goldisheavy

Thank you Pietro. We need to speak up about this. The attitude toward apostates in Islam is extremely wrong and terrible. If it's not abandoned, then I am afraid Islam will be wiped completely off this planet, together with all the good things in it, like Sufism. The murderous and hateful intentions toward apostates are not, completely not acceptable. I think the Koranic attitude toward the apostates is the most dangerous part of Islam. It makes people who are Muslims stuck in Islam because they fear to leave. It's just like being in a gang fo' life. Even when the gangster decides it's time for a better life, one is afraid to leave the gang. The desire to live under Sharia is also dangerous, but not nearly as dangerous as the item B on your list, in my opinion.

Ok, like I said before, I am not really a martial artist, but I enjoy martial arts and respect people who practice them. I especially like any and all wisdom that sometimes comes out of martial arts, especially if I am able to contemplate it. So because that's my attitude, sometimes I try an experiment or two. One time I was thinking about fast punches. I was thinking, why is it some people can punch so fast? How to punch faster? And then I realized that a problem could be buried in how we think about punching and what it means to punch someone. I come from a heavy physicalist background, so I instinctively have a lot of faith in matter, in inertia, in laws of physics and such things. And likewise, I also view the world through this lens too. So I think other people are more or less like me. So then what does it mean to punch from a physicalist perspective? You have to accelerate your arm matter to a certain speed using muscle power. That's slow just by definition! When I think this way, I picture my hand gaining speed, slowly, the dumb unlively matter accelerating. I see my hand going through many positions in space. The image that all this brings to my mind is one of slowness. If I look at it from a non-physicalist point of view, I ask myself, "What is it I want?" I have hand manifested in one spot and I want it manifested in another spot. Everything related to acceleration, intermediate positions, meat and bones, all that is irrelevant and just gets in the way. So, I tried punching while consciously seeing how my hand simply and instantly materializes in an extended position, without accelerating and without pssing through intermediate stages. Further, I've envisioned my arm and fist as a direct (rather than indirect) projection of intent (yi), as something that's truly alive through and through and not automatic dumb matter. The result was that my punch instantly became much much faster, if not instant. The difference this approach makes depends on how deeply and how authentically can you step away from the physicalist paradigm. So, if all this sounds like nonsense to you, and if you think there is just no foolin' with the laws of physics, then this approach may give you nothing, because you won't be able to rise above a level of pretense in your intent. In any case, I hope this is entertaining and educational. Please don't use this to hurt people if you can help it.

This happened to me. But sometimes I come across an old post and I think, "there is no way that wise and compassionate person can be me, can it?" I have to do a double take before I can believe, yes, yes, I wrote that and not Guru Padmasambhava. I wrote that and not Chuang Tzu. Wow... I bow before myself. So yea, I've seen myself as an idiot and as a wise sage, both.

Exactly right, but then you run into very very deep core beliefs about reality, about what's possible and what's not. And those beliefs are intentional. In other words, your intention really has a lot broader character to it than just one individual element like a single punch. So what you are saying is possible, but from our point of view, the kind of person whose intention is capable of that is likely insane. This kind of person is not even in our realm perhaps, not at this moment. But it's good to be aware of that possibility. Because if you know of it as a possible direction for travel, if you are not there yet, you can begin traveling there and end up there at some point. But if you don't know about such direction, then you cannot even begin traveling to that particular destination. --- To others, first, this is not theoretical. It's practical. I said why not make an experiment? Did you try it? It only takes a few seconds, maybe a minute at the most. Did you try it? Did it work? Maybe it works. Maybe not. It worked as I described for me. I am not here to prove anything to anyone. I don't want to impress anyone. And besides, I have nothing to impress with anyway. As I told you guys, I don't practice this kind of stuff to learn how to punch for martial arts. I once in a while try something like that to explore intentionality and manifestation for the purpose of wisdom. Once I learn my lesson, I do not have to continue. If you punch heavy bag like a dumb idiot, but a dumb hardworking idiot, for 3 years, consistently, you'll get a good punch. But if you are a contemplative person who also punches the bag for 3 years, equally as diligently, but you also contemplate what you are doing and are not dumb about it, your punch will be much much better than the dumb idiot's punch. So how you practice is as important as how long you practice. Quality is as important as quantity, just like Mak Tin Si said. This is not a penis contest. I am sure all you guys here punch better than me. I think discussing the intricacies of experience is not a waste of time.

