Taomeow

Organ-system-function known in TCM as Liver does a helluva lot more. Among other things, it does store anger (the five major emotions of Wuxing, of which anger is one, are all "stored" in specific organs and generated thence). When excessive, Liver anger "injures" the heart, its Child organ. It is not "injured" by its proprietary emotion unless the latter is out of balance with the rest. Kidneys, whose Child organ is Liver, are the main source of Liver health (or lack thereof) in a direct Wuxing generating phase. The Heart, the Grandchild organ of the Kidneys, is controlled by them too, which doesn't invalidate the point about the generating phase of the relationship being the most likely problem area where a TCM practitioner ISO correcting it will look first. The inquiry stage in TCM has nothing to do with "talk therapies." Talk at the inquiry stage serves the purpose of providing the physician with information about what is going on so he or she takes it into account when choosing the correct intervention. This corrective intervention, once chosen, is never "talk." Talking itself is not viewed as a corrective and/or curative intervention, unlike in talk therapies of Western psychology.

Absolutely. Provided there's consciousnes of the past included in it. (Some people have glimpses of consciousness of the future too, but it's rare these days. I for one have to rely on Chinese astrology to know the future, I don't have immediate sensory access to it except on rare insightful occasions). But including the past into the "now" is essential for emotional health. No emotion in and of itself is unhealthy, including anger, what makes it unhealthy is unconscious transfering of it from the "back then" into the "now." So consciousness, also known as memory, is essential for emotional health. The opposite of "remember" is not really "forget," it's "dismember." Dismembered (fragmented) consciousness, an outcome of repressed memory, can't generate any healthy emotions at all, whether angry or peaceful, they are invariably "not whole."

Why do you find it amusing, Cameron? As for Tolle's "now," it is so very un-taoist in that it is in denial of both ontogenic and philogenic (i.e. both personal and universal) developmental history having anything to do with this purported "now." And it is precisely the developmental history of processes and their outcomes that is the main concern of all of taoism, and "change" and "timeliness" and the origin of things (wuji to taiji to ten thousand things) are its living breath... so I don't see how one can possibly combine the two, they are so very opposite in their approach. I mean, if you want to go Tolle, you can't go Lao Tzu, who remembers his infancy... and if you want, like Lao Tzu, to "be like an infant," then you have to use a "back then" as your frame of reference rather than a "now." You aren't an infant today after all...

However, for palliative treatment, try TCM's methods of pacifying the Liver (the storehouse of anger) and tonifying whatever organs are too weak to control Liver Fire (usually the Kidneys). TCM is interesting in that it somatizes everything, including the spirit (or, rather, all five Shens). It is not a modality that has invented any talking therapies, support groups, anger-processing meditations, or Angry Taoists Anonymous, for lack of efficiency thereof I suspect (why else the most socially interdependent culture of them all would "miss out" on these?..) Instead it will look at the imbalances from the point of view of spirit-emotion-physicality and correct the problems with spirit and emotions via a physical route... well, they really are one package all of them, anger is quite tangibly physical, while an inflamed Liver is quite emotional, and a good herbal formula, quite spiritual...

And how do you "deal" with joy? Sadness? Grief? Fear? How is anger different? It's different in that it's more forbidden to a child by a parent, and later to a servant by an overlord. Although sadness is usually also forbidden. Most adults grow up extraordinarily angry, only the majority don't know it. Instead of feeling the feeling they have repressed on demand, they start getting "angry" headaches and "angry" rashes and tense, rigid bodies. That's because they never released any of the anger where it rightfully belongs, because they weren't allowed to. If they do release it later, they dump what they've stored up on the innocent party who has nothing to do with what and who has originally generated it, and invariably either on those who are smaller and weaker and somehow dependent (their own children, typically, not their boss, god forbid), or on any innocent bystander in whom they sense or imagine any kind of weakness that they trust will allow their anger to be vented with impunity. In other words, those who never express it somatize it (and get sick from the cumulative toxicity of stress hormones never metabolized properly); those who do express it but too late and out of context don't get any relief either because this allows for no integration, merely regurgitates it instead of processing it, and hands it down to the next generation of angry people. There is no good way to deal with anger other than to stop creating situations and environments that generate it in small children. If there was, people might have stopped murdering each other in unstoppable wars a few thousand years ago. The USA has started 42 armed conflicts in the twentieth century, a record so far. Think mister Tolle can prevent us from breaking the record in the 21st?..

