Taomeow

Oh, that's buddhist territory, I'm no expert on that. In taoism, you accept energy from anything you like, the whole cultivation is about learning how to transform it for your purposes, that's what alchemy is. There's nothing wrong with getting energy from animals, and in fact some prominent founders of taoism were animal transformers -- notably Laozi, emperor Yu, Fu Xi, and scores of others. There's nothing wrong with getting it from plants and minerals either, all of TCM is about that. What do you think "real tao" is, a humans-only club? "Study the cat, Saihung. Everything you need to learn, she knows already." -- Deng Ming-dao "Energy" and a "transmission" are not the same. You can get energy from anything you like, and it doesn't turn you into what you're getting it from. With a transmission, it might... but it's still up to you. A transmission opens a door into a different you; whether you walk in or not, and how far you will go, is your call.

Oh no, this is not how one would arrive at a conclusion that someone isn't practicing a genuine tradition at all, and of course I didn't and wouldn't in your case, because I have no information to go on at all in the case of your practice. See, a transmission is something that can take place years after one starts a genuine practice, and there's no telling how genuine it is from the timing of the transmission. It can be the first, the middle, or the last event of a practice, and the fact that it didn't happen YET doesn't by any means indicate that the practice is not genuine. In fact, in a traditional taoist learning process, you would spend some eight years on physical and general-education tasks before you would be deemed ready to sit in your first meditation, let alone be initiated by transmission. And then, when your body, mind and spirit are prepared accordingly, you might get it from a different entity than your teacher -- a taoist (or any other) school or sect usually has scores of patron deities and spirits looking in on its practitioners, and even demons, who might compete for a chance to transmit to you with the benevolent entities -- hence the importance of proper prior preparation so that by the time you're open enough to get noticed by an immortal entity, you will be prepared to accept or decline a transmission with adequate understanding of what is happening and what it is you're accepting or declining. Free will! A transmission incorporates free will, unlike a possession.

Perhaps I wasn't clear in my words, so let me try again. A Transmission is different from a Lesson. It is also different from a series of lessons of any length and depth, and from any and all systems of learning that aren't communicated via a transmission, such as informing, showing, telling, teaching by example, training, coaching, stimulating the student's own creativity with assorted methods and props, assigning tasks and goals, monitoring the student's performance, correcting mistakes, and so on. None of these are transmissions nor parts of a transmission in the sense the word is used in our context. A Transmission in our context is an alternate-reality, nonordinary-consciusness event. I assert this is what takes place in all ancient genuine traditions, including taoism. This event, I further assert, can take a number of shapes and forms and be accomplished via a number of different methods. I mentioned a few of the most common traditional ones, but I don't profess the knowledge of "all" of them, although I do know of quite a few more than the ones I mentioned. Qi is not the same nor even close to something that some folks understand as certain "special energy of the transmission," even though qi, being indeed quite ubiquitous, is usually present -- before, during, and after the transmission. If transmission in the sense of a non-ordinary mode of learning is discussed in the sense "whether qi is or isn't being transmitted," it is simply being discussed in a wrong context. Whether other-dimensional reality is involved in a transmission is a much more relevant question. I assert it always is in a transmission. Did I do better this time?

The teacher consciously and energetically opening the student up, but not with what Westerners (as well as Western-minded Asians) understand as "qi" (I think I will act on everyone's nerves if I reiterate once again that "qi" of my understanding is not "energy" but I have to, lest we use the same word but mean totally different phenomena) -- not with a "bolt of energy" but with a "bolt of meaning," "bolt of transformation," "bolt of truth," "bolt of new vision," "onslaught of different-level information" and so on -- yes, THAT is also qi, but it is not the "energy qi" of Western theories, it is the "medium and message of meaningful change" of traditional taoist understanding. Different traditions do it differently. Some will transmit with things like ayahuaska (in taoism, the true purpose of the ingestion of the immortality pill is exactly the same), others will send you on a vision quest to a sacred "transmitting" spot, some will give you an object of power (a talisman) that will act as a "transmitter." Many will transmit in dreams (taoism is prominently prone to this mode of transmission though it is not the only one it uses -- but there's hundreds of classical stories where the teacher-student transmission takes place via the teacher showing up in the student's dream, or else the teacher taking a student because the student happened to show up in the teacher's dream). Some will use the method that is probably the one most often thought of as "the" transmission -- a kind of "charged" touch from the teacher, either physical or "energetic." This is legit, but it's only one way, out of many, and the same student might get a "portion" of the transmission this way and then other portions via other methods. Whole transmissions -- of the teacher's entire spirit, entire being -- are also part of many traditions, these typically only happen when the teacher dies and has selected his or her direct successor. This is a classic shamanic tramsmission, where the shaman is not thought of as an individual at all but rather as a force that comes to manifest via a succession of bodies, all of these bodies are different people living in different times but they are all essentially one and the same shaman, because what's transmitted is not the personality an individual had but the force, power, art, craft, connection, conduit it was quite aside from the individual personality and physical being. That's what I meant. Taoism is transmitted via pretty much "any and all" of these methods and more, but whatever uses none of them isn't taoism, is just a scholarly hobby... Oh, I didn't really study it in any depth, just read a few books. But if you want to study it seriously, seek out a kabbalistically trained rabbi, a few of them might have weekend or evening schools for beginners or can point you in the direction of one.

