Taomeow

Bones grow, get remodeled, and increase their density in response to piesoelectric stimulation. The book to shed the light is "The Body Electric," and here's tons more references: http://silver.neep.w...BoneElectr.html By the way, I don't have the patience to look for it right now but I distinctly remember uprooting information that some types of qigong, taijiquan, sword and pole routines, many martial exercises that emphasize hitting stuff, assorted hitters traditionally used on the body, and hitting impact on acupoints produce the very piesoelectric discharges in the bones that are the signalling mechanism for the growth of their density and simultaneously the electrochemical conductor of minerals that will accomplish same if you combine the routines with an adequate diet. Which brings me back to taijiquan's "soft on the outside, hard on the inside" mantra. It means soft, flexible, pliable muslces -- and hard, tough, dense bones. (These are the effects opposite of what you get with all sports/athletic/bodybuilding routines, incidentally.) Chen style I'm partial to has jumps, feet stomps, and explosive punches which feel -- FEEL -- like electrical discharges through the bones... and probably are.

Fair enough. Would you mind giving your friend MY personal email then? I will PM you?.. So it's not "people" anymore anyway, it's one person. And I have your word for it and no other info. Really not enough to go on, truly, verily. I also have a personal friend, in another country where the power layout was such that herbs were not exterminated from what MDs learn in school. My friend has MS. An MD prescribed ginkgo biloba and it helped her get out of a very nasty flare-up which landed her in the hospital for months, and get into a remission with no symptoms. Of course you only have my word for it. Sucks, right?.. Oh, and I wasn't saying the complexities of TCM herbal formulas aren't understood by anyone. They aren't understood in the framework of a paradigm that studies them without having any understanding, regard or respect for the paradigm that created them, a different one. You can't understand "kakim tebya bezdarnym banal'nostiam nauchili v shkole" without knowing the paradigm it is part of, and if you apply the one you know you will come to the conclusion that it's unintelligeble gibberish and publish this result in a peer-reviewed journal. But anyone here who knows the paradigm the above comes from will just laugh. As TCM pros who are trained in the true tradition and not in McDonalds-TCM blend will laugh at "pharmacology of Chinese herbs." It wasn't pharmacists who discovered and learned to use these herbs, you know. And it wasn't an inferior kind of medicine that created a civilization that failed to disappear off the face of the earth unlike all of its contemporaries, and generated the largest population on Earth. Tells you something about what it can do for human health long term. Our pharmaceuticals are taken off the market in an average of 15 years -- just enough time for lawsuits to accumulate to a point where they start making little but annoying dents in profits. That's when a new drug is introduced. Study the history of medicine. 3/4 of all drugs approved by FDA in the past 40 years have already been taken off the market...

Could you please provide their names? Would I be able to contact them and find out exactly what happened and what else they were taking besides ginkgo biloba? Chinese herbs, with very few exceptions, are not used as single-herb "supplements" in TCM, and haven't been used like that for thousands of years. In a multiherbal formula used traditionally and prescribed individually, possible negative effects of any single herb are counteracted, neutralized, enhanced or balanced depending on the effect and the needs of the patient. To take them a la patented pharmaceuticals -- one at a time for a particular symptom, illness, or desired effect (while ignoring all other effects or knowing nothing about them) is a new, and vastly inferior, way to use them. The TCM way does not allow for "side effects." All effects are effects. If some effects of an herb are different from the ones aimed at, other herbs are added to block the unwanted effect. The Western way is to prescribe the next medication for the symptom caused by a medication, but the new medication has its own damaging effects, so a new one is added, ad nauseam. They never synergize, never balance each other, never harmonize in the formula, let alone in the body. But a TCM herbal formula is put together exactly for the purpose of balancing out all effects of all ingredients. And as soon as effects show up that were not intended, something can always be added, subtracted or changed on an individual basis. You can't benefit from any one single herb "supplement" through "pharmacology of Chinese herbs" and you can't really get any real information about its action when it is lab-dissected into "active ingredients" the Western way instead of being synergistically combined with dozens of other ingredients that will change its "pharmacology" in such complex ways as to be inaccessible to double-blind placebo-controlled pharma-financed studies. To summarize, "pharmacology of Chinese herbs" is yet another "advanced science of slicing soup."

Guys, some of you may be missing the point. If you don't know who paid for the study, you can't really take it seriously no matter what it "proves." If it is a pharmaceutical company or its agents, the very purpose of the study is to disprove a natural thing under investigation, and only "scientists" who will oblige will be getting the job. Only herbs that might successfully compete with pharmaceutical drugs due to publicity they got, and therefore pose a threat to pharmaceutical profits, are subjected to such "investigations." It's always this simple.

