goldisheavy

If you perceive an ambiguity, just call it out and I will do my best to disambiguate it. To call out an ambiguity, please provide good descriptions of two different and incompatible understandings that can arise due to an ambiguity. In other words, if you just say "it's ambiguous" and leave it at that, I will not respond (or at least, not kindly).

Same thing anyone else means by it. Just what's in the dictionary. And by clear intent I mean intent that's been freed of structured conditioning.

I don't think people understand the real implications of abilities like "telekinesis". Sorry if this sounds negative, but I don't mean to be a bummer and harsh your mellows or anything like that. I just don't know how to put it any nicer than that. We all have an idea of what the world should be like. And we cling to that idea with all we got. Should anything appear contrary to our idea of reality, without special contemplative training, we would become extremely disturbed, scared and lost. This is why mentally ill people have very hard time being functional. They are scared. They don't know what to trust. It's like having no ground to stand on. Hard blatant magic implies the total and utter destruction of the world as you know it. Total. Utter. Gone. No world. No universe. No other people. No things. No dogs or cats. No driveway. No home. No stars or planets. No space or time. When I say "destruction," of course nothing is actually destroyed, but all ideas about it are removed from the depths of your own mind. It's not just that you'd be breaking rules of physics, that's nothing. You'd be breaking the boundary between yourself and the world. What are you? If you're not limited by your body, then what are you? You are not human. That's huge. All your ideas about what you are, what you can and cannot do, would be shattered. You'd have the biggest identity crisis this side of the universe. People sometimes commit suicide from the most minor minor trivial things when they reach midlife crisis. People reach 30-40 and realize they didn't achieve any goals or didn't live the life they wanted (as a human! they want to be a limited human, they have goals, plans, wishes, hopes for the human!), and they hang themselves, or they reinvent themselves. Think what this implies. Not only do most (99.99999999%) people not want any psychic abilities, but people want to remain stupid and limited humans, on purpose. They have goals, wishes, hopes and dreams for those stupid little limited un-psychic mounds of flesh that they all fervently believe they are. They can't just give it all up. Not until they fulfill themselves a million times over and get tired of being a human first. People are so fucking scared of real psychic abilities, that even the slightest hint of them, and they are willing to burn the witch they think has them. That's a lot of people around the world. And the only reason we no longer have witch burnings in the developed world is not because people have matured or become more fearless, or because they have expanded their minds, hell no. The reason why we don't have witch burnings in the developed world is because everyone got utterly convinced that such things simply do not exist. Should people believe they do exist, they could easily revert to witch burning behavior of the past due to tremendous fear. People want to have ground under their feet. They want to be sure that when they open the door of their home, there is a familiar street on the other side. People want to be sure that when they release an object from their hand, it falls to the ground. This is comforting. This is familiar. It's stability. These desires are so deep in our minds we don't even realize they are there. Just me mentioning it is not likely to give you a realization of what I am describing. You have to crack your own reality at least briefly to understand what I am talking about. People think that having a psychic ability is an add-on. It's not. People think that we have Jane over here and add psychic ability and voila, we have psychic Jane. So the formula would be: Jane + psychic training = psychic Jane. Sort of like: Jane + carpentry training = carpenter Jane or Jane + math training = mathematician Jane But having a real magic ability is unlike any mundane ability. Mundane abilities are built by building on top of your core beliefs about reality. Since your core beliefs about reality are untouched, acquiring mundane abilities feels relatively easy and safe to mundane beings. It feels like a step by step process, as you add more conditioning on top of your already-existing conditioning. Supramundane abilities are restored to the original limitless being by uprooting and dissolving the deeply nested core beliefs about reality. This is what makes them unlike anything you've ever known. It's not even training. I say "training", but it's not. It's not like training for a marathon. It's not like lifting weights. It's not rote. It's not repetitive. It's not cycling energy. It's not opening chakras. It's not microcosmic orbit. It's not anything most people are obsessed with doing on this here forum. It's not any of that spiritual confetti. This is why someone who circulates energy is not going to get any powers. And they don't. You won't become immortals. If you conserve your energy, you won't get anything. It's all a waste of time. And of course reality supports what I am saying, because if you test any person on this forum, a la Randi, I can guarantee you they will have no power, and SFJane has been brave and honest enough to realize that in her own training. Good for her. Bravo. Nobody here will have any kind of special power. Why not? You don't do what you need to do to have it. Why not? You don't want to. Deep down, you don't. If you deep down wanted to, you'd pick a practice that opens the gates so to speak. But you don't pick it. Instead you pick something rote, something you can do in the morning every day, something that doesn't ruin your life. You can do it before breakfast, then have your oatmeal, nice and healthy, then go about your day as a limited little lump of human flesh. You need that stability of being human. You need the safety of the known. You need physics to continue to function so that you don't freak out. You have dreams, hopes, plans, goals, wishes that you strive for as a human. You don't want to stop being a human. You don't want to destroy this world. Etc. and so on. You just want to spice this place up! Spicy. You want a little something spicy on top. That's all. The only practice that yields power is contemplation, and even then, contemplation has to be coupled with willingness. You have to be a willing, non-resisting participant. That's huge. To get this kind of willingness you must have tremendous emotional maturity that transcends human emotional maturity. It's when you know everything there is to know about being human. It's when you are utterly, utterly satisfied with being who you are and having lived as you had, and have nothing more to gain from it. It's like you had your fill and now you can do something else. But not until then. If you still enjoy the human games, you can't play the games of immortals. So does this mean you should stop enjoying being human so you can become immortals? Hell no! The dirty secret is that you are already an immortal who magically made this human world. You love all of this. You love this game. You are not yet done playing. There is nothing anywhere that can hurry you up. You cannot contrive anything. You cannot artificially with some kind of practice change your innermost desire. This is why the highest spiritual practices stress that there is no artifice, no practice, no rote training. Why? Because intent has to be clear and if you are applying techniques your intent is still dirty. It's not clear. To understand why this is actually the case, one has to contemplate for a very long time. No, you don't need a master for this. You don't need a Guru. You don't need to be a Buddhist or a Daoist or any ist. You just need to be ready and willing. When you are ready and willing, you'll have the requisite wisdom to know what it is you need to contemplate. You'll be able to sense where it is that limitations emanate from. You'll be able to consider things that most people cannot even consider. So enjoy yourselves. Have fun. Be good to each other. Don't rush anything. When you are ready, you'll start asking different sorts of questions than when you love being human and want to remain human in a human world, with all that it implies, and you just want a little something extra special on top, a little spicy spice on top. A little spicy microcosmic orbit practice. A little spicy chakra practice. Something that is guaranteed not to disturb or change your dream of human in a human world even in the slightest. Something safe. Enjoy!

