Aetherous

Dangerous...in the youtube comments people talk about their friends dying from this.

Now that's an elevated perspective.

I'm not sure what you're asking. This thread is for sharing what practices you do, and maybe why you do them.

Someone else just made a thread about that:

That's great, I plan on being there.

If you do something in order to achieve a goal, you're "cultivating". Let's say if you practice breathing, and your goal is to increase your qi for self healing...then you're cultivating qi and health. The term could be used for anything...like if you're in school, and have the goal of entering a certain profession - you're cultivating your profession in that instance. Working toward a goal is cultivating the goal, just like planting a seed and tending to it is cultivating the plant. In another sense, cultivation is about your choices in each moment. For example - you can choose to look at porn, in which case you're cultivating the results of that. You can choose to say a kind word to someone who could use it, and in that case you're cultivating those results. You can enjoy a cup of tea, and get those results. You can go into the bad part of town, and get those results. Every choice we make, what we focus on, what we do which shapes who we are, is cultivating us. Buddhists say we have our body, speech, and mind; so our actions, our words, and our thoughts either improve or worsen things. Some choices feel good in the moment, and have good results. Some feel good in the moment and have bad results. Some feel bad in the moment and have good results. Some feel bad in the moment and have bad results. Generally, it's good to cultivate so that you avoid bad results and bring more good results. As we can see, sometimes that involves making choices which don't feel good at the time. For instance, if you're cultivating your profession, you might not want to study...but if you do, you'll pass the test. Or if you're trying to lose weight, you might not want to eat the healthier meal...but if you do, your weight will keep going down. It's also about avoiding things that feel good temporarily but are ultimately harmful. For instance, hanging out with friends is a lot more fun than studying...but failing the test and ruining your career is much worse. Or, eating donuts and ice cream is enjoyable, but it makes you fatter. So, the first definition involved working toward a goal. The second definition was our choices and what we pay attention to in every moment. Those are two different ways of thinking about this term, cultivation. A person on the spiritual (or related) path is commonly called a "cultivator", and what they practice is commonly called "cultivation", no matter what it is. It's just a general term that's in common usage. This sort of makes sense, because people on the spiritual path do have an end goal in mind: at the very least, they want to improve things or themselves somehow. Most want enlightenment of some sort. Also, they are conscious of doing the right things and avoiding wrong things, in some form or another. At the very least, they have something that they practice or do, which they think will increase what they want in their lives, or bring them closer to that end goal. It's helpful if their idea of cultivation expands to include what they're becoming with every choice in every moment. And to think about what makes a good life, and what a good person is. What's fulfilling? What makes us proud when thinking back on life? Cultivation doesn't start and stop; we're becoming who we are to be at all times. If we get trashed on Friday, and then sit on the meditation cushion on Sunday, we still have to answer for our choices on Friday in some form or another. If we have lofty goals (like true enlightenment), this is very important to think about...because we will need to rectify who we are if we want to reach those goals.

Yes, I think that's the case as well. Probably good to use the order they prescribe it in.

I think that's the original order of the animals, as far as we're aware. Also, in the original version the exercises were different, and were more like calisthenics. It's unknown if they were required to be practiced in that order, but we do know they were listed in that order, so might as well be. Later on in history, people attributed wuxing correspondences to the animals, and changed the order, as well as changing the exercises themselves. It totally makes sense to attribute the wuxing to it, even if the original version didn't mention that. That's just how the Chinese culture looked at these things back in the day - if an exercise had five of something, it had a correspondence to the wuxing or a correspondence could be made. It's good to think of things in context. Maybe later practitioners designed their five animals exercises in a certain way, so that if you do them out of the order they prescribe, it's not as good. Doing the later exercises in the earlier order isn't right...if wanting to do the earlier order, it'd be correct to use the earlier exercises. And to keep the modern wuxing attributions in mind, but to set them aside because the original version didn't mention those ones. In order to figure out the correct wuxing correspondences for the old version, we'd have to be an expert at how the other texts of that time and slightly before it did the same thing. Do we know that at the time, they were looking at the bird as fire, or metal? Do we know that they were looking at the tiger as metal, or wood? What did others of that time say about the element of the bear, or the deer? I don't know the answers.

https://www.theblaze.com/news/teacher-bans-trump-hero-project-long-island?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_content=062316-news&utm_campaign=dwbrand&fbclid=IwAR2Zvr3mNlSwS14_GSFfNCWZq7Fm5xOrr8xuSORh2yarDqTlQjIDKnohCmM I think this epitomizes what leftists are.

