Plastic Object

Check out Swedenborg, probably the weirdest and most wonderful christian mystic of them all. He had parallell spirit sight and normal sight, and could have perfectly controlled OBEs at will: http://www.swedenborg.org Also: when I read John Changs description of the spirit world and afterlife in Magus of Java, it struck me how similar, actually almost identical, his views are to Swedenborg's.

You have nothing to worry about. Sleep paralysis isn't dangerous and lucid dreaming is pretty easy to learn. No teacher is needed, just keep desiring it and keep a dream diary and it will come naturally after a while. An odd observation though: it seems like male lucid dreamers can't have orgasms in the dreams, while I have heard that female dreamers can. I wonder why. Seems unfair to me.

I read somewhere that back in the old days, all who wanted to study kabbala had to be jewish men, who already had grown children, and who had proven themselves as pillars of society. Only then were they considered to have the maturity to recieve and relate to the mysteries of the kabbala. That is one tradition. To your question, I think the job, married partner and "life" are, well all a matter of cultural conditioning, expectations and preferences. It does not matter much. The real tricky part of your question is in what ways having and taking care of children infuences one's spiritual path. First, I'd say that children are neither necessary for nor a hindrance to achieving spiritual goals (whatever the goals are) because empirical and historical evidence shows clearly that there are many childless true masters as well as masters with children. Second, I think most would agree that to care for someone else in an unselfish way is good for one's spiritual development. To have a child with someone, and to stay around to take care of that child no matter what, is really the most simple way to practice how to care for someone else every day (and night) for the rest of one's life. Therefore, and third, I'd say that to commit oneself to having children and to help them to grow up, is the most basic, simple and straightforward human (or animal for that matter) way to culture the virtues of love, devotion and unselfishness. (It is btw also a good way to understand oneself and to learn more about the patterns and behaviours that one received from one's own parents.) Lastly, I'll repeat that it seems unlikely that it is the only way, or even that it is the best way for everybody. I recall, though, a long passage in Umberto Eco's, Focault's pendulum, where the girlfriend of one of the protagonists patiently explains to her boyfriend that his search for the holy grail is just a pontless backwards metaphor, ecause her womb really is the grail, and it isn't inaccesible and far away, but right there next to him, or something like that.

.... and it is not necessarily a bad thing as your friend's example show. THis is a way of reasoning that makes a lot of sense. Maybe you also indicate a development that many martial artists go through as they grow older. That is, they start out with believing that all enemies have a human face, and that a punch in said face can solve any problem. Then they move on to some more refined ideas about what is dangerous to us humans (disease etc) without disregarding or forgetting about the first danger. It is a bit like (to make an analogy) moving from a belief that there is a military solution to all society's problems (lets go kill the bad guys to save the planet!) to a bit more deep structural explanations (lets try to deal with poverty, lack of education, bad infrastructure, bad healthcare, to save etc) But I'm going way of tangent.

A little question: The driving force for most people I have met who study the really brutal and effective martial arts seems to be fear. Fear of some specific thing, and then one practices and practices to counter it and to be prepared for it. Does this ring true for practitioners of chinese internal martial arts?

thanks Shon, I think I will!

I wholeheartedly agree that the southeast asian martial arts are the best for pure combat value: kuntao, silat and kali/escrima. I have practiced a couple of them and feel really secure in the ability of these systems to just about take out anyone from another system, including practitioners of most mainland chinese systems. I also think that many systems have a honesty to them that is apparent. If you want to punch someone in the face so he falls over, go for western boxing. If you want to be able to escape a rapist: submission wrestling, if you want to survive multiple opponents with knifes you shouldn't try to hit them with "fluffy magic bunny hands enters the eastern gate of the temple" or whatever. Run fast instead. It is all about what kind of situations one trains for. I don't practice taijiquan, but my bet is that some practitioners probably can handle themselves in a real fight, but that most probably couldn't. I also think that some knowledge of how ordinary people fight is necessary for most people who want to win a real fight. So practicing an good external style for a couple of years does seem to be a good idea, if you don't want to do it in the streets ;-) What this knowledge of external styles gives is body-knowledge of how potential opponents can fight, and it also gives the ablility to sort out really bad techniques from good ones. There are many so called fighting techniques out there that are lethal or dangerous -for the one who tries to use them (karate X-block against knife, spinning backfist and spinning high-kicks f. ex). Taijiquan seems to me to be quit a few steps removed from street brawling, and may contain techniques like these too. As a general rule I'd say that if the master has no reputation as a fighter (in his or her youth -which is more often the case) and his or her master has no such reputation either, then the style probably isn't good for fighting, and probably contains dangerous elements (for the user that is). ... and since you may be curious: I haven't been in a real fight since I started with martial arts.

It seems inevitable that predators like this guy will appear as soon as previously esoteric practices moves out into the public awareness. What strikes me is that he seems to be really worthless at NLP as well. His sites reads more like the leaflets I get from my local pizzerias than as something written by someone who has studied the art of how to affect others on the subliminal level. But maybe I missed the more sublime cues? ;-)

On the other hand, here above are some extraordinary insightsful comments that wouch for the general credibility of the climate of discussion on this list. I'd say that the bad things that you describe applies to most places where humans interact. What I do know about this place, is that the incident of good discussion (good in a wide sense -read in what you want) seems to be statistically much higher here than in other places. Btw, I am speaking as someone who has no idea what these arguments have been about, since I just arrived to this forum. Take what I am saying as a word of encouragement. keep up the good work and continue to speak about things that matter. Those who can will follow suit, those who are unable to will eventually go away to the places where they belong.

Hi all, Ah, ehh, right... I'm this individual who has done martial arts and off these last 20 years without actually managing to become an expert martial artist, and now I'm here. It seems that you lot ;-) are honest, unafraid and friendly, so I'm looking forward to taking part in discussions! cheers, Plastic Object