Ha, so this thread started after all? Excellent! Let me ask all of you here: Do you intend to drop your intention? Let's analyze the basis of intention. Is intention caused by something other than intention? If yes, then intention is unintentional in the first place. In that case, surrendering intention is meaningless and impossible to enforce, because at any time conditions can arise to give rise to new intention. If not, then intention is primordial and cannot be dropped at all -- it can only change its character, but it cannot be dropped. Another way to look at it is to examine the beginning and end of intention. For example, stand before a table with a cup on it. And intently pick up a cup and examine what happened right then and there. Did your intention have a beginning? If yes, it means prior to that beginning you were unintentional. Then from an unintentional state you entered intention. This seems like nonsense. Most logical is to say that intention cannot be said to have a beginning. Instead, certain character of intention changes, and not intention itself. So when you stand there before the cup, the fact that the cup is on the table, is not unintentional. It's intentional! You intently do not pick it up, even though you don't normally think of it like that, because you don't normally think of the negative as intention, but it is. When you pick up the cup, it's intentional because when you didn't pick it up, it was also intentional. That's because intention cannot affect that which is extra-intentional. If something is subject to influence by intention, then even in the state of rest, it is intentional. And if something is not a subject to influence by intention, then it's not ever affected by intention at all, and can be said to be unintentional. Now let's examine some practical mysteries of intention. Normally people don't consider breathing to be intentional, because we don't think about breathing most of the time. It just happens. Now, is it possible to intentionally speed up or slow down your breathing? Seems yes! Aha! So that means breathing is not unintentional in the first place, since it is within the scope of intentional influence. So, ultimately breathing is intentional, but in practical terms, we don't think of it that way. If you examine other functions like walking, you can see the same thing. Most of the time you have intention to go to some place and you don't produce individual intentions for each individual step of the foot. You produce a higher level intention to go to some place, and your feet walk "automatically", but this automatism is intentional and not unintentional, because you can demonstrate to yourself that your steps can fall within the influence of intention at a step-by-step level. So what happens in Tai Chi when you're a master? It's not that you drop your intention! Not at all. On the contrary. Your intention becomes less fragmented and more whole. It becomes higher level and less micromanaging. You don't manage appearances in a step-by-step manner. You produce a higher intention of being some place, or of staying healthy, and then whatever happens automatically fulfills your higher order intention. So you may ask then, what is the highest intention? I will say the highest intention is the intention of an enlightened being. It's intention that has no characteristics, because it is so high and so whole, that all appearances are taken care of automatically. But that state is an intentional state! It's possible to intentionally exit that state and start to micromanage appearances if you want just like a person can decide to walk using random and strange steps, making each step intentionally different from the others. Look at how the flies fly. A fly flaps its wings so fast. Do you think they have time to think about each flap? I say no. Fly intends to fly left or right, but it doesn't intend at the level of individual wing flap. That doesn't mean wing flaps are unintentional, unless there is no way at all for a fly to control wings in an intricate manner. If the fly can intentionally tilt its wing for cleaning, that means the wing falls within the scope of intention, so everything the wing does is intentional, even if it's on auto-pilot at some point. So a Tai Chi master raises intention to higher and higher levels. There is less and less micromanagement of phenomena. But at no point is it ever unintentional. At no point does anything ever act "on its own". There is nothing "on its own". Everything is always connected. Ultimately nothing is produced. Ultimately nothing is destroyed.

If you like isometrics, you'll probably like dynamic tension at least as much, if not more. Dynamic tension is movement under tension, kind of like dynamic isometrics. You don't use external resistance, but you build internal resistance instead, but unlike in isometric exercise, you move in that state. From my experience it has tremendous effect. It's like strength training x10 without weights. Intuitively I feel that you can learn how to lift a car without ever touching a weight or a rubber band in your life. It can be done anywhere. There is one warning though -- dynamic tension tends to excite your system a lot, so you need to spend at least the same or double the time deeply relaxing after the exercise. Now, with exercise like isometric horse stance, there are subtle benefits that are ignored by the physicalists. Physicalists look for things like strength, but what they don't understand is the role of psyche and expression. What isometrics develop is a sense of comfort within one's body and a relaxed comfort within exertion. Isometric exercise develops better neuro-muscular control, to use the western lingo. It may not be "strength" in the western sense, but it helps expressiveness. If you understand the role of expressiveness in life and in a fighting match, then you'll know why it's very important. The problem is that training expressiveness at a subtle level is a looong time endeavor and it doesn't give obvious results right away. Some exercise give you instant benefit after even 3 days. Then you think -- aha that's good and useful. But others give benefit after 1 week, but it's very very subtle! So sensitive people notice a very subtle but important benefit, and keep going. Then after many years there is a big benefit that even insensitive people can notice too. But if a numb person tries some exercise and the subtlety of the benefit escapes them, it seems to them as if there is no benefit at all, and then, logically it makes no sense to practice that for 5 years in the hopes of there MAYBE being some benefit or maybe not, when you got this exercise right here that gave you obvious benefit after 3 days.