Xian, thanks for the pointers. I am interested in this kind of material. I will be on the lookout for it when I visit Borders.

I've read Seven Taoist Masters: A Folk Novel of China (Shambhala Classics) and Tales of the Taoist Immortals (Paperback) both (translated/recounted) by Eva Wong and both great books in my opinion. Other than saying the books were great, I can't think of any other thing to say unless there is a specific question to answer.

Kind of like my nose creates my face? Not exactly.

People do this all the time with other individuals, but no one cares. It's only when someone's pet "good guy" is judged negatively that we must require they meet our pet guy in person and think 72 times, very hard, preferably after a 3 year retreat, to pronounce a negative opinion. But if you want to have a negative opinion about anyone else, without meeting them in person, feel free! Help yourself! Enjoy! Knock yourself out! Woo haaa... I don't know anything about Verdesi, so please don't take this as either positive, negative or even neutral evaluation on David. I'm just trying to point out the uneven standard we seem to have when it comes time to getting an opinion about someone. For some people we don't mind if you acquire any amount of opinions, right away, without meeting that person, without even hearing much from that person, etc. The standard is very low. For others, oh jee, before you say something negative, you better go study 30 years under the person you want to negatively opine about. On the other hand, if you want to say something positive, you don't have to study for 30 years. Hell, you could speak completely out of your arse without knowing the fist thing, as long as it is positive. So for example, if I don't know the first thing about Dalai Lama, and I say "Isn't Dalai Lama wonderful?" No one is going to challenge me. Everyone is in agreement. No one is going to challenge me by saying, "wait a second, how do you know Dalai Lama is wonderful?"

