Taomeow

I would surely share the sentiment if I believed in darwinian evolution. We didn't "evolve" though. We used to be homo aquaticus according to some anthropologists (e.g. Desmond Morris), and still retain the pattern of hair growth on the spine only encountered in aquatic mammals, not Bonobos, not any other monkeys or apes or any dry land mammalians for that matter. This pattern, with hair growing backward along the spine (humans and aquatic mammals) rather than forward (everybody else), is all that remains of our glorious past. Taoists don't believe in darwinian evolution, incidentally, only in evolution-as-unfolding, i.e. things undergoing the universal four-stage cosmic process of Conception, Growth, Fruition, Consummation. Because it is universal and all-encompassing and there's no room for improvisation that wouldn't affect the whole of creation and change all of the pattern, at every stage of this process things innately know what they are. If they do not unfold into what they are, it means they have been tampered with. Without genetic engineering, mice don't glow in the dark, grains and legumes don't produce terminator seeds, and humans don't work for the overlords. The timelines that have been tampered with terminate in knots in the overall fabric of space-time, in loops separate from the overall pattern, and ours is one of those. (I've seen it.) Which is why untying the knot and opening the closed-circuit loop is the real goal of cultivation. Changing this timeline, plucking the knotted distortion out of the fabric, and restoring the beauty of the design can be a personal goal, but it will change the whole of creation once accomplished. That's why the classics equate "holy sages" or "real humans" with forces of nature, cosmic events, and see them as a source of power above that of the gods.

Too many "stars" get killed for real, so the ones who weren't killed might jump on the bandwagon?.. Then again, John is supposed to have killed someone too, a sailor in Hamburg?.. In any event, the world of fame is nuts, and fame WITH talent is pretty lethal... usually lethal to the talent, but occasionally to the actual physical body too. In the case of Lennon, it was lethal to the physical body, while in the case of Paul... he's been rather dead artistically for a long time, so it doesn't really matter whether it was his own dead artistic body that created Silly Love Songs or someone else's.

Me too -- and everyone who's WLP's student here, remember it's shuigong day?.. see y'all in hyperspace tonight

