freeform

I'm so glad you've discovered the Little Superstar clip... I try to start every morning by watching it.

Hey Sean - I've noticed that the link, quote, bold, underline, italics etc buttons work differently now. When you press it you get a dialogue box to type in the text/address to be modified - although this might make it more likely that people wont forget to close the tags, I find it rather counter intuitive. Before, you could highlight the text, click the relevant button (bold for example) and the tags would go either side of it... to do the same thing I now have to go through many more steps... is it possible to have the dialogue box pop up when text is not highlighted, and have the old system when some text is highlighted? not a big deal by any means - but I used to enjoy reading back through my post, highliting and formating the text easily and quickly... I appreciate all your hard work for this community - so please dont take this as a critisism in any way (and dont bother changing it if it's too much hassle!) thanks

LOL - yeah I just re-read it - and I do bring up far too many topics. I guess I tend to think like that - I get an idea and see how other things fit into it. I've always been facinated with coincidences, I'm always on the look out for a meaningful coincidence - maybe I'm just deluding myself, but it makes me smile, and somehow I feel I grow through it. I tend to think of sacred geometry as 'relationships in space'. I'm not sure what I mean by this myself - but seeing shapes and patterns in nature is part of it. The fibonacci sequence that explains the relationship in space of many natural occurances (from shells and plants to galaxies). We always try to 'get to the underlying truth' of experiences. Sometimes I think that the fibonacci sequence is like a deep truth - because as just a simple formula (the golden ratio) it follows the same laws that govern nature - so working with geometry (shapes) and the ratio somehow invokes the the deep, refined energy of the universe. (and the different shapes reflect different aspects of the universe - like the Platonic solids). This, in my mind, relates to what you said about 'adding to self'. I think I know what you mean about that - it's like you can learn hundreds of qi gong techniques, but not get into the full depth of any one of them. I think sacred geometry - rather than adding, is more a function revealing and refining. Sometimes a chant reveals the deeper truth of itself, it's far more than just a sound. It's like getting into the core of yourself and/or the universe. It's like we can see through the fog of what we've 'added' and notice the underlying pattern that creates everything. Rather more practically I remember a guy demonstrating the power of this pyramid he built (it was composed of hundreds of smaller pyramids and it was all in golden ratio)... We took a bottle of water (had a taste) and then stuck it in the middle of this pyramid sculpture - five minutes later we tasted it and it was quite sweet. (I think it was Seandenty that was saying one of the masters he visited could do this...) I could feel a nice warm buzz in my stomach and intestines for a few hours after.

I go for the stages of enlightenment model... There is no final destination, just paradigm shifts in our consciousnes... like the stages in life (think being a child and seeing the difference between yourself and your parents). I think there are three stages to enlightenment... they seem to coordinate with the three tan tiens. The Taoist aproach is to work from the bottom up - cultivating the body, presence in the moment, centered, gracefull movement through the space of life. The upper tan tien needs to stop controlling, projecting, grasping, attaching meanings and 'talking'. It needs to resolve polarities of our individual maps of reality. The next step is at the heart (middle tan tien) this is achieved through interaction with others. Learning to be present and in the moment whilst relating to others - this is a very difficult process for most, it seems. It involves dropping away the fear of loving someone (anyone) completely, the dropping of the social facade (and thus revealing the parts of us we'r constantly, unconciously hiding from others) and feeling emotions fully - without editing or 'thinking about them or attaching meanings etc. By being present, in tune and in love with people, you learn to be those things with yourself... The important thing to do now is to become as 'enlightened' as you're ready to be. This simply means living our life through all those three levels as best we can. The main task is to do the right thing from the right centre - move, direct, and 'function' from your belly - love, connect and feel from your heart - invent, reason, be creative from your head. In our society we give our over-worked and polluted head nearly all these tasks. Our bodies and emotions deal with our dark fears (because we tend to edit them and not let them in our head - so they settle in the heart and LTT). So we tend to behave unconciously since our bodies and emotions are acting out all the 'deleted scenes' of the head.

