Taomeow

Very true... and if you feel like sharing that direct experience, I'm all ears!

Yeah, conception to birth is the most crucial time. (I don't usually analyze this period because I'm after practical applicability of the reading to real-life situations and decisions, and this part is of little pragmatic value post factum -- but I do dream of the day when a couple just planning to conceive a child would ask me about the best moment to do it. Traditional bazi readers in China were consulted in this preemptive manner for hundreds if not thousands of years -- which may be one reason why the Chinese are by far the most populous nation on earth today.) In our species, since about the last third of the 20th century, nine out of ten pregnancies end in spontaneous abortion within days of conception (too early for the woman to know, in most cases. Source of info: Encyclopedia Britannica.) This is usually characteristic of a very unwell species and doesn't happen in healthy populations. So this fact alone can illustrate how much is decided long before one can take charge of one's own life -- the life itself, vs. death, for starters. To say nothing of, e.g., little things like your gender. Birth is the next weightiest event -- the transition from one world, a water world with dual controls (self and mom, where too much intervention from extraneous controlling forces will result in self bailing out) to a dry land world with multiple controls (self, mom, dad, doctors, nurses, siblings, the government -- which decides what substances to inject into your bloodstream and how much to tell your mom about what's good for you -- she no longer knows, because her mom was also told by the government officials, and her mom before her). Infancy is the next transition -- from no neocortex to a developed one, i.e. from a "feeling baby" to a "thinking baby." Early childhood, next -- from "thinking baby" to "thinking-twice" child who learns how to feel one thing, think another, and say yet another, in an attempt to please everybody involved (self, mom, dad, the government, etc.). Every step of the way, the role of self is minimal in this process until much later -- when it is much too late. By the time you get any say in it for the first time, you are 95% complete -- of which 40% to 80% is irreversible. You are already the final product when you just start thinking of shaping yourself into something else for the first time. If you're thinking of shaping yourself into something else, that's part of what "the final product" is like: someone not satisfied with how he or she has come out. The imperative toward perfecting oneself is part of the "I'm a work in progress" mentality characteristic of this particular "final product," and can last till the end of one's life -- without having actually changed anything significant about 95% of what you were shaped into to begin with. (The sculpture is not aware of the chisel... or, rather, until the sculpture becomes aware of the chisel, it will never know what it is and how it came to be what it is -- much less change it. Now a sculpture laying its hands on the chisel... that's astrology!) But the stars and moon and sky are earlier still... and therefore they determine things way before, and way ahead, of your "personal decisions," your "genetics," or your "social environment." Of course there's this new age idea that it's all our own doing, that we "choose" our parents, "choose" our circumstances in advance, and are born into this or that set-up as an act of free will. Doesn't account for 9 out of 10 spontaneous abortions of course, but new age paradigms are seldom bothered by facts. Knowing astrology is knowing the mind of tao. The mind of tao is the kind that never forgets. What went before your birth is something it never forgot, never made irrelevant. It knows that if you plant an acorn, you are going to reap an oak tree, not a carrot. And vice versa. Astrology (Chinese, at least -- I don't know much about Western) figures out how to help the carrot grow into a healthy plant, and sometimes it involves irrigation, and at other times, drainage, and so on. It doesn't facilitate ego trips whereby carrots fancy themselves oak trees. Which may be the reason carrots who fancy themselves oak trees don't like it. Or the reason carrots who are happy being carrots all the way like it. Or the reason oak trees hoping to live to their natural lifespan of over a thousand years like the idea of trying to avoid that lightning which can strike them down while they are still very immature and very vulnerable. Let it strike four hundred years later -- but let's figure out how to grow till then so as not to attract it... ...anyway, I'm rambling... over and out.

Thank you, robmix! Glad you liked it!