Yeah that totally made sense.

Do you want to talk about what was involved with getting into that? Only a few people here at most are involved with legitimate Daoist lineages. Impressive. I used to be doing that amount of time each day, then luckily the instruction had it shorten down to 30 mins - 1 hour daily.

As for myself... There is some private instruction which is solely for spiritual development; I've stuck with it daily since 2012, because the results are obvious and the philosophy behind it makes sense. I could be a better student/practitioner, but I'm not the worst. Learned Kunlun back in the day (took the old facilitator course, prior to it being an apprentice course...and didn't attend the yearly continuing education to maintain my name on their site), and still sometimes do various practices from that, mostly the Kunlun Method. I find it fascinating and mysterious. One of the most powerful things out there. And I have nostalgia about the trainings I attended, as well as sharing it with a couple of other people. I'm very undisciplined with the Tara's Triple Excellence online program, but I apply some of the teachings from time to time. It has helped me turn enemies into dear friends. I only got to part way through the Second Excellence course...but it is super helpful for understanding Tibetan Buddhism, especially on an experiential level. When my life is slightly less busy, I plan on progressing further in the program, even though it's not my primary practice. An opportunity hasn't arisen for me to attend the lineage's Tara empowerments or teachings in person, but I think doing so would be important when getting to the Third Excellence, which has the vajrayana and dzogchen stuff. And finally, there are things that I incorporate into any path in order to make it work better. A couple of the best things in my experience: short periods (like five minutes) of calm abiding meditation using things in nature as the objects of meditation truly makes the mind function in a healthier way, and eating lighter/chewing food until liquified (because having bogged down digestion is a major problem when doing spiritual or energetic practices). Also, I think that simply exercising in a moderate way on most days is essential...an example of "moderate" would be doing a medium difficulty hike through forest trails for an hour or two. In terms of "semen retention", I have found through my experience that it's important to some extent...I think a simple rule of thumb is to divide our age by 10, and that gives us the number of days it would be best to wait in between. There are probably lots of other little tricks I add into my cultivation, but they're not coming to mind right now.

We can talk about that, too. I made this thread because I have a feeling (just a feeling, nothing to back it up) that many new members here don't have a practice. Learning from teachers in the spiritual marketplace (or outside of it), gaining some experiences, exploring what systems and ideas are out there, having discipline to maintain a daily regimen...everyone should be doing these things. In addition to saying what we do, we can add what we're hoping to accomplish with it, like you suggested. Or however people want to answer the thread.

Freeform had some great advice there. Also, it's not good to diagnose yourself with Chinese Medicine. I would hazard a guess that your issue isn't kidney essence deficiency.

Very interesting; welcome!

https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-etymology-of-the-word-human

I've found this to be very true during many practices; even ones which aren't Kunlun, but are from other systems (despite those systems instructing that it's good to earth during their practices...I didn't find that to be good advice at all - it counterintuitively led me to feel a lot more ungrounded). Although there are other practices that seem to depend on the earth, or on dew in the morning on grass, which sometimes are fine. Besides the loss of kidney qi, which we could think of as being like the loss of warmth from the body when in contact with the earth...sometimes if the ground we're on is cold, it can draw that coldness into the channels, and cause problems. I experienced that, by having a sharp pain in my ankle after practicing on the bare ground one night, which lasted for many years. So, see how it makes you feel over a long time of experimenting, and you'll have learned a thing or two. Our channels become wide open during these types of practices, so that outer things can end up getting in which we don't want, and our qi can leave more easily, making us become less embodied and depleted. But sometimes we do want to connect with certain outer things, like having the sun touch our skin in the morning, or walking on pure morning dew on grass. Some things are good. Some practices may benefit from you touching the earth. ...oh also, I like to call touching the earth without a barrier "earthing", and I prefer to think of grounding as anything we do that makes us feel more normal (less "ungrounded"...less airy, dizzy, disembodied, delusional, abnormal, etc). "Earthing" doesn't necessarily "ground" us.

