Taomeow

Oh, OK, I have Michael Saso's books, I'll try to look it up there, since we may finally have found an authority acceptable for both of us. However, I am not sure field studies are of any use unless the scientist becomes the study's subject's student. Otherwise it's still proving the pudding without eating it.

No, that's not what I meant. I meant research into her biography that cites her father as an ordained taoist who initiated her. I'm rusty though, it's been a while and I don't have orderly bookmarks, alas. But it's something I remember finding far more plausible than the Mr. Moe controversy. I have read actual taoist writings, pretty much everything available in translation in the two languages I'm fluent in, and had access to an insider source too, which is why I trust what Ms. Wong has to say. It's congruent with my understanding, it has inner grasp of the essential, of the underlying fundamentals of taoism, something that is sorely missing from not some but all academic works I have read (and I used to read those too, moons ago, notably the whale of studies into Sinology and taoism, Joseph Needham) -- which is why I quit reading them. Not because I choose to be undereducated on the subject. But because I choose not to be mis- and dis-educated, or to put it bluntly, brainwashed. And scholarly works as accepted by modern academia are nothing but.

Yeah, I expect to find as much useful information as we've seen in the case of "public revelations" by assorted detractors of, e.g., Wang Liping (who was unanimously declared to be a fictitious character -- I remember hot battles over his existence/nonexistence on assorted tao-dabbling forums, but the opinion of scholars was unequivocal: fictitious! And how they laughed at gullible suckers like me who made a peep to the contrary! ), or to point out a more recent example, Max, for that matter. How about the line of "research" into her biography that traces her lineage through her father rather than Mr. Moe? Detractors to the rescue! But that doesn't really matter... there will always be scores of Australians willing to teach the Innuits how to keep warm on the North Pole, and scores of Norwegians teaching equatorial Africans how to stay cool.

What's the point of quoting someone who is a lineage taoist, i.e. "not a scholar" to you, if you want to rely on the scholar who is not a taoist?.. I think I mentioned more than once on prior occasions that I don't read books by scholars, I only read books by practicing taoists (or by practitioners of certain specific taoist arts and sciences). I don't know how Robinet slipped into my references, I was just in a hurry or I would have remembered who she is and ignored her. OK, now I remember. A scholar. Not a taoist. Anyway, here's the quote you won't accept because it's coming from a lineage taoist and a member of the sect rather than a "scholar" "researching" from the outside looking in: "The members of the Mao-shan sect are sorcerers par excellence. As mentioned in Part One, this sect is not to be confused with the Shang-ch'ing Mao-shan Taoists, who are mystics. Mao-shan sorcerers prefer to draw power from spirits and lesser deities, and are especially skilled in exorcism, fighting malevolent spirits and other sorcerers, offering protection, warding off disasters, and guiding, searching, and rescuing dead souls. Mao-shan sorcerers use talismans and objects of power such as mirrors, bells, and coin-swords. They are especially adept at calling deities and spirits to enter their bodies to enhance their personal power. Practitioners from other sects will invoke only certain deities, but Mao-shan sorcerers are pragmatic, and will muster anything that will help them. Today, the practitioners of the Mao-shan sect are found in Taiwan, Hong Kong, remote regions of southern China, and Chinese communities in southeast Asia. Of all the sects of Magical Taoism, the Mao-shan sect is the most secretive. Admittance to the sect is extremely selective." --The Shambala Guide to Taoism, pp. 116--117. Sounds not all that unlike Max, doesn't it?.. and totally unlike the Shang-ch'ing Maoshan sect, wouldn't you agree?.. And trust me, Eva Wong didn't make up Mao-shan Magical taoism and Mao-shan sorcerers, despite the fact that the characters based on this image were used in some movies or other you saw. I've seen many movies depicting true love, but it doesn't mean that everyone who's ever encountered true love has been merely influenced by movies.

I'm no "you guys" to you mister. Maoshan Magical is not the same as Maoshan Mystical, according to Eva Wong, is she one of the funny guys in your book too? "Tens of thousands of temples" are mentioned by Yang Li, professor at the Graduate Department of the TCM Institute in China and one of the foremost authorities on the history of magical arts -- however neither she nor me ever asserted that they all existed simultaneously -- we're talking a long period of history, ever heard of things sequential in time? a small mountain, ROFL indeed, a long history to a small mountain. You guys...

