Taomeow

Take that, flat earthers!! Now you've got your ultimate proof that the earth is a globe!

@voidisyinyang Thank you for the recommendations, but I've got my hands full with Nassim Haramein (that is, when I'm actually looking in the direction of cool heresies in western sciences, something that doesn't happen often -- that Elvis has left the building for me quite a while ago.) So, I can't promise I'll dedicate much time to finding out what western sciences have decided about taoist arts in the last five minutes I wasn't looking. In another five minutes it will change anyway. I don't think taiji "is" or "is not" a fractal since I'm yet to find a natural phenomenon or an art based on same that is "not" a fractal. But we've been looking at different parts of that elephant.

I remember that book. I believe "the secret of neigong" Western sciences are not unified enough (nor advanced enough) to crack at this point. "Translating" those concepts into Western terms is merely a matter of prestige -- some eastern masters want to be taken seriously in the context of Western sciences, the vogue of the day, so every time something "rings a bell" they are happy like Pavlovian dogs, the bell means dinner, or at least someone scratching them behind the ear. I believe, however, that Western sciences have a way to go before they can tackle live phenomena (whose complexity is exponentially greater than that of mechanical ones) and would have to start on that journey by reversing its direction. And that if they want to tackle things like neigong (which they usually don't) on their own terms, they would have to advance quite a bit farther in that different direction in biophysics, chaos, fractals and power laws (applicable to, but not entirely encompassed by, noncommutative geometry and physics).

I think so too. And this cry for sanity was bound to fall on deaf ears. Which is one reason I look as far back to what remains of pre-Laozi taoism (Fuxi and the shaman Yu the great, e.g., and "folk" taoism and the I Ching minus the Wings) as I possibly can, and prefer taijiquan and meditation and using a luopan and experimenting with herbal formulas to talking "about," and ancient diagrams to texts written "around" them. We all do what we can based on how we understand the subject matter. My understanding is based on a pretty much visceral "knowing" of a wrong turn taken long before Laozi. But it's not in my power to skip over millennia of BS in one fell swoop -- it is in my power though to seek out and try to access, in myself, what went before all the BS -- it's still there, amazingly enough, I wasn't launched from Mars (at least I hope I wasn't.) It is in my power to choose the general direction of where I want to go with it. Yeah, I mentioned "watch TV instead" in the spirit of the tongue in cheek. I haven't had cable in over 20 years. I know this paradox, and practice because... well, there's no "bothersome" reason why. Because too many of who I don't like don't practice anything or else practice something else. Far as Tibet is concerned, I prefer pre-Buddhist non-Buddhism, aka Bön. My very first exposure to the Eastern thought that made a dent was Dzogchen, but my Dzogchen teacher mentioned tao at one point and the rest is personal history. I can't say I found or didn't find what I seek. There's another paradox for you. I had a similar discussion once with a locally prominent classical Chinese medicine doctor in China, a Longmen taoist, who was of the opinion that there's no clear distinction between "natural" and "unnatural" but was professionally and "taoistically" more interested in finding out where the distinction between "human" and "not human" lies. He had encountered cases, e.g., where a patient was born with large parts of the spinal vertebrae missing, or without a brain, and lived. Not the way one would expect a human being to live though. So "human" was of much interest to him as a spectrum. To me it also is... Yes, we are using our computers to get to the closest possible approximation of belonging to a tribe, of being tribally connected we can muster without actually belonging to a physical tribe (which is what I find even more impossible to recreate by just unplugging -- no, it's not the humanless desert that's missing from the life of a tribal creature gone civilized/modern, it's the real human connectedness... and this-here computer is not the "next best thing" by any stretch of imagination but it's the "only" thing practically available. Better than nothing doesn't mean "good" or "normal" to me, but it means what it means.) Basically, I don't worry about tao, she'll be fine regardless of what we do to ourselves (or allow the unmentionables to do to us, as the case may be). I worry about the tao in the human world. About being "not fully human" without necessarily being something "better" or "next" or "realized." Just not human enough. That's the problem I have with modernity, and with any which system that doesn't see it as a problem.

