Pietro

How interesting the way in which this forum is reacting to this question. Really really interesting. Yes it can be used the wrong way. But ... the idea of someone dying seem to be making some people really unconfortable. No, it's not the idea of someone dying, it's the idea that someone here might indirectly cause someone else death. how long have you seated and contemplated death? It was a daily meditation for some of our zen cousins! And how long have you seated and contemplated that something you do might cause another person's death. Someone you never know, you surely will never knew. Everything you do causes incredible changes in the whole universe. Where does our responsability start? Where does it end? Beside there is quite a tradition inside succesful Taoists of breaking the shell. There was also a parallel tradition of breaking the emperor's shell ;-) -oops that was an error. Sorry your majesty. Ehm, the emperor has just become an immortal. No, I would say don't close this thread, leave it here, leave it open. And let's observe it. For me I have many questions I would like to pose on this topic: is suicide always wrong or there are situations where you consider it acceptable? And what about the society? Does the ethical status of suicide depends at all on the status of the society? Let me quote on this a short story: What about compassionate suicide? When a person life has become a huge burden. I really would love to know what you guys and girls are thinking. Especially those that jumped and wanted this thread closed. Wonderful! I'll send this to a friend of mine who is constantly depressed (you can understand him, he lives in North-Wet England, while coming from Sunny-Sunny Rome), and recently told me that a suicidal person is an impatient person.

I would say, show me that you know the laws of grammar, and I will help you with the laws of attraction.

please don't forget that it's not an all or nothing situation. You don't just suceed or fail. The book present a series of principles that work synergetically well. But then you might get just some of those right, and still have some very good results. Also his point of view is very biased: he starts from the point of view that work is evil, and he want to work as low as possible. I abhor this point of view, and I worked hard to find a job that I would love. So for me 4 hour work week means to do for a maximum of 4 hour a week the boring part of my job. Well, from this point of view, I greatly succeed. But from another point of view, I would 7 days a week. So where will you put me?

Having used his sytem in various ways for some time I reached a mixed feeling about it. While on the one side (yours) it is great, I also notice that on the other side is really giving some problems. FOr example, if I am working with someone who is following this a.) II never know when I can catch him b.) I never know if he will do his work or he will decide that it's part of the 80% that is not worth doing c.) it really ruins your humanity in your working place. Pietro

How come you always end up being around people who are either bisexual or homosexual, Max? where? Where!! I searched the whole bloody house last time I was in NY, and I could not find a single tit. Just lots of links from dating sites. Although the links were all toward nice middle aged men. Hmmm Like this: We probably should now make the revised version: Gays: Unretenting Taoists since May 25 2009, 06:44 PM

Oh, you are going to Santiago this summer? If you want you can come down to Coimbra and visit me. You would be welcome. Cheers, Pietro

Hi Findley, let me get it right before I try to answer you. What is that you do when you: "give in and release". Be specific: you masturbate? you have sex with your girlfriend (or another Bum's girlfriend ). How many times? And (very important) do you fantasise while you are masturbating? And, are those gay fantasis? What about the next times? And yes, male homosexuality and taoism do not go well together. Question asked to a Taoist Lineage Master: "But according to medicine there is a number of homosexuals that are just generated by the fact that in the womb they were under the influx of this or that hormone. What should those people do?" Answer:"Not study with me, and follow a different tradition than taoism in their spiritual life". EDIT: late addition, I don't think that is caused by retention, nor by the fact that you are gay. But if I tell you more at this stage I bias your answer, doing a disservice.