Thanks for listening to the story, my generous friends! I will experiment with it, I've been practicing (not every day though, but almost) since the seminar and I'm curious to find out where it might lead. For me, the interesting part so far has been that I actually "want" to do it -- I am basically lazy and most things I do I have to kick myself in the zhi to get going, but so far, with this one, I don't seem to have to exercise any willpower, something in me is curious and seems to want to see what it has to show... but then, it's only been two weeks, hard to tell yet whether it's the novelty factor, the timing factor -- this finds me in a relatively stagnant phase of cultivation that needed an influx of some new motivation anyway -- or the actual merits of the practice itself. Time and experience will tell. I don't normally jump to conclusions until something way more tangible and "heng" than merely "believing" or "not believing" starts happening. What about you? Have you tried it? Witch, I don't know if Max "takes," but he hasn't taken from me. His assistants seem to be in good shape, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.

YM, thanks for your response, it clarifies a lot for me re where your objections are coming from. Shanggzing Pai founded by Wei Huacun is a different Maoshan! -- a mystical orthodox school Max has never made a peep about. And what you refer to as the "mostly fictional" school of magical Maoshan is nothing but -- wasn't it founded by Mao Xing and his brothers?.. Why are you saying it's fictional? -- I refer you to Isabelle Robinet's and Eva Wong's scholarly accounts for confirmation of its real-life existence. (I'm sure there's scores more but I don't have any more references handy at the moment.) Interestingly enough, "what a shame," your exclamation addressed to Max, was something Mao Xing's father used to tell him, he was also opposed to "magic tricks" and kicked his would-be-immortal son out of the house so the latter don't "shame the family." Mao Xing had to actually raise someone from the dead before his father and his brothers (who later became his students) even began to take him seriously. Looks like not much has changed since early Han dynasty times! I mentioned female hermits not because I was assuming or implying "gender discrimination" but because some of the practices of Maoshan were only transmitted to women for the longest time, and Max mentioned his female teachers. School of the Immortal Way -- I am translating from Russian, not from Chinese, I don't know what the name really is in Chinese OR English, but that's what a real-life female hermit once mentioned to me, in a context unrelated to Max, years ago. I know very little about her lineage, and I was wondering if you may have heard something from a reputable source and could help me figure out the arcane family ties of the Buryat-shamanic/Tibetan buddhist/Maoshan amalgam in existence where I come from. Well, not really. It was tongue-in-cheek... I know you can't know. But YM, don't you know how HUGE Maoshan used to be? -- with tens of thousands of temples, with ten schools of the Magical Sect alone?.. Don't you think it is at least plausible that you might not know EVERYTHING about it?..

YM, care to share what you know about the female hermits of the Maoshan tradition belonging to the School of the Immortal Way? ?..

Striptease?.. -- the only article of clothing I mentioned removing was my flip-flops. A line of taoist products? Actually, that's not where I was going, but as fate would have it, I've thought about it on and off (in a context unrelated to the present musings), and almost started something a year ago, but then got sidetracked. Thanks for the reminder! Tell me what you (the collective taoyou) would really like to buy and I'll see if I'm equipped to sell it!

Well, the confusion is terminological, confined to the domain of words. The Five Phases or rather, Five Stages of Change (of qi, what else) and the Eight Trigrams of the bagua both use terms like "fire," "water" and so on, but they mean different things in the two systems. E.g. Water of the Five Phases means a phase of qi that "descends," while Water of the bagua is a trigram that has two yielding lines around a central firm line, signifying a quality of qi that is soft on the outside but possesses inner strength. The two systems describe different aspects of the universal process. Tao-in-motion is represented by the Later Heaven bagua, and tao-in-stillness, by the Earlier Heaven bagua. Immortality can (and does) exist either in stillness or in motion. It is a common mistake to think of immortality as "stillness only," however taoist classics are full of explicit statements to the contrary -- "the way of tao is motion and the pattern of this motion is return." The bagua describes the way ("method") of tao, and the Five Phases, its pattern. "Return" is not a once-and-for-all deal, not a one-way ticket "to the source" -- unlike in Buddhism, in taoism, "to and fro goes the Way."

