Taomeow

"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently." -- Friedrich Nietzsche

Or a tulpa? "Tulpa is a concept in mysticism and the paranormal of a being or object which is created through spiritual or mental powers. It was adapted by 20th-century theosophists from Tibetan sprul-pa (Tibetan: སྤྲུལ་པ་, Wylie: sprulpa) which means "emanation" or "manifestation".

Indeed. In the beginning it was too wild for me -- I think over a year had elapsed between the time I joined and the time I revisited it next. I remember reading something authored by, who else but ron jeremy (all caps of course in every post) that shocked the hell out of me. About what was presented as a hilarious prank that today would probably get him quite deservedly arrested (if caught) for harassment, assault and bodily harm. Something that involved womens' bathrooms and pepper spray. The boys hooted their happy approval -- serves those bitches right for being women. I didn't think I'd ever feel like discussing anything taoism or not related in that bathroom on that forum and clicked on the bookmark just accidentally a year or so later. No more all-caps. So I started reading. Still smelled of boys' bathroom here and there, and of laudanum elsewhere, but I also caught a whiff of something else and followed my nose. What we have today is not the end result either, just a phase... I hope. I hope the organism survives and doesn't mutate into something entirely unrecognizable. Although who knows.

That must be why 1/3 of all hymns in the Vedas are ecstatic praises of ganja. While I never used it either recreationally or in conjunction with cultivation, I did use it medicinally during a period of recovery from an eye problem. It shines in this capacity, nothing else comes close. The OP asked specifically about relaxing the eyes. To scare him away, with warning originating in the "war on drugs" unleashed by the pharma (with whose many blessings it competes too successfully in too many cases), the prison complex (for profit) and the general control impulses toward Big Brother deciding for everyone what they can and cannot do with their bodies is, to my mind, unwarranted. Going back to the OP question: palming is a form of qigong. It was introduced to the West as part of the Bates method for eyesight improvement, but it originates with a qigong practice of that type (albeit a bit more sophisticated in the original). It is also very very efficient if practiced diligently.

Gordian knot solution

"There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. All the rest — whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mind has nine or twelve categories — comes afterwards. These are games; one must first answer. And if it is true, as Nietzsche claims, that a philosopher, to deserve our respect, must preach by example, you can appreciate the importance of that reply, for it will precede the definitive act. These are facts the heart can feel; yet they call for careful study before they become clear to the intellect." -- Albert Camus

You are thinking entomology. ST is talking etymology.

I know exactly what you're talking about. Spent four years forty years later fixing that, to the extent possible, and it involved reliving every detail (and making up none, incidentally, unlike in all those "rebirthing" etc. scams.) (Don't ask, that ship has sailed, I'm not advertising that cruise.)

Black and white flip into each other when they reach extremes, according to the taoist yin-yang theory. Extreme yin turns into yang, and extreme yang turns into yin. Saying that they are not dialectic opposites (and by the same token co-creating partners) based on this behavioral peculiarity leaves out a whole gamut of their other behaviors which prove they are. They are -- and this doesn't contradict the premise (nor the empirical observations of this one behavior of theirs) that they turn into each other on a spectrum -- or rather at the outer extremes of any yin-yang phenomenon, which is to say, of any phenomenon. Once extreme yang turns into yin, it can only be yin in comparison to something that is less yin, more yang. They can't exist without each other, nothing is yang by itself and nothing is yin by itself. (Despite some buddhist-influenced schools of taoism obsessing over "pure yang," a theoretical as well as an empirical impossibility to the original ones. )

/\ that torus is a fine example, for me, of how I occasionally fall bass ackwards into science -- i.e. I feel "something" and then start looking for "who was able to put it into words and/or formulas. " In this case, Nassim Haramein, and before him, a whole school of "heretical physics" proposed by some Russian physicists in the 1980s and dealing with "torsion fields."

Yup. The one and only, to some empirical taoists. Everything else is related -- opening and closing, inward and outward, upward and downward, in-breath and out-breath, ultimately yin and yang. The foundational energies of the world. Have you ever seen Wang Liping's anti-covid routine that was posted on this site a while ago? It's one of those that involve simultaneous expansion and contraction.