This is filthy garbage indeed. I am not going to be tolerant of this any time soon.

I think I understood what the ghosts were from Mak Tin Si's explanation already. If I have not understood it, then my misunderstanding is going to become apparent later on when I try to say something about ghosts within Mak Tin Si's framework. I myself do not rely on that framework though. I am curious about other people's frameworks, at least sometimes, and I want to see how other people live within their framework and what flavor their life has. It's not an either-or relationship for me. Perspective is part of nature. It's not unnatural. Mind in my view is primordial. It's not something in the brain. The mind is something without characteristics. You can think of the mind as the highest abstraction or the ultimate meaning or one's true or "high" self, or many other names. The mind is not the same as the mindset. Mindset is a structure that resides within mind. It gives shape to experience and it introduces somewhat stable "laws" and relationships and so forth between and about phenomena. Mindsets come and go, but the mind is always present. The mind plus mindset is what makes terms like "time" and "space" have meaning. Without these two, terms like "time" and "space" would have no meaning and could not be experienced. Since mindsets, from the ultimate point of view, can be picked up and dropped like one would a man's tie or a woman's earrings, it makes sense to not take on a mindset just because it is traditional, but to take it on consciously because it is either good or beautiful, and one can do so creatively. If no one teaches a good mindset, you can make one. To do this you need to have a lot of wisdom, but this stage is not unattainable. Anyone who makes wisdom their number one priority in life can attain sufficient wisdom to become creative at the ultimate level after some years or decades or at most a few lives (in my view). In other words, once one is determined to go in that direction, it doesn't take too awfully long. I'm explaining this to give you an idea of where my questions are coming from. The mind, and even the silliest and dumbest mindset are not unnatural. They are natural. People often believe that their minds and thoughts exist extra-nature, outside nature, and somehow impose, rape and violate nature. I don't believe that. It's possible to create an experience of disharmony and clashing energies, but all that is still completely natural, because nature is all-embracing and so is mind. And I have seen physical manifestations since I was a child, but I don't believe that physics is the ultimate truth. Somehow I was able to rise above my perception and my original beliefs. I will not die with the same beliefs I was born with. I'm not saying it's good or bad. But it's a possibility. I personally like it for myself and I wish other people would become aware of the possibility of consciously molding one's core beliefs. Most people sort of take for granted their core beliefs about reality. I guess that can be OK and fun. It's part of dreaming. But consciously molding core beliefs is also a valuable part of dreaming. There is regular dreaming and lucid dreaming, innocent dreaming and dreaming on purpose. I see it as all good and cyclical. I think the flavor of one's dream/experience/life has to change once in a while. What if you already had 1000 lives where you see roughly the same things and believe roughly the same things? Is it enough yet? Are you tired of the sameness yet? For me the answer is yes. Maybe seeing spirits and believing as you do is something you've only been doing for 10 lives and so it's still cool and fresh. I don't know. ----- To Stigweard and TheWhiteRabbit: Thank you! That was interesting. Stig, your square gives me more questions than it gives answers. Why square? Why only 9 squares? Why that order of numbers? Needless to say nothing there seems intuitive to me and it makes no sense. Why is hun on the left sude, west, and po on the right side, east? Why can't hun be north or a corner? I just don't get it. It's obvious to me that the square is arbitrary, and that's fine. But! If you make a system like that, it better have some interesting and elegant properties. However if the system is arbitrary, but is not intuitive, and has no interesting properties and no elegance, then I don't think it's a good system. It is subjective, but that's my take on it. The magical square appears clumsy to me.

seadog, That's what I was asking about. It's interesting. Do you have a similar map for other organs? If that's too much to ask, please ignore. Thank you.