I don't think that's a necessary consequence. I think a change from considering some things to be internal to your being and others to be external to considering all things to be beyond the self-other boundary is a very very subtle change. It's almost no change at all. Some would say it's not even a change. When I am dreaming, I usually assume the dream world exist in the same way this waking world exists here, externally, independently objectively and so on (well that's not entirely true, but let's simplify). Suppose I become lucid and realize I am dreaming. Suddenly I realize that everything that appears, however legitimately and "physically-looking" it is, is actually a product of my dreaming mind. That can be a very mind-blowing awakening because things in my dream can look so crispy clear, I would swear they were real physical things, so then realizing they are not can be a mix of exhilaration and fear, or maybe not so much, depending on the state of mind I am in. And then what? Do things change? Do things become difficult? Not to me. I can explore the world. Everything is more or less the same. I can chat with people. I can ride the bus. The only difference is that now I can do more things. I can now disappear and reappear somewhere else. I can hypnotize people effortlessly (all the people in the dream seemingly want to do the same things I want to do and I don't have to make any kind of obvious hypnotic effort, but the hypnotic effect just appears on its own). If I am not lucid, this is less likely. If I am not lucid, someone might be arguing with me. But if I am, usually there is no argument. So if I say, "we are going here" we are going there. People don't tell me "no we are not going there." They do exactly as I say and they enjoy it. So being lucid does make things different but I wouldn't call those differences "difficult." So I just described all that in terms of dreaming, because I think it's easier to think about it that way, when it's somewhat removed and compartmentalized from this here occurrence.

"A disease is caused by bad fumes" "A disease is caused by tiny little invisible creatures that live inside and on your body." "A disease is caused by spirits that live inside and on your body." Sorry but I don't see a tremendous difference. But one of them is sexy scientific one and others are unsexy dark ages ones. I like science, but to me scientific advancement is less about superficial things, and more about how it changes the way we think about things. Things themselves though are as absurd as they have ever been. Little dudes running around your body are as silly as the spirits. The difference between bacteria and spirits is wholly superficial, like the difference between Santa Claus in the West and Ded Moroz (Grandfather Frost) in Russia is a superficial difference.

Ah, but this process is not something that you can turn on or off. This process of people believing things that are congruent with their unchecked presuppositions is always ongoing, even right now. Very respectable people, Ph.D., scientists, physicists, all are subject to this very same process. They are all affected. So if being part of this process is enough to suspect the assertions that people involved in the process make, then you must suspect everyone and not just the believers in the psychic. Actually many people are. Why do you say they are not? Not everyone is amazed by John Chang. I think witnessing a real psychic power, like with a .45 bullet would be too traumatic to the mind of most people. They would vomit like Neo did when he went through the rabbit whole in the Matrix.

This is actually not true. What people want is to preserve their identity as people, together with all the implied limitations, while at the same time, they want to overcome these limitations. And yet you cannot have your cake and eat it too, and that's why people do get anywhere for the most part. There are a number of problems with this. First, why don't you go to your place of work and ask "Did you sincerely seek psychic powers in your life?" My bet is that most people will answer in the negative. So when you say "People from all places, at all times, have wished for and sought after psychic power." you make it sounds like a lot of people, but when you put it in perspective, when you compare that to the number of people throughout ages who did not seek any psychic powers, the picture changes dramatically. Secondly you assume that the world you currently experience is not your own creation. But what if it is? Wouldn't it mean that the absence of people with powers is nothing more than your own intent and proves nothing at all? All your logic depends on the idea that the world exists objectively and independently. However, if you truly believe that the world exists objectively and independently, how would psychic powers even work? By what means? Wouldn't the world work by its own rules then? This goes back to our sincerity. If you sincerely believe in psychic powers you cannot also believe that the world is objective and independent of your mind and being. You have to decide what is it you really want and how seriously do you want it. Most people who talk about wanting psychic powers are deceiving themselves in a very profound way.