Some emotions. But if you were ever to nurse a baby you'd know empirically that the original emotion humans are born with is the opposite. No baby could survive if all emotions were all about pushing away. The two primary energies life is hinged on are seeking and avoidance. Not avoidance and avoidance.

I know. The English word "emotion" is not derived from the PIE root directly though. It is derived from the Latin word and inherited its meaning. Digging for the PIE roots is fascinating but you have to allow for the branching out of the derivational tree far and wide. In PIE, "blaku" means "white," but it branched out into English to mean "black," and you can't say that "white means black based on its PIE root." Not today anyway.

The etymology of the word is not "pushing away" -- it's ex+mōtus, "drawing out," "externalizing," "aiming outward" or "outward bound movement." (A partial synonym, in terms of the pattern of energy motion, is "expression" -- pressure toward outward manifestation.) This is what "emotion" is in terms of the energies of the world. It is your energy's response to the energies of the world, an interaction between your energies and the energies of the world, the energetic you "going outward," toward this interaction. And of course there's separation (co-creation) between you (or me) and the world, but "emotions" do not push one away from the other (whether another individual or the world)-- rather, they create an energy bridge between one and the other. That bridge is the way indeed.

Yeah, that emoji might laugh all it wants but I'm still distressing the hell out of a leather jacket, making spears and steampunk jewelry and breaking in a pair of military boots. And I haven't even seen Mad Max.

Found in a church bathroom

"Mad Max" was set in 2021.

Above the tall pines an emerald hummingbird, strung on heaven's strings.

Deep bow. Your perceptiveness never ceases to amaze me. It was in my PPD notes, that story, I found it in the "hidden" part -- wow, that was written in 2010! How Time flies, on the wings of, in this case, a different kind of birds... Here's an excerpt (it was about downsizing my altar): Of course I miss all the space I had on the altar table, so I had to get rid of some of my favorite magical toys -- quartz crystals and Peruvian rattles and the large incense burner and the sword, the sword! -- I'm not getting rid of the main tool, obviously, but I can't keep it across the altar table anymore, for lack of the latter, so I had to go back to my notes and find an alternative procedure to protect the space. I came up with the Stone Warriors. You go somewhere natural, the mountains (no such thing close by) or the ocean beach (well, that's easy enough) and look for four identical stones of the shape and size that appeals to you. You explain to them why you want to take them and what for. You take them, you write talismans on them, you consecrate them, and then you release their Stone Warrior spirits to guard your work. You place them at the four directions and then activate them for the ritual. So off to the beach I went. Parked the car, mentally announced my intent to the resident stones, got out -- and magic started as soon as I stepped onto a little hill with a flat top strewn with pebbles. Two dozen or so seagulls and pigeons alighted from somewhere nearby and immediately landed, arranging themselves in a perfect circle around me, about 15 feet in diameter. Shoulder to shoulder, wing to folded wing, they sat, all turned toward me, all looking at me, all motionless. I turned around this way and that way... a perfect circle of birds, half of them seagulls, half of them pigeons. So in stillness they sat, and in stillness I stood for a few minutes. Then I said to them, thank you for showing me the right place to look for my stones. Much obliged. They shouted something back and took off -- all at once -- and were gone. Encouraged, I started looking for the stones to recruit within the circle the birds had marked for me. It was sunny and bright and breezy, the ocean was a deep, dark winter blue, and the place was mundane and not, I went swimming there in summer and I ate my Mexican fast food there for lunch and I also saw a UFO there and had a date with a Native American chief there (we remained friends) and was given the gift of a large beautiful abalone shell by the ocean and also something mystical that may or may not be a Pearl, a Pill, something mystical... and I got my Stone Warriors from that place which is ordinary and extraordinary at once, so that they know how to handle both. I am very happy with my choice. Now I need to practice the talismanic writing before actually transferring it to the stones. And that's what I'm going to do.

I feel totally in between something and something. Out with the old, out with the new. The border between the things I feel are gone forever and the things to be gone soon is a strange place to be, but I've a hunch it is going to get pretty densely populated eventually. For now, it's not exactly a desert and not exactly a picnic. In between.

Never breakfast

Here's what the top three lines of the global counter of the leading causes of death look like today: 1.Suicide 2.Covid-19 3.Malaria This is pretty shocking, considering that the first two lines have never been in the leading position before in all of human history.