Or both. With apologies to all serious meditators out there, I happen to think meditation tends to be overrated as a solution to social problems and personal tests alike. If it wasn't, all those meditators who, e.g., join a monastery and spend their whole lives meditating would be expected to solve some?.. Monasteries, in the meantime, were being raided by bandits and destroyed by fire and steel at the imperial and warlord and Red Guard military or political or pillage-plunder discretion as readily as any place meditation-free. I wouldn't ignore the fact and substitute wishful thinking... A multi-pronged approach is best... with some humility on the side -- otherwise one may feel devastated and paralyzed into complete inefficiency and incompetence once reality gets harsh enough to teach her she is not as omnipotent and bullet-proof after all as she fancied herself to be just because she hadn't been put to the real test yet. (I've been through this humbling experience several times -- remind me to tell the story of The Lesson of the Bee if you're up to hearing it sometime, about the very first such reality check, at age 6... I keep reverting back to that lesson for humility whenever I start getting cocky...) So -- Plan A, B, C, D... Plan A is perhaps "nothing's happening, it's business as usual, proceed as usual with no extra caution" -- the part that sucks is, it is not at all compatible with plan B or plan C... so while learning to tolerate ambiguity (plan D), you try to do as much as you can to accomplish as much as you can and leave the rest to the gods. Strengthen your body and your mind... Know where to run and hide... try to stay up to speed as to "when..." ...make yourself useful to a community by gaining valuable skills, make yourself useless to the enslavers by losing any skills they find valuable... and so on. Ask the I Ching. Meditate. Do what you can. Use magic if you can, don't fool yourself and don't imagine superpowers within yourself that are a match to the old, well-entrenched power of evil by default, with no effort required on your part. Be kind to people, above all be kind to people and animals and all creatures great and small. Be a warrior if that's what kindness warrants -- you can't be kind AND powerless, your kindness is a joke if you can't do anything about helping anyone with it on account of being powerless or cowardly or both. And so on. In other words, I don't know of any simple answers except for one -- "don't stick your head up your own ass, or all the answers you will find are going to be shitty."

Thank you for digging up and noticing this thread! The answer is no, you and I and everybody else are in the balance-upset world of manifestations (Later Heaven) right now. And simultaneously we are in the forever-balanced world of the unmanifest (Earlier Heaven) at all times. The manifest and the unmanifest exist simultaneously at all times. They are not a sequence in any linear-time way of our everyday cognitive habit (which does not reflect the actual nature of time at all); they are two sides of the same tao coin -- everything tao does (tao-in-motion) and everything tao doesn't do (tao-in-stillness). Anything tao doesn't do can become something tao does -- Earlier Heaven is the dimension of potentials, and these are unlimited. (I can spill my cup of coffee right now, lock the keyboard, and end the thread abruptly as a result... it's a potential, it's realistic because my cat Haomao keeps trying to knock it over by jumping on my computer desk for some attention... but there's also a potential for me to not let him... one of the potentials will manifest, the other one and all its potential consequences will fade back into Xiantian. Haomao, back to Xiantian with you and your meddling tail!) Anything tao does can become something tao doesn't do -- manifestations become unmanifest (e.g., you first manifested as an infant in this life, the infant is no longer manifest but neither is he nonexistent, he is simply not manifest in the right-now of Houtian, but he is manifest in the Houtian of back-then and in the eternity of all-time and no-time and always was, is, will be.) So... 2012 looks more like a year of More Yi. The manifest world we're in is out of balance at all times, striving for balance at all times, and at times it is closer and at other times it is farther away from this balance. There's a difference between regular changes (Wuxing, yin-yang, bagua) and irregular changes (Yi). Regular changes manifest, e.g., as seasonal (Conception-Growth-Fruition-Consummation, or Spring-Summer-Autumn-Winter, with all their attributes and events in harmony and order). Irregular changes manifest as upheavals, a monkey wrench thrown into the mechanics of harmonious changes, so to speak -- that's Yi. The I Ching (Yi Jing) deals with the consequences of this monkey wrench. In 2012 or thereabouts (I'm not sure about the date, but pretty sure about the process) a really big one gets thrown in. Is all...

Thank you, TheSongsofDistantEarth and majc and Rainbow_vein and phore, and you crack me up!

Thank you for your kind words, and for the link -- I'm about to check it out!

