Aetherous

The mind is powerful. It can be easy to suppress or repress sexuality, which leads to it expressing in less than healthy ways. So it's important to not be thinking "I'm distracting myself with this right now so that I won't experience sexual thoughts"...that's already thinking sexual thoughts. The mind simply has to be on something else, 100%. It takes time to set out with this knowledge and make it happen...at first, you can't help but suppress/repress to some extent. After a while, you're able to lose sight of sexuality from time to time. When you can do that, it helps to be busy doing things. Have a job. Have a hobby or five. Read books. Exercise. When you're busy doing things, avoid doing things that stimulate sexuality. For instance, don't go to yoga class. There are tons of beautiful women in those classes wearing skin tight clothing...not a wise environment to exercise for a guy who needs less sexuality in his life. Imagine working at a manufacturing facility, where you have to set something in a machine, and then stay clear of the machine and press a button so that it does something. In that environment, you're not going to be stimulated by sexual images. So...don't avoid; don't suppress/repress. But simply put the mind onto other things as best you can. Develop your interests...for instance, learn a foreign language. Meditate. Go for nature hikes. Learn about investing in the stock market. It especially helps if you have a practice which makes your mind more clear and your heart more open and soft. Lust is like the lowest form of this energy, love is a higher form...compassion, which is having so much love that you actually act on it to help others, is the highest. So that's all for before you have the urge. You can manage yourself like that for as long as you want, once you are cultivated enough...it's possible to be celibate for life after a certain point. It might take years to get to that level of development. If you already have the urge, you're kind of screwed. It's not that you're 100% helpless, such as in that very moment you can't help but touch yourself or someone else. We have enough self control to hold off for a while, but we'll go a little crazy, and we will have to sooner or later do something about it...just in my opinion. So if it's a matter of looking at porn at work, or not...perhaps you could think about the consequences of such actions. What if you were caught? Would you lose your job? Are you willing to face that just to look at porn in that setting? Can't you wait? Try to focus on the tasks at hand, even if they're boring. Every moment can be a meditation. Just have mindfulness of what's going on, and get out of your head. Being distracted away from sexuality is the key...the sooner the better. Having spiritual practices which transmute the energy is just icing on the cake. And when in a good relationship, try to not have too much of a good thing. Intimacy, which is what we're actually looking for, is more than just banging. Creating memories is an overlooked part of relationships...go explore places, take videos of it. Talk about your childhood, what excites you, what your dreams and vision for your life are. Also, sexuality can be a sacred thing if you take it to that level. A spiritual practices that develops and heals both of you. It sounds like the type of sex in the previous relationship wasn't very healing...some issue must have been there which caused you both to spiral downward with it, rather than upward.

You can't generalize about women. For every 4 that will only date a guy for a certain reason, there are 3 others who don't care about that reason. So in that sense, it's a numbers game when trying to find a mate...you have to go through a lot of different women to find the few compatible ones. Just pay attention when she is interested in you...that's an opportunity opening up. Seize it! Don't falter.

Shepherds don't even have to meditate, because their job is so great, but they can if they want.

Depends on what your teacher says. For instance, I've been told to place life duties and responsibilities above spiritual practice. So if I'm working a lot, it's okay that I'm not able to meditate for 2 hours a day, or to meditate at the specified time. The energy is going elsewhere for the time being, and it's going to important things. However, no matter what your teacher says, it's all up to you. If you want to practice more, then create a lifestyle that can accommodate that. For instance, lets say your job is making you do overtime every week, and your neighbors are noisy when you get home, so you're simply irked when practicing and are getting bad results... ...put in the extra effort to get a job that has a basic 40 hour work week and never more than that, and move to a new location that's quiet. Then you can have that time to practice undisturbed. Just one example. Also, you can have a wild domestic life...but simply take a drive to a park that no one goes to and practice there in the quiet. Spend 10 minutes there...that's doable for most busy people. We either make time for practice, or we make excuses for why we're not practicing.

Since this thread is about Rosicrucians, check out all the different orders that claim being descendants of the original...when learning about the subject, we should know that not all teachings ascribed to it are real. Perhaps it's impossible to truly know whether any order is legitimate, or a newer invention.