You can start researching here... and there's plenty, but don't go to just "any" source -- John Lamb Lash the comparative mythologist is the real deal, researcher of the primary sources rather than repeater of the repeaters, my kind of guy... http://www.bibliotec..._watchers22.htm An excerpt: Archon From Greek archai, "origins, beginning things, prior in time." In the classical Mediterranean world, archon was commonly used for the governor of a province, or, more loosely, any religious or governmental authority. Hence the plural, Archons, is often translated in Gnostic texts as "the Authorities." (There is no Coptic word for Archon, so Gnostic texts use the Greek term in Coptic transliteration.) Pronounced Ar-kon. Adjective, Archontic (Ar-KON-tik). In my usual habit of attempting the impossible, I propose three definitions, or three levels of definition: Level One: Cosmological In Gnostic cosmology, Archons are a species of inorganic beings that emerged in the solar system prior to the formation of the earth. They are cyborgs inhabiting the planetary system (exclusive of the earth, sun and moon), which is described as a virtual world (stereoma) they construct by imitating the geometric forms emanated from the Pleroma, the realm of the Generators, the Cosmic Gods. The Archons are a genuine species with their own proper habitat, and may even be considered to be god-like, but they lack intentionality (ennoia: self-directive capacity), and they have a nasty tendency to stray from their boundaries and intrude on the human realm. Archons are said to feel intense envy toward humanity because we possess the intentionality they lack. The Gaia Mythos describes how the Archons were produced by fractal impact in the dense elementary field arrays (dema) of the galactic limbs, when the Aeon Sophia plunged unilaterally from the galactic core. See especially Episode 10. This event is also described in detail in Alien Dreaming. Level Two: Noetic-Psychological In Gnostic psychology, the noetic science of the Mystery Schools, Archons are an alien force that intrudes subliminally upon the human mind and deviates our intelligence away from its proper and sane applications. They are not what makes us act inhumanely, for we all have the potential to go against our innate humanity, violating the truth in our hearts, but they make us play out inhumane behavior to weird and violent extremes. Left to our own devices, we would sometimes act inhumanely and then correct it, contain the aberration. Obviously, we do not always do so. In the exaggeration of our insane and inhumane tendencies, and in extreme, uncorrected deviance from our innate intelligence, Gnostics saw the signature of an alien species that piggy-backs on the worst human failings. Hence, Archons are psycho-spiritual parasites. Yet as offspring of the Aeon Sophia, they are also our cosmic kin. As inorganic entities of two types, embryonic and reptilian, Archons can at moments penetrate the terrestrial atmosphere and terrorize humans, although there is no reason or order to these forays, for the aliens cannot remain for very long in the biosphere and, anyway, they have no master plan to accomplish here. The ontological status of the Archons is dual: they exist both as an alien species independent of humankind, and as a presence in our minds, rather like a set of programs operating in our mental environment. The risk they pose by invading our mental software is far greater than any physical risk they might pose by erratically breaching the biosphere. Working through telepathy and suggestion, the Archons attempt to deviate us from our proper course of evolution. Their most successful technique is to use religious ideology to insinuate their way of thinking and, in effect, substitute their mind-set for ours. According to the Gnostics, Judeo-Christian salvationism is the primary ploy of the Archons, an alien implant. Our capacity to discern alien forces working in our minds is crucial to survival and co-evolution with Gaia who, as Sophia, accidentally produced the Archons in the first place. (This comment belongs to Level One, the cosmological definition, but as so often happens with Gnostic teachings, noetic and cosmic elements tend to merge.) By recognizing and repelling the Archons, we claim our power, define our boundaries in the cosmic framework, and establish our purpose relative to Gaia, the indwelling intelligence of the planet. Level Three: Sociological In the Gnostic view of human society, the Archons are alien forces that act through authoritarian systems, including belief-systems, in ways that cause human beings to turn against their innate potential and violate the symbiosis of nature. LIVE spelled backwards is EVIL, but the Archons are not evil in the sense that they possess autonomous powers of destruction, able to be applied directly upon humanity. They are agents of error rather than evil — but human error, when it goes uncorrected and runs beyond the scale of correction, turns into evil and works against the universal plan of life. Gnostics taught that the Archons exploit our tendency to let our mistakes go uncorrected. Because the Archons need human complicity to gain power over humankind, any one who assists them can be considered a kind of Archon, an accessory. How do humans assist the Archons? One way (suggested in the Level Two definition) is by accepting the mental programs of the Archons — that is, adopting the alien intelligence as if it were human-based — and implementing those programs by actually enforcing them in society. Another way is by actively or passively conforming to the agendas so proposed and imposed. Jacques Lacarriere suggests that Gnostics detected the humanized face of the Archons in all authoritarian structures and and systems that deny authenticity and self-determination to the individual. He argues that Gnostics recognized "the fundamentally corrupt character of all human enterprises and institutions: time, history, powers,states, religions, races, nations..." (The Gnostics, p. 24) Corruption occurs, not because we make errors, but because the errors we make go uncorrected and extrapolate beyond the scale of correction. Lacarriere says that Gnostics reached this conclusion "out of rational observation of the natural world and human behavior." Ultimately, they asserted the "contention that all power – whatever kind it may be – is a source of alienation... All institutions, laws, religions, churches and powers are nothing but a sham and a trap, the perpetuation of an age-old deception." (p. 28-29) This may seem like a dark view of human affairs, but given the evidence of history (not to mention current events), it cannot be said to be unfair or exaggerated.

In the multiverse, which is where we live, you don't mess things up by changing the past. You just jump to a different timeline. Imagine history as an office building... you can see through the windows, you can see people moving from one room to the other, you can see someone enter a room or leave, you see people talk, make love, fight, conspire, perspire... but you can't affect anything in those rooms by just looking. Now to actually change something, you have to enter the building. Through a door. Once you do, you have changed things inside it. Now the interesting part is, for all practical purposes it is now an altogether different building -- since now it contains you. You can communicate with people inside and affect their minds and actions. You can set the building on fire. You are a walking potential to change everything... except for the building that was there before you walked in through that door. That building, the one you're not in, is on a different timeline. Affecting the past is like that -- you can "see" the past (via learning history) but everything that happened there will remain this way once it happened this way. However, if you locate the "door" to walk into the past through, you will find yourself in a building that never was -- the one containing you at that moment in time -- which only comes into being once you create it, by walking in. What you have created is a branching-off timeline. It does not eliminate the building you're not in. It just creates a new one, with its own timeline stretching into infinity. Once you go back to the "present," the "present" you find yourself in will have been the outcome of the "past" you affected. That's your timeline now -- the one where you've already changed the past by having been there. And it's different from the one you left. Very different, or slightly different -- but not the same one. I view methods of locating this kind of doors, the ones through which you walk into different timelines, as the main goal of my cultivation. Heck, I would change everything... by eliminating the archons, of course. However, the timeline with archons, the one we've been stuck in for god only knows how many thousand years (no fewer than 15,000 but maybe much longer than that... to be determined once I get there) would remain unaffected... so you keep moving with this one quite unaffected by my elimination of the archons in another one... enjoy!

