Aetherous

They're all thinking with the wrong head.

Baolin Wu's ideas about feng shui state that buildings for humans should be in a square or rectangle shape...perhaps looking at only the negative aspect of straight lines is not the complete picture; there are positives to it as well in that we benefit from such structures...and don't benefit so much from weird shaped things like a domed home.

I've had things others have mentioned...and also frog legs. I will never have them again. They don't taste like chicken. They actually taste like a swamp.

This is something I am personally trying to reconcile. In my religion especially, I'm not allowed to worship or bow down to any person, or any "idol"...and that is not something I'm willing to go back on (consider it being similar to samaya). So the article was nice in that it's made clear, this yidam is just your visualization and mind creation, and is a symbolic tool. I can work with that. I can work with prostrations as being purification of oneself, instead of them being worship of someone or something. I'm interested in exploring Tibetan Buddhism, but it's tough when we're told to prostrate to the yidam, supplicate or basically pray to, seek refuge, receive empowerments from, etc...the yidam or the root guru. Hard to reconcile those views with the views presented in the article. Beyond my personal issues with this, which aren't meaningful to many other people I'm sure...I'm also interested in hearing about people's experiences with yidams. For instance, apparently some people experience these things as real after a period of practice, and receive actual guidance from their yidams. That would be very interesting.

I certainly don't know, but from what I've read the "vajra wrath" actually gets rid of anger, and is peaceful and compassionate by nature. On the other hand, I can definitely see why a wrathful form would cause actual wrath like anger to arise...only makes sense!

I think it can really help...nah actually it is essential...to actively cultivate compassion and feelings of love, forgiveness, acceptance, etc, for each person in your life. This will transmute the grumpies into goodies.

"This happened at The US Army National Guard Base." LOL, no such thing.

Maybe the "valley spirit" AKA "the mysterious female" mentioned in the Tao Te Ching. Which I assume is just another name for the Tao or the wuji, or the "quintessence" in other words. I'm unaware of any Taoist groups discussing this idea these days.

The book in the original post is basically how to expel the stale winds and how to sit in the 7 point posture, which are basics before and during seated meditation sessions in Tibetan methods. Different sects have variations on the details of how to practice these things. Tsa Lung which was in the video clip, is slightly different. It's like inner yoga or pranayama based on the 5 winds (which are the vata subdoshas). That teacher, Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, also covers his version of the sitting and expelling stale wind in his books in addition to the Tsa Lung exercises. Yantra Yoga is like a Tibetan version of asanas. Here is a guy who explains his version of these different methods.

My mystical poetry. I compiled these words written over about a 10 year period, back in 2007...so it's old stuff. I kind of stopped writing after that, because going over old works made me really take a close look at myself, and some of it wasn't who I wanted to be.

Honesty hour: Drunvalo is a phony.

A truth: math and studying eastern religion are more masculine activities than watching football.

Luke, I personally think the genders are our true nature, and not simply a role that most people unconsciously play, which the few (drag queens etc) are free of, as if it were a straight jacket. It's who we are, inescapably...and motivates our actions, even if those actions are to become a drag queen. In my view, when a person adopts the other gender, it's almost always based on surface stuff...for instance, look at how drag queens become "feminine": they raise the pitch of their voice, imitate the gestures and speech of women, put on makeup, do up their hair or have wigs, wear dresses and high heels, etc. That's not femininity! That's how women tend to behave in this culture, as seen from an outside perspective...as perpetrated by those who were born as men. It's the same thing when a woman tries to act more masculine. She takes on her misperceptions of what men are, rather than actually becoming a man...and thus fails miserably to become truly masculine, and also loses her femininity in the process...because she's straying from her true nature. If she would stop acting, and was simply true to herself, she'd finally be feminine. And it would benefit her. Apart from the very few people who are truly born different, we can't change the fact that we as men are XY, and women are XX. That has broad implications, and no matter what we have become, we will always be influenced by that. Even after gender reassignment surgery, the person is truly the gender they were born as...most people can tell just by looking at the bone structure.