Yes, I, too, know more than one kind of taoism, but methinks the kind that's full of pyramids is a hybridized product of either cross-pollination with buddhism or an involuntary competition with it. Modeling it on the imperial system was the outcome of the imperial system itself, for many, many dynasties, favoring buddhism over taoism -- not just in their hearts but primarily in their taxation policies and outright assaults on the original taoism, accompanied by several waves of cultural revolution style destruction of all but a handful of its original vast scientific and spiritual legacy -- yes, the cultural revolution was a very traditional endeavor in Chinese history, nothing unprecedented there -- while punishing possession of those books by death for generations (allowing only for a few notable exceptions some of which are what we know today as "traditional Chinese medicine"). Which is why I am always after "that other" taoism, the "before buddhism" kind, hard to find, finding me on occasion, and proto-taoism that is harder to find but definitely closer to what the rain forest is like than to what pyramids are like. "Not closer to the Dao?" If nothing is closer than anything else nor farther away, why bother? I am forced to operate under the assumption of the holy sages that "in the human world, tao has been destroyed." I know it's not "positive thinking." But that's the only kind that makes any cultivation make any sense at all. Seriously... If everything in the human world is perfect tao as it is, might as well watch me some TV. Butter me on both sides and call me a biscuit. The rain forest was not created by the destruction of tao in the human world. Pyramids were.

He was one of the first authors I encountered, very early in the game, and it's true that it's from a "nearly-bygone era" of very limited availability of things taoist to a westerner. Those were the days of looking for "where do I go with this taoist spell I fell under" -- I never went with any of his practices or took any of his stories to heart -- yet the idea that western systems are, without a single exception, upward-bound (toward Light, Sun, Father in Heaven, Paradize, pyramids, the head trips, hierarchy, patriarchy, yang, massively consuming... all expressions of Fire) while taoism is downward-bound (the way Water flows, down to Mother Earth, Dark, the womb, LDT, soil under your feet, toward earthly Life rather than heavenly afterlife, path of least resistance, non-hierarchical values, matriarchy, yin, massively nourishing... all expressions of Water) did ring true. So true in fact that to this day this is the first thing I notice about any phenomenon on autopilot, a primary diagnostic tool of sorts -- upward-Fire or downward-Water, pyramid (scam) or evenly spreading out (the life-generating ocean... and Amazonia, incidentally, looks like an immense and very even green ocean when you look down at it from a plane -- and is very wet. Nothing sticking out. No pyramid shapes. Even and wavy like Water.) Of course this is just a very rough and raw take -- there's indeed thousands of techniques, but the goal, the vector, the where they are headed (there's that word again) and spearheaded (and again) -- that's quite noticeable from the get-go no matter what technique you're looking at. And of course if you go deeper into taoist practices, there's Fire within Water and Water within Fire, there's that. And if you go wider, there's also Wood, Metal and Earth, each of them containing all five. And wider still, there's Thunder and the amazing and terrifying techniques of Thunder magic, there's Lake which is a different kind of Water altogether, there's the dangerous Water abyss of the I Ching, and the rest of them ten thousand things. So, of course, the Water-Fire dichotomy is a pre-K distinction. Nevertheless, I believe it's still important to notice. I don't think BKF invented it. I think he interpreted and sort of grokked something he learned, and it's not any one method or source, anymore than the Catholic Jesus or Presbytarian or Greek Orthodox or Mormon are "the source of Jesus" -- but if it's about Jesus, it's Christianity, and if it's Water-like in its overall scope of values and vectors, it's taoism. So, cut the man some slack. I don't think he was wrong on this one at all. I think he was mighty insightful even if he's wrong (or worse) about everything else. Even a broken clock shows the right time twice a day.

@freeform Thanks for your elucidations. Why "trying?" I'm disagreeing. Specifically with this statement (made to someone else in the conversation) and this one These and a few other things that I tried to explain why I disagree with (also not getting too technical). Ting and sung outside an internal MA also got me scratching my head, since these are proprietary taiji concepts and phenomena, and I can't quite imagine how they can be put to the test of reality without, well, putting them to the test of reality. I've met, at various taiji gatherings, workshops, camps, etc., many folks (too many) with a silver tongue singing sung and ting and what not, one of them even writes books on these subjects and is very prolific. The problem is, you touch hands with them and they have nothing. Not in the "good" sense of "nothingness." And I've never, ever touched anyone who was sung who was not an internal MA practitioner, and encountered someone who was ting without such specific cultivation only under very specific different conditions (some people are born with it and it's not unlike kundalini in that you have great trouble reigning it in, it's too much if you don't know how... so, anyone spontaneously ting and with no skill developed to handle it is usually in a whole lot of trouble and possibly autistic.) So, I also objected to speculations about these skills outside the practice they are derived from and are part and parcel of. I may be wrong of course. Haven't been shown how by real life yet, but anything is possible, of course. Theoretically. But to talk about them like you do in some contrast to neijia phenomena, skills, and methods used -- well, that sort of weirded me out. And if I say neijia uses this type of breathing and you say this type of breathing is a sign of "defilement..." ... Nope. Longmen, part of the morning altar recitations of the school's scriptures.