The way I tend to think of pee drinking is like a feedback mechanism... it's kind of like a homeopathic feedback loop. So I agree with Sean completely. Rather than drinking or snorting pee, I tend to just notice the smell... this gives a more subtle, but still effective biofeedback. Smelling food is also important (our nose is right above our mouth for a reason). We tend to forget that we have this very sensetive instrument... Although unconcious, we get all kinds of vital information from smell, we get feedback about all the systems and organs in the body, and imo it's very important to nurture this ability. We also constantly smell our surroundings and other people and their emotional and physical (maybe spiritual?) states. I read somwhere a study about people with multiple allergies - they tend to have a very bad sense of smell, as well as not smelling their food. I wonder if doing neti practice is helping my sense of smell?

The birds outside my window imitate the sound of car alarms. Dogs make a very low, quiet growl to dscipline their pupps. Humans talk about talking. Humans talk about thinking. ('thinking' is talking about experiencing.) If we stop talking, we can stop thinking and start experiencing. Then we can imitate car alarms and discipline our pupps. After that... who knows?

Welcome! What kind of martial art do you practice?

How did you manage that?! I've got 1.5.0.7 too... this is a test... nope still the get the dialogue box well - this is one of those strange quirks computer have sometimes... (maybe this is how they'll end up becoming concious! )

Personally I thought that the main effect of using the keysound was that by making the sound you kind of have to make a reverse breath... the actual sound has an effect on the body, I'm sure - but i think the main effect is doing the reverse breath at the same time as 'letting go' (which you need to do to make a loud noise) and concentrating on sexual/sensual feelings...

It would be silly of me to speak for 'all Taoists'... but imo life is suffering and is enjoyment and is pain and is pleasure... you may notice there is no real difference between happiness and sadness... it's just two sides of one coin... It's like a pendulum swinging between the two opposites... but the actual motion/movement is a whole, singular 'thing' out of which the polar opposites arise... maybe the Taoist way is to get that pendulum swing more and more... further to one side then then other untill the swinging is so fast and so forcefull, that the pendulum starts going in a circle (rather than just from side to side)... then the polar opposites dissapear and we awaken to the motion/movement of life...?

I've gone through a lot of very interesting information to learn how to do exactly this (internal alchemy is just one of them) My recomendation... in terms of sorting out 'problems' or patterns in thinking is to use this tool: Aspectics (also known as Problem-to-Enlightenment). That's in terms of an actual ego-clearing practice... I also urge you to listen to Ian (and Lezlie) - although what I'm suggesting may seem contradictory to Ian's suggestion of 'get out of your head and back into your body' - it actually achieves this in a really elegant way. actually I've found that psychological and physiological 'pain' are very much connected. Getting back into the body is the best cure for psychological 'problems'. The mind is like the teenage upstart and the body is the old wise sage. You may cut yourself and feel pain - then look at the cut and start getting worried about infections, losing blood, staining your clothes, where to get a bandage etc. so from a simple physical wound we manage to create a whole host of mental problems and pains whereas the actual problem is far simpler and very much physical. It's the same with our emotions - emotions always begin in the body - we feel emotions - and then we think about them. The thinking is a way to get away from the pain (or even pleasure) of the emotion, and it causes many blockages. Once we can feel an emotion to the full, without editing or thinking about the experience that's when we're on the path to really transforming ourselves. The Aspectics excersise above seems a little simple, maybe a little 'stuck in the head' - but it is one of the most powerfull ways of working with your automatic patterns that I have found. It's easy to say to yourself 'I'll just concentrate on the physical when I start running one of my problem patterns' but doing it is far harder... most of us are constantly running these patterns - moments of actual awareness are far between... maybe through dilligent practice one can extend the moments of awareness, and have them happening more and more often - but in the end the patterns have to achieve their ultimate aim, just shunting them to the side is like hiding that skeleton in the closet - it has to come out at some time in some way or you can go straight to the root cause of the pattern and work on all its aspects (physical, mental and emotional). Every single pattern or problem we have has the ultimate aim of returning to the Tao, sometimes rivers flood villages on the way to the sea, sometimes our patterns hurt us on the way to the Tao - if they're hurting us often, they're usually stuck in a kind of feedback loop - usually they'll keep on hurting us in the same way untill something is done (or the lesson is learnt). The Aspectics process is a way of taking each pattern through its course straight to the Tao... this takes maybe 20 minutes... if left in its loop it could take a lifetime (or longer?!) for it to reach its ultimate goal (Tao).