An interesting picture gleaned genealogically... My father's last name means "warrior," his first name means "lion." His brother's, my only uncle's, last name is predictably the same; his first name means "cat." My mother's maiden name means "bear," her first name means "muse." My paternal grandmother's maiden name is derived from "Hagar" the biblical personage; her first name means "wisdom." My maternal grandmother's maiden name means "oak tree," her first name means "God's promise." My husband's last name means "birch tree," his first name means "bear." Thus within the names of the closest family I have 4 animal entries -- lion, cat, two bears; 2 tree entries -- oak, birch 2 religious entries -- Hagar, God's promise 2 entries for art and philosophy -- muse, wisdom 1 martial entry -- warrior I would say this layout accurately describes the peculiarities of my personality, the drives within my soul, and probably my DNA. What about you?

I desperately need a safe and efficient flea remedy for kittens under 8 weeks of age and under 2 pounds of weight. Would you please look it up for me in the Akashic records? -- or maybe you just know off the top of your head? Would be greatly appreciated.

Yes, it can get complicated. If a poisoned water/food/air supply plus electromagnetic pollution plus brainwashing plus medical dumbing down etc. etc. cumulatively result in a kind of behaviors that effectively eliminate every trace of free will just as they are designed to, then you can't blame anyone for anything, looks like. I used to struggle with this paradox myself, for years. Don't blame the perpetrator, she victimizes someone else only because she was victimized herself, and if she wasn't... Here's the crux of the matter I think. If she wasn't, would she be evil free? Would she be normal, kind, caring if she wasn't so damaged? Well, we don't know. We can choose to believe it, we can choose to believe that wrongs people commit that are not their fault because they never had a real choice as to who to evolve into should be forgiven. But I've come to think that this forgiving stance increases suffering by not giving anyone any pointers as to the true nature of their actions. So I decided at one point that I will not "believe" anything, that I will just react to "what is, as is." So when I see cruelty, I don't dilute it with intellectualizing, rationalizing, justifying it as the outcome of a particular chain of events beyond an individual's control. I choose to just react as a normal human being. I think someone, somewhere must take responsibility for acting normal, for allowing normal human feelings to exist in the world -- otherwise the very pattern, the very template for "normal" will be eliminated from our collective consciousness. I think this is why I'm here. I don't mean TTB, I mean this life. Some people are here to accomplish something grandiose. Me, I'm here to try to uphold the pattern of "normal human feelings" and "normal human reactions." Who knows -- maybe it's critical that yet another human being chooses to just react as a normal human being -- maybe without this, extermination of basic human normalcy, which used to be our genetic birthright, will be accomplished sooner and with more hopeless finality. I stand against this plight of humanity... whether alone or with seven billion others, I don't care. I stand against dehumanization of humans, and this means, in particular, that "someone" who threw the cat in the garbage bin is not interchangeable for me with seven billion others who could have, would have, might have done the same thing. They are not interchangeable parts of some dead machine yet, are they? Not yet. I wouldn't do it. You wouldn't do it. Someone else "might have, could have, would have..." but she "did." For me it's enough information -- I hold HER responsible for the deed she did, and not you and not myself and not even the shadow government. If no spark of free human choice is left, then whoever does whatever doesn't matter anymore because it is not human anymore, and I can't really be the judge of a species I don't belong to. If everything someone does is exempt from personal responsibility by 100%, this someone is not human anymore. If it's the plight of "everybody," ditto. But I stand against this plight... so it's not 100% yet even if no one else does.

Because the casual realm of private action is the field of application of free will. Whereas and institutional realm, such as that of state-enforced laws, is where one's free will may or may not have a field of application. For purposes of private decisions, we are empowered, and therefore responsible. Ergo, casual cruelty can't be justified by the widespread existence of institutionalized cruelty. Does it make sense?

Um... no, what I said was neither casual nor threatening. If you need an elucidation of what I meant, here it is: master Wang Liping is a "dragon" -- the 19th Transmitter of the Dragon Gate school, to be precise; you wrote that he orders his students to teach against their will, and that they teach because they are afraid to disobey; since you made it up, I tried to guess at your motives and the best I could do was this -- you were "playing chicken with a dragon"; since Master Wang Liping is powerful and wise (not threatening or vengeful as you may have imagined), a far better course of action for someone who intends to learn from his tradition would be to try to get included in the sharing of his power and wisdom instead of antagonizing all things and people Longmen with this kind of behavior; which is why I offered you my opinion strongly advising against this kind of behavior. OK?.. Oh, and don't play chicken with me either. This is not a threat. This is a humble request. I get horribly bored when engaged in this kind of games, is all. So if you can find it in your heart to spare me... I would greatly appreciate it.

