Pietro

Note to self: never mention disembodied entities to people with an overactive fantasy! No, no, SereneBlue, I was just ehm joking. don't worry. ;-)

Hi Fruitzilla, and welcome You missed the line: ;-) In Italy we say "we are at the fruit" (Siamo alla frutta) to mean that we have reached the real limit on something. That enough is enough, and something gota change. Well, we are at the fruit, Zilla Sorry couldn't contain myself ;-)

Don't let this thread be hacked into a thread on the nature of reality. There are already plenty of places to discuss this. Don't respond to provocations, here. Thanks.

come with your girlfriend is she pretty

Well, I would suggest to get rid of the gun, just out of the fact that most of people daying by gun, are people being killed out of an error, from a family member. (or similar). Yes, inner dissolvng is painful, but no where as near as the deep and continuous pain that comes from not inner dissolving. second, there are levels. For example you only dissolve inside your body, and not your aura until you are confortable with ghosts and similar. third although shit can happen, so you can find yourself in a really bad situation and then dissolving will really help you, in all other instances you can also adjust the speed quite a lot. The joke here is: do you want to go for the one lifetime enlightenment, the 2 lifetime enlightenment, the 10 lifetime enlightenment, the 100 lifetime enlightenment, the 1000 lifetime enlightenment. Eventually you'll reach there, it's just a matter of when. And in any moment you can change track (although if you can wait the last breath to move to the 1 lifetime enlightenment ;-) ). So you do have some elbow space. Regarding becoming crazy, don't worry. We are all already crazy. We are trying to reach sanity. dshdsheqwdljd dsjdwhizq dsbxd dhiew hswhs dshd ddswo dejic ew ipw edjwopdwew I hope you feel more at home now . But seriously, suppose something bad happens to you. The usual scaremonger: torture or rape. Actually why limit your fantasy: torture and rape. Or just witnessing it respect someone you love (and honestly that can be even harder). That is an external event. You don't dissolve that can really mess up your life in a big way. If you dissolve it doesn't. And if you dissolve, and you can't handle it? Just go slower. Unless you are the one being tortured you often can go slower. And if you cannot, and you really can't take it. Well put it like this. The situation is not going to be worse than if you didn't dissolve in the first place. Yeah people can go crazy because of a bad experience. You are not special. Are we going to stay here and worry about all the bad things that can happen, or are we going to just have some fun and tease some buddhist along the way ;-) . COm'on :-P.

bump let's give it anther go.

Unfortunately not. All I am telling you on this topic is coming from Bruce teachings, and personal conversations I had with Bruce. But I do know a bit more, if you need. As every time the topics come out there are always some new students who gets shocked that taoists have this quite rigid rule. So questions starts: One of the most common ones is what is that de fact ruins the energetic body. And the answer is male to male anal sex (Bruce-speak: Butt-fucking). Is male female anal sex ok? Yes, apart hygenic problems that can be overcome with a brief enema. What about female being active with a strap-on dildo? (You wouldn't believe how many women jumped up and immediatly wanted to know this. Makes you wonder what's going on in other's bedroom ). Yes, that is ok too, because although physically the male is receiving energetically it is still giving. How many times it is needed for the energetic body to be ruined? It can't be said, sometimes one time is enough, other times one time did not ruin the energetic body. Does it matter if someone was raped and he did not chose to have sex? Unfortunately no. The energetic body can still be ruined. Can you (Bruce) perceive when someone energetic body has been ruined? Yes. Do you ever check the energetic body of your students? I try not to, I leave to people their own privacy. (I think he also added although there are times where it is really obvious). And finally: So Bruce what would you do if someone of your male students was homosexual? Answer: I have taken an oath not to teach a male homosexual, as such I would have to throw them out of the class, or stop teaching. You cannot change an oath given to a person who is dead. You are stuck with that oath.

Thanks to everybody who are contributing! It's really getting interesting. Hi Craig, thanks for asking. I left Italy in 98, to do a master in england. From there most of my academic life was in England (Master), Germany (PhD), and Ireland (first post doc). The academic situation in Italy is very difficult. There are little funds, and unless you are very connected you can't get access to them. Independently of how good you are (there are exceptions, but rare). So I don't see myself going back to Italy. On the other side I was offered this job in Portugal, and it was a nice offer. It's a 5 year of post doc. Portugal feels very nice. Although I don't speak the language, I am catching it up really quickly (think that I still don't speak German, and I lived there 2 years). On the other side, I am speaking the non verbal language much more than in anglosaxon countries. Here people are not afraid to touch you when they speak to you. I feel the culture is so much nearer the culture I grow up in. And even more, as Portugal is poorer than Italy, it really resembles Italy of the 70's. So I bought a house here. It's an old house. I paid a fraction of what I would have paid it in Italy. It is in a small village, out of Coimbra. The countryside reminds me of Tuscany. And when I described the situation to my parents, they told me how Tuscany was like this 30 years ago. With nice old houses being sold quite cheaply. Now they are all gone and the prices has risen to the stars. You know I always wanted to build a Taoist community (founding a taoist vilage would also be nice ;-) ). So I bought this house, with a couple of hectars around. It connects with a river (more like a stream). It has access to a well, and there are other sources of water coming from the hill. I think it has great potentiality. It is also 10 minutes by car from the city. And with Internet connection. So it is really possible to live here, and work here. Going to Coimbra only for key works (like if I have to attend or to give a lecture). At the moment I just moved here. I would like to develop the land into some form of permaculture-forest garden-fukuoka style. (read fukuoka's one straw revolution, for an example of a real hard core modern taoist!!) I am also inviting people to join me. I haven't really figured out how things should develop. I think as long as we get along, and we all contribute to the community, we should be able to stay together. And of course the invitation is also to you, to you and to any other TB. Come and visit me, stay here, we'll do tai ji together & start a taoist community . In fact I was even going to offer qi gung lessons in exchange of work. Oh well . By the way, do you know that I was thinking about putting California as its own option. Someething like -California -US minus California. Part of this is because I read somwhere that California alone has a GDP that equals some other nations among the 8 big. But then I also would have to extrapolate the UK. And then what about the various side of the US. And the latin countries in the EU. If I had 60 options I would have done it po

