Taomeow

Yes, I've read Sarno's book, but it's "superficial" rather than "profound" where I come from. A diluted offshot of Art Janov's ideas and a poor relative of his practices. Better check out the source book -- "The Primal Scream." Of course "fibromyalgia" is even more superficial, but Magda seems to be unwilling to consider any deeper possibilities, and no one could or should force her to. So I was thinking, if pain is inexplicably triggered by certain types of motion it might be superficial enough of an explanation. Trigger points -- these are pretty specific to fibromyalgia, no? -- I'd check for those.

I hate to think that's what it is, but then, I'm seeing ten times the chemtrails too... and people who've been watching them for decades say so as well: a dramatic increase.

I read it in Li Hongzhi's book. He asserts his school is a buddhist-taoist one. I read it very long ago though, so I don't remember which sources he cited, but his whole rationale for reforming buddhist ideas and practices with a generous dose of taoist ones was based on this premise.

I'm trying to convince you to lose suspicions about something fishy... um, snakey... specific to kunlun based on its purported "bad neighborhoods." I'm trying to convince you that "bad neighborhoods" are where some people permanently reside, kunlun merely makes it visible to them, by removing the superimposed make-believe hologram of a "good neighborhood" and a layer or two of paint. Good luck to me!

Gautama Buddha explicitly stated that his dharma would be saving sentient beings for 500 years. It's well past expiration date by now.

Yeah but I know better than that about you -- do you happen to think "fibromyalgia?"

Really? Well I've never heard this PR line from the KL crew, ever. I was pretty damn sure I'm sharing an independent discovery. You just made my day! And I'm not talking the triune brain, I'm talking DNA. I'm not talking the R-complex, I'm talking DNA. I'm not talking nagas, I'm talking serpents in ALL traditions. Not SOME but ALL. Do you have a bit of time for a book, it's not a large tome, it's pretty concise, to include in your schedule? You of all people I would like to convince. (There's people I don't want to nor expect to be able to convince because they're better off believing what they believe, safer this way... and then of course there's zombies, and I don't talk to zombies.) "The Cosmic Serpent: DNA and the Origins of Knowledge," by Jeremy Narby, Ph.D.. I recommend this one because it matches many aspects of my own experience but then the author (an anthropologist) spent 15 years contemplating and researching everything pertaining to them before writing the book, so he's got an advantage. Please read it if you have a chance.

Pacific, San Diego area. Where I live is very close to the ocean and the ocean is all there is in the west, so the sun always sinks into the water. (That's another, ongoing, mystery for me -- why the sun can linger on the horizon as long as it likes, getting lower and lower very gradually... but once its edge touches the water -- puff! -- it sinks almost right away, within less than a minute it's gone. Does it become soaking wet, soggy and heavy when it touches the water? I once wrote a poem that began, "when the day is thrown into the ocean like a stone," but then started wondering, will anyone who doesn't watch the sun sink abruptly like that know what I mean?..) I've never seen a "peyote sunset" though -- got any pics?

Trunk, ever heard of The Cosmic Serpent? The "reptiles" (not to be confused with "reptilians") are part and parcel of pretty much every single tradition, the reason being that our DNA is modeled on that pattern. Kunlun puts one in touch with one's own DNA, for starters. What one will find there depends on who he or she is. Most of it is uncharted territory for science (they call what they don't understand about it "junk DNA," which makes for an interesting "scientific" picture of the bulk of who we are being comprised of "junk" -- their name for "incomprehensible!"), but the same territory is well charted in many symbolic ways by many traditions, and the "reptile," the Cosmic Serpent therein, is a great divine mystery, not the biblical pest we all know and fear. It's only in Christianity that the snake becomes the symbol of evil. Everywhere else it's the symbol of wisdom, eternity, life itself. (A few species gone bad, the reptilians, do not own the Cosmic Snake pattern... the Twin Snakes are the double helix and that's owned by the mother of the universe, who does have some wayward children... but "snake" as such isn't one of them.) 5ET is right -- they (the beings) freak out even more when they see WHO is practicing than we freak out when we see who's watching. Ignorance ain't bliss. Must be hard to watch...

I haven't seen Avatar yet, is there a connection?.. am I channeling it or something?..