So wholesale rejection of all content? Nothing worth considering? Bad form on my part?

You don't understand the nature of identity it seems. What does it mean to be human? What does it mean to be Jane? Ever thought about it? The more power you have the less human you will be. Why is that? Because the meaning of "human" is defined in a certain way. Humans are beings with certain specific limitations and boundaries. As you remove limitations and erase the boundaries, you make what used to be human unrecognizable as "human." It's like suicide without violence. You die to the world as you know it while the world dies to you, and yet you live and there is no violence or suffering. It's supremely scary. It's infinitely more scary than taking a bullet to the head or having cancer. Why? Because when you perceive a bad condition coming to you from what you think is outside, you can allow "your" being to contract internally and even to lose consciousness, lose grip on what's going on, to go into coma, to die. Dying is a result of not being able to come to terms with transformation. It's when the transformation fails to match your idealized self-image so dramatically, that you cannot stand it anymore and pass away. This is why people have amnesia regarding very bad accidents, because their restricted and structured consciousness cannot accommodate certain things into its structure. This is why most people don't remember having died previously or having been born, as all of that is way too traumatic to overly structured mind. In contrast, when you become magical, you experience the fullness of transformation without the luxury of being able to contract your being, to shrink away, to hide, to run into unconsciousness, without the luxury of amnesia and passing away into unconsciousness. You have to be a willing participant in all of transformation, all of it internalized, and to a normal person there is nothing more scary and more insane than that. And to remain calm and composed and even kind during this is the pinnacle of mastery. That's what Buddha is. You're a wonderful person and you don't have to prove it or demonstrate it. If you enjoy demonstrating it, that's another matter. I respect what you're saying here. However, the matter about magic has not been addressed at all. You've not really tried to understand magic. Instead you tried to force your way into it using your assumptions about what magic is and how it works. You've never really asked, "Why do I feel this dismagic? What's so dismagic about this experience?" The limitations. Where do they come from? Who maintains them? There is a lot to think about.

Just my thoughts on this. I've read roughly 85% - 90% of what you wrote. A lot of it is just repetition (like describing the various powers, yea, I understand, two three of the best examples would be enough for me to get the point, or maybe even 5, but I had to quit reading at some point as I wasn't getting any truly new information after a while). All this time you've been developing powers you never actually understood magic. You still don't. BK Frantzis asked some good questions, but his questions were just a starting point (and not even a good starting point, probably because BK Frantzis either doesn't understand magic himself in the first place, or just wanted to dissuade you). The good news (and keep in mind, all this is just my opinion) is that you didn't lose or waste anything. All that experience is still valuable. You've been making an enormous error by trying to brute force your way. You thought that if you only were more stubborn and practiced longer and with more devotion, you'd get some powers. Let me ask you this. Imagine you had all the powers. All of them (or maybe just one all-embracing power? why would you need separate and different powers for different tasks unless your powers were limited/specialized for each task?). How would you, having all those powers (or one true power), produce an experience of an earthly human being, of this here "reality" with all its limitations? How would you go about it? If you can understand what I am saying above, you'll understand something important. Oh and think about this too. If you have all this power, would you still be insecure? And if you had no insecurity and no fear, would you really be as destructive as you imagine with all those powers? There is a lot, a shitton that you don't understand yet. I like your honesty though; that's rare. You stand out as a real practitioner. You've made mistakes but at least they are honest mistakes, unlike 99% of people who don't make a sincere effort and whose mistakes are fake mistakes.