And which of you guys said, "Nothing feels better than human kindness?" Was it you, TwoTrees? I'm still thinking about it...

It's interesting how the pecking instinct gets transmitted once the first beak has been dug in. No, I wasn't asking for a ganging-up effort to set me straight, but apparently I didn't express myself clearly enough, for which I apologize.

I don't know what to tell you, Ian. What I "expected" was to get what I asked for -- for people to share their experience of tackling the situation I described. That's "share experience," not "tell me how." Quite a few did and were quite helpful. Liking Cat is not the greatest rationale for disliking whoever disagrees with her, but that's up to you of course. I don't know either one of you well enough to have an emotional investment. Maybe it will change with time. Most of the things I was talking about had nothing to do with TTB, by the way, so far I think this place is saner than many.

Leidee, exactly! The right way to teach me is to ask me what I want to learn. The right way to learn from me is to ask me what I can teach. The rest is innuendo. By the way, I don't mind "assumptions" that are rooted in reality and common sense at all! E.g., any native Chinese speaker can safely assume he or she knows Chinese far better than I do, and I will never take offense in the fact. Teach away, I acknowledge and respect your superior expertise and would be stupid not to. On the other hand, someone who (Cat, in the last post ) is into Jung assuming that whatever I (the generic I) happen to dislike is invariably a projection of something wrong with me personally -- that it can't possibly be my normal and healthy reaction to something wrong with someone else -- now that's the kind of assumption that is not rooted in reality or common sense. I don't necessarily buy Jung's take or any other authority's take that can be offered to disrupt my position; my position may be rooted in a good grasp of something entirely different that makes more sense to me than does someone else's authority, ideology, or belief system. So... if I don't like something or someone it might, just might be I don't like it or him or her without "projecting" my own imperfections. Of which there's many of course, but why assume I'm made of nothing but as soon as I notice an "external" imperfection?.. I don't like junk food, e.g.. I am a healthy traditional eater, I despise chemicalized stuff in a pretty box or can or wrapper, fad diets, bizarre eating, and vastly prefer to eat what my great-grandparents ate. (Who lived to be close to a hundred years old and died of bullets, not of a disease.) I submit I eat the way I eat because something is "right" with me, not because I'm projecting something that is "wrong." Ditto in interpersonal interactions: there's a chance I don't like stuff that is indeed lousy, and like stuff that is indeed decent -- so why not give me the benefit of the positive assumption?

Teaching through sharing is perfectly fine, and occasionally noble. Far as I'm concerned, there is a right and a wrong way to teach. The "wrong" way I was referring to is to assume, or hint at, a level of accomplishment automatically superior to that of another poster -- without this another poster having implicitly or explicitly asked to be enlightened and guided in the general direction of "the right path." The wrong way to teach is to assume the Dalai Lama has been waiting in limbo till you (a generic you) explain to him that he really should not be attached to the red dust of Tibet; that Mantak Chia needs to consult the Pope of Rome on the issues of sexual expression; that Chen Zhenglei must immediately drop his taiji because you can assure him that there is no opponent; or that Taomeow doesn't know what to do with her emotions unless instructed.

