures" of all other minds, hearts, livers, kidneys, stomachs, and so on, and would perhaps evolve to full-blown grandeur mania if little episodes of ganying, "synchronicity," that of necessity happen in every life were to be taken too seriously (and occasionally are, I've seen people who think they "do" synchronicity and regard it as a sign of some powers they have.) I do agree that the bulk of what we attract (via ganying and also other players -- wuxing, notably, to say nothing of yin-yang and other fundamentals of existence) we do attract unconsciously, because being unconscious is a default state of current humanity and most of its individual representatives. But I don't think "reprogramming" is the answer -- most people already do nothing but run unconscious programs. The answer is more like eliminating the programming, far as I'm concerned. The answer is consciousness where the "unconscious" has now usurped such power. Or, to put it in traditional terms, "know thyself."

Having studied subtle phenomena tackled by taoist sciences, notably ganying, I submit that the "law of attraction" has about as much to do with the real thing as a pyramid shceme with the pyramids of Giza, or a vague idea of how an internal combustion engine works with driving a car. "You attract what you are?" What ARE you?.. I have seen two-year-olds with brain tumors. I have seen a man whose hands were stained with blood of thousands of innocent people die peacefully in his bed, surrounded by a loving family, at the age of 90. People who believe every complex "why" is reducible to a simple "because" will cite past life merits and crimes, karma, and so on. This may be true, but then it is not compatible with "you attract what you are" in this current life, since indicators of what it is you are as an entity not limited to this-here life are absent, and more often than not people attract "something" that doesn't seem to have anything to do with what they are in this life, as in the above examples. So one might want to take a pick... either believe in karma, or in the law of attraction, but not in both simultaneously. 'Cause if you believe in karma, it means the only thing you are equipped to attract is your karmic debt, and what you focus on, put out, etc., is irrelevant -- a debt is a debt. Whereas if you believe in the law of attraction, it means you attract what you focus on and put out, which means your karmic debt is irrelevant. However you slice it, it looks like an either-or deal. (Of course the very crux of "new age" is being able to hold two or more mutually exclusive beliefs simultaneously. )

Well, we had a superhail this morning, and people who've been living here all their lives assert they had never seen anything like it. A few youtubers caught it on camera, one of them right in my neighborhood -- here's what it looked like:

No, not really, I may have worded it with insufficient clarity, so let me try again. I don't believe the story. I don't know who the source of the story is, and I don't think it's you. I think you believe what you want to believe, and that's your only role in the transmission of the story. But I have no reason to think you are its creator. Even if it was true, which is something we have no proof of just as I said we don't, still we don't know the "whole" truth of the incident that may or may not have happened, for which we have no further information other than you heard it ten years ago. That's always too little info for me, nothing personal. However, even if there was one unfortunate accident in ten years with a sacred plant misapplied inappropriately, your choosing THIS story over any other is information in and of itself. Anyway, gotta run. You weren't accused, and if you thought you were, consider yourself acquitted.

Looking for yet another fight?.. Sorry, no time/inclination. When I "accuse" someone of something, I say so. (E.g., I "accuse" the archons of meddling in human affairs, as I mentioned in the initial post.) I have no idea who made up the story, you or someone you heard it from. All I know is what I said: no names provided, hearsay with no documented proof. I don't "attempt to discredit" what you wrote, I successfully make the point I make: you didn't provide the name. This you can try to turn into a fight if you have nothing better to do, or take at face value, as a mere statement of fact. Fact: you didn't provide a name. Fact: I said I heard these stories by the dozen but the name was never provided. Impression: you often look for fights here no matter what the subject matter. Fact: I've no time/inclination to oblige. Sapientis sat.

Um... who or what are you arguing with? The thread is about plant teachers. I didn't offer a "point of view," I repeated verbatim what a plant teacher told me. If you want to shoot the messenger, fine, but this doesn't quite rid you of the fact that the plant teacher did give this messenger this message. And if you want to take it up with Mother of the Universe and explain to her how wrong she is, I can put you in touch with a shaman in Peru. The first thing he will tell you will be, if you are taking MAO inhibitors, you can't be here. The stories like the one you told are made up by the dozen, but the funny thing is, they never provide the actual name of the purported victim. Not a single documented case. MAO inhibitors et al, in the meantime, kill about 3 million people worldwide every year. Or at least that was the statistics from some fifteen years ago when I read researcher Thomas Moore's "Prescription for Disaster." The figures must have changed for the worse by now -- the drugs (that's drugs, patented concoctions, not plants) have proliferated way deeper and wider since then.