Of course. I think the mechanism inside us that discerns whether to be offended or compliant (equanimity is the ability to treat a power greater than yours without resentment) is innate knowledge of the intent of the party dispensing power. This knowledge, this discerning mechanism, is however present only in mature people regardless of age -- "mature" in the sense that their understanding of the nature of power is commensurate with their actual emotional, intellectual and spiritual age, not lagging behind and not getting ahead of itself. A two-year-old will be offended if mom makes him eat what he doesn't like just because she's on a power trip that doesn't take his feelings into consideration and treats them as irrelevant because she "knows better." It's mature and sensible to be offended in this situation! The same two-year-old will swallow bitter medicine without being offended (upset, maybe, but not offended) if mom has proved to him by now that she never goes on power trips like the one described above, and that if she does use power, she has a valid reason for that. It's a matter of trust. Trust must be earned. Equanimity is possible if the (mature) stronger party has earned the (mature) weaker party's trust by never having abused power. When a teacher refuses to teach a secret practice because of a sense of responsibility (e.g. knowing that the practice is not safe to undertake at the student's current level), a student who has to submit to this power-decision of the teacher will not be offended if the teacher's intent is clear to her -- if the teacher has earned her trust by being scrupulously honest and never going on power trips. However, when a teacher refuses to teach a secret practice because he doesn't want to be surpassed down the road by a talented student, which is what he fears might happen, it's abuse of power (the teacher blocks the student's progress out of self-serving considerations) and the student who might sense this motivation will be rightfully offended.

Yup, he's a classic tulpa. By the way, he requested full human rights in one of the last episodes, the case went to the Federation court and he won! Tulpas are capable of cultivation too... or of degradation. Just like us.

People know little about spirits, spirits know much about people... this seems to be the general rule in a spirits-unfriendly society. In a spirits-friendly one, people know about spirits, and discriminate. In Kongo, they will be surprised that Westerners are so disrespectful of their mboga, spirits of their deceased ancestors. Many practices are specifically designed to communicate with them, they are contacted for family-related advice and obeyed with no qualms. In Tibet, they educated the first and for a long time the only Westerner, a woman named Alexandra David-Neel, in the ancient Shortcut (a la Max's quick-quick ) practices of both the Red Hat (traditional) and Yellow Hat (reformed) buddhism (sic) and allowed her to study with the Gomchen, the Great Hermit, who taught her the tibetan buddhist methods not open to the public, those of not just calling or expelling but actually creating entities, known as tulpas. She created one when she returned to Paris after many years in Tibet. Many people saw him. The tulpa was created by her as a fat and cheerful tibetan lama to be her companion, but life in Paris soon corrupted him and he started growing lean and malicious and began sexually harassing his creatress. She had much trouble dismantling the tulpa -- it took her some six months. In voodoo (the real thing, not the movie version with obligatory evil sorcerers and zombies) possession by the loa is THE method used by both priests and lay practitioners, and elaborate knowledge about each loa and what and how will attract them constitutes the bulk of voodoo expertise. Talismanic writings are used, among other things, much like in magical maoshan. Now we're getting closer to deciding whether Kunlun is a specific entity-friendly practice... There's many, many levels and origins to entities, spirits, and thought-forms (a tulpa, e.g., is a conscious thought-form, but most thought-forms people create are unconscious). Someone familiar with one or two varieties only might believe these are all there is. It's like an urban child who knows cats, dogs and mosquitoes and believes that she knows "animals." That there's millions of species out there that are living today and billions that used to live before is not taken into consideration. There's millions of species of spirits, deities, demons, "elementals," all sorts. Some are domestic and some are wild. Some have a permanent residence, like the god of the Yellow River or the Jade Emperor or a ghost of a haunted house who's stuck there against its own best interest due to some unfinished business. Others are with no home and can show up anywhere. Still others had a home once and were made homeless by modern developments; some of these are pissed off. Some are inside and some outside. Many reside on other planes but some, on this-here one, or can easily travel between planes. An epidemic of a contagious disease is an example of an entity that moves between planes. Weaponized viruses are thought-forms, the product of modern-day evil sorcery. It's not an individual virus that is a thought-form though, it's the spirit of the disease, the virus is the conduit for its spirit to manifest in the material world. Kunlun is not an intentional spirit-communication practice, but its proximity to the world of spirits makes it possible for such conduits to appear. Spirits residing in close proximity (inside you, first and foremost) will use these conduits. If you've dealt with these before and the conduits aren't clogged by them, then higher plane spirits might see you practice. They may or may not get interested. They may or may not have reasons to get in touch with you. They know you, is all; whether they will want to invite you to know them is decided on a case by case basis. This is what happened to me, the spirits commanded by ayahuasca saw me, I didn't invoke them, I didn't have any intent of invoking anything, I didn't know anything about them at all -- but they spotted me practice and communicated with me, and I took what they told me seriously and went to Peru as they wanted me to, for reasons that transpired only then and there. If instead I freaked out and dropped the practice... well, I would freak out and drop the practice, why not?.. Nothing wrong with that. But I would be doing other practitioners, the practice, and the teacher a great injustice if I pointed a blaming finger at them. You walk in the rain, expect to get wet... don't blame the sky for containing water. Don't blame water for flowing downward. Don't blame a downward-flow practice for things that might rain on your head. It's not the goal of heaven to produce rain, it's just that rain is part of heaven. It's not the goal of kunlun to attract entities, it's just that entities are part of reality. Kunlun is a reality practice, not an entity practice...