Todd, the belief that acupuncture provides "symptomatic relief" has been promoned by "Western science" which takes an interesting approach to things it can't do and can't begin to understand: colonial approppriation. Western science's stance on authentic non-Western healing modalities is exactly the same as Western civilization's approach to authentic non-Western cultures: they are to be conquered, parts deemed not usable destroyed, parts deemed usable stolen, and the whole ideologically dismissed as "barbaric," "backward," "uncivilized," "inferior," "obsolete" and so on. The popularized appoach to acupuncture, like to all things non-white in their origin, is colonial and racist and that's all there is to it. If it's "symptomatic relief" it's been doing a good job for me -- I haven't used the services of a Western MD in fifteen years, during which time I've grown considerably healthier than I've ever been in my life. For about seven years now, I've been using the services of licensed acupuncturists (making damn sure they aren't former or current MDs trained in acupuncture on the side but, rather, OMDs trained in TCM primarily or exclusively) for anything that ever went wrong with me that I couldn't correct with my own (rather extensive) herbal expertise. Dentists are the last frontier... the day I can take care of any and all dental problems without them, I'll consider myself "arrived." The acupuncturist who treated my tooth was trained by his acupuncturist mother in China, since birth, pretty much, because he was born with severe problems, so he got a bunch of needles stuck in him every day, all his childhood. He told me there's no better way to learn. Because he knew I knew a thing or two taoist, he told me, "I won't treat you the way I treat my American patients, I will treat you the way I treat my Chinese patients. " Which was his way of saying "excruciatingly painfully." He told me I "understand pain" (well, I do) and this understanding is the prerequisite for feeling qi and having control over what it's gonna do. He used the needles both locally for the tooth and elsewhere for another problem (a whole bunch of deficiency symptoms after three unimaginably stressful years). Locally, he stuck the needles in many facial points. He needled the crown point too, and a whole bunch of others on arms and legs on the Liver and Kidneys meridians. He didn't treat any points on the body (which is unusual). As for moxa, I used it on myself, locally, in rapid "pecking" motions and with intense but precise heat so as not to burn my face. I went by the feel -- I could feel the qi breaking through into the nerve, and followed the sensations.

If you can afford it (if you can't, get someone to give it to you as a present the way I did ), get Anatomy Trains: Myofascial Meridians for Manual and Movement Therapists, by Thomas W. Myers. The author of the article you cited contributed to it too. For the scientifically minded with a spiritual twist, it's a gas!

Witch, mind answering a question? Since what age in your childhood do you remember yourself clearly?

I get "irritated" when I wear a scratchy sweater. My emotions and thoughts in response to human interactions are a tad more complex. The non-having of emotional responses is a value in some spiritual systems (the ones I don't buy) and people who have been exposed to them occasionally talk of this modus operandi as the "right" way to be. The ones encountered more often than most are Buddhism or Zen-sprinkled Westerners, "sprinkled" so the outer layer of ideas is there, including the idea of faking eternal calm. In reality, however, neither chronic emotional excesses nor emotional numbness for all purposes are attributes of life. An aware observer of life will notice... Keep teaching a cat to walk on hind legs and see if the cat gets used to it enough to comply without an inner and/or outer protest. Only if you hurt and abuse her into numb compliance! Otherwise, long as she keeps feeling, she will keep feeling it's not right. With teachers who teach me their tricks of choice without having been explicitly asked to, I feel about the same.

Not involuntarily, not spontaneously, not on any regular intervals. No relation to my taoist practice. This is a shamanic practice. A shamanka can partially (or completely) unblock specific (and specifically chosen) genetic memories at will. An out-of-context practitioner of a fragment of something or other can (and more often than not does) accidentally and involuntarily partially unblock random fragments thereof. The first scenario is usually part of an ancient and whole and meaningful tradition and invariably serves a greater purpose than mere curiosity or nothing better to do with one's spare time. The second is a personal disaster that befalls people who practice fragments of traditions they weren't initiated into by a competent master and don't understand. The first scenario is a spiritual practice usually aimed at some sort of communication with specific energies of the inner and/or outer world for the purpose of soliciting their cooperation in an undertaking. The second is a spiritual entanglement in energies of the inner and/or outer world one doesn't understand, can't control, and doesn't know how to "talk to," which most commonly results in a mild, moderate, or severe neurosis, a delusional mindset, busted emotionality and/or emotional numbness (bu ren) and/or uncontrollable unhealthy drives, and occasionally, as a mild, moderate, or severe psychosis. My post was an attempt to warn practitioners of fragments against such practices. A whole somatospiritual tradition is not entirely safe for someone not born into it either, but a whole tradition is invariably much safer to study and practice than a fragment thereof disconnected from a larger personal and universal context. I kid you not.