No, no, no. LACK?? I never said or even tried to imply you lacked motivation. The most important thing about motivation is not quantity but quality. I don't mean to say you lack passion or drive. My point was more to the quality of motivation, the why. Why Taoism? I'm not saying "you don't love or strive after Taoism hard enough." If you explained the motivation behind your search, it would help to have an intelligent discussion. I am going to take a totally different tack with someone who comes to Taoism seeking longer orgasms compared to someone who comes to Taoism seeking wisdom. Some people's motivation amounts to nothing more than blind fear. For example, people are worried that their diet is not in tune with Nature enough, so they seek some (what they think is) naturalistic advice on diet. They want to get all scientific about their diet because they are afraid of their bodies becoming unglued, etc. They don't give a shit about wisdom. These folks just want their bodies nice and strong so that they can subject themselves to more stupidity and abuse. Other people like the idea of immortality and come to Taoism because they have heard of Taoist immortals. I have totally different things to say to these variously motivated individuals. So my point is, if I know what motivates you, the quality of your motivation (and not quantity), then I can try to be more useful and helpful in how I talk to you.

This is very very wrong. Women do not get off on pain at all. The reason women tend to go for the so-called "bad" guy is because women want a protector, a go-get-em-er type guy. They want a guy who is not afraid to fight, who is not afraid to break a few rules to get shit for the home, and so on. This instinct is from the old hunter-gatherer days, when it was common to have to fight to survive (not fight against nature, mind you, but fight against other clans and roving morons, in other words, you had to fight other humans, the brutality did not come from nature but only from the humans themselves and not in all tribes/locales). The problem is that it's very easy to mistake confidence with aggressive anti-social brutality. Women want a confident strong guy but often they go overboard or their estimator is slightly broken, and instead of just calm confidence they get a wild, loose, uncontrolled guy who then abuses these women and so on. It's easy to confuse controlled calm strength with uncontrolled sociopathic brutality. If women had more brains, and understood themselves a little better, they wouldn't fall into this trap. But women struggle like men with ignorant ideas and bad conditioning. So in reality women don't want a bad guy. They want a good guy. They just don't want a door mat. But they get confused when they judge the character. They sometimes think a biker guy who beats people up is what it takes not to be a doormat. Or they think if the guy is calm, it must be due to weakness. That's wrong judgment. Bad appraisal skills. Women are not really taught how to appraise true strength, so of course they can easily make a mistake.

Well, all the best ideas were already spelled out in the Castaneda books we already have. They are missing some of the links. For example, the books teach you to disconnect from your history. So as you review your history, and you ritualistically move your head left to right and breathe in tune with the movement, you are mentally releasing the "hooks" that those historical events have on you. That's a very interesting teaching, but they don't tell you why and how this releases the power. And something like that does release the power, because what it does is weaken the rigidity of the structure that your mind/being has. Those historical events are not just things that merely happened. They are things we believe in. They are things we believe are real. They are things we believe are important. They are things we believe define who we are today. They are things that limit us by defining us. If I define water as wet, it can no longer be dry. That's a limit. A sorcerer is someone who weakens the limitations to allow for experience to be more creative and less rigid (with fewer rules). Another example is a teaching on self-importance. Why is self-importance undesirable for a sorcerer? Again this is not explained. They tell us it's bad, but not why so. It's bad because if you take yourself seriously, you will be too afraid to take risks or to do strange things, that's why. For a sorcerer, that's bad, because a sorcerer is someone who seeks freedom. If I am very important, then I cannot recklessly endanger myself, and from the point of view of self-importance, even the slightest danger is seen as reckless stupidity, and thus an entire life is spent like a turtle in its shell mentally and of course, as a consequence, "physically" as well (not that there is a real distinction between the mind and the matter, but that's our language of today).

All our problems in life come from this idea that we need to always be practical. In reality 90% of our actions are guided by fear, so the idea of practicality is one that's conditioned by fear and ignorance. So it's hard to penetrate this veil of bullshit if you are always practical. It's good to be practical in a manner that doesn't make you dogmatically or blindly practical. Sometimes it pays to stop whatever it is you think you should be doing and reflect for a moment. Don't just keep jumping. Stop. Ask yourself if there is another way. Maybe there is a ladder nearby and all your "practical" jumping attempts are just stupid? A lot of stupidity hides under the guise of practicality.