I think we have a slightly different understanding of the term "symbolic". But, yes, I was talking about linkages. That's what I meant. So I was saying, what are kidneys linked to? What other body organs are they linked to? What kinds of intentions are kidneys linked to? Are kidneys linked to any social roles? If so, which ones? For example, does a kidney link to one's boss or one's student or one's executioner or what? According to acupressure principles, kidneys are linked to various areas on and right under the skin of the body, right? Do kidneys have a shen/spirit side? What is the role or function of the spirit side of a kidney?

I appreciate you saying this. Thank you. However you have said so many times already on this forum and I have taken your point on this the first time you said it. Please do not interpret what I am saying as evidence of my non-acceptance of the Chinese meaning of "ghosts". So, if I understand correctly, any subtle living entities can be called "ghosts" in Chinese way of thinking. Am I correct? So a "ghost" is a rather general term that covers many situations and not just dead people's presence. But, that said, it seems like you've ignored my question. I'll try one more time. Do you believe that these subtle entities simply exists whether we like it or not? For example, the person has 3 hun no matter what? So from your point of view, no matter what anyone thinks, one has 3 hun, so a person might as well learn about 3 hun to be closer to truth of "how things really are"? Do I understand this correctly? For example, do I have 3 hun in your opinion? Maybe I have 10 or 1.5. Are you sure it's 3? Have you counted my hun? Or is it something that's believed to be a principle, like a "law of hun", like in the West we have "a law of conservation of energy" which states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed within a closed system, but only changes form. So maybe in your worldview there is a law of hun that has a simple and rational explanation for why exactly 3 hun are there to make a person and not 5 or 2.5 or 1.7? I guess to you studying ghosts is not even an option. Ghosts exists so if you don't want to remain ignorant, you have to study them. Right? Also your teacher said ghosts exist, so there is no way you could say or believe something that contradicts that, right?

Yi cannot be dropped, pretty much by definition. Think about it. If you think yi can be dropped, please start a new thread about it, and let's discuss it. You'll need to explain how to drop it. How do you intend to drop your intent? Yes, I sure would love to see you explain that one. --- To the original poster: If someone tenses up, they produce no movement and yet they are putting a strain on themselves. In this case, you may want to remember that you are not in a hurry to win anything. You can "fight" forever, because Tai Chi never stops or starts. So, since you don't have a time limit by which you must subdue the guy, not in Tai Chi anyway, you have some options there. You can let the guy stand there tense and waste his energy while you relax. You don't need to subdue the guy by a certain time limit. You're not in a hurry. You can wait for 1 billion years. No problem. You can create scary appearances around the guy to make him tense even more! Aggravate his psyche so he wastes even more energy tensing. Frustrate him. Play with him. Spend absolute minimum energy doing this. Take your time. Take 100 billion years to do this if necessary. Don't think you need to go home for dinner. You don't. You can stand there for eternity. Or not. Either way, all options are open and there is no compulsion on you. If your mind is compelled, that's a weakness that can be exploited by he who knows what's compelling you. You can punch the tense body with annoying pressure point punches. Punch the arm with your fingers. Of course this may not be "standard" tai chi, but in tai chi there are no rules anyway. The forms are to introduce wisdom and not so that you become chained by them! If the form instead of releasing you chains you, that's wrong. The form is there to release one's inhibitions of rigidity and not so that it imposes its own new fancy and more subtle rigidity on you. You are a crazy lunatic who cannot be predicted. You are Dao. You have nothing to gain and nothing to lose. Just play. Try this next time.