Hi Kate, yes Dissolving is not a suppression form. You bring attention to the blockage, and by bringing attention to it it often opens up. YOu don't open it up. You don't compress it . You just are open to the fact that it can open up. Essentially when it opens up you live fully what is inside. Whatever is that you have been trying to suppress you live it fully for a few, terrible, seconds. And then it's gone. It is a bit more complex than this, as often people tend to remain attached to their suffering, so they recall it. Also blockages come one after the other. So behind this blockage there is often another that was generating this. So unless you manage to dissolve the whole of it, in all your bodies, you can still re-experience it. Matter of fact, in my experience, it's like cutting weeds. Eventually you reach the root of it, and when you dissolve that all is gone. But even if you do not do that, you still have cleared out a lot. And next time you will start from a better place. But to make sure this happens, you need to keep on dissolving until the LDD, or at least bring all the energy to the LDD at the end, and then dissolve the lower dan dien. NOTE although those seemed a descitption on how to do the dissolving, they are not. Important pieces are missing. Please refer to Bruce Frantzis material to get all the instructions. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

Yes, sensei

thanks. So far everybody seem to be born, work and feel at home in the same place. I wonder if it was an overkill to ask three questions instead of just one. It's that I reember some members who were born in one country and then left. Some because the geo-political situation required, and some to follow their practice.

Hi Chen, welcome. Very interesting your description of "exploding, destroying the Dan-Tien". My teacher is Bruce Frantzis, a master & lineage holder, student of Liu Hung Chieh. Bruce does not teach much about sexual chi gung. (which he did not learn from Liu, but from his previous studies). Mostly to avoid being considered a sex qi gung teacher. It can be a problem in the Christian US (now it's getting better). Regarding ejaculation he explained that the problems is that it breaks a matrix that you are trying to build in your practice. But that it is also possible to ejaculate without breaking it. ANd when this happens ejaculation is not felt as an explosion anymore, but more like a drooling. I suspect I managed to do this only one time, so I am very far from being able to practice it consistently. Also from your entries I got the impression that you practiced a period learning (with no family or girlfriends), and then you started having a family life. Is that correct? How many years did your training take? What taoist group were you studying with? Regards, Pietro

But then you are teaching us! I should start calling you sensei, sensei!

It is. How would you apply it in this situation?

Very interesting, thanks. One of the best place to explore non duality is through sex and love. Especially sex while being in love. Especially sex, while being in love with the person you are having sex with (although not necessarily!). Do they have sex experience tents also?

Hi Sloppy Zhang, so you got a shock! yes, you dissolve. What do you dissolve? Here the question is more, what can you disolve. How strong is your concentration? How strong is your dissolving? How strong are you (dissolving is tiring)? How big is your commitment? You disssolve the feeling, the images, the sounds everything. But if you can you also dissolve the energy that is behind it. That is giving rise to it. And you make sure to go through the whole body, at least to the LTT. You know when things like this happen to me those are the times where dissolving is more painful, but also more easy. There is no fog. You can feel the blockages right away. Also those are the times where I do reach the LTT through the dissolving. Other times I am going deeper, but it takes so long that I often reach only half way. Then I bring down the energy and dissolve the LTT. But when I am shaken then I dissolve all the way to the lower tan tien. Partially because I am shaken so I know I will not enjoy life if I don't dissolve. Partially because I can feel the blockages so easily. And then once you reach thre LTT it is gone. Of course this is also the moment where you can go deeper, because you are shaken. So yes, dissolve, dissolve dissolve.

Of course, after you have voted it would be nice if you could also post some more details of where you are from. For example, I was born in Italy, live and work in Portugal, and consider my house Italy. So it was EU at all three questions.