Clearly.

Here's a few observations I've made of taoist and buddhist drivers: Taoists don't honk in traffic. Buddhists honk, point a finger, shout that you must not look at the finger, that the traffic is your karmic fault, that the traffic doesn't exist and is just an illusion, which is also your fault, and that the middle finger they're sticking out is YOUR finger. And keep honking. Taoists give it gas when they want to get somewhere. Buddhists apply the brakes. Taoists get speeding tickets, buddhists get parking tickets. Taoists have invented air bags to soften the impact of head-on collisions. Buddhists have put "death or serious injury may result" labels on them. Taoists check the mirrors often when they drive. Buddhists never do, because they expect to see themselves in the mirror.

Not for me. Animals encounter bigger things as much as humans do. A military sonar owned by the US Navy is bigger than any whale. (I was talking the size of authority and/or the size of impact, the physical size ratio between an adult and a child being the model for all other power transactions, which are far from limited to physical size, in reality and in my post alike.) Um... one would just have to stop looking for peers in all the wrong places. You are never so strong as to stick out of ANY peer group like a sore... I mean, healthy... thumb. If you excel in something to the point that you find yourself alone on top of Mount Olympus and it starts bothering you, drop it and do something else. Something any Joe Schmo is currently better at than you. Above all, do not abuse power. Historically and archeologically incorrect. Humans, unlike tigers and moles and like lions and apes, have always lived in communes. The loss of inner strength was to a bigger (power-wise, not in terms of the number of members) commune that took it away. I am yet to meet a strong individual who can single-handedly reforest the Sahara desert, but if someone is strong enough for that, 'tis a noble task to undertake. Being strong for purposes of pushing others around and being alone if this option is not chosen, for lack of ideas of other things one might do with one's strength, is Ayn Rand-ish and rather pointless, don't you think?..

He doesn't, but I do. There's no such thing as equality. The inequality can be dynamic, situational, the same two people can exchange places many times, now you're higher, now you're lower -- but in every transaction one is the parent and the other one the child, and every time it is the parent who offends, the child who is offended. (If a dad gets offended by what his son does or says, it means the roles have been reversed for purposes of this particular situation and dad is being the child.) Ta Chuan explains it in the opening line: "Heaven is high, the Earth is low; in accordance with this, higher and lower places in the human world are established." In the human world -- and in every single transaction taking place in it. This spacial relationship (high/low) is reflected in the size of the actual being (parent tall/child short) and in the size of one's authority (high -- parent, low -- child.) One who doesn't want to get offended must grow up... if he or she "chooses" to not get offended without having grown up big enough to naturally be bigger than the "parent" and reverse the roles, it's dissumulation, repression, pose, whatever... it's not real. One is still offended when someone bigger flexes his or her "I can do whatever I want with you because I'm bigger" muscles, whether physical, emotional or intellectual, but pretends (to self and others) he or she isn't offended. Quite unhealthy, IMO. If being or not being offended is an issue, grow big enough to minimize your chances of someone or something being even bigger... but try to remember there's still someone or something still bigger out there, always.

Oh, please don't, just sprinkle some sake on the stove fire and you'll be redeemed! I don't know any Cantonese anyway. The only way I can tell it's Cantonese is, if people speak Chinese with some extra word tones and zero comprehension on my part, this must be it.