I would get rid of the archons.

It's selective awareness. A very common affliction, and though seldom as immediately deadly as in the above example, in the long run, always! But I was mostly after the "timeliness" aspect of the example. "Timeliness" being my favorite taoist concept. It sort of eliminates much of the "right vs. wrong" dichotomy quite effortlessly and leaves us with things that are "timely" or "untimely." Tao is very mindful of this aspect of her functioning. A snowfall in New York is quite timely for Christmas, but quite untimely for Labor Day. The sage emulates tao's precision timing; the fool lives in the moment, perfectly aware of things she is paying attention to, perfectly unaware of the things she is not paying attention to... and falls into the trap of the moment she didn't notice. At least that's how I saw the little story...

Hi there sunshine, hope your health troubles will soon be over and you will feel good as new. I am of the opinion that flushes are a bit harsh on the system and there's slower, surer methods to prevent and remove gallstones, of which the simplest and pretty efficient one is to take beet juice on a regular basis, 50 ml daily (you can take up to 300 ml but only in divided doses, one single dose shouldn't be more than 50 ml). Unlike other juices, it mustn't be consumed fresh (this is important to remember -- if you start drinking it fresh you develop intolerance, there's some substances in it that you don't want to consume, that however degenerate rapidly and do not pose a problem an hour or two after you make the juice). Let it stand for at least an hour in an open container before drinking. The oxalic acid in it dissolves the stones slowly but surely (and prevents cancer too while at it), while its blood-building properties support general health and stamina. Also, I would compensate for the missing galbladder by including bitter herbs in your daily regimen to aid digestion. The simplest thing (unless you are like me and store dozens of herbs in the pantry and like to concoct your own formulas) is so use a tincture known as the Swedish Bitters, available at HFS. I would also add digestive enzymes to your every meal -- look for a formula that includes ox bile. Good luck!

Doesn't the whole scenario remind you of anything?.. Let's see... How do the overlords go about taking away freedom? The cheapest way is to make it obvious to the public that freedom is dangerous and harmful and only serves the bad guys. Then the public will demand that the freedom be taken away. How do they introduce tight internet censorship that's been in the pipeline for a while? Why by making it obvious to the public that freedom of information is dangerous and harmful and only serves the bad guys. There were no leaks. Nothing of any consequence was revealed. Assange is just another way to spell Osama.

Yes, all children.

Just wanted to share this tidbit of research: An average person thinks 65,000 thoughts every day, but 95% of these are the thoughts he already thought yesterday. What it practically means is that the mind lives in the past 95% of the time even when it thinks that it thinks about the future -- or the "now" for that matter. "Now" is a stand-off for "unfinished business" 95% of the time. Tao seems to be bent on finishing any business that gets started. It doesn't abandon an acorn till it is an oak tree. It doesn't abandon an oak tree till it is an acorn. The mind emulated that, and you can't do anything about it. If you put 65,000 thoughts on hold today, it only means you will have to deal with 65,000 tomorrow. That's because putting them on hold didn't do anything to finish any of the unfinished business. And never will. An acorn can be stored in a glass jar for three thousand years, but once it is planted in the ground, it will resume what's been on hold, the thought to think through -- "oak tree" -- and there's no stopping that. You can't store it in a glass jar for three thousand years and get it to think "crocodile." Its unfinished business is "oak tree" and the only way it can proceed is by fulfilling its nature, finishing its business. Finish your business...