I've discerned four ways people look at astrology... 1. The traditional way. This is based on the conviction that knowledge decreases and not increases in the human society, i.e. that it's only the illusion of an increase of knowledge we're dished out in modern times, not the actuality. The illusion is created and perpetuated by the technology-obsessed overlords so we are conditioned to believe that because we watch TV and talk to recorded voices on answering machines, we are more intelligent and know more about the world than our ancestors who watched the movement of the stars and talked to the gods. The traditionalist doesn't buy it and looks to ancient knowledge for real understanding, ignoring the overlords' and the conditioned masses' opinion. I am in this category vis a vis astrology. I know a guy who has made it a lifelong quest to collect documentation pertaining to Destroyed Libraries -- there's been hundreds of thousands throughout human history -- I'm a bit like him in that I look to knowledge they eliminated on purpose, not to the kind they propagated instead. Astrology related knowledge was being forbidden and destroyed throughout centuries. Possessing taoist astrology books was punishable by death during the rule of several dynasties. To me it always means the best recommendation of the study material anyone can offer. 2. The new age way. This is based on the conviction that knowledge accumulated by humanity is nothing much compared to what I, personally, can accomplish. Astrology may be right and good, but it's minor compared to what I, personally, can do to overrule it. I am so amazing, so wonderful, so superior to everything that went before that there's no reason for me to pay heed to any ancient knowledge -- I can outknow and outperform it all anytime. All you need is love, tralalalala, all you need is love, trululululu, all you need is love, love, love is all you need. Not that they love their neighbor any more than the average Joe does, but they use this (or some such) approach to establish their superiority to anyone bothering with anything in order to understand anything. Why bother? All you need is... fill in the blank... all you need is to be me, or someone singing my tune, and you've arrived. 3. The dismissive stance. The self-proclaimed "scientific method" aficionados, followers of the doctrine of Biomechanical Fundamentalism, have been told it's all bunk, and won't investigate, because the people who told them so hold degrees. They operate on the assumption that the academia somehow generates the truth. That they themselves may be in it for salaries and positions and tenures and sabbaticals and perks, but certain abstract "scientists" are in it for the truth, that they go to college and then do research and studies and so on in order to produce it, not in order to make a living and hopefully a career. These are perhaps the most idealistic people of them all, for they believe that others ("scientists") are better than they themselves are -- more honest, more courageous, more intelligent -- and so they take their word for anything they will declare about astrology and carry the message to the world for free. They are the overlords' dream come true: they police others and themselves for the sanctioned/prescribed knowledge (minus all the burned libraries and all the burned astrologers) to remain the only kind without being prompted any further -- initial conditioning is enough, they will "maintain" for the rest of their lives. 4. The bogus-astrology way. You know, all those "your horoscope for the month of July" columns published in general circulation magazines, and all those dabblers who write books about "your Sun sign" or "your Animal sign" and the countless websites whose source of study is those very books, and all the rest of it. This is not astrology, of course, but 99% of all consumers have been exposed to exactly this kind and told that that's what asrology is. Some bogus-astrology practitioners are in it for the business only and know it (e.g. the ones who write the columns) while others, having learned a lil' bit, feel equipped and empowered to "really" do it and so deceive honestly, i.e. they deceive themselves first and only then the recipient.

Thank you!

yes, this book: A Thousand Pieces of Gold: Growing Up Through China's Proverbs by Adeline Yen Mah, besides being a most wonderful foray into Chinese history and its never-ending relevance for the present, is the story of the author being cheated out of her inheritance by a brother conspiring with a sister. A sage in her own right, educated by a taoist grandfather, Yen Mah did do something about the situation. It was too late to get her share of the inheritance as she only found out about the conspiracy post factum. So she told her brother, I'm going to write a book about it... and did. No one in the family is on speaking terms with her anymore. But she made enough money to buy her ancestral residence, and enough of an impression to get three of her readers (two Chinese, one American) to volunteer to restore it to its original pristine condition.

