freeform

certainly very masculine - tall 'ship' and a guiding star - bearing in mind that men tend to navigate in relation to prominent landmarks and women tend to navigate by noticing patterns in the land... Hawaiian men used to navigate by the stars, whilst the women tended to lie on the boat feeling the intricate flows/waves/tides beneath the ship to navigate... interesting how women feel downwards and men look upwards (oh by the way I lied that men did one and women the other they both did both - but women were more renowned for navigation by feeling the currents and the men more renowned for recognising the celestial bodies). care to elaborate, Buddy?

Brian, I really appreciate your posts, thank you

how 'hard' do you do your pilates? do you find yourself holding your breath? what happens to the muscles that you use to push poo out? If you find yourself pushing and holding or straining your breath, I would really recomend easing up a notch. This is not advice specifically for pilates, but for any excersise that recruits the core... remember the core is very much linked to your beathing - alow your belly to act as a bellows - when it's compressed alow the air out, when it's expanded alow air in. In general breathe out on exertion (anytime you feel like holding your breath to give you more power, just ease up a bit and breathe out) You may be over-exerting the pelvic floor and possibly your lower back (psoas) - they're linked with ejaculation - keep your full awareness on your body when working out - which means linking breath, structure and attention... ... I'm not sure how experienced you are, I dont meant to be condescending with this simplistic advice - but it's important stuff to consider...

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Mal, Sounds like you're setting yourself up for some self-sabotage. I often do this - you set up unreasonable demands on yourself and often unreasonable expectations of what the result will be. the expectations and demands are linked - you tell yourself you wont get the results if you don't fulfill your demands - it's just setting yourself up for failure. My best estimation of how/why this happens in me is that my mind grasps for control. Only the mind needs rules, only the mind has expectations - both are illusory, they are both in place to make it seem like you're in control. If it so happens that you do stick to the demands and you do get the expected results, then the mind has a little glory to grasp on to, even though it played a very minor role in your success. The more likely scenario is not being able to stick to the demands and not getting the results - in this case the mind has a very concrete story of why it didn't work - in this way it re-asserts its illusory control. More and more I'm letting go, and when i feel connected to my core, my belly, It becomes so natural to just follow my intuition - this is not necessarily easy or 'chilled' - often intuition pushes me to a place that is extremely 'uncomfortable' for who i perceive myself to be. Intuition is like the antidote to the poison of mental control... the only irony is that most of us see intuition as the worst of poisons and mental control as the universal medicine... When I feel 'connected', the mental grasping doesn't stop - but its importance is neutralised - I can impose demands and expectations in my head, then I tend to just let it go and follow the deeper wisdom in my belly.

