Taomeow

Thank you! Yesterday's full moon was, according to the Native American calendar, the Full Flower Moon! So here's a tip for those interested in moon magic: if you pour some clean water into a bowl and, on a full moon night, place it outside so that the moon reflects in it, and keep catching the reflection for a few hours, you will get Moon Water, which has numerous magical uses. It will cure an ailing plant if you water it with this potion. It will clarify the complexion if you use it as a lotion. It will improve the texture and luster of your hair if you rinse with it. It makes a good yin tonic if you drink it. Finally, it can be used in assorted spells, mostly love spells but also curses and hexes -- depending on what you mix it with and what you intend it to accomplish. I kid you not.

If master Chunyi Lin was a woman attuned to the natural cycles of the moon, "she" would know otherwise. The three days before the full moon would be PMS (if attuned women were to suffer from that, but they don't), and the three days after would be the second, third, fourth days of the period, getting progressively weaker. But the day of the full moon would be the first day of the period, and the strongest at that. Three days before the period, the woman is less of a woman and closer to a man than at any other time, because her estrogen is at the lowest point. Estrogen is a metabolite of testosterone, i.e. its next metabolic step; usually men don't convert most of their testosterone (although they do convert some, and have some estrogen -- some yin within their yang), while women convert most of their testosterone into estrogen (though not all -- they keep some yang within their yin). However, in the three days before the period, they don't convert whatever testosterone they have into estrogen, so their testosterone levels are the highest at this point. (On assorted spacial-orientation tests, women usually score worse than men -- EXCEPT in those three days, when they score as well as men. Testosterone is what makes you roam around, and if you have to roam around, you better know how to find your way wherever you're going and back; hence the evolutionary enhancement of this ability in men. Women who get restless when their testosterone is high may attribute it to PMS, but it's just that they aren't used to feeling this yang at other times, and it throws them off -- unless of course they are in tune with themselves and the energies of the world.) Full moon is the peak of yang-within-yin of the moon, from that point on, yang energy will go down and yin energy will start growing. The transformation is abrupt, one flips into the other -- the onset of the first day of the period turns the yin-yang tables. Few women and probably even fewer men today understand the dynamics of moon's energies -- because of so many unnatural influences that damage or cancel altogether the inner alignment of hormonal events in the body with natural energies of the world outside the body. E.g., light-darkness stimulation of the pituitary-pineal-hypothalamic axis which is designed to orchestrate the waxing and waning of cycles of reproductive hormones (as well as most others) is off kilter in the world of electricity and non-physiological schedules, to name just one significant factor out of ten thousand.

Take a look at this: http://shadowandsubstance.com/

OK, sure thing. Sincerely recommend reading Gopi Krishna's books. If I remember the titles correctly, Kundalini: The Evolutionary Energy in Man, and Living With Kundalini, and maybe something else. I only read the first one, a long time ago. Ever since I did, I never believed anyone who claimed their kundalini was awake, because they didn't claim anything but bliss, goodness, love, light, special abilities, and/or some kind of weirdness... while the real thing, in an average modern human, starts with the most severe illness and psychosis. That's because when kundalini is awakened in an average modern human, she runs into all the blocks of repression, the somatized psychological blocks and the psychologized physical ones alike -- blockages made up of all normal natural human feelings and behaviors that weren't available or weren't allowed and therefore never had a chance to unfold properly, and therefore were never processed adequately and removed from the system. The spine is full of those traumatically induced psychosomatic memories that never reached the neocortex and remained stuffed in the spinal column, the lower brain, and the midbrain. On her way up kundalini butts her head against them with great determination, causing profound mental and physical distress that may take years to process and integrate -- if one is lucky to integrate it at all, the way Gopi Krishna eventually was. Why is it important to you, SG? Do you suspect you disturbed your kundalini's slumber? There's a difference between when she stirs at the back of the spine once her sleep has been disturbed a bit, and when she does suddenly become wide awake and rushes up. The stirring can be very pleasant, a "promise of something" kind of pleasurable feeling. If that's where you're at, I would leave it at that... I mean it most sincerely.