Intermittent fasting is a good idea for many, per my research, but not for all. People who are prone to blood sugar fluctuations are better off eating frequently, in small portions, and without lengthy intervals between meals. (If you are one of those people, you will have noticed mood fluctuations around your food intake.) Increased carbs on workout days and protein on off days is a recipe for building muscle mass. It that's the goal, you are better off practicing every other day rather than every day, because muscle mass is acquired most efficiently while you're at rest after having had your workout. If you work out every day, the signals to grow muscles will be coming in continuously but the time for the body to actually act on these signals spreads over the next 48 hours, with the bulk of the events happening during sleep when you get your peak HGH release, and bombarding it with new signals has the opposite effect, decreasing the efficiency of this process. Of course if muscle mass is not what you're after, you can practice every day. My taiji teacher who has been practicing every day for decades has no muscle mass to show for it... of course strength is another matter, he is strong in every possible sense, including the fact he has never been sick in his life and doesn't seem to know what "tired" means.

That's not transmission, that's possession. Transmissions, however, are the heart of absolutely all genuine systems, not just taoism (and of course genuine taoism is transmitted, no ifs and buts -- like any other genuine ancient system. Taoism without a transmission is a taxidermy art, a study of a stuffed nightingale sitting on a shelf. In the meantime, a real live nightingale sings its transmission and flies away! ) E.g., in Kabbalah, it's called "to light a candle from a candle." So, Rabbit, unlike in your computer analogy, the candle of the teacher's gong ignites your own, and how clean or how smoky your own flame will be, how bright it will burn or how soon it will go out -- this depends on the candle you are. A transmission ignites your own light, what will happen to it once it's yours depends on you.

Must be a poorly chosen location for the cemetery. Yin Feng Shui (the art of placement for the dead) is used among other things in order to make sure there's no above- or underground water running into the graves, no swampiness even after a rain, in fact this may be the single biggest consideration of yin feng shui: perfect drainage. Trees that grow on correctly chosen cemetery grounds are typically luxurious rather than "nearly dead," big and powerful -- if it's an old cemetery, they look eternal. Mosquitoes, like all flying creatures, are way more yang than whatever doesn't fly. And their stinging contraption is as yang as the sword... weapons that pierce and draw blood aren't yin, not in a man's hand and not in a mosquito's mouth. Overly yin grounds like swamps breed them precisely because extreme yin causes yang to arise. I know of a bunch of schools of thought that equate yin with "dead," and all of them misunderstand both yin and death. Yin is more about germination of new life than it is about death (that's why females who are more yin than males are the "breeding ground" for the species), and disembodied spirits, especially the restless ones that don't stay put wherever they belong, are more yang than any in-the-flesh living creature. The body, whether alive or dead, is yin compared to the spirit, whether in or out of body. Have you noticed how all religions that negate, belittle, "disown" the body also happen to negate, belittle, suppress the feminine?.. Cemeteries are yin compared to cities, and that's why they can be used to germinate the yang spirit in meditation, but one would have to know how to do it. Most of the living don't know how to act properly around the dead, and would be like strangers in a strange land who don't understand the local language and the local customs. What happened that full moon night?

Champagne and caviar.

And Celestial Teachers were ETs, obviously. And Sons of Reflected Light, the legendary proto-taoist teachers, were higher-dimentional beings. And Emperor Yu turned into a snake whenever he was up to it. And "we are the people of the dragon" was always heard as a metaphoric line by outsiders (and their educational clones of any citizenship of course), but metaphors are funny in that insiders seldom use them any other way but literally. Every totemic animal of every tribe was the bona fide ancestor to the members of the tribe, and turned into a metaphor only in the mind of the outside "researcher." Because the outsider couldn't tap into the ancestral DNA and the tribesmen could, he always assumed they're making things up. The number of realities that existed as realities to us humans for the whole of our history till about 150 years ago that have been relegated to the ignoble realms of "mind projections," "metaphors" and "superstitions" is simply staggering. It shouldn't surprise anyone if some of these realities start making a comeback. We lived with them for so very long before we were forced to start living without them that a less than a geological-second-long glitch in our way to perceive reality might self-correct any second now.