Installment 5 So I sit and follow instructions. I have hardly ever meditated sitting in a chair -- every which way but in a chair, mostly in full lotus, sometimes lying down, often in movement. I have something against chairs. I once saw a photograph of an African boy sitting high in a mighty tree, on a thick branch, squatting, butt lower than feet, knees under chin, exuding relaxed comfort and peace. I used to be fond of climbing trees as a kid and finding positions to relax in that were "accidental chairs," all of them different and unique -- some supported me along one side, some had to be straddled like horses or camels, some allowed me to find balance only in firm embrace, some turned me into a Vitruvian girl... Ordinary chairs never appealed to my sense of the sacred, and at one point I even invented and created a "shamanic chair" to meditate in -- I used pieces of black sheepskin and arctic fox fur from a retired jacket, and feathers and beads and gourd rattles and sewn cloth dolls to decorate it -- but even the most supportive of my family members, upon seeing it, thought I'd gone too far ("you've finally lost it, haven't you?"), so I got upset and dismantled it. I'll make it again though, now that Max says you get your best kunlun if you sit on an animal fur rug. To which I might add, in a chair of your personal design, as weird and uncalled-for as it might look to others. I also hardly ever meditate to music. At the seminar, it was loud, but I didn't seem to mind, the flow of sounds and sights was benign, nothing bothered me, not even the fact that after every break (there were breaks following each of the four introduced segments of the practice) I had to look for my flip-flops, which happened to have been synchronistically chosen to match the colorful carpet on the floor to the point of complete camouflage invisibility -- navy blue, red, dark yellow -- all the shades incorporated in the carpet were not merely close but an exact replica of the ones I came in wearing on my feet, so every time I removed them, someone would kick them while walking past me, and they would immediately blend in and disappear. I don't know why I'm adding all these secondary details -- perhaps to generate a somewhat multidimensional picture, a "been there done this and that" kind of credibility. Done this and that, important and unimportant, been there and back, attended to the mundane and the mysterious, and so it came to pass. Sitting, holding the mudra, eyes closed. Max came up from behind, gently touched my closed eyes and the top of my head, and said something that I heard as "you have a top secret." He didn't really say that. I do have a top secret though, but could he possibly sense it right away, just like that?.. Ah, the power of self-hypnosis. Max didn't do it, I did it to myself. We all do, one way or the other, and from what I heard, so do gods, for what is creation itself if not self-hypnosis of some infinitely mighty spirit that had fallen under the infinitely powerful spell of her own making?.. For the rest of the seminar, I was caught on my own hook, and gently, and then violently, it led me toward hope. I have a top secret. I live in hope of encountering someone who is capable of deciphering it. Hope is dope... Kunlun itself, after the Red Phoenix and the Golden Flower (no, not the one from the book by the same name, Max says, the book has nothing!) and Spirit Travel, started to the wild, mesmerizing, unexpected, almost inhuman Mongolian music. Oh, it was the best choice ever. Almost instantly, I was propelled into some past of my recurrent visions -- dreams? past life memories? genetic recall? fantasy? -- boundless steppe, smooth rhythmic speed, a view from atop a proud and dangerous horse, freedom, freedom, freedom. Everything in me rushed forward, in that direction, out and away from here and now, out of this time, out of this place, out of this modern me. "Looks like you're trying to give birth," Max commented. Yes -- to myself. I've once seen an ancient Native American statuette of the Moon Goddess giving birth to herself, she wasn't serene, she was raw with effort, teeth bared and clenched, features distorted, body convoluted... what do men know, I thought. How can you break into another dimension -- of spirit, creation, knowledge, freedom -- anything -- while just sitting there looking serene and peaceful like a buddha?.. Well, maybe later. Alchemy does get subtler, but don't try to make it subtle until it is ready. You always start with raw material, and that Mongolian tune, as devoid of all artificiality as the dawn of time, is my witness. So I let an irreverent thought pass -- "what do you know about birth you have to give to yourself, not everybody gets struck by lightning at the age of six, some of us get struck by an open palm of a very unenlightened being at that age, smack across the face, and this is something we have to remember and forget, remember and forget --" -- I lose the thought, lose the interest in thinking, and ride my wind horse into Genghis Khan's land. (to be continued...)

NO WAY! You caused me to rent and watch a movie titled "Mongolian Ping-pong" -- I saw your entry RIGHT AFTER I finished watching it. The key word in the movie is "pearl," a glowing pearl, to be precise. That's the word I was going to post here. OK... Spectrum, I had a dream (a while ago, but one of those significant ones that you don't forget) about finding a huge, stunningly beautiful pearl in an old mysterious theater, and a set of theatrical make-up. What do you make of it?

