Taomeow

A very prevalent category of people I've encountered is the third kind. People who believe they are enlightened until they stub their toe, whereupon they immediately flush their enlightenment down the toilet and revert to taking life seriously. And then there's the fourth category, people who only believe in enlightenment in the classical taoist sense (later borrowed by a popular Buddhist preacher who used this concept as a building block in the foundation of Zen) -- a leap across the abyss where you either land on the other side or not, either get enlightened or get screwed, and if you get enlightened it is instantaneous and permanent and you don't use the internet anymore. Life, in the meantime, as unenlightened as it may seem to anyone who can't see the light for whatever reasons, or to anyone who can for that matter, is only worth living when taken seriously. If it is not taken seriously, if it's a play, a game, a make-believe, you are no longer human, you may be pure oneness but pure oneness pays no bills and makes no babies and wipes not their tears when they cry, and is therefore not worth considering as a factor that can make or break the wholeness of a human life. Oh, and that stubbed toe -- it is either whole or broken, and it matters much more than whether the universe is whole -- yes, it is, universally speaking, but we are concerned with local developments for a damn good reason. Things that are whole are available for perception only to themselves. No fragment of a broken cup can be used as a cup, nor claim it IS the cup. It is what it is: a fragment of something broken. Knowing it is not enlightenment, but a good start, far as I'm concerned.

Glad to hear it, Cloud Recluse! Here's one of the stories the ayahuasquero told me about one way ayahuaska is used by the tribe he's been in contact with. In the third month of pregnancy, they start giving it to the future mother and her husband. The purpose is to enable them to hear the baby's unique song, the song of a new life. When they hear it, they learn to sing it. Then they teach it to the whole tribe, whose all members proceed to rehearse it to perfection. When the baby is born, they give her some ayahuaska and the parents and the whole tribe sing the baby's very own personal life song to her. This way the unbreakable bonds are formed right from the start, the baby knows that everybody knows and understands her, and so no one needs to be admonished to "love thy neighbor," this love is imprinted systemically and is as natural as breathing. It is a rite of acceptance and respect for the new and unique human being on the block. To compare, when a baby is born in our culture, she gets eighteen shots of dead bugs laced with mercury and a bunch of designer petrochemicals into the blood stream. Quite a rite in its own right, don't you think?..

I was doing them regularly for a while, and still do them occasionally. The most noticeable long term effects are pliability and softness -- and with regular practice, a "boneless" feel to the body. This part may indeed be Russian, Yoda, if we're talking sturgeon and similar Russian prehistoric monsters with flexible cartilage for backbone, of which I am one.

The best meditations for me are the difficult kind. For starters, I sit in the full lotus pose for "the real thing." I avoid meditations that ignore the body. I seek to feel transformed by meditation, not "relaxed." I have discovered experientially that transformation in meditation is contingent on breaking through a difficult obstacle, just like transformation through birth, a shamanic "quest," or (probably) death. I've meditated "the relaxed way" this way and that way for many years, only to discover in a bad crunch that none of these techniques could make a dent in my predicament. So I proceeded to seek out and practice the difficult kinds, the tempering, transforming kinds. These I found to have life-saving power in a real-life crisis. I'm a pragmatist and meditation for the hell of it doesn't interest me; I'm after meditation the tool, the usable tool of shaping myself the way I want to shape myself... a tool that can work exactly as planned... and then... ...and then blast through all my pre-transformation self's plans and surprise and shock it by morphing me into something entirely else.

Thank you! OK, let's see... in no particular order: Taijiquan (Chen style) Qigong Female internal alchemy External alchemy TCM Classical feng shui (Xuan Kong, form/compass, Flying Stars, etc.) Chinese astrology Calligraphy and Rapid Ink painting Talismanic sorcery I Ching divination Assorted odds and end towards cultivation of the Triple Treasure of perfection, nondecay, immortality Some of these I'll be happy to discuss, while others are on hold, either because I'm out of practice, too much of a beginner, too much of an expert, or sworn to secrecy. Thanks for asking!

I used to be with it, but then they changed what it was. Now what I'm with is not it, and what's it seems strange and scary to me. -- Grandpa Simpson I loved you for your body, there's a voice that sounds like God to me declaring that your body's really you. -- Leonard Cohen Ong namo gurudev namo (I bow before my higher self) -- a Hindu chant It's not hard to wrong a cat but there's no honor in that, I can assure you. That's right, none whatsoever! -- Mikhail Bulgakov

Cloud Recluse, have you tried iboga? I researched it quite a bit but I'm not aware of it being available outside West Congo. Ibogaine, its derivative, used to be administered by a guy in Staten Island in a psychotherapeutic setting, but the FDA kicked him out eventually. In Venesuela, there's a clinic that offers it, but the price is more than steep. As for ayahuaska, I know a guy who has a South American shaman fly in once a year and hold a session with a bunch of local ayahuasqueros. They've been doing it for close to two decades I think. He asserts it is not for unsupervised experimenting, a shaman has to be there and control the energy lest it run away in all the undesirable places. I tend to agree that sacred plants cannot be beneficial when used in non-sacred ways. I've met too many people who have mushroom soup for brains to believe that "recreational" use of consciousness serves any useful purpose. It is my impression that modern urbanites experimenting with these potions bear every resemblance to a neolithic man experimenting with computer use... What is missing in both cases is the first idea of what the whole culture of which this one item is an integral part is all about.

Why taijiquan? Because I couldn't heal anyone with taekwondo and couldn't kill anyone with yoga.