"Gong" is probably close to "cultivation."

Exactly! I do so like the word "timeliness" though for this "correspondence (that) means harmony and coordination." The genuine taoist teachings can be discerned by their heavy emphasis on the concept, and the useless ones, by the fact they ignore it and get busy with something entirely else.

If he, a man from Crete, is not telling the truth, he's confirming the truth of what he's saying, i.e. he is lying. And what he, a Cretan, is saying is that Cretans don't tell the truth. If it's a lie, then he, a man from Crete who says men from Crete don't tell the truth, is lying. Which confirms the truth of what he is saying about men from Crete. And so on. It's a paradox, see...

Who to call and who not to call a taoist, the recurrent itch of online forums, the chronic scratching of the surface of the "naming" issue that leaves everybody irritated and seems incurable... where is it coming from? Why is it important for the afflicted to transmit the disorder? I am not aware of anyone who calls himself or herself a "taoist." Seriously, the debunkers debunk a nonexistent adversary. People usually talk about what they are into, but the inference that talking about being into things taoist is the same as calling oneself a taoist is made over and over again, resulting in mighty pointless debates. Personally, I talk about practicing taoist arts and sciences, about cultivating taoist skills, and it's the truth because I do practice and I do cultivate -- then, with the predictability though thank god not the frequency of the sunrise, along comes someone adamant to prove to me I'm not a taoist. Wow, what a revelation. What else is new? I'm not a kongo drum either, I'm not a trilobite, I'm not the statue of liberty. I have never called myself a kongo drum just because I play it on occasion, I have never called myself a trilobite just because its genetic material is part of my DNA, I have never called myself the statue of liberty just because I occasionally stand in zhang zhuang. I have never called myself a taoist just because I do taijiquan, qigong, taoist meditation, TCM, Xuan Kong feng shui, Chinese astrology, calligraphy, rapid ink painting, talismanic sorcery, I Ching divination, and read some taoist books. I have called myself a practitioner of the arts and sciences of taoism. I have called myself a cultivator of the taoist treasures. I have called myself these true names because they are not names. They are descriptions of the things I do. To my knowledge, with the exception of a few of those who don't do any of these or similarly taoism-derived practices and therefore haven't lost their culturally conditioned interest in being called something definitive, no one else is likewise interested in calling himself or herself a "taoist." I got my new kitten three months ago when he was two months old. He fit in my palm then. He doesn't anymore, he has grown to three times the size in as many months and keeps growing. His fur has undergone many subtle changes, his behavior keeps evolving, his voice is different, our relationship is gaining its own history (relationships are made of mutually shared memories of being together for extended periods of time), and I'm already having trouble calling him a "kitten," he is not the same animal that was clearly a "kitten" three months ago, I can already see a "cat" in him, he's almost big enough, and a day will come when no one will think "kitten" when looking at my "cat." What happened? Where did the kitten go when the cat came? Well, there was never any kitten as opposed to cat to begin with, they are one and the same animal, you can't oppose them. Moreover, the kitten keeps "kittening" whether you call him a kitten or not, and in fact doesn't call himself that, and in fact is not aware that's what he's labeled. Does it change even one whisker of his? No it doesn't. Is a practitioner of the taoist arts and sciences a "kitten," and a practitioner who has been ordained, a "cat?" Maybe -- if she will be ordained in the future. She's still one and the same animal. Will she ever be in a place where everybody would know to call her a "cat," a "taoist"? Maybe. Does it change the kind of animal she is? Even one whisker? No it doesn't. Which is why the last of my concerns is what label to slap on myself to account for what I practice. And the first? To practice.

I entered the mirror before I saw the other entry. Must have mirrored it in my mind. Here's a classic sophism: A man from Crete asserts all men from Crete are liars and always tell lies no matter what they say. Is he telling the truth?