I'll catch up eventually... Smile, my son told me that when I'm watching a movie I look exactly like the picture you posted. How very embarrassing! Rain, a response to your question is tres involved, I'll either post on the kunlun forum or PM you. August Leo, have you noticed you've been reading the account of the first hour of the first kunlun encounter in my life? You've been practicing for, what, a year, two? -- I thought the practice is stable enough to not be affected adversely by exposure to a newbie's written perspective?.. besides, I cultivate whole-brain skills consciously and purposefully, so being able to use my left hemisphere is no indicator of my inability to use my right one -- or both simultaneously. In fact, at the seminar, Max made me say what I was feeling at exactly the moment I didn't feel like talking, it was a struggle to get the words out -- but it's a bit of reverse alchemy, don't you think? -- saying it dissipates and dilutes a phenomenon's power, but some things you want to use diluted -- you don't pour 100% pure acetic acid into your salad dressing, you use a 5% vinegar... and you don't drink 100% ethyl alcohol, you dilute... The important thing is to know which process will condense it and which one will dilute it -- if you do, they're both alchemical. Yes, words too...

Little1, Chris, and everybody who's embarrassing me with "positive judgments" -- please cut it out! You're messing with my humility! ...but I'm grateful and touched. As (supposedly) an ET told a contactee, "the love you withhold is the pain you carry." Please don't think I'm withholding mine -- I love you guys! Installment 4 Glimpses of the audience. Some, like me, are learning Kunlun for the first time, others have been practicing for a while. Some of the "initiates" can be spotted immediately by the effects of the practice that set in as soon as they get down to it: they don't behave like "normal" people do. I've seen it before, I've been this way before. Another time, another teaching, an opening -- into the levels of personality, emotions, physical motion, self-expression not occurring in "normal" everyday life. The layers of repressed "me," once they start sloughing off, revealing the "actual me" underneath, are multiple and as varied as people themselves. Some of these layers are paper-thin and easily pierced, while others are brick walls, concrete dams, powerfully reinforces structures of holding-back. Most are erected below the level of everyday consciousness, and people carrying them around don't know they do. They feel burdened but they externalize the feeling and don't look inside for what it is that's really burdening them. We start noticing these structures for the first time only when they are beginning to crumble. What's underneath? What's behind the wall? Long ago, when by the emperor's decree they started building the Great Wall of China, some taoists said, this is not good... it will break the back of the dragon, and now things the dragon was supporting with her breath will start deteriorating, running out of breath, dying. The wall cut across a unified ecosystem, a grasshopper lost his mate, a butterfly was thwarted in his flight, a tigress got cut off from her watering hole... the deer multiplied beyond what the tigress would have allowed, the trees whose bark got eaten off by the oversized herd died, the rivulet they used to protect, holding the banks in the embrace of their roots, got overpowered with mud slides and dried up, the great river that it used to nourish receded, killing fish, black and white swans that used to hunt for the fish, men and women who used to have enough to eat and suddenly, or eventually, didn't anymore. An inner Great Wall does much the same thing to the mind, body, soul, and destiny of a human being. And when there's many walls, when a lifetime is spent erecting them -- some paper-thin like the Japanese screen doors, some deep and invasive enough to "break the dragon's back" -- everything starts dying, in a chain reaction of inhibition of what could have been, should have been, being replaced by what shouldn't have happened, couldn't have been good... but did come to pass, to usurp the place of some natural unfolding cut off by the wall, because nature abhors vacuum. When these walls start to crumble, they release the trapped memories, the thwarted potentials, and a whole lot of confusion. Here, a tender flower finds its footing in the proper soil for the first time in centuries; there, an enraged, starved tiger rushes out with a mighty roar... amidst clouds of dust and shards of glass and the howling of the wind that has waited to make its way to the other side for so long, rushing into the opening, turning everything in its way upside down. That's what I've seen before, and now I'm seeing it again. A woman starts laughing like a demon, then whimpering, baby-like, then speaking in a language unknown, unheard of, about her long-lost purpose. Another one screams piercingly and startles me out of the beginning phase of my meditation; no one turns to look. A heavy thud behind me! This time I do turn to look. A very tall man with shoulder-length blond hair is on the floor on his back, twitching, struggling, coughing, gagging, neck tensed up so tight it looks like it might snap, toes curving inward tightly the way they did when he was being born. I've seen it before. I'm thinking, uh-oh. This practice gets all the way down to the limbic system. To the R-complex. To pre-cortical systemic somatosensory memory. To jing. To all the traumas endured by the infant, and perhaps the fetus. To birth. I do hope there's safety valves built into the system. I do hope people know how to use them. I could help if they didn't. OK, back to minding my own business...