Yes, it is common and a good sign. The taoist way to handle extra saliva produced during meditation is to swallow it in three slow gulps, directing it along the back of the throat (some people may need to lift their heads up for this). This replenishes jing (surprise surprise )

I never buy factory farmed meat. (I hope this is not an offshot of the vegetarian discussion or I'm going to finally lose it and roll out the big guns and unleash the real information about factory farming on the guilty and innocent alike, proving without a shadow of a doubt that wheat, corn and soy are the real murder. Everybody run for cover. If I get serious about it... I don't think even one vegetarian will ever touch his plate of misrepresented carbs without feeling like a serial killer/genocide perpetrator ever again. I'm not kidding.) OK... where was I. Oh, battles against evil I do or don't engage in, what went first, the chicken or the cat. Alright. I seldom pick up battles that will accomplish nothing aside from getting me killed. Being a realist and a pragmatist, not a despair-over-everything-24/7 type, I fight against evil on my own scale. I have saved lives, but I can't save every life and I don't think this disqualifies me, or anybody for that matter, from having a right to feel compassion, indignation, or any other human feelings on a case by case basis. Far more serious work is done by many here I'm sure -- and most definitely by me -- that what might show up in the posts. In any event, casual cruelty is not made OK by the existence of institutionalized cruelty.

Yes, absolutely... and cultivation is about knowing thyself-- and once you know, you don't turn the other cheek -- you just don't slap the cheek of the innocent party. If you know thyself, you know who really did you wrong, and never harm anyone or anything else. Not a single cat, dog, man, woman or child. That's cultivation, as opposed to decisions "in the head" to be good when what is good and what is not so good within your own heart is a big unknown.

___Moderator's note:___ Personal attacks and insults are against our policy and in violation of our guidelines. Please cease and desist. -- The Sword of Tao sheathed Longmen practitioner/Master Wang Liping's student's note: This is SLANDER. One hundred percent false, made up, not real, nil and void. I would strongly advise you avoid playing chicken with a dragon.

She did to the cat what she never dared do to mom and dad, teacher and preacher, doctor and boss, prime minister and tax collector, girls prettier than her and boys who wouldn't take her out on a date, friends who didn't care and foes whom she didn't have the courage to confront. This is a very typical scenario. Evil is taking one's frustrations out on someone who is not their source. Evil is the victim identifying with the perpetrator. Evil is doing unto others something other than what they do unto you. (Mal, this includes your example -- by not putting out the eye of each of the perpetrators and becoming good friends with them instead, the protagonist of your story sent them and everybody a clear message: "extreme cruelty is OK." I would put his other eye out for this. ) The dynamics of a torture victim being successfully taught to sincerely love the torturer are very accurately depicted in Orwell's 1984. All you have to do is break the body, the mind, and the spirit... what's left is pure obedience. Some ideal.

The new age perspective has its markers, and these are 1) live in the Now and 2) there's no evil. The taoist perspective has its markers too, and these are 1) in the human world, tao has been destroyed, and 2) everything that's done now should be done with (1) in mind, and aimed at remedying this. To those who like me prefer to go to the original taoist sources rather than new age novelties to glean what taoists really thought, I suggest reading up beyond poor TTC translations. The Yuandao, as well as Laozi's own extended version of his views as presented in the oral transmission recorded by a student, The Wen-tzu, would be a helpful start. Oh, and "enlightened" is a hypothetical state of being postulated by buddhism. Taoists talk about "real humans" instead when describing the highest form of human development, and being "real" includes being able to tell shit from candy.

Good and evil are not things, they are processes. No "thing" or "person" is good or evil, but there's lots of things that create good processes, lots of things that create evil processes, and lots of people who preferentially or habitually create good processes or evil processes respectively.

Positive and negative didn't mean "good and evil" to the original discoverers of the polarity. They meant concave and convex, the outer and the inner, the dark and the light, the heavy and the light, creative and receptive, masculine and feminine, and so on. To equate negative with "bad" was an evil move on the part of the usurpers of our consciousness and all current power structures they control. Linguistically defeating the feminine, negative, by equating it with "bad" was aimed at defeating its power everywhere it manifests. Positive acted as evil when grabbing more than its fair share of power and upsetting the balance. What the woman in the video did was positive -- yang, action -- and evil. Evil arises when either the positive or the negative act when they shouldn't or fail to act when they should. E.g., war, active use of power in a manner in which it should not be used = positive evil action. Failure to help when having the power to = negative evil action. The father who smacks the child = postitive evil action. The mother who doesn't nourish the child = negative evil action.