I use Firefox... let me try it again... yup same thing - when I highlight text, then click Italic button a dialogue box pops up asking me to enter the text to be italicised... It's a mystery indeed

Well - I'm not sure I'm agnostic - I dont think there is anyway of really proving it

Welcome Taolpha! I remember when I first started a Tai Chi class my knees were in pain a lot of the time... then I learnt to use my feet properly and it all went... it's all very calming and centering once you know the routine. Anyhoo - great to have you here.

I was just as skeptical as you - clouds do tend to morph, disappear, reapear etc. so when someone suggested they can bust a cloud with energy and intent I was like "yeah - you can bust a cloud without energy and intent - just watch it long enough " - then I felt rude and obliged to let the teacher demonstrate. This is the Hawaiian Huna technique of gathering and then directing energy out. You simply gather energy in your hand (breathing in through the soles - pump up the LTT then direct to palm - where you breathe more energy into the chi ball (your hand heats up)) - you have to find a smallish, fluffy, recluse ( ) cloud that is not near other big ones (you can distinguish it clearly and it tends to morph less that way) - you intend into the ball that the cloud is to be dispersed and just throw it at the sucker. it disperses within 5 seconds - and I saw it done so many times that I had no doubt that it wasn't just a coincidence that the cloud dispersed at the exact same time as the chi balls were 'thrown'. When I was in this class, nearly all the other participants were quite new to serious energy work, and they all managed to bust a cloud. We also learnt to throw energy balls at each other with different intentions. sometimes this was very effective. - well it's not flying or walking through walls, but I've had very interesting results with the inner smile, microcosmic and even the 6 sounds. I do inner smile almost every day... after I smile to my organs and stuff I do the yang practice of smiling outside of myself - I tend to smile to family and friends and then smile to 'problem people' in my life... Although similar events have hapened at least 3 other times, the most recent was when a builder at my flat having not finished his work went home, didn't return my calls for several days and then when I finaly got into contact was *very* rude - shouting, cursing, demanding to be payed for work he hadn't even done. So after the phone conversation I was feeling rather angry - did my sounds to cool it and then went for a long, deep inner smile session... when smiling at the builder something kept popping into my mind - the idea that I should smile to his daughter too - so I did... The next morning the guy turned up at the flat apologising prefusley (I wasn't that shocked as I've had this happen a few times before) - he got on with the work he hadn't finished before and at the end he refused any payment for it... as he was walking out the front door he turned and said "at least my daughter is alright" - I was like "what do you mean?" - he didn't explain, and just walked off smiling. (he hadn't mentioned a daughter before). So if this happened with an incorrect method, incorrect technique and no teacher! I wonder what could be achieved if all these other conditions were correct! You said your practice (and I assume the practice of your master(s)) is a non-martial one - how would you describe it? I understand it's the lightning path - what does that entail?

I've done a bit of cloud busting... I've seen people blasting clouds away, having a maximum of 20 minutes training. Breaking bricks might take longer to master - but it's no 'walking through solid walls'... that's altogether something different. You're right - this stuff needs to be seen to be believed - and however trustworthy other people seem, I'd have to see it for myself - to verify its truth for me. what still mistifies me is 'what one does to be able to do these things'. As you say it's all good when someone's claiming they're enlightened, that they have super-human powers... but how is this achieved? what fundamental difference is in their practice that allows them such a huge difference than 'us'? I've seen some amazing things that would shift most people's idea of human ability... but slicing through bananas, pushing over objects without touching, walking through solid walls etc. is something that's so distant from my experience that it's still unbelievable. Especially since you condemn many of our practices as ineffective - when many of us have had a lot success and some facinating experiences with them... was what we experienced not real? - was it only the tip of the proverbial iceberg?

Welcome Leidee! Sharing ideas and experiences is what the Bums do with most of their day - so you'll fit right in!

- well I hope none of us take those four words as describing our entire practice. For me the spiritual comes as a result of working on the big four. When people say that the practices we do won't lead to good results, we must be missing something very fundamental - I'm trying to work out what that is. It's like the extra 'secret' ingredient that only a select few seem to be aware of... but hundreds of thousands of other people miss...

how about a european meetup!!!??