Hello Chris, Thanks to have post this question. Hmm, not really. People drive on the right of the road in Italy, on the left in the UK. In this regard you can say to each their own. But you really cannot drive on the left in Italy or on the right in the UK. Some things are external of us. If they depend on our agreement we reach it, and then we stick to it. If they depend on nature, we observe them, measure them, describe them, and then once we found an agreement we stick to it. Then there are opinions, and in this regard you can say to each their own. But spiritual life is not an opinion. And this also is not an opinion. The fact is that being difficult to observe from the outside and mostly impossible to measure we are confused to think that whatever happens inside is the equivalent to an opinion. Totally subjective, and thus unfit for any external review. Not really. You really can harm yourself by doing things the wrong way. This does not mean that you should not explore. Just that there is threading through known land, and exploring. And generally the first is less dangerous than the second. Objectively. Ha(!), the false dicotomy. Of course no school have all the wisdom. And it is also incorrect to think that all the schools point to the same place. Some school do, some school do not. Sometime two schools in two different traditions point to the same goal, while you can find traditions where two schools inside the same tradition are actually pointing to different places. Generally you can study in a school, and once you have mastered that school, and reached a supreme level there you can expand in another school. And maybe reach a sinthesis between those two schools. But if you do this before having understood the ins and outs of your school you are in dangerous unexplored land. Here be dragons. They truly danced together for more than a thousand years. The daoism that mixed with Buddhism to create chan was already a form of daoism that was heavily influenced by buddhism. My two take away points are: 1) spiritual life is an objective journey which can hardy be observed from the outside. As such claims about it should be taken as objective claims. 2) In spiritual life there are threaded paths, explorations, and well known dead ends. You should know in every moment which of the three you are taking.

Ok, so here we can talk freely. I have to say I really enjoyed the way the old Spok had integrated his emotional and mental side. And similraly the old father of Spok. FOr me what really blew my mind open was the recognition that if you went back in time you could bring on knowledge on the scientific knowlege more rapidly. Now in the movie to avoid having to tackle with things too complex time travel was occasional, but what if we learned to do it. Yes, every time you follow a new time-space universe. But here in an interesting idea: Imagine the whole univers is about to be destroyed. Imagine the only way to survive is to have science reach a level where they can avoid this. But we are so far not able. But we are able to do time travel. So just before the event the best scientists go back one generation, and bring with them all the knowledge. They go in the past, and they make the humanity make a bigger jump, because in less than a generation they are up to speed with what have been discovered in the paralele universe. Then they expand this knowledge further. But it is not enough, so a new bunch of scientists (the original are now too old) go back again, and so on. This is a way in which you can see science progressing really fast just before a really bad singularity. The idea of time criminals have been exploted many other times. Still can someone point me to other books with the same theme. In particular the time criminal, and the time cop was a leit motif of the old movie. Final question, after the movie my gf started callimg me Spok. Should I be worried?

Little1, can you please explain me this: I am especially perplexed by the "have to" exist. I mean I could grammatically understand a claim like: Which essentailly would say that timetravel would create some anormalities, that to avoid them the universe would always follow a different evolving line. I am not sure if I agree, but I can understand the statement. But saying that a timeline does not have to exist... maybe you could expand it. Thanks.

Hagar, I am not your senior but your peer. In fact I look up to you, as you have a family, and I don't. Your reply was absolutely correct. I just had little time to read it. Your concept of experiencing the storm completely (as long as you do not get attached to it) will in fact let the waves pass. As such my suggestion was included in yours, if I only had read it before writing mine I would have refered to it.

Would you be ok with being able to have the mental waves pass through you, and then leave you. No matter how big they are? Because asking to have waves only of a certain size is essentially asking to control life. And no amount of meditation can do that. On the other hand being unattached to your waves is something that can be reached, and many meditation can help you in this regard. And I do agree that it is better to stick to one school. And with the meditations of one school. They often have complementary effects. While mixing can be useless or even dangerous.

very good point. I haven't thought about it. But ever since the movie I keep on seeing/feeling/imagining the multiverse as a whole single thing that keeps on evolving as one unit. Not any more a single universe at once. Time travel are a limited form of jump across the universe.

interesting

now they're seperate, And there is emptiness inside! The dark birthing hole. EDIT: sorry, too late. Ignore mine. Next line: Polite not loving