I never had a chance to try my taiji in a physical fight, but I have used the humble skill acquired so far in very serious situations of fighting that were psychological warfare. An example: a loved one was hospitalized in a life-threatening emergency and basically taken hostage by the head of the ICU who, instead of doing what was really necessary, wanted to use this routine opportunity (someone entirely powerless under his thumb) to perform several unnecessary (which I knew for a medical fact), invasive and dangerous (which I couldn't allow), expensive (the only real reason) tests and refused to do anything until/unless his plan was agreed upon. I had the power-of-attorney to make the decisions for the sick person, so I was the one the doctor had to "fight off" in order to do what he wanted to do. He was a triumphant blackmailing bully in his attitude which said, almost in so many words, "I am the king of this castle, you are nothing, I do as I please, it doesn't matter what is medically justified, what matters is that I am powerful and you are powerless, see?" MUCH worse than a punch, this. The doctor was obviously used to everybody giving up under the kind of pressure he put on me. Instead of going with my emotions (if I did I would probably wind up being thrown out by security, taiji or not), I consciously decided to take the situation under taiji control. I took a step back, relaxed, sunk externally, internally, emotionally. Then into the first opening in the doctor's screaming I pushed research, studies, logic, calm confidence which taiji taught me to feel in situations where I wouldn't be able to summon it otherwise. The first thing that happened was, the doctor was visibly thrown off by my body language -- relaxed and soft without cringing or crumbling -- the body language of defeat wasn't there, of fighting, wasn't there... he didn't know what to make of it and suddenly shut up and then goes, "but, honey... sweetheart..." -- which made me realize he's projecting someone else onto me in his misplaced adamance, so I took a wild guess and spoke to him in a voice that was a cross between a mother comforting a crying infant and a hooker promising untold delights to a customer. He was a puddle of compliance in a minute. Thank you, taiji!

I see a very traditional Chinese landscape, I have one of these in my living-room. The artist may have painted himself into the picture as part of what is actually there at the moment of observation. He paints what he sees -- including himself in the process of contemplating painting what he's looking at. This is consistent with the classic taoist view that does not allow for an "observer" being positioned anywhere outside of the "observed," or for any "pure awareness" distilled out of some disposable container. An artist ain't no such thing! All he is matters -- not just his "awareness." So he has no reason to exclude himself and pretend he's not there. He's not a liar. He's there, and it shows, and he shows it. In order to paint a landscape, you enter it. Once you enter it, you are part of the landscape you're painting. You are the observer and the observed wrapped into one. It doesn't matter if you're painting what you've been looking at recently or a long time ago, what you have never seen and only imagined, what you plan to see one day, or what you're looking at right now: as long as you truly see it, the method whereby you see it doesn't matter. The landscape is realistic (there's many here-now places in China that still look like that) and metaphorical (richly metaphorical, resonating with scores of core taoist concepts and ideas) and majestic (nature is worshipped and venerated in such paintings, not merely "depicted"), and poetic, and many things on top of that and on the bottom of that. I love this style. I've tried my hand at painting in this fashion and discovered something amazing... ...you can paint with water, a hint of ink to cloud it a bit is all you need, water itself will decide how to go about creating a landscape -- your main role is to try not to interfere too much with what it wants to do. I would recommend trying to copy one of these paintings as a very illuminating practice.

:lol:

Freedom is a feeling. To know this feeling, you have to be in a state where your body and your mind don't contradict each other. E.g., if your mind says "I am a being of light" and your body goes, "yeah, screw digestion, let's photosynthesize!" -- that's it. Freedom is just another word for reality check.

Thank you. Have a great retreat.

I don't know if it's possible to get the information I'm after but I'll ask just in case -- since you're going to be at a Franciscan place, maybe they know?.. I was in the Franciscan monastery in Lima which has extensive underground catacombs, and the catacombs have many pits with thousands of human skulls and bones arranged in mandalas, thirty feet deep some of them, and they won't tell you why the Franciscans did it. When questioned, they quickly respond with a line learned by rote, "this serves no purpose, and was done merely to astonish." I'm not buying that, of course, and have my own ideas as to the purpose of this practice, but I wonder if you could get an explanation from the source and share it? They don't allow taking pictures inside the Lima place but someone seems to have sneaked a camera in -- here's what one of those pits looks like: http://www.swerdloff...tacombs_jpg.htm

It usually shows when it's like that... I was seeing Mal and you and a bunch of significant others (you know who you are ) in my mind's eye when I wrote that.

The story has a continuation... 400 years later, Ancestor Lu became so proficient that he surpassed his master Chung-Li Chuan and became HIS teacher! I wonder why in the "Conversations" of the two immortals (translated by Eva Wong) the following dialog has not been replicated which I'm almost sure has taken place at some point... "OK, so now you want what I have? It's gonna cost you, young man! Remember when you had what I wanted? Well, the tables have turned now!" "Humble bows, Ancestor Lu, humble bows... I'll pay... even if I have to go hungry..." "No need to go hungry... have a peach... it's a special one, from the Tree of Immortality in the garden of my lady friend, Great Mother of the West... just give me that purse of gold ingots..."