OK. The point is a mathematical abstraction postulated to possess neither volume, area, length, nor any other higher dimensional analogue. Thus, a point is a 0-dimensional object. Free for the taking!

However, Hawking radiation is a theory, it has never been observed, and phenomena it predicts have not been empirically verified. Unlike Einstein's relativity theory, which yields observable phenomena. And which predicts stable, growing black holes. There will be no immediate end of the world if these occur. The black holes might indeed be too small to notice. They will have grown bigger in four years, however. Or in four billion years. The thing is, no one knows. Safety to life on Earth is not a priority to any of our scientific projects. When the Challenger was headed for disaster, many scientists were saying so, saying it was not safe to launch it at the stage the project was, and they were called paranoid and overruled. Oh, and the Chernobyl reactor was supposed to be safe, and what happened was not part of the calculations. Events just have this annoying ability to ignore theoretical safety assumptions. It's not about whether the end of the world will be brought on by this specific bit of science. It's about all of it working in that general direction. In five days, five years, or fifty -- that's something no one knows. Y2K or particle accelerator or a weaponized virus or the nuclear tests or the nuclear war -- who knows. But there's too many happy little kids playing with too many big-ass matches all at once. Whoever guarantees they won't set anything on fire is living in a dream world, Neo.

Installment 3 Once you've decided to participate in something like this, after the initial process of vascillating between "why should I -- why don't I" has yielded a "let's do it and see what happens," there's three possible ways you can go. You can place your entire conscious awareness outside, keep your analytical facilities busy, watch others, draw whatever conclusions from whatever you notice. Or you can let the process draw you in, ignore "others" and focus on what's going on with you, then lose the "observer" altogether and become the process. And, finally, you can shuttle between the two modes, in and out of the inner and the outer, there and back, now a researcher, now a guinea pig, and occasionally both at once. The first mode, that of an "objective" observer, does not interest me one bit, because it is so inefficient in dealing with live phenomena. No one has the right to claim "objectivity" because anything you perceive is invariably filtered through the prism of you, personally, and pretending that you are not there and the data collect themselves is not merely "reductionist" but, if you think of it for a moment, tragically ridiculous -- hilariously preposterous -- just plain idiotic. You were there, researcher, observer, data collector! You made a dent in what you were researching, observing, collecting! You are the dent! Quit denying it and respect your own presence in the space-time continuum and beyond, and stop milking your silly objectivity cow with her tortured, dry udder that can only nourish delusions -- for "objectivity" is the biggest delusion of them all, the lie to end all lies. So my choice was between the two remaining modes -- but actually, I didn't have to choose. At an earlier time in my life, I've been trained in dividing my awareness and simultaneously being aware of the way my awareness is divided at any given moment -- not unlike the way you spread your physical weight between the "full" and the "empty" legs in taijiquan, on a fluid, constantly shifting sliding scale that allows you to even talk "percentages" -- eighty-five percent on the right, fifteen on the left, ninety percent yin, ten percent yang, ninety-nine percent "here," one percent "there..." So for me, the whole seminar was, among other things, a practice in this kind of shifting. I was aware of what's going on with others; then not -- ninety-nine percent not, eighty-five percent not, fifty percent -- then aware again, ninety percent outside, ten percent inside "my own stuff" -- then the inner, "my own" expanding, engulfing most, almost all, all of my presence -- then an interruption from the outside and I'm back there, with the rest of you and out of me. That sort of presence. So -- what was going on outside, what was going on inside, and what was going on in the mysterious realm that is neither -- that is, instead, the ever-shifting border between being and becoming?.. The best I can do with observations collected in the above-mentioned manner is present a series of glimpses. Glimpses of Max, his assistants, the students, myself, the practice. I focus on one, then the other, then all, then none -- and I notice... Glimpses of Max. I watch his posture closely, and am satisfied. He lives in his body comfortably and manifests a presence of self-acceptance and authority. His head is shaved, and a student of phrenology could perhaps derive some information from the cranial configuration on display -- but he asserts the practice makes the bones of the skull movable, and the shape will change and keep changing and won't be "frozen" in one particular position. Is it true? I watch closely. When he works on one of the students, apparently producing some deeply felt effects that show up on the surface as slow at first, then faster, then oscillating, high-speed, wide-amplitude vibration of the student's whole body, not voluntary, no, the amplitude and the speed are like nothing one can "do" -- as Max is doing his "thing," whatever it is, do I notice the back of his head change its shape? The bump right there, at the outside of the visual cortex -- does it bulge out, does it look different than it did only minutes before? I'm sure it does. Does it?.. I'm not sure... (to be continued)