Absolutely agree that "all" plants are teachers... "Sacred" ones are different in that we have receptors in the brain tuned in to their teachings and can translate them into human comprehension more readily than the teachings of those plants that don't concern themselves specifically with our species, but in the grand scheme of things, "all" plants are sacred. Love McKenna's view of biology: "Animals are something plants invented in order to move seeds around." So true, so hilariously exactly right! I had a dream once, one of those which I recognize as "dreamtime dreams," as real as waking reality only more so. The context was weird (as often is the case with dreams): I was making a speech in front of an audience, advocating country living vs. urban or suburban, and couldn't come up with anything but platitudes -- "well, you get fresh air... more greenery... fresh produce... less pollution... fresh air..." when a loud and clear voice from the back of the audience offered, "And the pig squeak, don't forget the pig squeak!" I was very surprised but repeated sheepishly, yeah, OK, and the pig squeak... I woke up perplexed, with an urgent "don't forget the pig squeak" in my mind for no good reason. I told about the dream to a bunch of people online, and someone responded, "pig squeak is the name of a flower, a decorative garden plant." I googled up a picture and... OK, I recognized it. This plant grew in my back yard, right under the wall of the house, but I didn't plant it there, it planted itself. I didn't know what it was, maybe a weed? -- and I was thinking of pulling it out, but then decided to sort of ignore it and see what it turns into come summer. So when I put two and two together, I realized that the dream was induced by this plant, and it was asking me to water it. Don't forget the pig squeak! Since it's not a psychedelic plant, it had no other chance to penetrate my consciousness than to enter it in dreamtime, and since it's normally not a talking plant, it expressed itself briefly, but did succeed "planting a seed" of understanding, which flowered in my mind the next day, with a little research. The plant itself flowered a couple of weeks later (of course I started watering it daily), pretty pink flowers, pig squeak... beautiful. And quite entirely mind-blowing, come to think of it.

Hi Aaron, I don't disagree that describing tao is fruitful and useful, but describing and defining are worlds apart. It is difficult to notice the difference until you start watching yourself (sic) like a hawk. Every time you define, you fragment. John is a dentist. Yes, it's true, you can define a dentist named John this way. But try asking "what does John do" and you will see how meager, incomplete, reductionist a fragment of the real picture of John this definition provides. While defining John, "dentist" doesn't describe John. It doesn't describe how John makes love to Nancy. It doesn't describe what John feeds his dog. It doesn't describe his feelings of doom or of grace, his digestion that is sluggish or frisky, his sense of style that is superb or nonexistent, his acts of greed or generosity, his inspiring or deadening interactions with his daughter, his body, mind or soul. All it offers is information that John fills and pulls teeth for a living -- and at that, only to someone already in the know as to what a "dentist" does. "John is a husband" makes him into a thing. "John loves his wife" returns him to the realm of processes, the ones not reducible to things. Things are fragments. Processes are not. "John is loves his wife?" Doesn't work. A process is not a thing. (Kate, thanks for thinking on that thought-length too!) The habit of destroying processes by removing descriptions and substituting definitions is the outcome of much brainwashing we've all been subjected to. It is far from innocuous. I invite you to examine the issue closer before arriving at conclusions... much of it is not very obvious, and the rest is mystery of mysteries!

Ayahuasca's main message (and she made me understand it's the main message to humanity, me personally being given it only in the context of my being a member of humanity, not because it's my personal issue to any greater or lesser extent than anyone else's... though of course to make any lesson sink in, it is made intensely personal by this deity, because we humans really get it only in this shape and form, as something intensely personal... comes with the territory of being human...) -- as I started saying before I digressed into the brackets, the main message was, "Do Not Abuse Power." Funny how it never made it to the ten commandments or any other do's and don't's of religious, scientific, etc. paradigms of "civilized" humanity, the one that the Mother of the Universe presented as the main one. There's no "Thou Shalt Not Abuse Power" in any scriptures I was aware of before her lesson, and among other things, this sort of validated my lack of grokking of any and all institutionalized religions and sciences that don't follow this principle. They all miss the point, or rather, omit it on purpose, and the purpose is not pretty. Later, I was surprised and delighted to find this very idea as the central thought among the teachings of gnostics who emphasized direct personal knowledge of the divinity without intermediaries. (This is what sacred plants provide, at least when used in the sacred, aka "uncivilized," context, without the semi-artificial demiurge, the archon, standing between the experiencer and the source and transmogrifying the experience toward its own purposes.) They believed we live in a dualistic set-up with two gods, the god of love and the god of power. They believed love absolutely excludes power. This is not what I would agree with, but at least I know that someone was still able to discern the main issue of creation and of the human predicament in it -- power -- as recently as the 12th century! Of course the Catholic church promptly unleashed a crusade against them (even though they were Europeans and, at least pro forma, Christians) that lasted for forty years with ferocity of relentless genocide, wiping the heresy and tens (possibly hundreds) of thousands of its adherents off the face of the earth. Talk about abuse of power. Oh, and by the way, have you noticed the crusade never stopped?..

What tao "is" is a question that invalidates the inquiry, since the "is" premise is false. "Is" nails, immobilizes, pinpoints whatever it addresses. Tao, however, can't be nailed, can't be immobilized, can't be pinned to a styrofoam pad like a captured butterfly and labeled -- it "is" such and such exhibit, "tao." The valid question is, what does tao do? Tao doesn't "is," tao "does" stuff, we can observe the effects, the "doings" of tao are real and it's a satisfying and meaningful inquiry, to start learning about tao via her doings. It may seem as just word play at first glance, but if you shift your perspective to always, and that's "always," remembering to apply "what does it do" to all phenomena instead of "what is it," the shift of consciousness in the general direction of comprehension will have commenced! You can't begin to imagine how many misconceptions will start falling like dead butterflies off their cruel, pointed, pointless pins... And when you're reasonably comfortable with this process, dare ask the next valid question: "why does tao do it?"