Cool dream. Just a couple of days ago I was reading an article about a scientific discovery that showed once again (to those with eyes to see) how right the classical taoist take is on the human subtle physiology. What researchers at Columbia U discovered is that it is not the adrenals but the bones that initiate the hormonal signaling underlying our response to danger, by releasing the hormone osteocalcin which initiates a whole cascade of functions. This "in the bone" response precedes, optimizes, backs up and can even replace the adrenal response. Quoting from the article: "...these findings suggest we need a radical re-think of the role of bones, which have previously been viewed as mostly inert structures (...). They may have evolved to protect us from acute danger by activating the flight-or-fight response, optimizing muscle function, providing the structural framework needed for our bodies to move and escape, and forming a protective cage around our organs."

In the shamanic traditions, the pretty much universal notion of "loss of soul" is not an accusation -- it's a diagnosis, very common, of a post-traumatic condition in which the soul shattered from some blow or a series of blows, fragmented, and parts of it (or, rarely, all of it) fled, usually trying to escape from fear or pain. More often than not this happens in early childhood, sometimes under extreme conditions in adulthood. The resulting person is incomplete to varying extents -- parts of the soul may have fled to the Upper or Lower world, and depending on the size and nature of those missing parts, there will be varying extents of dysfunction. It can be emotional (most common), psychological, intellectual, or all of the above. Sometimes the remaining parts of the soul will also be hypertrophied to compensate for the ones missing (e.g., overdeveloped intellect in an emotionally stunted person, or exaggerated emotionality in an intellectually deficient one.) The diagnosis is usually followed by a treatment -- "soul retrieval." No one is qualified to make this diagnosis who is not a practicing shaman. Someone with a bit of shamanic knowledge can, however, suspect the condition even before a full-blown diagnostic journey is undertaken. Some cases (e.g. manifesting as PTSD+violence+addiction+unfeeling numbness, or sociopathy+manipulativeness+nonstop staging of drama, etc.) are so "textbook" that it's like a psychiatrist looking at catatonic stupor and muttering "schizophrenia" -- too obvious to not know what that is. Most cases are not too obvious though. And sometimes people who have suffered loss of soul project the condition onto others -- i.e. they can't feel their own soul, consequently can't feel the souls in others, and assume that's because others don't have it.

You may be ready to move on to the next level. An ophthalmologist taught me to sneeze with my mouth open. He asserted it prevents a potentially harmful sneezing-induced sudden spike of intraocular pressure. If you sneeze with your mouth closed, the pressure is diverted to the eyes where it doesn't belong. (Keeping your mouth open while sneezing seems to be yet another natural thing suppressed by the civilized custom to reduce, minimize or conceal any physiological functions from others out of what we call politeness, and what is really an avoidance of too-obvious signs of aliveness. Expressing aliveness without mandatory inhibitions on its permissible range is something we commonly perceive as disturbing.) The first time I tried it, I scared myself and everybody around -- turns out the real sound of the sneeze is waaaay louder than when you prevent your mouth from turning into a resonating chamber by keeping it closed. But once you try this, there's no going back. Too liberating and enjoyable. I hope it doesn't count as more weird things than one per post (which is what the OP asked for) if I add to the weirdness of my sneezing protocols while at it. I sneeze from cold air or any type of draft blowing on the lower part of my legs, right above the ankle, unless they're protected with some type of clothes. Which is why in the season of socks I never wear the no-sock socks. And I never sneeze once. Only in series of 3, 6 or 9.