Yes. The best beginner TCM book I read years ago and kept recommending over the years, The Web That Has No Weaver by Ted Kaptchuck, OMD, first introduced me to the idea that traditional Chinese modalities somatize problems and avoid psychologizing them at all costs. Basically, they do not want to rock the Confucian boat. You know the Confucian drill? Emperor in the state equals father in the family, and is always right. Generals and officials in the state equal mother in the family, and are always to serve the father. Common folks equal male children in the family, and are always to serve the father and the mother. Slaves equal female children in the family, and are always to serve the father, the mother, and the male children. End of psychological nuances. So any "qi imbalance" will be readily addressed provided care has been taken to prevent it from translating into any "what really happened and who did it to me" connections. So "yin deficiency," yes, "child abuse," no. "Yang blockage," yes, "social cruelty," no. "Jing depletion," yes, "neglect," no. "Toxic heat," yes, "toxic parenting/governing/ecology," no. Anything that might connect the "imbalance" to the "actual real-life people and events" is circumvented. It's the same all across the spectrum, be it qigong or full lotus or herbal formulas or acupuncture. I have reasons to believe the rare and unique taoist teachers know it, and the rare and unique lineages have never broken up with shamanic ways that have always ignored Confucian political correctness. But, like I said, no one will teach this to the general public. It's a one-on-one case-by-case deal.

No. Shamanic interventions.

Thanks! I think in theory it's supposed to. The thing is, the way it happened with me, I processed a lot of it before I started cultivation. Then a teacher who was teaching the first qigong group I ever joined told everyone to sit in half lotus and told me to sit in full lotus. I laughed in his face, because I knew I never could, and told him so. He said, I can clearly see you can! So... turned out he was right, and he sat me down in full lotus within a minute and I could ever since. So, I don't know how efficient it is as the starting point... but one thing I know is, there's cultivation and there's gymnastics, and they are not the same, despite any possible outward similarities. Full lotus as a muscular exercise... seems useful, but I'd only expect for it to have the kind of benefits similar to any exercise that works the body or its parts into a better condition. It's a very "open" method, you can use it for many things. How to use it to process stored pain... a rare and unique teacher may know, but it is not the kind of info that's free-floating (too dangerous -- in a Confucian, filial-piety based society, you are not supposed to know, you are not supposed to remember... it can overturn the whole society's foundation if everybody remembers what and who fragmented them into bits and pieces from the start and how exactly. In ours, ditto. So things that consciously and intentionally unblock early repressed material have never been taught to the general public.)

It depends on whether your eyes are open or closed, and if they are closed, it depends on whether you're meditating or taking a nap. Have you tried 40 minutes in full lotus with your eyes closed, meditating? How about 2 hours? If you have, and still feel no pain, I want to know what you know. Cultivation pain is different from muscle/joint pain. Provided your muscles and joints are in a pliable enough condition that is -- if they are not, you will feel ordinary pain, but if they are, then closing your eyes and meditating in full lotus is very different from just sitting in full lotus. That's because you gather your spirit inward this way, and once it starts gathering itself, it comes complete with all the parts that fled from painful experiences. So before you reconnect them, you have to feel that pain, it is what's in the way, it is what's between you and your spirit's wholeness. You can't get rid of any of that pain without having felt it, nor mend any of the disconnections. So, once muscles and joints are ready for the task, that's when cultivation really begins -- everything you've done before are the preliminaries, the warm-up. Cultivation, once it truly begins, can't possibly be painless if it is to accomplish anything. A physical therapist once tested my pain threshold with a special device and announced that it is way WAY high. It didn't surprise me. Not that I look forward to any more pain, but I don't have much "unfelt disconnected pain" left in storage, which is why any new pain is only itself, other kinds don't jump on the bandwagon. The reason for low pain threshold in anyone is just this -- a new pain resonates with an old one of a similar kind, or of any kind just waiting for its chance to surface -- and this amplifies the feeling that otherwise wouldn't be as excruciating in and of itself. This is true for both emotional and physical pain.

Right. I didn't skip though, I've been reading books since I was 3 and classics at 7... I'm just at the "next stage" by now. Most of the poetry I love, I know by heart (many hours' worth of reciting if I ever invested them...). Books full of music that I haven't read yet in the two languages I can hear the music in are rare and far between. When I get really, really serious about my Chinese studies, I'll return to the state I was in at 7, like a good lil' taoist. I will read for the music again... (that's how I learned English -- by falling in love with the music, savoring every word... Some of them were like a bell tolling inside when I said them... "llllonnnnnellllyyyy... sacrrrrillllege... abanbanbanbanbandondondondon....)

Not in His Image: Gnostic Vision, Sacred Ecology, and the Future of Belief, by John Lamb Lash And that's it. I don't keep a long list of books to read -- if I want to read a book, I read it. I read very fast, and few books cover to cover -- 99% of all books published are too long, for commercial reasons. Most novels are really short stories. Most short stories are really one-page essays. Most one-page essays are really one-liners. I treat them as such. Not so with reference literature of the dense kind. E.g., TCM Materia Medica and my herbal books and the like are re-read till they are all in a dog-eared state.