I regenerated a nerve in a tooth that was X-rayed, tested, and pronounced dead by two dentists and scheduled for a root canal six years ago. Two years ago, it was again X-rayed, tested, and pronounced alive and problem-free. I used TCM -- acupuncture and moxa.

CCO is a sperm's memory of fertilizing the egg... at least it is to someone who believes memory is everything and everything is memory, and... remembers. Practices that trigger out-of-context non-integrated somatosensory memories are invariably dangerous. I can have a CCO anytime I like and the time I like to have it is "never." Much the same way I "never" want to have claws instead of nails and scales instead of skin, even though all of it is available to me because all of it happened in the past and the memory of how to make it happen again is sleeping soundly in my jing... which is not "sperm," contrary to what some of the resident males might believe, but memory -- ontogenic and philogenic memory I inherited from the billions-years-long life lineage that brought me into being, from my parents' DNA, and from my own prenatal development. If I were to choose to unblock any part of this long sequence of memorable events, I would first of all make sure there's a damn good reason I want to do it. I would never, ever do it for the hell of it... Ask any lab chicken in which they unblocked the pterodactyl genes so that it developed teeth instead of a beak how much fun it is to be a monster created for no other reason than just because someone can. CCO is not quite as monstrous, but basically follows the same out-of-sequence memory lane, and doing it "just because we can" -- thanks but no thanks... I practice female taoist sexual alchemy alright, but this, only knowing exactly what it is I'm after, and making sure every step of the way I don't do things "just because I can." My humble, of course.

Um... The Yellow King's inauguration was held on December 23rd, 2698 B.C.., the day of the winter solstice. This is the beginning of the Chinese calendar. Counting from this day, February 4th is the first day of the new Chinese year 4704, while the 18th is the first day of the first lunar month... like I said before, the Chinese system is solar-lunar, aka solilunar, aka lunisolar. Not sure about the spelling, pretty sure about the rest.

The Chinese New Year is a two-week affair. The New Year begins February 4th this year, and the Chinese New Year Day is celebrated on February 18th, 2007. The 18th is the new moon day, and it is the first day of the first Chinese lunar month. The exact new moon time is at 00:14 on 18-Feb-07 in China time zone. If we apply Chinese lunar calendar system to the USA time zones, in the US Pacific Standard Time (PST), the new moon time is at 08:14 of 2-17-07. In the US Eastern Standard Time (EST), the new moon time is at 11:14 of 2-17-07. Therefore, the Chinese New Year day for USA time zones is on February 17th, 2007. The new moon time is at 16:14 on 2-17-07 of Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) and at 17:14 on 2-17-07 of Time Zone GMT+1. That means Chinese New Year day is on February 17th, 2007 for European countries. For Asian countries, such as Vietnam and Thailand using GMT+7 time zone, the Chinese New Year Day is on February 17th, 2007, too.

I'll check it out, thanks. Didn't know Wang Liping was associated with any online activities, I've spoken to only one person who'd met him in person but it was a couple of years ago... What's TTBs? By the way, I can't possibly know about others (how do you like this quote from a gal who used to be Prime Minister: "Stop being humble, you're not that great!" ) -- but I try to make a point of NOT being full of ####, and especially of making no claims whatsoever regarding any "level of attainment" and "stage of sagehood" and "grade of enlightenment" and all that jazz. I am full of awe, more like it, where taoist arts and sciences are concerned... and any growth at all occurs in the opposite direction, i.e. the more I learn and the more I "can," the more I understand how desperately inadequate my skill is... every day I feel less "qualified" than I did the day before... That's because I'm a practitioner, and practice makes frustrated before it makes perfect... assuming it ever does...

Thanks, TwoTrees! Nice! Believe it or not, I've seen scenes like the one I'm using in my avatar in real life, in Bermuda where hundreds (or maybe thousands, who knows, they're everywhere) of feral cats live a free and richly social life. They are un-spayed, un-neutered, un-vaccinated, un-fed commercial crap that has nothing but crap and chemicals in it, and they are completely uninterested in humans but very interested in each other -- they live a tribal life where everybody seems to know everybody and behave very affectionately towards each other. I've seen feline couples in the park, on a stroll, walking side by side, step matching step, shoulders and whiskers touching, ears purred into respectively, tails hugging each other's bodies... They are slender and muscular (not skeletal like the feral cats I've seen in the thirld world countries, and not fat/diabetic/endocrine-compromised like American pets), and are a prime example of a good life and freedom being conductive to love more than suffering and slavery will ever be... but of course I digress...