I believe all Indo-European systems use the idea of "sin" though not necessarily the word. Some call it "desires and attachments" -- and those are not compliments in these systems. I agree that "some" minds are "not me" and (sadly) even the majority today. For me it was a shocking early discovery in my body-inclusive therapy, and I remember ending one session with not so much intellectual or even emotional as physiological, visceral rejection of the part of my mind I discovered to be "not me." "I don't want his stuff in my head," I proclaimed, in great despair, much like someone would perceive a discovery of a microchip implant and learning that everything she thought was her thought process, beliefs, ideas, attitudes was programmed -- and carelessly and sloppily at that -- by whoever installed the chip. It physically felt like massive Gothic shaped sharp, hostile, overwhelming cathedrals of an alien faith erected all over my mind -- since birth. Interestingly, realizing that they are not yours sometimes turns them to dust on the spot, sometimes you need to work to identify and dismantle them -- but the best part of the process (which can be, and was, very painful) is that underneath all that "alien civilization" in your mind, you might discover the real mind that is yours. The real me. Just me. And that's something that feels amazing -- and enough. So, I don't think "defilement" is accurate, on top of having unpleasant connotations of one being "unclean" -- some of those alien civilizations are very clean and tidy and orderly and shiny and pretty and PC and following all the "right thoughts right words" guidelines too. The only problem being, they are still alien. They are still not you. Not the real you, not the real mind that's yours. They are something that sits on top and stifles your "real me" and replaces it for all practical purposes. Like a possession. Like a demon with a thousand heads. And they can be nice looking heads, reputable, sanctioned by a whole culture of many centuries. And still they are alien demons who devour the real you. So the other problem with "defilement" is, it's absolutely lame, inadequate, to describe what's happened to us. It creates this image of something reasonably clean but with a few unsightly spots on it (that you may or may not be guilty of having introduced by carelessly soiling something in your system). Whereas what we're typically dealing with is a whole massive, monolithic alien invasion. One needs to be prepared to encounter the kind of difficulties in fighting against that which should not be mistaken for a laundry day. Too many are disappointed when they expect a quickie-mart enlightenment and get a lousy "I've been washed clean of my sins, desires and attachments" T-shirt to wear instead. To be prepared to fight a heroic battle like a warrior is closer to the right approach methinks. But then, it's "just me."

Are you sure? I'm not a theorist. I'm a practicing taoist and I practice what my teachers (martial and alchemical) tell me to, because I've been at it for quite a while and learned to trust them. Do you know both neijia and neidan? Which schools, systems, styles specifically? What's your system's source? What are "defilements" -- do you mean what I would mean (though I would use a very different term) when thinking of those impediments to a smooth flow of unentangled qi, or something else? (I could elaborate on what I would mean, and I would use the term "traumatic developmental history," not "defilements" -- can you elaborate on what you mean?) Also, which "spirit" are you aiming to transform with breath? How would it work on Danzhu spirit of the mouth, Zhenglun spirit of the tongue, Luoqian spirit of the teeth, Huben spirit of the throat? And what about the internal gods? Will they cooperate or block your effort? And what would you undertake to secure their cooperation? Taoism is not "wei wu wei." Wei wu wei is part of its conceptual framework and empirical participation (or non-participation, however you look at it) but the great mother nurtures her infant deliberately. It's a choice of action or non-action, and both can be spontaneous or deliberate, and either can have a spontaneous or deliberate action or non-action as its alternative, it's not that one is "wei wu wei" and the other "not wei wu wei." If only because you can't quite tell, without actually having been there, which one is wei wu wei and which one isn't. The great mother, just like her lesser incarnation, can walk away from the baby's pleas for nourishment (loud and disturbing to her peace) in perfect wei wu wei and let it starve and die. A cat of mine made a deliberate decision when her six kittens were born -- "I can support five." She dragged the sixth in my bed repeatedly, dumped it there and went to be an exemplary mother to the other five. "This one is yours, you take care of it. I can support five." Wei wu wei or not?.. I overruled her and made her take care of six, by dragging the kitten back to her every single time. Wei wu wei or not?.. That kitten is now my cat of nine years. Meow. To nurse a baby or not is a decision and a rather deliberate one and simultaneously a rather spontaneous one -- just "going with the (whatever) flow" doesn't begin to cut it. But it may be one of those "you have to have been there" jokes. (I've been there -- and not only with kittens. )

You mean you can move one ear separately from the other? I can move my ears fine, but both of them together.