Intent, yes, that's right -- but what I'm driving at is, when they hear "yi moves qi," "use yi, not qi," they still, more often than not, expect this yi to move "a kind of energy" -- electrical or magnetic or unknown-esoteric 'universal' or what have you. And what I'm saying is, qi is not it. What intent moves is not energy in the sense "energy field" or "energy blast" or suchlike. It reconfigures the pattern of change. At will... Qi is a pattern of change... a "potential for transformation" and "the transformation itself" and the "what's being transformed" all wrapped into one. And much of it has to do with "grokking" time, or what taoist classics refer to as timeliness. And the understanding of timeliness, timing, time is not gained from energy phenomena because time is not contingent on energy -- while energy is contingent on timeliness. Energy is one perceived component of the transformation taking place, but what makes an acorn grow into an oak, its qi, is a timeliness phenomenon. Qi unfolds in an efficient pattern of transformation when energy meets timeliness... Intent can choose the "time and place" for this unfolding... but now I'm getting into the territory that's increasingly difficult to verbalize. What I'm trying to say is, you can cause the acorn to grow into an oak if you provide the time and place for it to do so, but you can't make it grow better by applying any which energy to pulling a young oak tree up by the branches, pushing it, zapping it, and so on. Efficient applications of qi phase in timeliness, and "body awareness" is "time awareness," awareness of the nature, the shape, the flavor of the kind of time it is in at any given nanosecond or any given century. Perceive that -- and you've arrived at a place of unlimited control of qi by yi. Easier said than done of course. But to understand what the "done" is going to be aimed at and what it's not going to be aimed at if it's to be efficient is a start...

A pleasure to read, thank you, Mike. It's not that they're not passing it on, it's just that what is being passed on is misunderstood, and things misunderstood can't be "learned into coming alive" no matter how long and how persistently one studies them. Take qi, for instance. How many times will you hear debates about qi "existing" or "not existing" based on the assumption that "qi is energy," a kind of "subtle energy" that either "is" or "isn't" there. People will come to training assuming they are, or aren't, going to develop this "special kind of energy" depending on whether they "believe in it" or "don't believe in it," and both categories will be off and will miss what it is that they are actually learning, qi-wise. It's a bit like learning to, let's say, write in Chinese as an art form, without simultaneously learning the meaning of the ideographs you're copying and without this meaning having any relevance for you personally. Will there be "energy" in your calligraphy executed from this place? That's quite possible. A little, a lot, any kind of energy you like. Will there be "qi" in it if it's done this way? No. If, however, you draw the ideographs for "I love you" while knowing they mean you, the beloved, and the love, and do it while being in love, and feeling this love, and being aware of it in your mind, heart, body, memory, hopes and dreams, and being trained to direct this awareness into your hand and the brush it holds and onto the paper, and write it from that place, will it have qi? Yes. Oodles of qi! It's no coincidence that calligraphy was taught as part of traditional MA (sic) training. It's not the only and not necessarily the best route, of course, you can use any medium to get someone to grasp what qi is -- but it has to be grasped via a practice that is meaningful on many levels to the practitioner, or it will be forever mechanical -- it might have energy, but it will never have qi.

"1434: The Year a Magnificent Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissance," by Gavin Menzies, a British historian who did his homework, unlike 99.9% of his incurably (and falsely indoctrinated) eurocentric colleagues. In the course of decades of research, he has visited 120 countries, more than 900 museums and libraries, and every major seaport of the late Middle Ages. Here's the timeline of events he presents with fascinating documents accounting for every assertion: 1421--1423 The great Chinese navigator Admiral Zheng He circumnavigates the globe and discovers America. 1431 The new Chinese emperor dispatches Zheng He and his enormous fleet to sail the globe and announce himself 1434 A delegation from the Chinese fleet arrives in Florence and meets with Pope Eugenius IV. They leave behind a mass of knowledge, including maps, astronomy, mathematics, art, architecture, and printing 1460s European adoption of Chinese astronomy and rejection of Aristotle and Ptolemy 1490 Leonardo da Vinci studies drawings of machines and engineering copied from the Nung Shu -- a Chinese treatise printed in 1313 1492 Columbus reaches America. Eighteen years earlier he was given a map of the Americas by Paolo Toscanelli, who admits to having gleaned "the most copious and good and true information from distinguished men of great learning who came to Florence in 1434 from China. 1506-- 1515 The appearance of world maps based on Chinese knowledge of the world in 1434. These include the "Strait of Magellan" which had never been seen by a European.