You move me to tears, guys. I love you too. Please bear with me... The thing is, a friend who collects articles on assorted taoist subjects on his site has told me more than once that he would like to see one of mine, so I decided I will use this opportunity, the seminar I've attended, to focus on one subject at a time, more or less, and write something that will actually have a beginning, a middle, and an end. But then I figured I owed the Taobums first -- after all, you're the ones who got me into it. So whatever I started writing, I decided to start posting here, even before it is complete. Now if you get bored with my beating around the thick bush with a long pole, just say so and I'll stop. And if you don't, then it will keep coming in installments, because I've no time to write as detailed an analysis (and I do intend to try to make it an "analysis," not just a collection of observations and personal experiences) as I have in mind, all at once. So... here it comes, Installment 2: The first thing I will notice about a teacher is whether he or she is sufficiently alive. We've all had teachers, not of our own choosing, who were not -- my own memories of such teachers stretch all the way back to kindergarten. A spontaneous, uninhibited child will learn playfully and play while learning; most teachers are prepared to nip this learning mode in the bud, and are themselves the outcome of similar "nipping," and consequently, adults are overwhelmingly bad at this, i.e. at learning in this most effortless and most efficient manner. We have all been taught way too much by people, and via methods, that couldn't deliver the lesson without simultaneously arresting our physical, intellectual, spiritual development. I think one thing Max is aware of, and perhaps even slightly rebellious against, is that many in his audience need to unlearn the learning styles they had been indoctrinated in, ones that necessitate bartering your freedom for the teaching. I say "slightly" because, on the other hand, there's no taoist learning without discipline. Cultivation is discipline, and freedom, paradoxically enough, only comes into structure, not into chaos. Show me someone whose life is chaotic and free, whose mind is in disarray and free -- and I will behold a miracle far greater than a saber-toothed hummingbird. However, there's a difference between form that has to be strong enough and reliable enough to hold an extremely volatile substance so as to gather it together in one place and keep it from dissipating -- and form for formality's sake, for the sake of arresting spontaneity and freedom. There's a difference between the spacious and vast albeit formal taoist robes and a straightjacket. So even if Max showed up clad in full regalia the way he used to, I would have no objections. If, however, he was someone who could wave his sleeves but couldn't move his mind to embrace an unexpected in-the-moment question or event in the audience with the kind of relaxed confidence that comes as spontaneous non-practice, on the breezy wings of uninhibited self-expression, only to those who have practiced a lot, I would begrudge him everything else. I would hold everything against a rigidly indoctrinated teacher -- or one who is afraid to deviate from a routine because he knows too little to venture into uncharted territory. Max proved to be neither. What about the opposite pitfall then, the possibility of flakiness, of anything-goes-ness, of clowning around so as to win over the audience at any cost, including the cost to one's own dignity?.. No. Didn't fall into that one either. But what about self-aggrandation, puffed up self-importance?.. Nope. Cult-in-the-making brainwashing techniques?.. None, although something that qualifies as "suggestions" was used -- but it's impossible to grasp any discipline whose success is contingent on the co-creation between the art and the artist, the practitioner and the practice, the medium and the message, without some suggestive impulse, a nudge to one's intent, and some -- gasp -- faith. Faith is poor main course but excellent spice; it does facilitate digestion of any material it is applied to and it does increase its nurturing value. So... a bit of that. OK, maybe a lot. After all we were talking magic nonstop when the practice itself wasn't going on, in between the sittings -- Max and the audience were talking magic, and I loved being somewhere where it's taking place. Where things magical are discussed technically, where talking the fine points of communication with plants versus communication with your higher self within yourself is talking shop. Do this, don't do that, if you do this, you might wind up having this happen, and you don't want it. Only take a psychedelic if you can whisper to the mushroom to release its medicine into you without eating it or even touching it of even coming close! Only run the microcosmic orbit that has arisen spontaneously! If the woman calls herself a "white tigress," it means a guy should listen -- listen closely -- tigress... means, "be careful!" I would really love for some of my high school or college teachers to sit in on the lessons I was learning... I visualize their faces and start giggling -- all that time and effort they wasted on trying to give me a solid formal education, that I may wind up learning how to blow into a mudra to retrieve a lost key or summon a wayward friend!.. (to be continued...)