It is solar-lunar and, most importantly, closely linked with the Five Phases, yin-yang, and the I Ching. Every year, month, day, and hour is connected to a particular type/phase of cosmic and earthly qi, and the particular energy of any given moment is what it is, i.e. the moon, the sun, the stars are in a certain position vis a vis each other and our earth; and this is not arbitrary, it is a fact of reality. The taoist calendar happens to have kept track of this reality, and traces the origin of these energies in the universe to their very unfolding, to the beginning of Hou Tian, Earlier Heaven (aka tao-in-motion), as well as projects them into the future, and therefore knows at any point of time what's up anywhere in the uinverse in terms of the types of qi governing the moment. In other words, energies of the world are not what we want them to be, what we think they are, etc., they are quite real with or without our thinking anything at all about them, for they are a continuity, they have a developmental history that determines what they are today and where they're headed tomorrow. A real New Year is new because some real cosmic cycles have closed themselves and are ready to start over ("the pattern of tao is motion and the pattern of this motion is return," or to put it in my favorite terms, "tao fa ziran.") Random attribution of "new" this and "new" that to things that are not new doesn't make them new -- there's no new moon in the sky when there's no new moon in the sky whether we call this day our "Western" New Year's day or not. Similarly, there's no new Celestial Stem phase of the year on December 31st, and no new Earthly Branch phase. We don't feel it but that's because we've lost our ability to feel subtle energies... unlike our far ancestors... but the calendar that has retained this sensitivity to the subtle energies of the world, the taoist one, knows it's not there yet, it will come come February 4th (this particular year, or a somewhat different day in a different year). So we may be celebrating "something," it's a nice thing to celebrate anything at all... but if we really want to celebrate "the New Year," it's got to be the taoist one, from which the "generically Chinese" one derives all of its wisdom.

Great responses, bums! Thanks. To tackle the last one first: (oops... just saw it's not the last one anymore... great, please keep them coming! -- so, OK, now what I wrote below pertains to the next to last one): Craig, it may be a case of "when a student is ready" in terms of whether one encounters authentic teachers or not, and if yes, "when." I can relate to your experiences, down to a taekwondo background (a modest one but a very useful one in its own time), and the reason today I value lineage, tradition, authenticity above all else is perhaps I've grown enough, in whatever sense, to understand their value... I didn't always! I used to be, like most modern people, into the modern values of "creativity," "expressing one's unique individuality," "originality," things new, things unheard-of, things trendy, things cutting-edge... Ah how laughable I find them today. But an earlier me wouldn't understand the joke. And in any event the joke is on me... What am I, personally, doing at an internet fourm, any internet forum? I have a very good answer but I don't think it will be a popular one. But since you ask... thanks for asking... OK, here goes. I "contract" it the way one contracts a "pernicious influence" in TCM. My primary Wuxing phase is Wood. The internet is of the Fire phase. Wood catches on Fire easily. I don't have enough Water in my chart to avoid it. Fire is not good for me. It's not good for me but it is attracted to me and I, to it, it's a raw energy phenomenon, not even spiritual, just basic, elemental, almost as involuntary as digestion or respiration and, in a sense, even more basic. Wood catches on Fire, that's the nature of its phase, so if there's plenty of Fire in the environment, it will "contract" some, no way around it. Wood surrounded by Fire has to sacrifice a branch here, a branch there, she has no choice. So for me, it is very important to make sure my whole body doesn't get involved in the Fire. The internet is where I throw dry branches, so to speak. A sacrificial pyre... that lets me salvage the bigger, greener branches, the trunk... because I have at least some control over what to let Fire consume when I turn my computer on, and what not to feed it. But this control is limited, and I know my limitations full well. Against the original Wuxing make-up, I have any control at all over exactly 40% of what's going to happen to me, here or anywhere else. So my task is to use it wisely... Working on it.