Well, you reminded me of the days long gone when my very young, very talented husband, reportedly almost as talented as me, was busy working on his Ph.D. dissertation and I was busy getting the kids out of his way. When the kids got sick -- and twins have this interesting way of one getting the very cold the other one has just recovered from -- I spent much time on sick leaves with them, my husband didn't do it once. His co-workers and bosses loved him because he was always reliable and available. Mine hated me because I was the goddamn no-show whenever the kids got sick. Guess whose career went ahead and whose went down the drain. Guess who kept getting pay raises and who was getting promoted. You think society punishes men by taking their money and giving it to wives and kids? I think it punishes wives and kids first, by making sure they will either depend on a man to get the crumbs of society's pie or else live in poverty. In fact, that's what happens to women and children where divorce laws are more to your liking. The overwhelming majority of the world's poor are women and children. Now the big surprise... ditto in the US of A! There's a few other interesting subjects embedded in your message, but I won't go there right now, except to quickly point out that I'm the last person who needs to be informed that the guy in the White House is about as relevant as the words "natural flavor" you read on a label, which actually stand for "MSG." Family is dead?.. Perhaps. WHAT is alive? Which lifestyle has successfully replaced it? Hermit cultivators existed at all times, but they can't be considered a "lifestyle" -- there's too few and has always been and will always be -- so who is the modern viable alternative to a family man, family woman, child?.. grandma, grandpa?.. brother, sister?.. Who is living a new and improved paradigm? I'm really asking, I'm not being sarcastic. I don't see many happy families, it's true. But I don't know even one happy healthy together loner past the age, say, twenty-something. Where are they? What are they doing? Why are they hiding from me, what are they afraid of? -- I don't bite.

Schopenhauer asserted that offense can only come from someone you think of as higher than you -- he gave an example of a donkey kicking you which you might find unpleasant but not offensive, and suggested that you don't find it offensive because you don't think of the donkey as a creature higher than you. If we follow his logic, people who don't ever get offended believe they are higher than everybody else. If you never take offense, according to Schopenhauer it makes you a grandeur maniac.

If you try it with your eyes closed and tell me which way the pain is worse, with the eyes open or closed, I might think of something.

It's true and more is true and more horrible things are true. It has nothing to do with family courts though which do what they are instructed to do by parties whose least concern it is to protect anyone's rights, children's, mother's, or father's. It's happening exponentially now -- they (THEY) are taking children away and breaking families more vigorously every month. It's part of a bigger thing that is happening, but breaking the families is what they (THEY) have been after for quite a while now, as well as communities, any form of human togetherness and mutual support. You are expected to be alone and lost in order to fit in the agenda. Which is why I ask you (you personally, Smile) to take another look at your beliefs in this regard... You know which species don't care for their young? and why? 'cause they lay eggs, that's how they go about it... which is why the idea of non-parenting comes naturally to them... But we don't want to be THEM now, do we?..

I've seen the altars you describe in places of business in Chinatown. They are inconspicuously tucked under some counter or table or chair usually, indeed sit on the floor, face inward I think (but I'm not sure), and have a red lamp or a red candle burning. My method, however, goes back to an earlier time, when a hearth was simultaneously the altar to the god of fire. My stove is a gas stove with pilot lights that are always burning, so it's attractive to Dei Chu Koong... A feng shui master taught me about the alcohol offering. Another thing you do is avoid offending this god -- e.g., you don't blow on a candle to put it out, he finds it insulting! I must take special care not to offend this particular deity due to my personal wuxing peculiarities. I had the Sevenfold Buddha's pic somewhere, if I can find it I'll post it. Yeah, and the opening line of the definitive text, Tao Te Meow, goes something like, The tao that can't be spoken can be meowed. The tao that can't be meowed is not the eternal tao. Meow. And so on...

Oh, oops, my fault. I was in a hurry and my reading comprehension misfired. Sorry. No, I didn't know that! I never saw the movie, and only read the Russian knock-off version of the book as a kid. Gold standard, huh? Interesting... now I recall I've heard something peculiar about the Oz movie lining up with a Pink Floyd song to produce some uncanny synchronicity... but I don't remember what that was about... gotta investigate. Thank you for being so generous -- and perceptive.

5ET, I've no time to argue, sorry, but you ascribe an "agenda" to me quite with no merit. I am a traditionalist. I only practice what my teachers taught me to practice. The thing is, all of my practices always interconnect and none of them are randomly picked up -- e.g., maoshan sorcery (not 'folk shamanism') led me to kunlun, kunlun to vegetalista shamans, shamans to longmen pai. I just follow the yellow brick road.