Ok, I don't think you can follow what I am saying. So instead I will have to follow what you are saying for the time being. Let's assume power is what you want to generate. From the point of view of pure physics, what gives you more power? Accelerated mass under inertia, or active pushing? Keep in mind, that as you push more and more, the speed slows down. This is why you don't see power lifters snap 800 lbs off their chest. It's a slow, sloooooooow exertion. And that's why it's called "grinding". So if you want to gain some speed, you need to lose some of what you call "power", but really, you lose your pushing application and rely more on inertia of the arm-hand meat-bones-tendons-etc system. So it makes perfect sense to put maximum power into acceleration rather than pushing at the end of the punch (with the exception of one inch punch, where you really need to push and have no time or space for acceleration). Speed has many advantages over pushing. First, speed has power because kinetic power is power. In other words, no matter what power you put into acceleration, none of it is lost, so there is no inefficiency introduced by focusing on speed (more on this later). So you don't really lose power, especially if you have somewhat meaty arms that weigh something. Second, and more importantly, it's a tactical advantage. Not only do you get to your target faster, and thus potentially first, but you also allow less time for dodging, and the element of surprise (which is psychologically shocking) is increased. If you are still not convinced, forget about it. Just keep thinking how you currently think. I was trying to get people to look at a punch from a less physicalist perspective, if not completely non-physicalist. This perspective is a quantum leap beyond the chi paradigm. The most important thing in a non-physicalist world is expression. So your punch is not about power but it is about expression, and a fight is more like a debate than a struggle. You are negotiating your opponent instead of fighting him. You produce perceptions that are not acceptable to a rigid mindset, and the mindset falls apart or retreats. The punch is not about moving some meat or bones. It's about creating an experience. Apparently this is way over your head given your comments. Finally, since it's very hard to leap from a physicalist to a completely non-physicalist perspective, there is still one element that can slow down a punch. It's fear. That's because if you punch with maximum speed, you can't afford to slow your arm down at all. That means you have to let your fist flare out. This means the only thing that's holding your arm together at the point of maximum extension is your tendon and other connective tissue. This can produce tendon tear, easily. So in order to gain maximum speed, one has to overcome the fear or tendon rupture. For this purpose tendons have to be trained, so that you're not afraid to let your arm completely go. So then even if it flares out 100%, completely allowed to go forth without returning, the tendon is reliable to snap it back for you, and you don't use your muscle to hold it back to yourself at the end of the punch. If we could just jump into 100% non-physicalist realm, then tendons don't matter at all and the arm will stay where you intend it to stay, by definition. What I am trying to explain here is a kind of internal approach that does not rely on chi at all. Another option is to throw a throughtform at the person. Again, for this there is no need to create chi. You can toss a symbol at a person. But that's hard to do if you don't really believe in the power of symbols. P.S.: The southern style praying mantis guy didn't hit me with "chi" or "jing". He just hit me as I described. Just a fast, confusing, heavy flurry.

Sorry to get off topic, but money is said to be just energy. I disagree with how some of these people use that "money=energy" concept, but it's not exactly completely illogical or incomprehensible. So, the disagreement with how some healers prefer to use money would need to be at least somewhat nuanced, I think, before it could be taken seriously. I think it all depends on what level of healing one is performing and what is one's goal. If one is performing a mundane healing, and if one's goal is to simply persist in the world as is, without significantly changing its flavor, then charging money for healing makes perfect sense. Then healing is just like any other business, plain and simple. And as long as it's an honest business, I fail to see anything even slightly wrong with it. However, there are some types of healing that are different and are exceptions to this. One is when you disseminate wisdom. This is said to be the highest form of healing. It is the healing of the mind or heart. It is a celestial healing and it does not follow ordinary mundane rules of healing due to its eminently transcendent nature. Second, there is a healing that's done to beautify the world. If you want the world to get more and more beautiful, it's not enough to exchange one thing for another tit for tat. You have to put in more "energy" than you take out. So you can provide healing for free. This creates the "pressure" on the world system to become altogether better (or you can think of it as creating a "goodness vacuum" that the world wants to fill). So in this sense, you're not healing some stranger, but you are healing your own world-body, so it makes no sense to charge yourself for something you are doing to beautify yourself anyway. So if you engage in these two forms of healing, charging money is a no no.