Very well put, Hundun. I went through a similar evolution -- from "naturally messy" which I justified to myself by assorted beliefs that made it OK or even "superior" to being otherwise -- e.g. that I was, ahem, unconventional, creative, artistic, not like those poor neat freaks who have nothing better to do with their lives -- from this, to a realization of the "as above, so below" truth, of the fact that a disorder outside is always an expression/extension of a disorganized mind, spirit, and eventually body, and, invariably, life -- to a long and fruitful battle against myself and my own messy ways -- to the new feeling of freedom that you can't experience unless you have slain the beasts of entropy with your own hands. Victorious, I observe my shiny pots and pans, my neatly folded towels, my labeled and filed paperwork. This is not a work of obsession, of following someone else's enforced "rules," of "nothing better to do." This is spiritual work, hard and challenging and tangibly rewarding. There's relapses. I get busy with something "more important" and in no time my old adversary, His Majesty Entropy, rules again. I notice that I start feeling defeated "in general" whenever he manages to usurp the territory I'd been fighting so hard to call my own. Where he rules, I have to obey him, not any higher authority. I don't know where things are, I waste my time looking for stuff, I get stressed out over things not taken care of in time that had grown unnecessarily complicated as a result, and so on. This robs me of the convenience and the peace of mind that only come to an environment where I call the shots. So I start the spiritual battle again when this happens. Maybe I will never win "for good," taoist sources I've seen assert that gods don't like perfection in humans and will invariably punish the arrogant perfectionist -- because, well, only gods are supposed to be perfect, and they see a mere mortal aiming for perfection in anything as challenging them. Yet I am convinced the Way is anything but messy, and will keep striving to emulate its ways.

By the way, I think a bedspread is responsible for my taoist connection. When I was five years old, I got a silk Chinese bedspread for my bed, bright-gold-colored, with two huge dragons hugging its borders. It was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen, and the biggest challenge I had ever encountered till then. I struggled with those dragons every day because I was instructed that I was big enough to make my bed myself, and I definitely wasn't (my parents always thought I was big enough for anything, at any age, which is why to this day I don't know how to feel helpless -- whatever the size of the problem, my inner scale tells me I'm big enough to handle it). I think it took me ten years to learn how to make those two dragons fly out of my hands in one elegant silky whoosh and land on the bed to rest and shine through the day. I wonder what happened to them, my first taoist teachers...

There was a Simpsons episode where Homer was very upset when someone else sat on his sofa in front of the TV and "destroyed his ass groove." In nature, one thing ends and another one begins -- the day ends, the night begins -- every day and every night it is like that. Tao makes her bed every morning even though she will have to unfold it again in the evening: she removes the moon, the stars, the dew, the darkness and there's no trace of them anywhere till their time comes again. Imagine a lazy tao who wouldn't clean up after whatever she does -- all the rains going on forever once they start, one on top of the other, all the heat and cold, all the snow and sunshine, all the yin and yang... I don't know what all those nondualists who believe all differences and margins are wrong are smoking, really. It's the ultimate nightmare to imagine a world where things don't know how to begin and end, how to express and separate their essences from one another, where all you ever get is "more of the same." When this happens to a habitat, it's called "loss of biodiversity," and such a habitat keeps devolving toward lifeless desert. When it happens to our cells, the medical term is "de-differentiation" -- loss of distinct differences -- and the diagnosis, "cancer." Why would things be different in a world of "as above, so below" on the level of our ideation, lifestyle, politics, or bedrooms?.. Of course you will feel better without the TV in your bedroom -- it's like recovering from the flu, removing a splinter, beating off an alien invasion, restoring the principles of "separation of powers" in a democracy, or of "separation of state and church," and so on...

