DBT

May the light of your soul guide you. May the light of your soul bless the work you do with the secret love and warmth of your heart. May you see in what you do the beauty of your own soul. May the sacredness of your work bring healing, light and renewal to those who see and receive your work. May your work never weary you. May it release within you wellsprings of refreshment, inspiration and excitement. May you be present in what you do. May you never become lost in the bland absences. May the day never burden you. May the dawn find you awake and alert, approaching your new day with dreams, possibilities and promises. May evening find you gracious and fulfilled. May you go into the night blessed, sheltered and protected. May your soul calm, console and renew you.

How has your beliefs, religion, spirituality, affected your life script. Eric Berne (psychologist) stated “we develop our life script in our early years, experiencing significant events can alter our life path”. I came across Daoism in my twenties, I believe this altered my life script, I realised a purpose in my being. I changed over a period of time. I started a journey, I am still on that journey, with the same passion and interest. What was life changing for you, how did it come about, how has it affected your life script ?

Many years ago when I first started my studies in psychology at uni, I joined a group based on the hermetic and esoteric order of the Golden Dawn. One of the founders of the group was a British American, he had a very enigmatic name “Israel Regardie”. He had been a member of the original organisation. He taught us meditation, we had to hand paint our own pack of tarot cards. As we became more adept we were promoted to the next level from Neophyte to whatever, then we would learn through meditation the next card. He only spent a few weeks in the UK then went back home. After about 2 years he stopped coming, there was a rumour he had died. We never used the tarot for divination, it was more used as a visual path of meditation in relation to the Kabbalah. I left the group in about 1988, it was very enlightening.

It was an open question, you interpreted it well. It raises the question “are there events that may have affected us that we are not even aware of “?

Does our past still have a hold on us, events and experiences from long ago, do they still hold sway in our lives. Can we/should try to avoid them or cancel them out. This is just me thinking aloud.

Last week I posted “A Celtic Blessing “, this was from the book Anam Cara. I have given a copy of Anam Cara to each of my true friends.

I am sure there are people on here far more qualified than I to answer your question. I am sure Wiccan rituals go back to pre medieval times. I remember a ritual for crop planting, having to stand with your arms to your sides and jumping as high as you can in unison with everyone else. The idea was to show the crops what to do. Even today where I live people still chant Celtic words when picking berries etc (isolated villages up in the hills). Hope this helps.

No, sorry this was before I was introduced to GD. The rituals held in the wooden huts were Wiccan. I posted the video because I thought people might find it interesting.

We met in the cavern for meditation during the warm weather, we had a wooden hut in the woods with several rooms including an ante room. We moved to an old village hall near Hednesford. There is no trace of the wooden hut now, the village hall has been replaced with a community centre.

Back in the early 80’s this was our meeting place. Rituals took place in the woods. It has been vandalised unfortunately.

Welcome, I hope you find what you are looking for.

The symptoms you describe could be high or low blood pressure. Do you know your blood pressure and pulse. How is your general health, sorry for all the questions, I have had problems with high blood pressure, my treatment was “healthy diet, regular exercise, healthy mental attitude”. I hope you are feeling better.

Wherever you may go, go with all your heart. Confucius

Better to walk alone than walk with a fool.

Hi Jim, welcome. I am new here too, I am sure you will enjoy your time here.

I am not exactly sure of the years but it must have been around 1980-86. Possibly earlier.

I am glad you find it interesting, I am a complete novice on here, I have no idea about following others. You are more than welcome to follow my posts. It’s hard to say if or how I have benefited from my training, I have learned to detach myself from what’s going on around me, only getting involved as and when I feel I need to. Please don’t go thinking I am an expert in GD or indeed anything else. I rarely talk about my time with the GD group, it seems acceptable to talk of it on here, bearing in mind this is a Daoist forum. I got started with the GD group because I was studying psychology at uni, I wrote a thesis on the psychology of religion, I spent time with Hindu’s, Sikh’s, Buddhist’s, Witches, all sorts of religions. I met a woman in a witchcraft shop who invited me to visit a GD group, I ended staying for 4 or 5 years. How do you separate the gold from the dirt, not quite sure what you mean. The purity of your work and your inner self filters out the dirt (Ain Soph Aur). I hope this goes some way to answering your questions.

Israel Regardie came for a few weeks per year and taught us. He was an amazing guy. He taught us to recognise the keys to the doorways in a way only we knew how, by working on meditation and imagery. Experiencing the paths in our mind and linking it to our meditation. I once said to him “how can we possibly learn all this”, his reply was “if you can understand a grain of sand, you can understand a desert “.

The control we learned, was about maintaining control of the nunchaku as you created a moving shield around your body. Making minor corrections to keep a flowing movement. One day I was showing off and throwing the spinning nunchaku up in the air and catching them. Master Yau walked past, reached out, caught the nunchaku, spun them around his body a few times and threw them back. We did learn locks and holds but I never found them useful. Regarding the bounce back that injured my arm, you are correct about the follow through, maintaining a pull on the nunchaku. But also we learned to strike in a spiral, instead of striking square on, then any bounce back would miss your forearm.

Hi, I am new to the forum, thank you for having me. I am looking forward to sharing my thoughts and learning from the thoughts of others. I decided to add some detail about myself, looking at other people's introduction's mine was a little sparse. I am 64 years old, I came across Daoism in the late 1970's early 80's. I started to take kung fu lesson's to get a little exercise and learn a little self defence. I took a keen interest and within a year I was fighting for my county. Our master was Master Jeremy Yau, he was an amazing martial artist. I was also tutored by Sifu Bernard Chong, Bernard introduced me to Daoism as well as many other subjects. At the grade of purple sash (lau gar) I decided not to take any further gradings and to focus on other things. I studied psychology but still trained in Kung Fu and Tai chi. I am now at University as a mature student, studying to become a clinical psychologist. I am interested in all kinds of philosophy, including stoicism, the Greek philosopher's, Confucianism, the Kabballah. It's a pleasure to be in your company.

Crying to the sky, by Bebop deluxe (Bill Nelson).

It is great news the episodes are over. Now is the time to let go. When you get to the end of a book, close the book. Leave it closed.

For me, it is a book by John O Donahue called Anam Cara (soul friend). It is about Celtic wisdom, a beautiful book.

When I started my nunchaku training, I was shown all the basic moves, it was more about control rather than striking an opponent. When my instructor thought I had mastered the basic moves he started some one to one tuition, he turned a vaulting horse on its side and placed a medicine ball on top. He handed me a standard set of Chinese oak nunchaku and said “imagine the medicine ball is the head and the vaulting horse is the body. Strike the opponent, but bear in mind opponents strike back”. I was confused by his comment, I struck hard at the head. The nunchaku bounced back and struck me in the forearm (lesson 1). The leather nunchaku did sting when you got hit, we wore protective helmets and a box.