Why do we need power? What is the function of it? I think if you think about it, you'll agree that the function of power, as well as the function of speed, is to create a disruption in the system of a person. In other words, a person sees themselves in a certain way, and if you introduce a temporary inconsistency into their system, inconsistency between perception and the desired self-image, the person goes into various levels of shock, depending on how undesirable or strange the inconsistency is. This is why strange light punches that pull the skin in the weird directions at the same time can be so effective sometimes. But at the same time, if someone has a flexible mind that doesn't demand a very strict form, then these exact punches will be a waste of time against such person. The only reason we tend to gravitate toward power as a necessary component is because we believe so much in the physical reality of meat and bones and such. But the point of my post there was to allow the person to try a punch from a completely different view of the universe. So speed even with minimal power can create a strong disruption in a person's self-image. Well, one time a southern style (short hand) praying mantis guy did a little demo on me. He gently and extremely quickly tapped me so that I flew across the room. Granted, I wasn't really resisting much, because I just wanted to observe this guy and see what he's doing there, but I have to tell you. Those light taps are, how shall I put it, like being hit with a 30 lbs of wet towel very fast, very tiresome, bruising, extremely disorienting, and if you're not used to it, scary, because in southern style the guy invades your space and gets real close and personal to you, right in your face. In other words, it's a lot more effective than you might think. The guy that demoed this to me was not just fast though, he was also extremely strong and an all around athlete. He does strength and endurance training and the whole works, and not just the internal stuff. So even a very light tap from him is like being hit with a big mallet, and he was only playing around. Obviously this is all anecdotal. I suggest you actually try taking on someone who practices something like that and see for yourself. There is a lot of bullshit though. Like the Tai Chi guy who couldn't even budge my hand with his "technique". That's because I am strong and I don't lunge around. I just stay there and stick my arm out and hold it. He can't move it, because he doesn't have any momentum to borrow. He could try pushing me, but then I'd borrow his push if he did that. Needless to say, very disappointing fake, fake teacher. And this guy charges money too. Horrible.

Ok, if I understand correctly, from your point of view, ghosts simply exist whether we like it or not, so if we don't see ghosts, we're missing out on seeing a part of reality. And if we see ghosts, then we have a more complete picture of reality. So I guess you don't accept that realities can differ? That there are different perceptual paradigms? So you don't see yourself a cosmic womb that gives birth to this universe every moment?

Well, the way I perceive my experience, everything has multiple levels of meaning. For example, hands can symbolize intent (especially your dominant hand), and your legs can symbolize your traditions or core beliefs. Liver is said to clean the blood, so do kidneys. However liver does many more things. So liver performs a lot of different maintenance functions, according to western medical opinion, and kidneys mostly perform filtration. So maybe kidneys symbolize discriminating wisdom. Maybe liver symbolizes tolerance/patience/forbearance? I believe you said somewhere that teeth are the link to the previous generation. So maybe teeth symbolize ancestors. I don't remember this for sure. I don't know. I don't think organs must have symbolic meanings like that. I was just curious if you assign any symbolic meanings to them or if you just think of them as little meat machines that do things inside the body.

What's wrong with being a ghost? I think what I would want is expressiveness at the soul level. If my soul feels like manifesting myself as a ghost, that's wonderful. Trouble would arise only if I somehow became stuck in that state. As long as I am free and uninhibited in my transformation, no particular transformation is bad. I don't mean this in a condescending way at all, but just to make my point perfectly clear, I want to give this example. Imagine that you're in a forest and there are holes in the ground. Now, a person might say "Be careful of the holes! Avoid the holes!" Why? Because if you fall in, you are not likely to get out and your day is ruined. Plus people generally do not enjoy holes. However, what if you can come and go as you please? What if there is no way you can get stuck in a hole? And what if some holes have interesting bugs in them and some have gems deep down, and so on, then perhaps falling into a hole can be very good? So the hole is not inherently bad, it's being stuck in it that's bad, and this perception is intensified if you think negatively of the holes to begin with. So if you think holes have nothing interesting in them, that would intensify the badness of being stuck in one. I don't think there is anything inherently bad or wrong with being a ghost. But according to my taste, it's just ugly. But I don't think it's something to be avoided at all costs either. It's kind of like anchovies. I agree completely. BTW, I think "egregore" is a very cool concept. I think it's more interesting than a ghost at least.

Mak Tin Si, Can you please explain the fascination with ghosts? Personally I believe that we can create many flavors of apparent reality. There are some apparent realities where ghosts are a regular feature, and some where people don't even know what a ghost is, and never mind ghosts making an appearance. From my point of view, seeing ghost is not more or less true, and it is not more or less spiritual, than not seeing ghosts. It's just a choice that from the point of view of a wisdom seeker is neither here nor there. Ghosts are basically ornamental, as I see it, like any other appearance. But as ornaments, ghosts are ugly, useless and tasteless, and they introduce too much instability into the perceived world. This is why I don't allow ghosts to appear in my perceived reality. At the same time, I don't have anything against ghosts at the ultimate level. I don't think ghosts are bad or evil or "to be avoided at all costs" or anything like that. So I am curious about your fascination with ghosts. Maybe I am wrong, but seems you have quite some fascination and passion for ghosts. So are ghosts fun? Do you like to play with ghosts? What's good about ghosts? If you had to sing the virtues of ghosts, what would you say? If a person who can see ghosts is superior, then how exactly is a person who can see ghosts superior to a person who cannot see them, in your view? If I do give birth to ethereal beings, they are going to be non-traditional meditative deities of my own making. I don't think I will be giving birth to ghosts soon.