You are quite sensitive -- you want someone to touch your bed only if you want that person to touch YOU. We spend one third of our lives there -- more than we remain put in any other one place in a solid unbroken chunk of time -- and the bed becomes "configured" to your imprint, not just physical imprint of your body but a kind of presence of your being that is uniquely your own. In a sense, your bed becomes an extension of you, you are connected to it in all manner of subtle ways even when you're not in it -- and that's why in feng shui, they recommend not only making your bed but making sure that it is made just so as to announce, loud and clear, "awake!" The bed that is unmade announces, subtly but to some levels of you also loudly and clearly, "still sleeping." If you don't make your bed, you never wake up properly and your waking hours are not really waking hours -- an unmade bed blurs the distinction between awake and asleep for those levels of you that are in subtle contact with it.

Do you wash your bowl?

I'm pretty sure he does, shouldn't be a problem.

My teacher has created some compact forms specifically for those who are trying to practice in a living-room, office, or even cubicle. He wrote a book on the subject, and has put some demos on youtube:

Nothing personal, what I meant was that your take on divination in its totality, which you find without merit, wouldn't change if I added any bigger/better/different references to its technicalities... wouldn't you agree?.. I would love to discuss the I Ching divination with anyone who practices it or intends to learn how to... but after years of living with this book and having experienced its tangible help, its guidance in pulling me through the hardest of times... ...shrug. So... no grief... you shrugged it off, I shrugged off your shrug... at least we keep our shoulders loose.

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Um... thanks, now I understand. Indeed, it shows a difficulty in communication but it doesn't actually inform you of my background at all -- nor me of yours. Matter of fact, I could find all of the above for you, but it's only my teachers who can assign homework that I will spend time and effort completing -- online forums, nah, I don't go to all the trouble. If you look at Patrick's entry below yours, you can appreciate why.

There's five shens comprizing the Greater Shen in taoist psychophysiology (and in TCM following in its footsteps). One of them, known as the Heart shen of Lesser shen, is responsible for connecting the Greater Shen properly to the world of space and time and other people. It is behind one's ability to look people in the eye, among other things, and respond to questions with answers that make sense. The virtue of the Heart Shen is li, translated as ceremony, ritual, or propriety. If it is healthy, the person's behavior is characterized by a proper demeanor and style. If it is disturbed, its virtue is lost, and behavior can range from frequent failures at common courtesy to full-blown psychosis, with many in-betweens. What I'm driving at is, someone with a healthy Heart Shen knows the "propriety" of approaching the I Ching in a certain style simply because it is one of the normal functions of this spirit, its main virtue, to grasp it spontaneously. When it functions in a normal manner, it ensures a kind of spiritual "posture" that is aligned correctly with the object (or subject) of interaction. And if it doesn't... but surely it does in you, right?.. so you can explain what that opinion you have about what constitutes a "concrete reference" that is different from mine actually is, and why is it exactly that mine doesn't meet your standards? Maybe I can do better next time then, once I know what your specs actually are?

John Blofeld, I Ching: The Book of Changes, 1965, for the first part -- this was the first one that just came up on google, but it's actually common knowledge among those who engage in divination of any kind with any seriousness. Many will insist on a more thorough purification ritual, a bath with special herbal decoctions, clean clothes, and a meditation or ritual or at least three kowtows. Make some Chinese friends raised in, or with elements of, the taoist tradition (not from mainland China though, maoists had made it illegal to practice and the new generation is not fully recovered from the interruption) -- I have several -- and ask them if the family had the I Ching transmitted from generation to generation, and if they did, ask them if they remember how it was handled. For the second part, please refer to Hetu, Luoshu, and the Ta Chuan explanation. Then, since the I Ching always expects whoever touches it to do some spiritual homework and will never give you one hundred percent of the answer, use this information to make your own decision as to which methods are both available and legit of the following: tortoise shell; bone oracle; yarrow stalks; three coins; joss sticks; I Ching cards; online I Ching. Good luck!

http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b393/zaz...largeanim-2.gif

It certainly exists there, it's just that traditionally, these substances haven't been used for divination -- at least not by the same people who used the I Ching for the purpose. If you go to a restaurant, I think you would have some objections if they served you food that had been already eaten by someone the night before. Imagine a Chuangzian waiter who would serve you something scooped out of a toilet on the basis of the Way being in those to the same extent as in the steak and beer. The reason I mentioned the preliminaries to the divination the way I did is that I don't engage in cultural colonialism. If I am going to use taoist tools, I am going to respect them enough to use them exactly the way they were used by their creators, or as close to "exactly" as my best effort can possibly take me. This is cultural courtesy, cultural gratitude, and cultural respect. Without these I don't handle what isn't my own creation, my own spiritual property, my own human accomplishment. Do you?..