I say this as advice for myself, too...because unfortunately I completely relate with how you view women in the dating realms... Take some time, like a few months, and keep a list of every woman that you know in your life. Don't just think of potential mates, but literally every female that you encounter. Try to find the ones who you think are being good at wife/mother/girlfriend, and who have exceptional qualities...such as kindness, or frugality, etc. Try to find a few women who can act as role models for what you're looking for in a relationship. Simply doing that will help remind you that there are good women out there. Without being reminded of it, I think we can easily fall prey to the notion that all women are corrupt...and that notion holds us back from many things in life. For instance, we desire intimacy...it's not going to happen if you keep her at a distance. Also, perhaps treat relationships more like a transaction where you help each other live well, rather than like you're falling head over heels and being a fool in love. The latter is destructive to yourself if it ends bad. I'm not saying to protect yourself from feeling emotions...but do protect yourself from having your soul ripped out and shat on. If she cheats, then it's not worth continuing the relationship with her. If you get in a relationship, you might find that avoiding cheating takes work, and you'll understand more of why it happens.

Perhaps omniscient (all knowing), omnipotent (capable of anything), omnipresent or at least capable of translocation (being wherever you decide to go, or being everywhere at once)...while still being an individual being. In terms of the Christian God, they say omnibenevolent (good and merciful toward all).

You learned something about playing with sexual energy there. However, your condition is not permanent. Chinese medicine can help with some of what you're experiencing, such as waking up 5 times a night and having nightmares. As for bipolar highs and lows, you could train your brain by doing calm abiding meditation. Best of luck.

We're all seeing through dual eyes, even if we have concepts of nonduality. After all, when there is a concept of something, there also arises the concept of everything other than that something...nonduality versus dualism. Even that dichotomy is dualistic.

God is certainly other than ourselves as human beings. To say "I am God" is ridiculous - most people can't even control their own emotional reactions and thoughts, much less how events turn out in the external world. From what I've read, Rosicrucians would be strongly opposed to a philosophy that says nothing is good or bad.

There are all sorts of ways to use the "balance method" to find ah-shi (painful) points. Sometimes the opposite limb, or the opposite side of the body, doesn't reveal the point that would work. There are 5 systems, such as using the yin-yang paired channel location, the six division paired channel (such as Liver jueyin paired with Pericardium jueyin)...then there is "imaging" to consider, where a body part corresponds to another, such as the wrist corresponding to the neck, the elbow to the navel, the shoulder to the hip, etc. It's probably best for general health to just press around the entire body and find the point that hurts the most, then massage that one primarily.

FYI for the Christians, regarding necromancy: https://www.openbible.info/topics/necromancy

Recent news: 1) The Ka-Nying Shedrub Ling monastery recently opened up their dharma ratna shop, where they sell ritual items such as bells, and books...it will soon appear online as well. These items will be appropriate for use with this tradition. 2) The Dharmasun website will launch with a new design in June, and the first portion of the Third Excellence will launch at that time as well. This is really only relevant for practitioners who have gone through the first excellence as well as the three parts of the second excellence (takes a while! I'm still finishing up the first part of the second excellence)...but for them, all that's required is taking a quiz on the previous material, and then doing a skype interview. Info on the third excellence here.

Welcome...my most recent long term home was Appleton, which was recently voted #1 drunk city in America. Got a bunch of friends in Milwaukee. Good to see another Wisconsinite here...there are a few.

The main issue with most tonic herbs is that they're very cloying and can thereby weaken the digestion, which is considered the basis of our life. I personally have experience with munching on too many goji berries, and shortly after having ruined health. For someone with strong digestion, tonic herbs and raw juices are very good for them...so long as their digestion stays strong.

I think the dictionary on ctext is modern Chinese, while the Inner Chapters is classical Chinese, so it will give a general idea but sometimes a very strange translation. Here is James Ware's translation, which is considered to be faulty but is at least complete. I'm not sure if it's bilingual, if it includes the Chinese characters...so you could print the characters out from ctext. I personally like to use the Pleco smartphone app, with the optical reader. That way, I can just point the phone at a character, and it looks it up in the dictionaries. Pleco has Kroll's student's classical Chinese dictionary as an add on, which would be one of the better ones to use for this. edit: whoops, this is Zhuangzi's Inner Chapters? My bad.