I like it more too, but you've got it backwards -- "theory" is your version, a "practical" situation is mine. Yours is actually traditional, it used to be practice. It's the shaman's way to charge her clients. The shaman, however, knows who can afford what, and so do the spirits, so a client typically tried to pay a maximum price he or she could afford -- a wealthier one paid more, a poor one paid little or nothing. I've read a book about one of the last Mayan traditional healers, don Elijio, written by his American apprentice. She describes exactly this payment method. Don Elijio was the richest person in his poor community. He did nothing with the money, he collected it in a sack, and lived a lifestyle indistinguishable from that of the poorest farmers. But he never turned down a payment -- nor demanded it of those who genuinely couldn't get his help any other way but for free. Would you trust our modern urbanites to honor such a method?

Hypothetical situation. Say you have something great to offer to the world. It is so great it almost overwhelms you. You know you want to share it with others, because you can't see how something so big is for one person only -- you. You believe others will get benefits from it too. You need others in your life who understand this thing that has taken over your existence. What do you do? Suppose you decide you will teach it. If you're already rich, that's easy: you just teach, charge nothing, live off your prior wealth. If you're middle-class, you might want to quit the job that has made you middle-class, so that you have a full-time commitment to what you're going to teach. If you don't quit it, you might be too busy to ever give the teaching the full benefit of your full attention. So you quit. There's a mortgage though. Kids' college payments. Car insurance. A backlog of medical bills from when you were a mere mortal and unwell and saw a doctor, a dentist, a shrink. And so on. What are your options? Quit the job, charge nothing for the teaching, and let someone else deal with all your money obligations, usual expenses, etc.? Finally, let's say you're dirt poor when the teaching comes to you. You wear one shirt for months, you don't have a second one. You can't afford to buy a whole lot of detergent to wash it. You live in a cardboard box. You emerge from it one day and say to the world, I will teach you a great teaching -- for free. What will the world's reaction be? So... from the possible scenarios I can envision, the prerequisite for successfully offering the world a free teaching is being a multimillionaire, it doesn't seem to work out any other way. So are the rich, the very rich who don't need your money in order to teach, the only true teachers?

double

Thanks, Cat, one thing I'd like to learn from you is how to remember to be so nice to so many so often without ever overdoing and/or faking it! That's fine balance! Heya Upfromtheashes, thanks! Yes, there's methods... but I'm overdue on another thread, I lost my Kunlun virginity over the weekend and am trying to find the time to write a report on the seminar. So ask me again at a more opportune later time if you're still up to it then, OK?

This one? Ong namo gurudev namo? If you think it's the only one, you are already your own gurudev, "higher self." If you ain't it, there's many, many, many-many other mudras to help unify and integrate your assorted parts into the "higher self." If that's the goal of course. Which is not all traditions' case. I bow before gurudev Patrick.

Jing mediates basic survival drives -- self-preservation, self-replication (reproduction), and behaviors that facilitate intactness/continuation of self (children) and avoid damage/destruction/cessation of a life line. When someone or something (conditioning, ideation, abuse) override these primal drives, the only way to do it is by deadening them, killing them off. Dead jing is what one accumulates when he or she was not allowed to, or "chose" (via early conditioning -- early enough to leave one with the illusion of free choice and "free will") not to respond to natural impulses of self-expression. By adulthood few of a "civilized" person's impulses and drives are "natural," and all manner of ways in which they get thwarted is the outcome of every impulse having to navigate around, and get entangled in, large blocks of dead jing. I think "dead jing" is the closest Chinese term to "repressed unconscious pain," and some of it is visible to geneticists as what they like to call "junk DNA" because they can't think of a use for it. The use for it would have emerged if the blocking mechanisms weren't set off. Tao makes no junk! Of course misguided celibacy, non-reproduction, non-breastfeeding, etc., all result in dead jing. Catholic nuns have the rate of breast cancer ten times that of the general population. On the other hand, prostitutes have ten times the rate of cervical cancer. Sexually, one can kill jing by avoiding sex -- OR by having sex without love. Take your pick... not.