Here's another taoist joke: You can walk like a duck and quack like a duck, but until you can lay an egg and feed a hungry person, you are not a duck.

Intent -- I zap into a meditative state when I want to. But if external activities are to be considered... well, whether they will affect me meditatively also depends on intent. Some of the "props" that will do it unless I watch it (i.e. zap me into a meditative state even if I didn't intend to get into a meditative state) are tribal, shamanic, classical Chinese music, chants, rattles, drums, bells, didgeridoo, flutes, singing bowls... placing awareness in the eyes (what Sean described -- but applied to the whole world, "looking reality in the eyes and maintaining eye contact," so to speak); the ocean; driving while thinking about otherworldly beings. The lethal combo is driving while listening to classical Chinese music, thinking of aliens, and maintaining eye contact with the universe.

Yup -- your last sentence, bingo! What makes people hot or cold -- right again, we can be born this way or we can be skewed this way by assorted factors, or both. "Born this way" relates primarily to the interactions of the Five Phases -- e.g. I was born with plenty of Fire qi phase in my chart, I've seen many charts that have none, I will always be different from the latter, it will start manifesting right away (all my childhood illnesses were "fire" -- I ran huge fevers in response to being taken outside for a walk -- in Siberia! -- with no discernible medical cause, and a very clear astrological one...) Then, um, in the US, e.g., people who are born "cold" are at the further mercy of the cultural habit of keeping all foods in the refrigerator at all times (elsewhere people shop for fresh perishables on a daily basis instead, but our foods are mostly built to last -- if kept cold -- or rot if not), of iced drinks with ice cubes floating in them (a TCM practitioner's worst nightmare... steadily building cold in the lower body, freezing one's "cooking fire!" -- whatever you eat after such a drink, you won't be able to metabolize properly...), of all kinds of crazy ways that arise when a tradition has been demolished and commercial interests came to dictate what's good and what's hip and what's "cool" to consume. "Cool" my ass. So someone who can benefit from "cooling off" and someone who will be harmed by it are placed in the same boat, culturally. Then popular fads come into the picture -- people who don't eat right from the start begin having problems, looking for solutions, but since the problem is not identified properly (i.e. individually and competently), the solutions are usually -- in most cases -- way off. In some cases, however, one can get lucky and it will so happen that the latest fad just happens to be this particular individual's Rx for health. Moreover, people are born "lucky" or "unlucky" to begin with -- and the "lucky" ones are more likely to keep being "lucky," and vice versa. Most "unlucky" ones can be massively helped if they know exactly what to do about it... just like you said, if they have figured out "the root cause of what makes me me." Helped, or self-helped, as the case may be... but "know thyself" is the prerequisite. Interesting about the yogi... well, if he was on a Fire practice path, that would warm him up enough for other factors (food, climate) to be not only possible but necessary to keep cold for the overall balance. Makes sense.

Well, I'm grateful for this forum -- I don't normally look at TTC for anything in particular, other than to figure out why it has been so popular for so long. (Why the Bible while we're at it? Is it a great book or something?..) So I took another look here and there to see what it is I might be missing, and I seem to have figured it out. It is indeed one of those books whose popularity will endure because it is a bittersweet onion with many soothing then shocking then soothing layers -- and you notice the layer that resonates with the layer of reality you personally are experiencing most strongly at the moment. Come back to it a different woman or man and it is a different book. I remember reading it as a political instructions manual for the ruler. I remember reading it as a taiji practice footnotes. I remember reading it as an internal-alchemical text. I now read it as a cosmology. And I suspect this is the case in every case -- you read yourself into this text, somehow. I even know how to design a book this way (it is arranged in a hypnotic double-helix triple-spiral pattern that is so resonant with the natural DNA pattern of the human body that whatever it tells you is perceived as something you absolutely "get" -- just like you "get" instructions of your DNA without ever doubting them... The double-helix triple-spiral patterns of organizing speech are the staple of hypnotic techniques.) Which is why I've seen many "readings" of this book that make absolutely no sense to me -- e.g. all the applications derived by the "inherently powerless." I don't feel powerless, so I can't read it this way. It's not a matter of actually having worldly power, it's a matter of self-perception... and I've seen this book perceived in ways that are not available to me, but it does not mean they are wrong. It is designed to have personal meaning. That's why it's been around and venerated for so long. Nifty...