If silence is golden, then Russell Brand is a gigantic piece of lead!

"You cannot find absolute bodhichitta without relative bodhichitta, even if you look for one hundred eons." - Khenchen Palden Rinpoche. The Dark Red Amulet: Oral Instructions on the Practice of Vajrakilaya (p. 5). Kindle Edition.

No judgment here, but that's a far cry from real femininity!

In that area, like Nepal/Tibet/etc, they've made human bone malas from the skulls of deceased monks. They do sky burials, where the bodies are left out to be eaten by vultures...then the still living monks would collect the skull bones and fashion them into beads. You can still find these human bone malas around. They're used in wrathful deity practices. At least personally I think it'd be pretty nasty. lol

What came first: evolution, or intelligent design?

"A Lemon", by Pablo Neruda Out of lemon flowers loosed on the moonlight, love's lashed and insatiable essences, sodden with fragrance, the lemon tree's yellow emerges, the lemons move down from the tree's planetarium Delicate merchandise! The harbors are big with it- bazaars for the light and the barbarous gold. We open the halves of a miracle, and a clotting of acids brims into the starry divisions: creation's original juices, irreducible, changeless, alive: so the freshness lives on in a lemon, in the sweet-smelling house of the rind, the proportions, arcane and acerb. Cutting the lemon the knife leaves a little cathedral: alcoves unguessed by the eye that open acidulous glass to the light; topazes riding the droplets, altars, aromatic facades. So, while the hand holds the cut of the lemon, half a world on a trencher, the gold of the universe wells to your touch: a cup yellow with miracles, a breast and a nipple perfuming the earth; a flashing made fruitage, the diminutive fire of a planet.

Due to the health benefits of real sourdough compared to regular bread, I've been working on a starter. I previously tried to make it with wild yeast (just flour and water in a jar), but it had an off kind of smell to it. I will keep trying. Regardless, the starter I'm using now smells how it should, but isn't nearly as bubbly...so I'm not sure if I can recommend this hyperlinked brand of dehydrated starter. I think the moral here is, if you know someone who makes their own sourdough, ask for some of their starter because it'll save you a huge hassle. It's been at least a month and a half of trying. Anyway, today I made whole wheat sourdough pancakes for the first time. I'm not at all a pancake fan. I hate them with a passion! But I actually enjoyed these...and afterward, I felt more alive (similar to after eating really fresh sashimi) and wasn't hungry again for hours. Sourdough pancakes: a really good thing to do seeing as how inexpensive, healthy, and easy it is (once you have a starter).

https://www.youtube.com/watch/?v=SELDTUaHRxQ

The Yoga Sutras say that the path of meditation involves the ceasing of the fluctuations of the mind; sleep (lacking conscious awareness) is described as one of the fluctuations of mind...so it's something to be let go of in exactly the same way you let go of other thoughts that arise. Think of sleep like a totally blank thought cloud that comes over you...remember that it's not your natural state. In my very limited experience, there are waves of consciousness...sometimes after a dip in consciousness where you were basically in a sleep state, all of a sudden there's a high burst of blank awareness and brightness of mind...and then after that, thoughts develop again. Typically thoughts like "whoa that was kind of intense" at least for me. I view it like a minor kundalini awakening. So basically, notice if you get more alertness immediately after the sleep state, just before thoughts come. That's the gap...similar to the gap between thoughts.

Try it again. I had to edit a bunch of times trying to get it to embed here, but couldn't figure it out. It's a video of a photographer who gets strangers on the street to pose together as if they were lovers, family, or friends...the people describe a feeling like they were actually close to the others and cared for them afterward. The power of body language and touch!

People in relationships might want to look into the thing Catholics do, "Natural Family Planning".

The back shu points are good to use when one of the 5 shen is disturbed in addition to that organ being deficient.