Third vote. This way you would become a traditionalist -- start with a practice to prepare the body, the body will prepare the mind, the mind will seek out a hands-on taoist art or science (happens naturally!), practice that and it will reveal what meditation really is (not "relaxation," which can be learned anywhere even though it will be called assorted funky names), then the teacher will come. A teacher found in a different manner is likely to disappoint. The do's and don't's of taoism boil down to, "do something taoists do" and "don't get too metaphysical too soon."

Metal Dog, I really appreciate your research -- thank you for posting. It's a hell of a rabbit hole... coincidence theorists get dizzy and then sleepy and then defensively dismissive just looking at it from afar... "no no no, I won't go there, it's too deep and dark and disturbing, and I'm s c a r e d, so why don't I follow the cue from the overlords and dismiss it all as stupid paranoid "conspiracy theories," with an obligatory smirk, and then... then maybe I'll be OK?.. They've got to reward me for obedience, don't they? A good dog always gets a morsel of dog food when they say "sit" and I sit, right? So I'm sure I'll be OK." (You're a bad dog, Metal Dog!) A scientist whose name eludes me at the moment once said that "coincidence is what is left over when all facts have been accounted for by a bad theory."

Interesting! Well, I think it's more or less an example (a very, very mild one though) of what I was talking about -- things being brought out by qigong, becoming visible. You are not "creating" tension this way but the tension that is there gets a chance to get noticed. (Hamstrings?) Ideally, one gains autonomy and increased voluntary range of motion over more and more organs and functions with practice -- it's much like playing a musical instrument, an inexperienced guitarist will hit the adjacent strings inadvertently, or a novice piano player might not move exactly the finger he wants exactly where he wants it to go without touching off the neighboring keys (or fingers). I would experiment with lifting the huiyin on the inhale, maybe the toes will relax then?

I very much disagree with the author. It's not bad vs. good qigong that produces side effects. I specifically asked a taoist TCM doctor about it. He is of the opinion that any qigong can produce "qigong sickness," good or bad, and good sooner than bad (because bad qigong isn't doing anything much to begin with). He has seen it many times. Qigong is a trigger; the underlying problem can show up and get resolved, or not -- it all depends. But just because it didn't show up without qigong doesn't mean it wasn't there. A yin affliction -- deep seated, chronic, invisible until it's too late -- can be turned into a yang one with qigong, i.e. brought out of the hiding and to the surface, where it is easier to heal! Symptoms mean nothing in and of themselves. Consciousness means everything. What lies behind a symptom? What real life events, what body problems, spirit problems, developmental history problems, nutritional deficiencies, environmental toxicities, bad lifestyle choices, bad luck?.. Oh, and raising the huiyin is not incorrect in any way (not the anus, as the author asserts -- this is assinine, pun unintended... the technique is lifting the huiyin, and it's never produced incontinence or constipation in anyone -- he simply made it up). The huiyin lies on the same central line as the dantiens, so it can get involved quite naturally, whereas squeezing the toes... um, try this with anything realistic, like reverse breathing in full lotus, or taiji for that matter -- what's he gonna do with squeezed toes, claw the ground?.. Yeah, squeezing the toes does lift the huiyin, so what? -- sticking a finger down the throat produces saliva, it doesn't mean that's the correct method to produce saliva in meditation. Hitting the tendon below the kneecap with a rubber hammer produces a kicking reflex, it doesn't mean one needs to use a hammer to master kicks in MA.

or, as a talking mushroom once said to Terence McKenna, "Nature loves courage."

The theory, based on solid scientific evidence (which darwinians prefer to ignore) first proposed by a British marine biologist, Sir Alister Hardy, in the 1960s. I've come across an overview of the arguments of anthropologists in agreement with this theory in "The Naked Ape," by Desmond Morris. A more recent take: Ingram, Jay. "Homo Aquaticus." The Barmaid's Brain and Other Strange Tales from Science. New York: W.H. Freeman, 2000.