Hi Auntie Sun, well, individual cases can be funky, ranging from metabolically idiosyncratic (e.g. my mother can't digest raw food at all -- never could after a course of antibiotics forty years ago, despite years of assorted treatments) to psychosomatic (if you believe a food is "poison" it will in all likelihood behave as such -- the effect is known as "nocebo," "I will harm" as opposed to "placebo," "I will help.") Then there's adaptation mechanisms that are strong in some people and weak in others -- the ability to adjust to new factors -- dietary, climatic, etc.. Some people handle low levels of sunlight exposure while others get SAD. Some people experience jet lag for a day while others, for a month or more. Some people benefit from raw foods -- particularly those whose bodies are very "hot" in TCM terms are in this category -- while others are harmed by them -- the ones whose systems are very "cold." You gave me reasons to believe this scenario may be behind your experience. In all likelihood you are dealing with "heat" or "toxic heat" in the body, a condition specifically calling for cooling, raw, yin, etc., dietary interventions. I think it's wonderful you figured it out empirically and got on the diet that works well for you, but the danger of this being extrapolated to others is that others may be in a completely different or even opposite situation. Or a more complex situation, e.g. different "climate zones" in different parts of the body -- hot on top, cold on the bottom, or vice versa. But generally speaking, thriving on raw foods is a symptom of internal heat in TCM, and failing to thrive on cooked foods, ditto. Infectious diseases which seem to miraculously go away, many kinds of skin rashes, difficulty concentrating, etc. -- these are all "hot" disorders, so predictably they are alleviated by "cooling off" the system. But someone whose system is "cold" to begin with will run into problems on such a diet... and if ideology is involved, will attribute the chronic diarrhea to "cleansing," fatigue to "detox," mental sluggishness to "peaceful mind," a decreased sex drive to "preservation," and so on. Ideology is the enemy of nutrition and the breeding ground for placebo and nocebo effects that mask the effects one is NOT looking for... e.g., the effects of eating "cold" on one's emotionality, ever heard of a "cold heart?" -- it starts out in the stomach. I'm not saying "everyone" will have this effect, much less you personally (in fact, maybe you are one of those people who should always eat like that, I dunno -- theoretically it is feasible), but I've known raw foodists (many, a whole hive, in LA) who had two things in common all of them -- the chronic runs, and the blank stare in response to things like love, compassion, enduring friendships, all those "intangibles" a warm heart generates spontaneously...

This chapter is best understood via a study of sacred geometry. The subject of inquiry I propose is the eternal feminine, aka the Vesica piscis. A very inspiring reminder, this chapter. Even though Christians use the vesica piscis as the symbol for Jesus and eternal life coming from this particular source, the idea of this shape representing a male source of life (or a "fountain," as one of the unfortunate translators envisions it -- he should stop jerking off, methinks) is without merit -- a vesica piscis is a vagina, quite explicitly. In sacred geometry, it is the primordial shape that gives rise to all other forms en route to manifestation. All platonic solids (the foundation of material manifestations) and importantly no other primal 3D shapes are derived from the shape of the "flower of life" formed by the natural arrangement of vesica piscis within a circle (the empty circle being the symbol for "the unmanifest," the vesica piscis, the route of manifestation). All of the yummiest taoist goodies ditto -- the bagua, the 64 hexagrams, everything. All of Kabbala, ditto -- the Tree of Life is the superimposition of the straight (male) lines onto the curved (female) pattern of the Flower of Life. All of Vedic sacred geometry, obviously, ditto. All of Moslem art. All of paleolithic art!! And all of the best of modern physics whose connection to sacred geometry has finally been uprooted by my favorite Switzerland's top gun in the physics of vacuum (a black holes dude -- you see a black hole if you look straight into the barrel of a top gun), Nassim Haramein. ...sorry for deviating from the delights of the dictionary that are this forum's undeniable forte. It's not mine, so I have to make do with the tao that can be drawn, painted, circumscribed with a compass rather than described with a dictionary... that kind of stuff.

Nice. Well, you will have to forgive my looking under the carpet and around the dark corners, I've seen very few happy families and fewer happy childhoods. (I posted in the John Lennon Legacy thread today thinking exactly along these lines -- have you heard what he has to say to his audience before he starts singing "Mother"? I tend to hold a similar view... we had the same therapist, only some 25 years apart. )