So I was moderately successful at that, but found out that I prefer making "English scrambled eggs" instead of the classic French omelette. It doesn't require any of the skill of trying to make some perfectly shaped thing, but still contains all of the custardy goodness. I learned from this video: I make mine slightly less runny than he does, but still definitely not solidified. I prefer using quite a bit of curly parsley, or chives, chopped finely into it. Regular flat parsley makes eggs taste fishy, IME, but curly parsley is great. On a slice of toast like in the video...it's become my go-to breakfast. It seems to me like Happy Egg Co yolks look the best, in terms of being more yellow. Vital Farms is another trustworthy brand, but doesn't have that deep of a yellow. ... And in other news, this guy has a superiorly impressive hummus recipe. I really have to try making this. I also like how this guy puts ground sumac and cumin, and a piece of mint on top: I've found that Lucini is quite a good olive oil. This is a great video showing their farms, and production:

Just moved into my own place and for some reason, I have decided that at this point in my life I want to cook all of my food from scratch. Having a packed lunch at work should be an experience of heaven on earth and make everyone else absolutely jealous. This thread can be a place to share awesome and simple recipes. No excessive posting of health food recipes in this thread, please...emphasis should be on awesome (tasting) food. ... I just did this, and it turned out to be one of the most amazing things I've ever tasted. Explosions of different subtle flavors all at once. I've had garlic aioli (mayonnaise) at restaurants before, but this was a lot better than those. I personally didn't use any olive oil...only canola. The little amounts of ingredients ended up making quite a bit of mayo. Maybe enough for a week of sandwich toppings and dip. I might double the recipe from now on just to be sure I always have enough. Next to do: homemade ketchup and bbq sauce. ... Found a guide to boiling eggs. As a kid, I thought that the green color on the outside of the yolk was inevitable. As a result, I rarely ate hard boiled eggs. Well, last night I found out that was simply cooking it wrong. They are supposed to be fully bright yellow on the inside when hard boiled. And the yolks can be soft on the inside if you cook for less time, without being gross! http://www.simplyscratch.com/2010/12/how-to-hard-boiled-eggs.html Mark Bittman's book "How to Cook Everything: The Basics" appears to contain the absolute best guide to this hard boiled egg thing. That book is next on my list. Another good book (which I already have): The Flavor Bible. Helps in creating dishes, without making something disgusting. ... Also working on 2 hour baguettes tonight. We'll see if they turn out at all edible. This is on my radar, since I'm a huge pepperoni pizza fan: http://www.girlversusdough.com/2013/02/07/no-knead-pizza-dough/

This brings up a good point - looking at who most likely authored which books. I think in some cases for the New Testament, the original authors wrote in Greek (they knew the language)...it wasn't taken from another language (such as Galilean Aramiac) and recorded again into Greek by other people besides the authors. Or maybe sometimes it was...but not for every book of the New Testament. Please correct me if I'm wrong, or refer to any books specifically if info differs between them. This aspect isn't something I've researched at all...but it's a good point.

Ever since hearing "Fly fly my sadness", which most people here have probably heard before, I've loved that style of female singers. On that song they were called Angelite. Elsewhere they're called "Bulgarian voices", among other names. This linked song didn't impress me greatly at first, but hearing it over a few days, I really have gotten into it: https://youtu.be/W72E3_MuJ0M

Blood itself, in Chinese Medicine, doesn't cause stagnation (it's a "vital substance" in TCM, and is not a "pathogenic factor"), although it can stagnate for one reason or another and then be called "blood stasis"; I haven't heard of this ever being from having an abundance of it. I think the blood "is the mother of" qi, which then naturally moves the blood, so having more of it is a good thing...it would be more so when a person is blood deficient that the blood would stagnate, because the person would lack the qi to appropriately move the decreased amount of blood they have. I guess we could think of it similarly to how a creek trickles along slowly (the water is slightly more stagnant) compared to a full and rushing river. If someone ever were to use the term "blood excess", it would be referring to things like "heat in the blood" or "cold" causing the blood to stagnate... but the physiological substance of blood isn't the problem, so in terms of amounts of blood being negative, I think there's only "blood deficiency" as a pathological issue. With pure blood, the more the merrier...in fact, with full blood, our jing is protected. Often times, we find the blood is deficient when there's also blood stasis, at the same time...this can sometimes be because both patterns are truly simultaneously present (it's definitely the case where someone had a traumatic injury that caused bruising, which is blood stasis, while they are also a full time medical student whose blood is constantly being depleted from studying too much)...or it can be because, of course, when a normal level of blood is stuck in one place it's not abundant in another place and appears deficient there. I also mentioned in the first paragraph of this post about how blood deficiency can lead to the blood stagnating. The potential byproducts of blood nourishing herbs, for instance dampness and phlegm, definitely cause stagnation. It's good to have really clean digestion so that our bodies can handle the strength of herbs.

I can totally see that as true. And I think there's nothing wrong with having an abundance of blood.