I know we've been on the subject of goals and manifestation and 'effortless' action and what not... but I recently had a few insights that have really helped me, so I thought I'd share. I've been raving about the Slavinski book 'return to oneness'... and it's that book that allowed this latest insight into goal making. In a way all our problems are caused by goals! This is how Slavinski explains it and it makes a great deal of sense. Goals are simple - the structure is this: I want something that I dont already have... so this creates a polarity between 'me' and 'me with this thing' and the 'wanting' is the tension between the two - that is the motivating emotion (we have many other motivating emotions other than wanting, but anyway). So this tension (imagine 'me' and 'me with that thing' being pulled together by a rubber band of 'wanting') makes us get what we want - when we get that thing the tension collapses... When we fail to get what we want then something completely different happens! We start with a decision (and since we've got a PUA theme going this month, I'll follow that)... so your decision is "I'll go and talk to that pretty girl I've had my eye on"... you go talk to her, she turns and looks at her friends they all laugh at you. you hang your head and walk away. This is a failed goal, and if it was traumatic enough (which this specific example would definately be) you set up in your ego a defense mechanism so that you dont experience the trauma again. This could be "pretty girls are mean" or "I'm not cool enough" or many more - depends on the person and the actual situation (and there can be several such defense mechanisms put in place at once). So lets keep it simple and say that he only got one defense mechanism which was "all pretty girls are mean". The thing is his original goal is still not fullfilled! So there is still tension in that rubber band! On one end it's "I want to talk to pretty girls" on the other end "pretty girls are mean". This tension after some time goes deep into one's unconcious and stays dormant... lets say this dude 15 years later, when he completely forgot about that original regection, decides to approach a work colleague that he likes. He wants to do it, but there's something holding him back, and if he forces himself, he acts nervous and weird. So he goes to some coach, or teacher, or PUA, or whatever and what they do is try to empower him... "you want that pretty girl? if you want her bad enough nothing can stand in your way" etc etc - they can use hypnosis, energy work, anchoring positive states, eft or whatever - and that will work for a little while - because it will strengthen the "I want to talk to pretty girls" part of the polarity whilst weakening the other polarity ("pretty girls are mean"). For a little while he'll use his energy and push himself with his will and he'll talk to a pretty girl... but the duality is still there! and at some point, as soon as he stops pushing and forcing against it, the rubber band is going to pull him right back. So the guy might go through life - seesawing between the two polarities... What Slavinski suggests is that both the polarities should be brought together and integrated into one! (how taoist is that!?) There are a number of drills you can do to achieve this - but the main point is that both ends of the polarity are brought together and transformed into one/none... what appears to happen (according to Slavinski's book and the yahoo group dedicated to his methods) is that the charge of the problem completely disappears... there is nothing there - no tension, no pushing, no pulling etc. the guy can dance between the two polarities (he can find pretty girls mean, but he can also not, and he can talk to them if he wants and he can also not). It's as if the the goal structure has run its course - you've completed your goal, and the tension disappears! Now this was a rather simple example... think how many little tensions there are in your ego. ever wanted to do something and a part of you didn't. Ever have conflicting 'parts'? I'm willing to bet that everyone here does to a certain extent. Our unconcious is full of these tensions, and the shape created by these tensions is what many people call 'me' or 'I'. These tensions are what I see as 'karma'... karma is just unresolved polarity... for some people 'suffering' and 'life' is a polarity so they act it out by not eating meat. there are hundreds/thousands of little tensions througout our ego - in fact every good aspect of our ego has a bad aspect, and visa versa, and that's already a polarity. It takes a lot of energy to keep the tension in all these polarities going... freeing them up leaves far more energy for other things. (I was thinking how introducing more energy into yourself can be dangerous - and it makes sense... stop ejaculating and you get more energy which is used up by your ego on the unconcious tensions you got going... which can lead to extreme behaviour! it makes so much sense!) So does this make goals bad? I dont think so... I think that when goals are concious, and you know you're creating a polarity and a tension, and you know you have the responsibility and the tools to either accomplish your goal or to remove the tension - then you can be like the Tai Chi master advancing and reatreating in a dynamic dance between the polarities - except you're using your ego. What happens when all these tensions are integrated? I think you get Adyashanti - type enlightened teachers. And when they form a goal - they have their whole concious energy invested in it and it's far more likely to happen. Which might be how transmission works: Someone who's worked out all the kinks in his ego meditates with people that dont.... he has hundreds of times more energy that he can direct conciously - so he creates a dynamic tension - an intent - that all the people with him integrate their polarities... because of the amount of energy invested, this powerfull tension gives the people present a route, and if they relax enough their uncocnious will spot the route and take it! the same with manifestation... creating an energetic tension between 'I' and 'I with my goal' means that if you've got enough of your ego integrated there will be so much energy, that it will create a dynamic tension throughout the universe leading to the completion of the goal... the only way to relieve the tension is to actualise the goal! If you dont complete it - you create 'karma' - i.e. unresolved polarity!

http://poetv.com/video.php?vid=26090

Well this Ragnar dude is old and can bend a horseshoe! lol - also apparently animals have a real affinity to him... anyway I find reading about someone much more inferior to witnessing him live just for a minute or so. here's more about him from the website I was also concerned about the price of the magnets he sells - there is a set with a dvd and two foot sized magnets for standing on and the set is $150 - which is very expensive. but apparently if you call him up you can get just the dvd for about $35 which is reasonable. I also looked into magnets and discovered not all magnets are created equal - the ones he uses are not the ordinary industrial ones sold on ebay... here's more on magnets to be used on the body: www.magnetlabs.com

Bindo, it's very difficult to read 'tone' in posts. (there was actually some proper research into this!!) I dont think Craig was being confrontational - and he does have a point. I personally have a real dislike for that form of marketing - but often I must overlook the bs to get the gems. That kind of marketing is very ineffective for people who have an understanding of what is being marketed. for people just coming accorss this whole subject the marketing might draw them in, allowing the knowledge to be spread further out. What do I think of his techniques? - well, I think there is something to it - using magnets. I will be ordering some very high quality magnets and trying them out before I'll be able to make an informed oppinion. Caves, holes in the ground, special paramagnetic areas are all highly prized for cultivation purposes, so it makes some sense to stand on magnets. I'll keep you all updated...