But a neijia practitioner will disagree. Especially in a non-cooperative tuishou encounter with another neijia practitioner. You'll be out of breath and panting in a minute. The test of having mastered your breath is administered by stress. If you are always in charge of it for as long as no one and nothing challenges your "quiet, deep, at ease, slow and cotton," and lose this control as soon as you are under pressure, you (the generic you, not you personally) are like most meditators who are masters of control in meditation and of nothing outside meditation. To find out if you are really in control of your breath, you need to put it to the stress test. There's two major kinds of breath -- the way you breathe in ideal circumstances and the way you breathe in extreme circumstances. Everything else is secondary. And breath that does not know the full exhalation with pause cannot serve in extreme circumstances. It does not know where the extreme is. If someone punches you in the stomach, you don't absorb -- you return. Try returning without a breath pause. (Real-life exercise from my training.) Ting is a skill of listening to yourself and other.

In one of my favorite novels, one of the main protagonists, Pontius Pilate, hated the smell of the rose oil more than anything in the world. It gave him horrible migraines. Jesus cured him. Have you tried prayer for your lavender condition?

There's many different kinds of breathing that are used for different purposes. The breathing with a pause at exhale is fully legit for some practices -- especially neigong, neijing and neidan. The Chinese character for "exhale" comes from an older pictogram that shows a heart leaning against a tree trunk, literal meaning -- "pause, stop and rest your heart." At the exhalation, let your heart lean against that pause, settle before moving on. In a sitting meditation, circular breathing is fine -- you don't get tired sitting doing nothing , so you may not need to rest your heart in between breaths. Whereas toward certain goals of cultivation that involve "doing something," taoists might use some super funky breathing techniques. But that's usually for later. Beginners might do better not controlling their breath at all, but of course it depends on what the teacher tells you to do.

We're missing the "wow" emoji. We need it.

Once, a long time ago, in the Port Authority bus terminal in NYC, I yelled at an American senator, who is also a former gold medalist of an Olympic basketball team and a current corporate director of Starbucks, "get the fuck away from me, you creep," and pushed him out of my way. I didn't actually hate his politics, on the contrary, I owed him (long story.) But that day, he was hanging out at the terminal on the very eve of the elections in order to shake commuters' hands as they were passing by. Bad idea. The lighting in those walkways leading to NJ Transit buses was abysmal. He intercepted me and my co-worker, who were rushing to catch our bus, amidst ominous shadows -- we were, as always, in a hurry and practically running. So all that registered in my narrowly focused field of vision was this huge gorilla-like shape suddenly jumping out at me from the shadows without a warning, arms spread wide as though to force an embrace on me or to swat me like a fly, blocking my way. I pushed, swerved, yelled what I cited above, and increased my speed. I was surprised to find my co-worker was not following suit and instead stopped to interact with the gorilla. Apologizing for me, as it turned out. She did recognize him. In hind sight -- now that Starbucks has become what it has become, I think I ought to have punched him too.

Yes, they do seem a bit too high. And yet, many indigenous tribes like them like that. And apparently their necks don't suffer. There may be other factors involved as well. In any event, so many Western style sleepers develop double chins (older people almost invariably) and sleep apnea, and so few people who sleep on "something weird" elsewhere, that one may have something to do with the other. A soft pillow that sags under your head and offers no support to the neck and the jaw, so that your neck sort of swallows your chin when you lie down, might be at least partially to blame. Part of the secret may be that bodies not using our chairs for sitting (to name one lifestyle peculiarity out of many) work differently -- these pillows also double up as stools:

Thanks, interesting article. Didn't know about the bamboo pillows with "ventilation," looks like a a good idea for sleeping somewhere hot and humid without the air conditioner. I used to have a ceramic pillow exactly like this one: I tried sleeping on it but it was too high and too cold. So I just kept it on a shelf as decoration -- but my cat wanted that spot on the shelf for himself and threw it off and broke it. He normally doesn't do things like that. Probably perceived the ceramic cat as a rival of some sort. After much experimenting, I made a pillow for myself stuffed with buckwheat hulls, customized to the specific head/neck/shoulder distances, sizes and relationships that are mine alone. I believe a perfect pillow has to be as individually made to size as one's underwear or shoes. Mine is actually two pillows, one for the neck and one for the top of the head. Both are small, sausage shaped, firm but not hard, and perfect. A perfect pillow for me didn't exist until I invented it.