Perhaps "eternal life" meant more than simply continuing into the afterlife as all people do.

Movements are just a purification...the posture itself is the key. This is a method on the spiritual path, where we meditate. Is meditation boring? Is the present moment, the clarity of awareness, the sense of being alive, boring? Is stillness not something we aim for? What are we waiting to happen, when we do a spiritual practice? It is powerful...there are other ones that exist which are equally or more powerful.

I wouldn't say it's injustice...that implies that it's about people doing bad things to other people...it's just the way things work. If you have resources, you can easily have more resources, because you have the resources to get more resources. It's the way of the world. Just like if you were alone in nature, if you had enough food, you would be more capable of going out to explore and do other things. If you had no food, you'd need to focus on that, and you wouldn't have the energy to do much due to starvation. People working their asses off making 20k a year...they have the means to enter a different career field and make more. They just choose not to for a variety of reasons (excuses, if you want to be harsh about it). It's easy to change what caste you belong to in our society. Just research the careers that earn the most money. Do what it takes. A kid graduating high school can look into it, see that doctors can make 250k a year more or less, and decide to try their best in college. They earn straight As, then go a medical school of their choice. Then they're making a lot of money, and are able to invest more each year...until they eventually reach a point of being wealthy, and their money can work for them. Where there is a will, there's a way. It's easy to know the way...we've explored it here: it takes money to make money, as seen in the stock market. There is a way out, for those that choose it. It takes hard work and knowledge of how things work to change your position in the world. No one is stuck, and no one is forcing us to stay stuck.

A small chance. I mean, what has happened throughout history in other places can happen here too. Great nations have fallen, people have been rounded up and imprisoned, etc. Not even just historically, these things happen currently around the globe. This election isn't a sign of it coming, though.

The proof is in the pudding...you don't hear of transgender or gay people becoming straight by taking herbs, doing qigong, etc.

Doubtful!

I would tend to agree...although I heard someone recently bring up the good point that in school locker rooms, they change in front of each other and sometimes have communal showers. Despite what the individual identifies as, it would be problematic. Imagine a shower full of teenage girls, and then a person there among them has a penis...or a shower full of teenage boys, and one has breasts and a vagina. It's something that responsible adults will always try to avoid, in order to protect everyone involved.

Human nature is anything that humans are capable of. An individual's nature is what they choose throughout their life to cultivate. Everyone has buddha nature, which is the pure goodness they're capable of. Human nature without cultivation or any external influence is seen in babies.

I believe there is a lot of truth to that. (Although, if placebo effect works, then what's the difference between that and the treatment actually working? Both result in a cure.) They should have studied herbal medicine as well. There is a lot of knowledge gained when learning herbs which can help improve the education of the acupuncturist, as compared to going to school for only acupuncture. Although the quality of care depends on the individual, and not necessarily their education. Practitioner A might have had the best education, but can't fix people. Whereas practitioner B might have gone to a really bad school, but they have really good diagnostic skills after years of experience, so they end up treating you better than practitioner A. Who knows. Beyond the advice to choose one that trained in herbal medicine, it's hard to say who will be good and who won't. I would browse the websites of the local practitioners and see who resonates with your way of thinking. Some practitioners might be really new agey, whereas you're more scientific minded. Or on the other hand, some might be way too analytical, to the point of treating an idea of who you are rather than you, the person in front of them. So you find a practitioner that you think would be the best fit based on their marketing. Then you try them out for 3 times. Your problem should be gone after the first time, but some issues might take a couple of times. If it's not improved after 3 times, don't go back to that practitioner. Just what I would do. There are many styles of practice, like Dr Tan balance method, Kiiko's hara work, Shang Han Lun oriented practitioners, etc. It's impossible to say that one is better than the others, because the truth is that whatever works for people is what's necessary. ... Oh, also...when seeing a practitioner, they will ask tons of questions about all aspects of your health. It can cause you to remember other problems. But stick to having one chief complaint that you want them to fix. Then you can really tell if it's working, if it gets fixed or not within 1-3 visits.