still very vague. how would you know you're immortal? how would you know that your physical body has turned into one or formless energy? What specifically would you see, hear, feel/touch, taste and/or smell that would let you know this is so? examples: "I would hear three independent observers say that my body is giving off incredible amount of light" - "I would hear two different doctors tell me that the gunshot that went right through my brain has caused me no harm whatsoever - I would also see mri scans, x-ray scans and other test results that show me in perfect health" ...this is what I mean by being specific. If it feels very uncomfortable to make these goals so specific, then that's an indication that you're chasing after illusion...

Darin - EXACTLY! - 'loser talk' Losing is what it's all about - at least for me. Although you do have a really narrow, stereotypical idea of what someone 'going with the flow' is like - I've met maybe one person who I would consider as 'going with the flow' totally - he also happens to be the only person I've met that I could remotely consider 'enlightened', and he's very active, very successful (in the monetary sense) and tends to very quickly become excellent at whatever he turns his hand to. However everything he does is spontaneous, there is no planning, no 'consideration' or verbal/deductive/logical thought process. Since you're a fan of goal making, you may know that one of the most important steps is answering this question in very exact, specific detail: how would you know that you got what you wanted? (any scientist here would see the profound importance of this). It could be simple: "I want a red ferrari - so I know I've got it when I have the car in my drive with the keys in my hand, and an invoice showing that I own it fully" so Darin, how would you know that you've achieved immortality or ascended? - if you dont have a very precise, specific answer, then you'll end up chasing after a mental construct - 'you get what you focus on' - if what you focus on is a vague illusory ideal - then you'll get a vague illusion of attainment... by the way I really respect your drive and dedication, please don't take this as anything other than a friendly discussion and the sharing of personal discoveries.

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not really dissolving opposites, but rather 'joining'... it's kind of 'sexual'.

Please don't misunderstand me - I'm not trying to find faults with goal setting. Reading 'the greats' of goal setting is exactly what has lead me to my views in this matter. Not only reading, but studying with... The part of me that sets a goal is not intrinsicaly aligned with the tao - it's as simple as that. There is another part of me that leads me to what I need when I need with no conscious direction from the part that sets goals... That part of me is aligned with the tao... (oh and what I think I need and what I truly need don't align often) funny thing is; the part that sets goals will always argue that it's because of its efforts that 'good' things happen - which makes me laugh. Setting goals is the act of willfully creating illusion and separation - nothing wrong or bad with that as long as it's conscious. I once saw a privately filmed video of Anthony Robbins - He delivered an unbelievably energetic and convincing presentation - (un?)fortunately the amateur camerawork meant that after the speech the cameraman kept his lense focused on Robbins as he walked out of sight of the audience, while his co presenter did his thing. Robbins sat down and the camera zoomed in - all I could see in his eyes was a profound tiredness and disdain, none of what he spoke about was true for him in that moment - it was a sad sight, like looking at an old grizzly bear in a tiny cage. Most people's goals are just a way of trying to fill an empty hole inside themselves with something from the outside. This is our life-story as a society. We have all these external 'riches' yet the more we have the more unsatisfied we feel. ----- There is a way to let our conscious goal-making part dance with the deep flowing-feeling part - and the result of the dance is usually something that is very satisfying - but never in the way that you may have thought... Sorry for being so vague, but it's hard to explain this without being with you as I do so. Karen, if you read this, I'd really like to read your oppinion... I'd call it sinking down

There are a couple of important additions I would add here... no. 1 - 'choose a goal' is a big subject in itself. Goal making is an act of specifying - or being specific - (I want THAT as opposed to everything else that's available)... so it serves to be extremely specific - so when you say 'I want to date a pretty girl' - you really need to be very specific of what 'pretty' is. The more specific the better - because 'pretty' is rather fluid, if this goal had enough internal tension in it you would find yourself going from girl to girl, trying to find someone pretty enough. It's the same with "I want to be rich" - rich is such an ambiguous word - most people that have this goal as a 'life-story' will never be satisfied - they will never be rich enough, however many yachts they have, they can always have more. and that's the thing with goals - achieving them is never really satisfying - it may well be exciting and brilliant for a good six months, but then it becomes 'normal' again... and again you have to try to fill that black hole with another goal - so it's easy to spend our entire life chasing goals, trying to satisfy ourselves. Real, true, nourishing satisfaction is right here in between our thoughts in between the goals that our minds jump to...

