Aetherous

More food for thought: The Chinese five elements are almost nonsensical when moving through the time of day.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kali_Yuga

I guess there are two sides to every coin... edit: Also, it's good to keep in mind that you are currently feeling this way. You are not unaware of the problems that exist. You are capable of reflection. Do you know how many people feel the same way as you? This is quite normal...and it is not indicative of a dark age. IMO.

Maybe for some people. Use proper mantras, not ones that are randomly chosen or which directly awaken kundalini in a haphazard way as "I am" does. Or choose another object of meditation altogether. Don't do spinal breathing or any of the other additional practices. So basically...don't practice AYP. Mess up your body, your mind, your energy. Get sidelined from making progress, and pretend you're self pacing. It does something. Know your goals well. I found it to be very destabilizing after a while of practicing. It got to the point where I wasn't able to cross my legs or have my hands near my solar plexus, because the ungrounding energies were so strong. It has a creeper effect...you think everything is fine so you add on something else, then BOOM, you're unable to do any practice. That was my experience, and I did a lot of self pacing...ultimately to realize that the method itself is the problem, rather than my lack of discipline. Awakening dormant energies. Having a time each day of taming the monkey mind. Learning new things.

Starting Strength does seem like the best book for starting out, to me! The 3rd edition is great. I'm sticking with strong lifts since I already began (very similar, anyway) but using the info on proper form in the SS book at the same time.

Transmuting your sexual energy has little to do with pleasing women sexually. Let us know how your meeting goes.

I think kali yuga was literally in the dark ages, and we're actually in a good period of history. Look at human achievement in the past 100 or so years...it's like a second age of enlightenment. I don't believe the ages always end with a catastrophic disaster...there's a lot of nonsense discussed in spiritual circles.

Interesting...because shaking the legs will open the leg channels for a moment...but it activates more of an earth energy, which will rise through the body. Doing a third eye meditation, you will feel an energy (or whatever...hormones maybe) diffuse down throughout the entire body. So it's actually kind of opposite, sometimes. The energy that's invoked in the area will go up or else down to bring balance, but your body's energy will have a slight lowering or rising to go where attention is. It's tricky. This is pointing in a good direction.

I think it means you aren't caught up in energy, mind, spirit, etc. You are calm and living life simply, doing what needs to be done, enjoying things. Your attention goes outward rather than inward. You can notice the beauty around you. You aren't fatigued or anything...just feeling great. A direct practice that helps this a lot is in the link in my signature, "Cultivating Heartfulness". I view it as more important than most practices out there. Some Western alchemists place a great emphasis on doing it every day, before all else, to ensure their monkey mind (which they identify as mercury) is totally pacified. Instead of looking at whether you are "allowed" to do a certain practice or not, instead think of what spiritual cultivation involves. Is your mind calm? Do you feel balanced? Are you healthy? Is your life in order? Instead of doing a "powerful" thing, sometimes it's more effective to take care of the basics...then everything falls into place in the best way. If you do the "powerful" thing at the wrong time, it drains you of power, peace, and progress. So...don't be fooled by appearances...always focus on what is beneficial first rather than whatever is fancy. Is this the wrong time for you to do something powerful? Who knows. The positive or negative results from trying, will reveal that...or you can play it safe (which is the smart thing to do...trust me). You won't be missing out if you follow Max's advice to only practice 5E and one breath. Those things are powerful, too...but are also balancing. Do you have the discipline to do what is necessary, rather than what everyone else seems to be doing? Discipline is good to cultivate. That is something which empowers you. Then after doing, check your results...have you improved in any way, or have you gotten worse? Adjust as necessary. Also...Max has said that certain practices accomplish everything (like the one breath), and that masters in the past only practiced one thing for their entire life and achieved a lot (i jong posture, the preparation before 5E). Then, benefiting the five elements in you is an additional bonus. So if you like these practices, go for it and enjoy.

"There is simply no other exercise, and certainly no machine, that produces the level of central nervous system activity, improved balance and coordination, skeletal loading and bone density, muscular stimulation and growth, connective tissue stress and strength, psychological demand and toughness, and overall systemic conditioning as the correctly performed full squat." - Mark Rippetoe

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYdZu3fzEMA Not the style you were asking for, but this chills me greatly. Turn down the lights, just listen.