Started watching on your recommendation. Damn, this takes me back... Everything is possible in Amazonia. Raw forces of creation and destruction are visible and palpable there. A few twists of the plot rang very true -- e.g. a white man taking the lead in a tribal setting, using all the knowledge from his own warlike civilization which the locals don't possess and skillfully provoking a war between indigenous tribes reminded me of a story I've read in a book by a tribal shaman turned Christian. A prominent "anthropologist" who personally told him the story wanted to see how the indigenous people go to war, out of "purely scientific" interest. So he kidnapped the son of a tribal leader, killed him, cut off his head and mounted it on a tree, then supplied some artifacts around the site as "clues" that pointed to another tribe. He succeeded in his scientific pursuit -- this provoked a massacre. The appearance of the Nazis in the last episode I've watched so far also dovetails with what I know from completely unrelated sources. A guy I knew who is, generally, trouble wherever he goes got arrested in Ecuador a couple of years ago, somewhere far from the cities, and spent two or three weeks in a provincial prison. The documents related to the arrest were typed on a mechanical typewriter and stamped on every page with old-fashioned ink stamps bearing the insignia of the Third Reich. He made a huge stink about it and his lawyer promptly accomplished his release. He said he isn't even sure his jailers are literate enough to know what it is they're using on their documents -- just some procedure they learned once and keep following, they aren't big on innovation. Mind-boggling.

Here it is -- everything below is a quote from that conversation, written in response to me, not by me (not my circus, not my monkeys ) (quote) The way China does things is always questionable. The cages you saw in the clip was all for fish and oyster farming. This used to be a big business in Taiwan. While Taiwanese business people invested in China to expand the business, they stole the knowhow (with government involved) and expanded it 100 fold. Except with lower standard and price. Take abalones for example. If you go to the frozen section of Hmart, you can find bags of frozen abalones in big bag cheap. 80% of the same business in Taiwan had been destroyed by this kind of practice. The remaining supplies only to Japan and Taiwan which demands higher quality and sanitation standards. Not only this is a bad business practice, they also destroyed the natural habitat for sea birds and fish that are native to these areas. It all looks great in the food photos of course. This may be a different practice than the Monsanto, but the damage to the land is far greater. The Yangzi river dam now created even greater problem. The local species of fish went extinct, water born bacteria and pests are on the rise and the geo-structure has been damaged. More earthquake than ever before. Worst of all, it was a terrible construction works. The dam is now deformed threatens approximately 200 million people’s livelihood. Yet, one of the butcher of Tien An Men square has his daughter in the Yangzi Power company making all kinds of money. Whatever they are building, is for the power to pack money into their pocket and left a monument to amaze people. This dam, is nothing more than a giant statues of Mao gone bad. China’s rice, wheat and potato production is generally enough 82%. The main imports are Soy and Corn account for approximately 18%. This may not seem like a lot, but it’s actually critical to the Chinese society. It represent all the soy products, cooking oils and animal feeds. To put it in perspective, it roughly accounts for 1/5 of the 1.3Billian population without food. With the Swine disease, they are now seriously short of meats. Trade war has affected at least 3 million jobs now. The government over printed the RMB by 5 times and running out of foreign reserve. The real estate bubbles are about to burst. Few reginal banks already gone out of business. Inflation starts taking off. Yet, the government decide to add retaliatory tax on the critical imports from USA for the trade war. CCP is one really stupid and F**ked up government. The propaganda department is cooking up a pot of nationalism to hate American and boycott American products. Here in the wealthiest city in China – Shanghai. The first Costco opened in Shanghai only lasted 3 hours cause everything is gone. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mt7V2oCx3ws https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljtf6QR4rzY (end quote)

Of course much depends on the intent of the teacher and the student, on the claims made by the former and expectations of the latter. Someone who comes to the teacher at the end of that line asking to teach her a bike riding pantomime and gets a little window washer's dance instead better not apply it when faced with a real-life bike or she'll fall right off. Someone else who says "I just need to move more, any which way" with no intent of mastering the bike pantomime will be perfectly satisfied with the material taught. When someone has no trouble saying "I teach exactly what I've been taught, and this is who taught me," this gives you a chance to verify his or her method elsewhere, you don't have to rely on this one person's ability or understanding. You can trust he or she is teaching an art you want to learn, not a "my art." I for one don't care to learn anyone's ego trip. I want to learn a traditional art. If down the road I feel the urge to creatively modify it and make it "my art," I'll call it something else. I'll say, "this is the window washer's little dance my teacher taught me, but I want to combine it with rumba which I happen to know, and teach you that." If these conditions are met, anyone can creatively modify anything -- provided they clearly state where it's coming from. If, on the other hand, they teach you window washer's rumba but tell you they're teaching you a bike riding pantomime... If they say "taoism" and teach you their own "researched" or "channeled" material, steer that bike clear.