giving up is underrated. give up. give up completely. give up to the point that there is nothing more to give up. give up your most treasured goals, values, memories and fantasies. ...this opens the front channel - going down into the abyss of nothingness (also 'everythingness'). Out of this nothingness may arise an impulse for 'somthingness' - and we go back up from the deep, dark depths, up to the singular, individual light of the head and as this flower blooms, we go back down, giving up the light, giving up the seductive beauty of the mind, and so the cycle repeats... This is the microcosmic, as i see it at the moment (I'll give up on this idea in about 17 seconds ) rain - I like your posts - there is a real tempo, rhythm to the words sometimes - are you 'musical'?

Goals are interesting. Personally I believe that the "I" that makes goals is so narrow and limited in its ability to see what is possible (or just what 'is') that it's not to be trusted with something as important and broad as spiritual growth. There is another "I" that just leads, or flows - it's hard to explain because the "I" that explains is the same as the I that makes goals... Of course these limited "I's" are not to be ignored and forgotten because they're not so 'spiritual' - I still make small goals - I would like to have less internal auditory dialogue and more internal visual 'thought' - I would like to soften my body - I would like to learn more about anger... Making a goal means creating separation, limiting consciousness and being specific - it's part of the deal. So the achievement of your goal will always be dual, limited and specific. Enlightenment or wu-wei or whatever you may think as a possible 'ultimate goal' is on the opposite end of the spectrum - it's vague, non-spcific, non-dual and unlimited. so making a goal (limited) to achieve enlightenment (unlimited) is like trying to capture the entire universe in a cup. So the best way to use goals, as far as I'm concerned, is to make them very specific and very limited and then letting it all go and becoming unlimited and general, then let that go and settle in the middle and watch the two dance - part of the dance will be achieving your goal or getting something even better, something you might never have expected. Ian, I'm sure you'll have a certain reaction to my 'relativityness', and I'm pretty sure the above will make little sense. If you feel like it, ask me specific questions and I'll give you specific answers and lets see if we can capture a satisfying cup-full of the universe. PS - this reminds me of a little drill I used to do - I would stare at something very intently, focusing all my awareness on a single point, and when it's achieved I would broaden my focus, start to open up my peripheral vision and extend my awareness in all directions, trying to take in 'everything' rather than 'something' - when I settled into that I would again narrow my focus on something specific and then back again - trying to do this faster each round... when I reached a certain speed of going back and forth, it turned very strange - the two started to blend and I started to experience one within another - neither being specific nor being general - somewhere in the middle, but also encompassing both - and that's when I started witnessing the dance that happens - this was very pleasant and nourishing...

actually no, you're mistaken - all this talk is certainly a projection (sarcasm back at you ) yes it's anthropomorphizing, but in a conscious way. like I say - the thought rises from the formless up to become a fixed form - such as a word... we use the word and then let it desolve back into the formless. This way you dont tend to hold on to a thought, but you dont ignore it either, you can begin to delight in the dance that happens. when this process is not flowing and we're not conscious of it, we start to believe that 'fixed thoughts = reality' - reality becomes a very narrow, repetitive, automatic experience lead by the mind. so we can use fixed thoughts, we can project humanness onto tao, we can think of god as a big, naked white man with a beard in the sky, judging and controlling people's fate. But for most people that thought sticks in the head and becomes 'the truth' - whether they're conscious of this happening or not. I'm suggesting that it's possible for the thought to rise and become 'the truth' and just as quickly we let it wilt away back into the formless, untill a we begin again with a new 'truth'. It's kind of like breathing... this is the microcosmic orbit from a different perspective.