There is an assumption, that some things are learned better when you are young. If taoist masters were all produced out of youth education, it would make sense to study only with chinese people. But this is not the case. It is absolutely possible to start late in your life (say when you are 20), and still reach very high level. In fact also here kids that are forced to do something are sometimes less good, because they would rather go and play soccer. So assuming that someone is better because he is chinese is a form of racism versus the westerners. Better to get a good person, that speaks your language and that knows how to explain himself. DOn't go for the best of the best, go for a good one. DOn't look for someone who speaks the dialect from your little village in alabama (or wherever that is) just go for normal english. Don't look for someone who is so old he cannot walk. Get someone who is old enogh to have experience. DOn't get someone who is a saint, just someone who is not so false he would be considered bad by normal social standards. Old enough to have experience, a laguage that he can speak to you, a cost that is not too much, good but not necessarily impossibly good. Just follow the "good enough" principle. By the time that person is not good enough for you anymore (because you, have improved) you will have experience, connections, visibility that can lead you to the next teacher. In fact I think everybody can just start with their teacher near by, then move to the best teacher in their region, then in their nation, then in their continent. And is that is not enough consider why do you want to become a divinity.

Wonderful! Wonderful!! The master's touch. Leaves things unchanged, but hints about something. And then who wants to enquire more... can. After all consider this: if this forum is non polarised respect to a person's action, no one will go and study with that person. But if the forum gets polarised... then some people will hate the guy, and as an effect some people will love him (maybe secretly). This is how energy works. This is especially true in our society where we think that whenever people agree on something, they must be wrong, and so we have a good base to do the opposite. We were educated to act like this. Every single movie we ever see, the hero is such because he thinks differently from the bhaaa-people (did I stole the line from Dead Poets' Society? So the result of this thread will eventually be an advertisment for David. Some people WILL sign up for his course (or to pay the thousands of $$$ to see his poker cards). You want to be loved, you need to accept that someone will hate you. You want to go to the right? Start going to the left. What a great use of the laws of energy! For me I would say: ignore all this. Let David to his teachers, his students, his myths (be they true or false). Do your practice. As Dante would have said: "non ti curar di lor, ma guarda e passa". ("Do not be bothered them, but look and move on"). Funny, Dante said this when confronted with people who were passing eternity running after a banner they could not see. Ironic indeed!

never heard of him, but if he did what he claim he would be all over the place. He would have a nobel prize, much more money, and would not be selling his stuff at an online website.

Well, the whole discussion with David on this site started when one of David students expected this site to comply with David's teacher requirements on what to share and what not to share. Eventually David was able to impose his ethics on this site in that particular occasion. I think it is quite ironic that the situation came back to hunt him. With the users of our site to pretty much impose their ethics on the content of that site for one time. what goes around comes around. But I suppose David will get very pissed off, he will then find otu who this student is. Who will then be under strong pressure to ask the person who submitted all this to take it off. This person will do it, and eventually the info will be out. Been there, seen that. Bottom line is: enjoy those posts while they are there. In italy we say: who gets angry makes double effort: to get angry, and to calm himself after (incazzarsi e scazzarsi) There are things that are half way. For example fi you were able to be totally celibate, this is measurable. But it can often be achieved by people who are just very committed to something... no mater what that is. So there are things that can be measured, but would not make those practices be the cause, more like a catalytic facilitator.

In the i-ching Thunder comes from the earth. In our culture we see thunder coming from the sky. So which is which? Well, here is the answer. Mt take: Thunder comes from the sky, explored the sky looking for the earth, and then as soon as a direct line is found between the sky and the earth, a huge bolt of electricity is shot up.