No, because that part was phrased less haphazardly and clearly indicated that you didn't. But the first paragraph of your latest entry baffles me all over again. Don't bother clarifying though, you ignored too many things I said and argued with too many things I didn't say for me to retain any interest in any further exchanges. To be fair, I ignored a few things you said too, but only because I found the idea of responding to those quite boring -- e.g., the doctor metaphor you brought up for the fourth time, I never responded to that, not because I've nothing to say but because I find it pointless, is all. If you ever feel like responding to what me and Craig asked you to talk about -- what do you actually do, cultivation-wise, and how exactly? -- or if you ever feel like asking me what I actually do, and how exactly? -- I will reconsider. Until then, I bid you a virtual farewell.

YM, I'm baffled by the way your reading comprehension skills work. I have no idea what you're talking about, because you seem to argue against something I never said, put thoughts in my head I never encountered there, and ignore completely what I did say. On top of worrying about my nocturnal emissions and my six wives. In reality, I'm many things you don't know I am, none of the things you seem to think/assert I am, and I've no vested interest in changing this -- but at least can you take my word for my being a woman?

Yeah, I know, but I didn't read his first one. There used to be a site a bunch of years ago whose bookmark I've lost that had great info on Zhen He and his huge expeditions around the world with no conquest nor intent to conquer anyone (although they were fully equipped at the time, being the top civilization on earth with military power far exceeding any other nation's). I remember reading that they mostly collected plants from all over the world and animals for the emperor's zoo. When they brought back all the giraffes and elephants and zebras and jaguars, the emperor ordered to take the zoo all over China to show his people, down to the last peasant, what animals live elsewhere on earth. I had mixed feelings about it, I thought it was so cool, on the one hand, but I'm always on the animal's side, so from the animal's point of view, it wasn't that cool at all... but at least they didn't exterminate any, not animals, not peoples... unlike what happened shortly after the other guys "discovered" America. The Incas had a sophisticated all-terrain lama-based transportation system with sometimes as many as fifteen thousand of them linked in a "train" carrying passengers and cargo. The Spanish started out by exterminating all their lamas. For some reason, they decided to eat their tongues as a delicacy. In three years, there were almost none left. Humans followed shortly.

yet it's "usually" obvious which ones have their place in reality. Not "all" Africans have darker skin than "all" Europeans, but "Africans have darker skins than Europeans" is a valid generalization. Generalizations have a place in reality. In some parts of reality they go by the name "the bigger picture."

It's not remedied by any kind of detox, Little Don Piano1, it's not something that is brought about by an individual's self-centered slant, it's deeply, deeply cultural. In China, traditionally, everybody 'lived for everybody else," not for themselves, to the extent that one Chinese guy told me you tend to disappear from your own life, you're not significant -- what is significant is your relationships, within your family, the community, the whole society. It's not like that in the West, hasn't been for the longest time, and all the admonitions to 'extinguish the ego' and lose the 'self-centeredness' fall on entirely deaf ears because experientially, Westerners simply don't understand what it means, and it can't be gleaned from books, practices, detoxes, etc.. -- only from having been born into a corresponding lifestyle, a corresponding set of inherent values, and having absorbed them with the mother's milk (not with formula from a bottle, which is the first degree of separation, of the loss of oneness that will never, ever be remedied by any means short of the most miraculous ones in any foreseeable future). I have a few Chinese friends, and invariably, their lifestyles, even in this country, are markedly different from those of non-Chinese people around them. One of them, e.g., lives with his elderly mother and takes care of her, and built his working life around the fact that he has to, abandoning a high-paying tech job for a work-from-home struggling business start-up. It's not that he can't afford home care for his mother or a nursing home, it's just that there's no slant of values in this direction -- it is an inherent value for him to take care of her above and before making money, not vice versa, the way it is for the majority in his current milieu. Another one has a sister-in-law who is a flight attendant in Taiwan often traveling to the US. Whenever she comes, he is stranded because she takes his car for the couple of days she's beached here to go shopping, sightseeing, etc., while leaving her young kid, the guy's nephew, in his uncle's care for the duration of the visit. It strikes me as a peculiar arrangement but does it occur to him that he is being "used," "taken advantage of," etc.? No! Would it, to an American? Yes! I could tell you many similar stories, all of them pointing to the fact that this lack of self-centeredness is not something you can learn -- at least in most cases it isn't -- you have to be born into it, it has to be "you" to begin with, and here, it simply isn't. Now you and I come from a middle ground of Eastern Europe that has a little from column A and a little from column B, and we could theoretically be nudged in either direction. We have a choice. Most people born into extremes of self-centeredness OR self-sacrifice don't, oddly enough...

Oh my Little1, you had to bring up Long Johnson again... I couldn't stop saying it for a year after first hearing it. Oh my dog. Oh Don Piano. Not again.

YM, it's more like this: watch?v=EZc8nvL9SJM