No, clean hands are a must -- the process of change refuses to get exposed to filth.

I recommend Ta Chuan, "The Great Treatise," for the taoist "explanation"; Terence McKenna's interpretation of the I Ching as the most profound study of the phenomena of Time ever undertaken; Francis F. Yan's "DNA and the I Ching" that reveals its relevance to genetics; and above all, I recommend using it for divination in all seriousness, with respect, in humbleness, on a table covered with silk cloth, your hands washed and scraped before you handle it, ditto your mind... Try it and see what you can learn. The true purpose of the I Ching is to make you whole.

I could try, but first you would have to tell me what it is you see as the "false" purpose of the I Ching?

Eco Homo: How The Human Being Emerged From The Cataclysmic History Of The Earth, by Noel T. Boaz According to this book, we are not related to neanderthals. Moreover, we actually exterminated them. The author is a paleoanthropologist who presents evidence that I remember finding irrefutable, or in any event irresistible. It's been a while and it's quite foggy in my memory, but I think you might want to see this one to compare with your current bible. To me it clarified quite a few points in its day and age about the reasons we are the way we are. Quite, quite a few. I hate to be pushing yet another book on someone who probably reads more like too much rather than not enough, but since it's all rock-n-roll to you while you're sitting in full lotus, why not sit and read? By the way, here's a full lotus aside I meant to throw in in the appropriate thread but forgot: the heels must not be wrinkled in any way while you people are at it. Smooth like a baby's or you're not sitting in the right position for the right kind of flow. To accomplish this, you may want to grab the leg you're going to place on the bottom with the opposite hand from behind your back, grabbing the toe and pulling it up into the fold between the thigh and the pelvis. Then you place your other leg on top of it and try to do the same thing. Won't happen overnight, but ideally, you have to be able to grab both toes by criss-crossing your arms behind your back; then the balance will be perfect.