After the shaking I normaly also do the practice of lifting yourself up on the balls of your feet then dropping so that your heel strikes the ground and the vibration goes up to the top of your head. If I really relax (not bracing for the expected shock) the feeling is very interesting - grounding but also uplifting. I also was inspired by Plato's ourchase of the Soloflex vibrating platform thingy I wish there was a UK version. Looks like it would get all that dense jing vibrating in the bones and give the connective tissue a workout if you take on effective poses. Plato - if you're arround - how's it going with the soloflex - any developments? worth the money?

I've always been impressed by the look of this guy I think he's relatively near Sydney. (disclaimer - never been to OZ so not great at the geography )

I think most of us have taken into account the dangers of over-doing just about anything... What I find interesting are the 'super powers'. Not necessarily because I want to have some (although it would be fun ) I just want to get to the bottom of this... Most of these 'super powers' are just perceptual illusions - i.e. they have an expalantion of how they can do it, but the way it works is far simpler. I've seen a number of great martial arts hypnotists. Zapping people from a distance, making them fall or flail around - I've seen pretty much the same tricks done by an actual hypnotist - and the process is pretty much the same. It's really not that hard once you have a large number of students and observers. The 100th monkey syndrome kicks in and you start believing that the master has some other-wordly power - so when he zaps you from a distance you dont hesitate to fall. As always if you present them a skeptical non-believer they fail to zap them effectively - then they explain from their model of how it all works - why it didn't work (his energy was flowing differently, he was distracted etc) So what interests me are the levitation, walking through walls, teleporting, flying around etc. Seeing Chang (Dijang) set the newspaper on fire was perplexing... it's an old trick I've seen done a number of times. So that's where the first bit of doubt kicks in. I'm not saying he didn't 'set the paper alight with his chi alone' but I'm saying that I'm already doubting it at that point because I've seen the same thing, but knowing 100% that it was a trick. I must admit that his zapping looked genuine - the hypnotist zappers go through a certain process to be able to do it on people - he didn't go through that process. So I'm now doubting my doubts Walking through walls, levitating etc I have not seen demonstrated - so I cant comment. What I find puzzling though is when students of such masters (Sean - that's you I'm guessing ) claim that what other people are doing is generally 'wrong' (in the sense that it wont take them to the higher reaches of what's possible) - but then the 'right' way to do it is shrouded in secrecy. I think Tao Bums has many progressive and experimental members that do all kinds of things all kinds of different ways - are we really missing some key secret ingredient? We combine mental, emotional and physical with the energetic - what is there that we're missing? This is a really interesting subject for me - and I'm really enjoying this thread and Sean's input. I find it hard to put myself firmly into an oppinion and stick with it. There are doubts to sticking with either oppinion and I havent been able to resolve them. I really want to learn 'what's the difference that makes the difference'. Hearing about all these extraordinary people I just want to see it for myself - or even better learn and experience it in myself. Sean I'd really like to hear any other personal experiences that you're free to share with us. Also could you explain how the HT fundamentals (inner simle, 6 healing sounds, microcosmic orbit) are dangerous if practiced thoroughly? thanks!

Humans are the only animals that can be hurt by words. or turned on by words. or inspired by words. or kill because of words. I dont think it's healthy.

The reason the 'controlled' experiments fail - especially involving Randi-type characters is simply because the experiments are designed to fail. For example you write to randi saying you can do X - he then decides how can he test you, to be able to prove that you can't do X - so the main intention of the whole experiment is to see you fail. He designs the experiment - he decides how the experiment will be judged (and rather than getting third-party scientists involved) - it is he that decides whether you pass or fail. This makes it hard to test these kinds of things - because the bias is always there - whether it is to prove that it's 'true' or to prove that it's false - there is always an underlying intention that directs the way the experiment is going. It's actually quite ridiculous - I find this Randi guy the most abismal representative of science... he's the most unscientific person (when it suits him). It's like if you tried to prove that you can ride a bicycle at 20mph he would set up a test track in the snow going up a hill and only 30 metres long - his excuse is usually - well we cant afford a long flat track to test on... he has the final say on how the experiement is carried out - on how it's decided - and he's the only one who decides it... is he likely gonna make it easy for someone to get his million? I remember reading a letter by him as a reply to some guy who claimed he can live without eating for several months at a time... the letter was full of expletives and pure rage...