I have a lot of thoughts on this. You become soulmates, when you share your soul with someone else and they with you, and you accept each other. I view best friends as being similar to soulmates (of course without the bromance)...and most of my best friends, I was kind of enemies with to start out with. lol So when you've become soulmates...watch out. Your very soul is held in the hands of someone else...and you hold theirs. Because all things are impermanent as the Boodists say, this can lead to some enormous pain. There are a lot of soulmates in the sea for me...but then we must be mind mates, body mates, location mates, belief mates, family mates, blah blah blah. When it works out perfectly, that is rare and shouldn't be taken for granted (said by someone who has taken it for granted, and ended up with regret). And when you find your soul mate, if they are the type of soul that changes, you should realize that this soulmate soon won't be your soulmate anymore (said by someone who dated a changing soulmate). Also...I think solemates are one of the best kinds of soulmates.

Thanks you two...yup, hard part's over!

Projecting a known one's face onto someone else....YES! That is one explanation I have for seeing my teacher everywhere. Like my mind was more malleable at the time, and could make that connection when there wasn't one. I haven't really spoken of it too much on the board, only referenced it. It was a bad time for me! Pretty much Dec 2010 - July 2011...although I've still kind of got a screw loose.

Well, I don't know...during times when I was over-energized from visualization or neigong, when I did specific spirit ejecting methods, when I was going through qigong psychosis (which I think had a lot to do with this phenomenon)...people would say that they saw me somewhere I wasn't at all. Like a few friends 4 hours away from where I was saw me driving my car. A girl thought she saw my twin deliver her a package as a UPS guy. In my own experience seeing these things...I thought I saw my teacher (physically) numerous times when going through qigong psychosis, but the person always looked a bit off and I never spoke to them. I think it has to do with how when we dream, we can end up anywhere, doing almost anything. Maybe when we're dreaming that we're doing something in the real world, some people can actually see "us" doing that...and this doesn't stop when we're awake. Just ideas for what is a completely mysterious and questionable matter.

Tulpa...uncontrolled bilocation...spirit appearing as form.

Thanks for the explanation, Walker. I'm going to have to disagree, still. I think we must find correlation in the real world, otherwise there is no use of the 5Es even existing...the microcosm has an effect on the macrocosm. Your descriptions of the states of qi is technically the most convincing thing so far...but at least personally I don't accept it. I wonder, why are the appearances of the elements in the real world shifted one place over if the supposed states of qi are correct?

Then you're just like 99.999999999999999999% of the world.

Third eye according to some (like Swami Satyananda Saraswati in his book Kundalini Tantra) is where ida and pingala merge into the central channel...so that makes sense, as the kunlun method aims to do the same thing. From that one energy center, the entire energy body is transformed. Third eye has a correlation with the heart, one helping to open the other...third eye meditations will give an emotional elation, but will cultivate more of an emptiness type of energy...whereas heart meditations will bring emotional turbulence, but will cultivate more of a blissful energy (IME). We know how important the third eye area is to Taoists...even in the same tradition (Shangqing...in the Gold Pavilion text), the pineal gland is metaphorically called Mount Kunlun. Some say that Lao Tzu was speaking about it when talking about "the root of heaven and earth". Just some ideas for you.

Just for that, Ya Mu gets 5 stars from me.

I think activating kunlun is something you gain an ability to do once you're fully acquainted with the feelings during practice. It involves surrendering the head into the heart, becoming effortless, the heart energy expanding, the navel energy rising to the heart. Just my view...I was never really capable of this...maybe someone who had an easier time doing it, who feels they understand it, can explain their perspective.

Well, looking at the seasons in the real world, the typical format is not consistent. Does it change acupuncture to say that the season of spring is more like water element/phase? Why does the control cycle not fit the "new" paradigm? Everything has simply shifted over one space, just in regard to the seasons.

Well, yeah, but I disagree with that classification. lol

I've seen a lot of fools in that same position...so, only sort of.

I guess there's a fine line between wisdom and folly.