I have been planning and waiting for the right moment to get polyphasic. It had to be during some holidays, as it is quite clear that for the first few days it is hard to make sense of the world. Finally I decided that Easter was the right time. It is a week in which I am pretty much alone in the office. In the last days I have already started to pick up speed by sleeping every 4 hours, 24 minutes (my intuition loves to set up the alarm like this, although it rarely wakes me up). I was actually planning to start from this coming night to seriously decrease the sleeping time at night, but it seems that the power that be had different plans. First I planned poorly my trip, and to reach Jena I arrived in Nurenberg, then took another (useless) plane to Leipzig, just to discover that I have arrived too late for the latest train, while if I had just took a train from Nurenberg I would have been home by 11 pm. But this was not all. In Leipzig there actually was a later train to Jena. I took my 10pm nap before it, and then started reading: the train was I remember at 11.50 so there was plenty of time. And here is where the whole thing went so clumsy to make me suspect it all had a purpose. The train was not at 11.50 but at 11.20. And at 11.23 I was asked by a policemen to please move to the night waiting room. So there I was with a mac, plenty of books, projects to plan, clothes, and anything I could have needed for a couple of days; just at the beginning of my polyphasic period. Just as I was refusing the 'get rid of night-sleep, and adapt later' philosopy for being too firely. And what do you do when you are in deep water: you swim or you sink. Getting angy with the captain who threw you overboard lowers your survival possibilities by a lot. Beside I wasn't angry at all, just very amused for the turning of the events. So I just went polyphasic for the whole night. Following Steve Pavlina advise I took great care not to oversleep, while I permitted myself to sleep more than one nap every 4 hours. I napped at 10pm, 2pm, 4pm, 6.15pm (on the train back), 8pm (at home). I also had a natural light nap of maybe 10 minutes again on the train back. Considering that all the naps where on a hard surface, interrupted by the unpleasent snoring of the other passanger who was just not bright enough to understand that sleeping with your head thrown back in a chair with no head reast was a failure strategy, it went fairly well.. The 8 pm one was particularly interesting. But before describing it I need to go back and tell something else. After we have been speaking about polyphasic sleep I made some experiments, and for one week I was polyphasic. For 3 days completely polyphasic with no core sleep at all. In those 3 days I learned to sleep the polyphasic way. I had to. This consists in falling asleep immediatly in a very deep sleep that lasts for only few minutes. And then wake up with the feeling that hours have passed while only few minutes had. You know how in deep meditation there is no time (taoist call this state fourth time), and sometimes you can meditate for hours (some people for days/weeks) while feeling only few hours have passed. Well, it works the other way too, and you can sqeeze many hourse in few minutes, if you need to. I particularly like the first time it hapened to me. It was about 6 am in the morning and after having stayed in front of the internet I decided it was time to get my 6 am nap. I went to bed and woke up two hours later. 'Damn!', I thought, 'I overslept the alarm'. Then I look at the alarm clock, and there were still 5 minutes to go. 'Oh, Fuck! Now the alarm clock is broken'. I turned on the computer. The clock of the computer was on the same time of the alarm clock. It started to reach me. But I needed a last check. I went to firefox archive, checking at what time was the last page I loaded. 5.45, about. After that day it happened again, and again. And it happened also this morning at the 8 am nap. Steve also speaks about this phenomena in his blog. It seems a common phenomena, and one that is conditio sine qua non for the success of the experiment. I would like to keep you guys informed on my progress, and if anybody feels like joining in, he is welcome. I probably shall copy the post on my blog. Right now I feel very weak, and unprotected, as if my wei-chi has all been used up. But I just arrived home and I need to go out at least to buy some food. Oh, yes, btw, I went to Bruce course, and of course I asked him about polyphasic sleep. He told me he knows some people that did 45 minutes every 6 hours, for some months. But none for serious time (i.e. years). Also I gather you need some special trasmission for that as it falls under the umbrella of sleep yoga, which requires you to be able to keep yourself alert while your body goes to sleep. Something that I experience but am unable to consciously cause. Ok, it is 10 am and I decided for this first day I shall recover by napping nearly every 2 hours. good nap, Pietro

Shift workers are not so much hacking their system, but forcing it to behave according to an external regimen which has little compassion or attention for their needs. So they keep on changing system. Doing one night, and then 1 day of sleep. As if you could just move around the sleeping time like boxes. Said that, I found interesting what you say about melatonin and serotonin. Maybe we need to learn to activate and reactivate melatonin. What practices do we have to activate the melatonin more? What do we know about how the melatonin is released during a polyphasic period?

no, no, I grant you the right to speak ;-) it's more like you should accept that people who are lost might follow Mr Deida, until they find a higher teacher like you :-P

Here is someone who is sharing something from his path. You can study, and follow it, or do something else. If you already have something else to do, good for you. But many people do not. And those people are lost, and can only wait and look for a better teacher. Little1 agreeing with me?!!! That's weird indeed ;-)