Vortex, Rain, here's how I remember it (and still do it when walking alone -- it can't be done if you're not alone, at least not by a beginner; nor in a public place with more than a few people around. The beach works great for me, here they are miles long; before I moved here, I used to just pick a straight, long suburban street close to where I lived, there were seldom any pedestrians there save for an occasional jogger or dog walker; or else I'd do it in a park -- again, a long alley in front of you, or anything straightforward and with an open view of the horizon is one of the "props") -- so, OK, here goes. You start walking and you keep your eyes loosely fixed at any one point that falls on an imaginary trajectory arching from your walking feet to the horizon. "Loosely fixed" is a paradox of sorts -- you don't actually "fix" your gaze the way you would if you were looking "at" something you want to see or "staring" or "focusing" -- you do nothing of the kind, instead you sort of maintain a floating focus, if the space was a body of water then your point would be like a buoy on the far horizon, anchored but not stiff. You need to become aware of the fact that your eyesight is comprised of "central" and "peripheral" vision that are quite different in what they "normally" do, and keep being aware of your peripheral vision -- while never losing awareness of the central point. Peripheral vision works fuzzily, you don't look for or at anything at all, you don't see any precise objects with it -- instead, you let all of them float by, never forgetting to keep noticing the center (at the far horizon) and the periphery on your left and the periphery on your right simultaneously. After a while (soon, or eventually, depending on how often and for how long you do it once you "get it"), your peripheral vision expands dramatically. At first you may find you can only notice "left plus center" or "right plus center" simultaneously, but then it will be "left, center, right simultaneously," and then "upper left, central left, bottom left, horizon center, upper right, central right, bottom right" simultaneously, and then more... and then you start getting "flooded." You see the ground, every crack and pebble and blade of grass, and all the houses and trees and all the clouds and birds (you will start noticing a helluva lot of birds that you never knew existed, and other stuff that is usually too fleeting to notice) on your left, your right, brushing against your ears and temples, here and gone, changed instantly into a new kind of infinite multitude of "things" and images and impressions. The space will become... hmm, more stereoscopic than what you're used to. More real, more complete, but also eerie. That's the beginning of it. Physiologically speaking, peripheral vision is linked to the unconscious mind, so placing your awareness there will touch not only all the things you usually see unconsciously and bring them all into your consciousness, but it will also touch your own unconscious and start establishing some connections thence into your consciousness. This will do things to your emotions. (This is a warning.) Let it. This will also do things to your eyes. You might start feeling all kinds of stuff happening to your eyes, and they might start tearing. Let them. I'd be curious if you tried it and told me if anything worked, and if it did, how it went and what you felt. I was re-reading "Tales of Power" once this discussion started and found the technique described there briefly (I'm giving you a somewhat more detailed version) -- I think it was described in other books too, but I forget which -- and I found out that you were also supposed to do things with your hands while at it, something mudra-like, not necessarily a specific mudra so much as placing your hands and fingers in all kinds of unusual, uncommon positions and remaining aware of them simultaneously with your visual awareness. This I either did a long time ago and then found unnecessary, or never did, I don't remember. So, you can try doing it like that, or you can "add" this if the open focus thing isn't enough to facilitate a drastic shift of your perceptions and your consciousness; but for me it worked without involving the hands too. There's similar things in Chinese MA systems, and not only Chinese -- my taekwondo teacher definitely looked at the world like that much of the time, and noticed absolutely everything, as though he had 360 degree eyesight like a freakin' dragonfly. I remember once we met him at a restaurant and I introduced him to my husband, who later said, "your master has the eyes of a cold-blooded murderer." I never saw his eyes this way, but I guess that's something that might occur to an outside observer when he looks into the eyes that just about lack something "only human" about them while instead maintain something that is "not quite human." I have no idea what my own eyes look like in this mode, I never show it to anyone...

The proof of the pudding... Years ago I did adopt one practice from the guy's repertoire and followed it on a daily basis for a while. Namely, his way of looking in a certain specific manner so as to "shut off the inner dialog" while walking. This is supposed, according to DJ/CC, to "flood the tonal" with so much information at any given moment that it will be overwhelmed and have no choice but to shut up -- and that's when the nagual will surface. Well, it is absolutely correct, and I don't know of any other "meditation technique" whose efficiency is instant like that. I can switch to that mode in seconds and maintain it indefinitely, it is beyond effortless. Among other things, my physical eyesight improved considerably due to the practice. How can I "prove" this? There's no way to prove this. DO it and see. Don't do it and there's no way you (the generic you) can ever know. You can have an "opinion," e.g. that "it needs to be proved" or any other opinion for that matter. It's like the rest of the pudding -- you either eat it or you eat its shadows for all eternity and form endless opinions about the pudding, which are shadows of shadows of the pudding. Logical proof is not nutritious, and nutritious puddings are not logical.

Most people in China throughout history would have trouble defining a "true taoist" -- one was either a taoist or not a taoist. If you were a taoist, it meant you had been ordained into one of the taoist sects and trained to communicate with gods and spirits as part of your taoist education. If you were a taoist-educated taoist, you could "work" as a taoist priest or monk, or you could work as something else. If you worked as a taoist priest, you had to communicate with gods and spirits as part of your job description: in a village, a birth, wedding, funeral, supernatural possession, natural disaster, and all seasonal holidays throughout the year were your responsibility to attend and perform an appropriate ritual in which all the residents participated. Life in China was concerned with gods and spirits at all times, but Confucian doctrine asked everybody to respect them from a distance without getting personally involved, so taoists served as intermediaries between the population and all the countless Chinese gods, spirits and demons. If you invited a taoist to perform such a ritual, believed in it, and so on, it didn't make you a taoist; a "taoist" was understood as the doer of certain deeds, not as the believer in certain doctrines. If you did those deeds after having undergone special training, you were a taoist. If you did them without such training, you were a fake. What you believed or disbelieved simply didn't count. Hope it helps.