Anthromorphosizing the Tao will only lead you to a Western shaped, male God character. we project too much of our humanness onto Tao and so we come up with concepts such as 'punishment from heaven'. There is no punishment without reward and certainly no reward without punishment. Two sides of a coin. We tend to prefer rewards, right? we look at the shiny reward side of the coin and with a smug grin drop it into the piggybank of our consciousness... We believe we have now successfuly grasped the reward without the punishment... but ofcourse the coin was dropped into our piggy bank and the coin inveriably has two sides... so the punishment is in there (however blind we are to it) - and it does punish us from within... it's just unconscious so we tend to think the punishment comes from outside events. Funny thing is - the same punishment will carry on punishing (in the same way, with different packaging) untill we become conscious of it! (karma?) We can still play with coins and piggybanks, but if we want to play in the spiritual way, we have to always be conscious of the punishment and reward of every perception - and that's being aware of both sides at the same time - never leaning towards one side or the other (attachment), but accepting the coin whole (rejecting nothing) - this is when punishment and reward both nourish us beyond any way we can even begin to imagine. Re. speaking about our mysterious experiences - an experience registers in the whole of our being - from the head (finite, individual) to the belly (infinite, everything). Most mystical perceptions are first triggered in the mysterious belly - as they come up the back (in most ppl) the experience is more and more individualised - at the level of the heart the unfathomable idea becomes a feeling and as this mystical perception rises further, it is further filtered from emotional to sensory information (visual and auditory) - in the head level we can translate the sensory perception into words. As the idea turns into words, it then cycles back down the front, dying. It turns back into sensory perception, then feeling/emotion, then back down into the formless everythingness where it came from. (this is how (in my experience) mysterious thoughts work - track a few energetically - it's fascinating) so what happens is that something huge, ungraspable, enormous and mysterious goes through a cycle of individuation and is simplified to an enormous level to become words. Most of us have a very weak connection with the belly - and certainly the front channel is almost completely closed for most, and besides we have a tendency for individuation and head-centredness. So by speaking of, writing about, even thinking logically about mysterious truths, we create more blockages, more misunderstanding, more 'asleepness'... (unless ofcourse we've really opened the front channel and the thoughts are allowed to die properly - the central channel also has something to do with it, certainly when we stop all thinking the central channel is engaged and then things become interesting)

These are some of the best european teachers I know of (not necessarily through personal experience). Dirk Oellibrandt Zhixing Wang and Zhendi Wu Burgs Juan Li I'll be back with more if I remember them... (but for now, give these ones a thorough checking out )

Taomeow, as always you're stimulating some very interesting thoughts. I wanted to ask you your oppinion on this: we consider jing in amounts - you have a finite amount that you use/burn up etc. But as always when using a fuel or power source there is the consideration of efficiency. There are vehicles that can run more than 200 miles per gallon, and there are some that only do a few miles per gallon. So the simple model of having x amount of jing equating with y amount of 'vitality' or lifeforce or whatever becomes obsolete... So there is efficiency in use (i suspect qi gong makes your body more efficient at using jing) and then there is the paradigm shift, where if you get deeper into jing a complete transformation occurs - the rules kind of change - like with homeopathy or nuclear fusion. where with a tiny amount of the raw fuel you can create incredible amounts of energy. not sure what my question is but maybe you can pick up my train of thought..? (lol as I typed 'train of thought', a train rode past my office window, on a very rarely used train line)

I believe it happened (sort of) in the opposite direction. We were in a lower state (lower meaning more earthy, lower dan tien, less individual, more infinite) and came up to a higher state (higher into our heads, developed individuality became very finite). note that there is no connotation of lower = bad and higher = good or visa versa. We used to be much more connected to the earth and its resources, not really identifying ourselves as separate from it and from our 'tribe'. There was a study done on amazonian tribes where they tried to teach them maths (counting in descreet individual units) - the amazonians couldn't do it, and couldn't learn to do it - you'd give them 5 apples and they couldn't count them, or even have a concept of them as individual discreet, separate objects. so it's no surprise that our head based culture that is focused on separateness and individuality invented a language that is binary and static. (Taomeow would have some very interesting things to add here, I'm sure) So when we were in the lower realm we had less of an individual will and intent, now that we have this individual will, we have less connection to the non-individual, eternalness that was available in the lower realm. I believe that our challenge is to take this finite individuality and take this infinite connectedness and get them mating... and this is where the middle realm comes in - it's in between finite (upper) and infinite (lower) and the result of the mating of those is something like Love... aliens and stuff are the result of the dance of the finite mind meeting with the infinite belly...

consider the slack cut.