I knew that women were not taught the family style of martial art, but I did not know this story. To me it was told that the problem was that women would eventually marry, and go and live with the family of the husband. Those were the uses in China. And you did not want to dilute the family secrets by risking that this women would eventually teach in her new family. SO it was presented as a family secret problem. In a time where tao ji was a real defence. And people with it were employed as guards, being the only family to posses it would give your family always a good advantage position. Now is this sexist? Maybe. But it's not specifically taoist sexist. Is more that chinese uses impose to taoists to act in a certain way. Also I am not sure the chen style practitioners were taoist at all. Some style of kung fu are mostly done by taoists, other mostly by buddhists. There are exceptions, but often this was the case as the martial art would intermingle with the spiritual practices. (So Hsing I was mainly Buddhist, Ba Gua was mainly taoist, wu style tai ji was taoist, but chen style?) Now, if I go to the wikipedia page on the chen style:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chen_style_tai_chi_chuan there are no reference about taoism at all. Instead there are subtle references to Buddhism: Also the fact that they would not teach to their daughters anymore, would not preclude that they could teach to their brides. If the problem really was a problem with family secrets, you would expect the daughters not to be taught but the new wives to be taugh. hmmm

You should get in touch with Dao Zhen, who use to post here. He is on facebook http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home#/daozhen?ref=ts while in china he did just that. Went to look for teachers starting from White Cloud Temple. And he found. He would come here and post amazing things. Just start recovering his posts and reading them.

Not really, it was is seen as damaging the chi of the person. And is linked and connected to Chinese medicine. They don't have anything against homosexual, they just don't teach them practices, because it is ok to have a screwedup system. But it is a totally different thing to have a screwed up system... overcharged. And actually that is again not really the issue, because taoists believe in the fundamental human right to do stupid things. The problem is that out of their studies through history they observed that when a male homosexual that practiced got into a position of political power then really horrible things would happen down the line (many peoples dying). Now since they recognised that politic is mostly a lottery, and you never know who the next emperor is going to be, they decided not to take any risk. Actually rereading the post, I am not entirely sure the orgies were really banished, but more went underground. There accounts of people participating in similar practices in modern times. how would you like going into a place, and seeing a women you really really like. And then being forced to see her have sex (with passion, even!) with someone else, while you need to stay there, sit and dissolve everything that comes up. If this makes you drool for the spiritual jump-understanding you would get then yes. It can be awesome. If you go eek, then that part of taoist society is not so much for you. Interestingly taoists accepted that sex was normal, some people were ok with a lot of sex, some people were ok with a normal amount of sex, and some were simply not interested. The incredible thing was that those three groups could coexist in the same religion, and (I strongly suspect) even in the same groups. That is correct, things changed with history, but I don't know enough to point out to specific examples. Yes, most tradition feel that the two practices are not equivalent. Short story. I have a friend of mine who is an anglican pastor. He runs a little support group for people in trouble at the uni. Most people that go there are christians (apart the occasional taoist ;-P ) who are having problems. SOme of the problems are with other christians. Christians who are not accepted by the Evangelical community would often end up there. So long story short most homosexual arrive there sooner or later. And I know my friend is directly responsible for stopping a number of people from committing suicide. It's kind of part of his job. As we chatted I described him the taoist view on homosexuality, and the difference between male and female homosexuality according to taoism. His answer was interesting: "You know, I always felt that there was a difference, but I just could not point at what this difference really was. It might very well be that Taoists got it right" (... on this ;-) hehe) So if there is a difference, then it wouldn't be a bias, it would be a recognition. If instead there was no real difference, then all those traditions are biased.

Stairway to Heaven: Buddha, Tao, Islam are One? Burn the Infedel!

I remember this story it was from a movie about Gandhi. I don't know if the story is true, but it sounds true. So there is Gandhi on his bed, fasting. He will not eat again until violence ceases completely in India. A man breaks in, through the followers of Gandhi that do not permit anyone to see him. -Sorry Mahatma, we could not contain him. The man has some bread and throws it to Gandhi: -here, eat. I don't want to have you on my conscience... so they start speaking and eventually the men admits: -I live in hell, do you know a way out of hell? -I know, what happened? -My kid was killed by some muslims in a fight. So I found a muslim boy and killed him. From then I live in hell. What should I do? -Go and look for a muslim boy with no parents. There should be many in this moment of violence. And adopt this boy... The man is hearing very closely, Gandhi continues: -... but make sure to raise this boy inside the muslim faith. And the man starts to cry of relieve. Pietro

Hi Hagar, nice to have you back. First of all I think bees are slowly recovering from that virus. I agree that if you feel that you need to do something this has nothing to do with the bees, but all to do with you. Maybe it was an awakening moment to realised that once you find yourself in a fully natural situation you reacted in a very civilised way. Maybe this makes you feel you are distant to Nature. So if this is the issue, you might just go and try to leave more in nature. Maybe you could have a beehive (but you said you are alergic to bees. Or you could do something else: you could find some land, where is cheap, and buy it, and then seed it with flowers, and plants that bees like. Bees are having a hard time, as most modern fields do not give them flowers enough. I tell you thins, because it is actualy what I am doing right now. I moved to Portugal, and I bought a small piece of land. I don't know what I will do with it, but it will be something very natural, and very bee friendly (Said that I also put some cement on the exit of a hole in the wall from where wasps were coming out. And I did not regret it a second!)

Dao Dao is no Dao the Dao-Path toward the Dao is not the Dao