I agree that rules, especially if they are not mere guidelines, the enforced kinds, are generally bad. If people don't want to naturally do the right thing, and if the only way to get them to do the right thing is to put a spying camera and a policeman with a big club on top of them, then you have a cultural problem that cannot whatsoever be solved with brute force, fear, and other such low life methods. This is what many people don't understand yet. Many people believe if you put more and stronger enforcement in place, everything will be better. They don't see how culture is infinitely more important in creating a peaceful and good life than the number of policemen on the street or how big and bad your army forces are.

Mak Tin Si, What is the deep meaning of "kidney" in your opinion? If all body parts have symbolic meanings, what do kidneys stand for? What do they mean? If anyone else has an opinion, please chime in.

Doh. That's what the rest of my post was for. Yes, what is the difference? It's kind of fuzzy. An implication is perceived to be an immediate connection, almost involuntary and effortless. Inference is perceived to be a more distant connection, usually requiring mental effort and intent. In reality I think the difference between these two is not very clear. It's only clear if you just leave the definition uncontemplated, as it is with most things. In any case, if you have a deeper point to make, you should be more direct and not try to hint at it. Yes, I've seen similar studies being reported in the media, even recently. If you can measure something, it is mundane, conventional. It's not bad or evil. Mundanity is an ornament of awareness. However, if you perceive the ornament to be the root of meaning, that's a tragedy in my view.

Ok, I can't help but to toss my opinion into the pile. Here's a problem with Tai Chi. It tends to philosophically emasculate Li too much, which is false. What is the problem with people who rely too much on Li? They are numb, which is to say they are not sensitive to subtleties and nuances. And they don't understand the connection between Li and Yi, and so they use Yi in a crude, unrefined, and rigidly structured manner. How does a GOOD internal martial artist fix this? A GOOD one will balance this out. But taking all emphasis away from Li and putting the entire emphasis on Yi is simply a yet another imbalance. The truth is that for any people conscious of something that could be called "Li", Li has some truth to it, and it shouldn't be ignored. Li is not bad, or stupid, or unholy. Li is a manifestation of Yi as much as is Chi! Everything is manifested by Yi and not just Chi! So Li has truth behind it. The problem with an ignorant guy is not that he believes Li is true while Li is really false, but that he doesn't realize there are OTHER truths that complete the truth of Li. So the truth of the ignorant guy is only wrong insofar the ignorant guy thinks his truth is complete. Li is not a lie. Li is real and effective and is part of Dao. The problem with many internal martial artists is that they overemphasize Yi-Chi-Jing connection to the point of utterly ignoring and even deprecating Li. Li is scoffed at and put down. That's wrong. This is why when one of these ignorant extremist internalists shows up they can easily get their ass whopped by a boxer or even a non-fighter body builder. An internal martial artist should hold Yi as the most important aspect, and should balance the incorrect worshiping of Li with a healthy respect for Li, and balance seeing Li as the complete picture with seeing it as part of the picture. Sensitivity of perceptions and creative openness of mind are then restored to their rightful places instead of creating a huge imbalance and a huge delusion by thinking that Li is irrelevant and that Yi-Chi-Jing is supreme. So basically this guy just shows how stupid you are by tensing up. If some guy practices tensing up for 10 years and standing firm upon the ground, guess what? Maybe even the best Tai Chi master in the world couldn't move that guy at all! Why not? Because everything can be taken up as a mastery. Li doesn't have to stay at a mundane gross level. Li can be elevated and spiritualized (which is to say, liberated from structures, preconceptions about it) to the point of being miraculous. This is why honesty is so important and why dogma, including spiritual and physicalist dogmas, dogma of any kind, is blinding. The terms as I understand them: Li = physical strength, Yi = intent, Chi = subtle energy that's more private, and Jing = subtle energy that's been converted into a grosser form of energy that's more public.

Blah. Where do you think these games take their inspiration from?