make it a resonating string why don't we? I am a radical environmentalist, by far farther to the left, right, up, down, east, west, north, south than any Greens -- environmentally I'm a follower of Derrick Jensen's ideas, know him? If you don't may I recommend a book -- he's written several, I've read two, 'tis enough -- the second one that is fresh in my memory is titled Endgame. Moderation ends here... and good riddance too, far as I'm concerned. I don't buy moderate murder of the planet, animals, plants, peoples, feelings, senses, life. I am radically opposed to civilization. ANY civilization. I do have a computer desk under which I presently duck though -- in case stuff people start throwing at me when I say that (as they always do) gets too heavy. Other than that... I'm 5'8" and 135 lb, and have always been since I stopped growing, many moons ago, and will always be if I don't slack at the job of being me. Which I occasionally do, but rectify myself as soon as I catch myself doing it. I don't want to be a random collection of knee-jerk responses to what the world chooses or chances to do to me, I want to put myself together according to my very own specs. I'm an immigrant, have worn many hats, married and had kids early (2 at 21), and never look or behave as wild as I always feel. I feel prehistoric... I don't belong anywhere, but seldom fail to fit in anywhere I choose to. Nostalgia is my modus operandi, but what I miss is not a place but a time, and not a time in this-here life but a time beyond time, or at the very least some 150,000 years ago. I feel it in my blood and miss it every second of every day. I neither look nor act unhappy and much of the time don't feel unhappy either, but my internet incarnations often come across as grossly dissatisfied. This is the tip of the iceberg of me which I hope will sink the Titanic of this ridiculous and cruel world we call "modern" should they ever collide head on. Oh, and I love cats...

and I don't, but that's because I'm the one who was misread, not you, Cat and Michael! Spectrum, with all due respect... I didn't make a peep about taoism's stand on the issue of right or wrong, I said taoism has no prohibitive counterpart of the specific Buddhist and Christian thou shalt/shalt not's I mentioned, and I stand by this assertion. If you know of an authentic (sic) taoist text that is either prescriptive or prohibitive in the same way, do enlighten. The ones I am familiar with are open to interpretation. (Especially the oldest, wisest, and most important one in my book -- the I Ching.) I said, further, that "anything can be used for anything by a practicing taoist." Key word "practicing," and if if this opinion of mine strikes you as "uninformed" I surely object, it is quite well informed, just not shared by you nor elaborated on by me. Well, let me elaborate a bit... hmm, let's take a simple example: in taiji I'm told "use qi, not li," and further, "use yi, not qi." Is it a prohibitive or a prescriptive statement? A commandment? Something that has something to do with "right and wrong" in the moral sense? Nope, it is the outcome of a thorough and competent (on the original taoist masters' part) inquiry into what works, what works why, what works how, what doesn't work, and what works better than what else. Only being informed via practice breathes sense into "taoist" statements, of which mine was one -- oh, trust me, blatantly so. Anything can be used for anything by a practicing taoist. Ah but a practicing taoist will know what to use and what not to use, and when, and how, and why. She doesn't need to be admonished to lead a responsible, aware, etc., life, she will find out soon enough, or eventually, via her practices, that there's a "tao-aligned" and a "tao-misaligned" way to do things (or to not do things, as the case may be). Still there's no prhibitions on my using li if my qi is not up to speed yet, or my using qi if my yi is still weak, or anything at all for anything at all. It's just that it's going to be feckless when up against somenone else's practice that is better tao-aligned, or my own for that matter, down the road. I can cultivate extreme yin, e.g., if I so choose, and use it in my martial practice, or in healing, or in pursuit of grounding and stability, or for anything else I choose to use it for. I can abandon it and cultivate extreme yang, by the same token, if I choose to blow the status quo all to hell. I can, furthermore, explore both extremes and choose balance -- I can, while at it, even believe what I currently believe (to wit, that anyone who doesn't know the extremes can't find balance because where would he or she look for it without knowing what it is exactly that is being balanced and where exactly the application of the balancing weight should fall, or whence should it be removed?..) And so on... That's what I meant, roughly. This may constitute an opinion different from yours, but "uninformed..." ...nah, not really.