Yes, his experience does appear bland compared to what She put me through... but I posted it here because I thought the resident entheogenic virgins might enjoy his perspective. I think he's a really cool artist, some say "great visionary," and he attributes his artistic visions to entheogenic opening of his consciousness. He can show the money too. Not just "enlightenment of the mouth." I never told my story except for bits and pieces here and there. SHE suggested to me that I should write "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Ayahuasca." But I'm sure She was kidding. That mocking tone Alex Grey heard making fun of his buddha self-perceptions -- well, there was an episode where She used that tone of voice with me too, and that's when she mentioned writing the book. Doesn't mean I shouldn't write it, but definitely means I have to be very humble if I ever approach the task.

There's so many of them launched from Mars... cloned in secret labs, minus the soul... or wherever the zombies come from... A couple of days ago I was taking a walk along the beach, and chanced upon two fishermen who just then caught something they thought they didn't want, so they threw the fish to a seagull who was hanging out nearby monitoring their activities. I stopped to watch. It was a very large seagull, but the fish was alive and big too and putting up a fight, giving the bird a hard time. For a full five minutes I watched the struggle for daily bread... um, fish... the seagull was obviously trying to align the fish against his beak lengthwise but the fish managed to turn sideways every time... Then -- success! Head first, tail sticking out, the fish is in the beak the right way! One more effort and... and at this very moment along comes a jogger, sees the scene, and runs at the seagull mightily, flapping his idiot arms! The seagull dropped the fish, which was already dead or dying, the ocean lapped it up... the next wave came empty. The jogger, with a satisfied grin, stopped to watch the seagull circle the site in hungry despair. "Why did you do that?" I asked him. "Oh... the fish was too big, he couldn't swallow it anyway." Great. At least spontaneously evil often goes hand in hand with spontaneously stupid. This gives us a chance...

In ancient Egypt, cats were worshipped as gods for at least two thousand years, the years that coincided with the unprecedented flourishing of Egyptian civilization, the height of its prosperity, power and wisdom. Bast the cat-headed goddess was the protectress of the family, of the crops, of human health and fertility of the earth. She was more sacred but less mystical than Egypt's other gods, she was the bringer of good fortune to farmers and pharaohs alike, and ordinary cats, who were thought of as her servants, helpers and occasionally incarnations, were loved and revered. This was backed by the state law that guaranteed death penalty to anyone killing a cat. If a family cat died of natural causes, the head of the family shaved off his eyebrows as a sign of mourning -- for one year. In Europe, the Dark Ages started out with cat hunts which rapidly evolved into witch hunts. In the heyday of inquisition which lasted without relenting for 400 years, nearly all Europe's cats got exterminated. This resulted in an exponential growth of the rodent population, perilous to an agrarian society, bringing about many deadly famines and culminating in the Black Plague epidemic, with infected fleas brought on the backs of the exponentially growing ranks of rats. The epidemic killed 3/4 of the human population of Europe. Cats went back into favor when it was over, and had to be imported. In the late 19th century, the British government in charge of "protecting" Egypt's sacred sites hired a large work force to excavate millions of cat mummies (Egyptians embalmed their cats and buried them in sacred cemeteries for thousands of years). The mummified cats, about 100,000 tons of them, were sold at an agricultural auction. Most were bought by American companies, ground up and sold to farmers for fertilizer. Which in my opinion accounts for the nutritional disaster zone the country had turned into -- Bast is mightily offended... Now the woman in the video -- she has a lineage. She's not alone. Should HER lineage prevail NOW, it's all over for OUR species.

Heartbroken Because I'm not the one who was shooting this -- I wouldn't use a camera, I'd use a semiautomatic.

No, you missed my point... my mistake, I thought it was obvious what I meant. Ever heard of BP?

Yesterday my daughter was attacked by a stingray while riding the waves. Even though the encyclopedia asserts stingrays attack humans only in self-defense, only when stepped on, this is not what happened -- the creature just lashed out with its barbed tail while my daughter was afloat. She was attended to by the lifeguards who soaked her injured leg in hot water for an hour to get the poison out and then bandaged it. There were two more people getting the same treatment for the same injury at the lifeguards' booth -- the ocean is angry... Those two other people were crying the whole time, while my daughter was flirting with the lifeguards and generally enjoying the adventure despite the pain. FWIW, she was the only one there who wasn't born in the USA. Oh, and I did the cupping treatment on her when she had bronchitis at 3. It doesn't hurt.