I understand Russian perfectly. What he's saying is that you move in a relaxed manner under the moment of the punch or until the moment the hammer is about to connect with the iron stick. He's not explaining why it helps, he's just telling you to do it and how to do it. He says to keep relaxed until right before contact. It should be obvious why this is beneficial. If you are tense over the entire duration of the punch, you have to overcome the resistance caused by your own muscles in moving your hand forward. If you don't tense at all, not even during the connection, your hand is not intrusive enough to cause maximum damage, and if your hand connects with bones, it can get hurt unless your fist is held together by some tension. What he doesn't seem to be explaining, although I haven't watched the video to the end, is that you tense only the fist, and not the rest of the arm. They call it "brick on a string" in some other Russian systems. The fist is tense but not the shoulder. It's not that easy to achieve this because people tense all over when they do tense, so you have to unlearn that instinct to be able to tense only the fist but not the shoulder and the rest of the body. My father taught me to punch exactly as explained in this video and as I am explaining to you. Many Russian people know to punch like this. It's not just some secret martial arts voodoo. It's semi-common knowledge and I don't think it has much to do with internal principles, at least superficially. In other words, you can benefit from this style of punching without understanding the first thing about the mind, and the power of beliefs to structure it, and about how intent is limited by the conditioning factors and so on.

The best thing you can do is to begin looking at your beliefs and values with a critical eye. By critical I don't mean to say that everything you believe and value is bad. I simply mean that you should be in position of authority and responsibility over the contents of your own mind. So in the way I use the word "critical" I do not imply "negative". If anything, you should be your own friend and not your own enemy. Once you are free to examine all the various beliefs, values, habits, patterns in your life, how they appeared to you, why do you maintain them and so on, you will begin to see that you are better than 90% of all the spiritual teachers right then and there. Why is that? It's because most teachers neither question their own beliefs, nor do they teach anyone to question anything. Most teachers spread dogma in a format that prohibits and discourages questioning. And a curious and questioning attitude is a precursor to true freedom and fulfillment (although it's a long road even with such attitude). Now, with regard to travel, what the old sages really meant is this (I am speaking authoritatively on this issue because I believe I understand it 100%). They meant that all our problems stem from how our minds are structured. To understand the flaws that inhibit us, we don't need to go to another country. Simply turning your attention inward is the answer and the key to wisdom. That doesn't mean traveling is bad. Traveling is neither here nor there. The point is, if you are not already looking at the contents of your own mind, it won't matter and it won't help you to go to China, but if you already are looking, then again, it won't help you to go to China, because all that a good Chuang Tzu-like sage would tell you in China, is just that -- examine your own mind and be careful of the assumption you make. Assumptions about yourself, about reality, about the inner and the outer worlds, about the distinctions between them and so on. As I said before, you should at least read both Tao Te Ching and Chuang Tzu, just to know when the so-called "taoist" teachers are peddling bullshit. If something a so-called "Taoist" teacher says is not in accord with Chuang Tzu, you can be pretty sure it's BS, at least from the point of view of the orthodox Taoism, which is defined by its founders, such as Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu. Not everything called "othodox" is great or correct or useful. But at least you would understand what the founders' attitudes were compared to the people who teach "taoism" now. If nothing else, when these teachers deviate, they should explain themselves, why do they call themselves "taoist"?

What I don't understand is why would you want to learn about something that you have no clue about? Since you have no clue whatsoever about Taoism, I take it you were not interested in it to begin with. Suddenly you seem to be interested. Why the change? And now that you are interested, why are you asking on a forum, from people who might themselves be misguided, instead of going to the primary sources, such as reading Tao Te Ching and Chuang Tzu: The Inner Chapters, for example? I hope you find all the answers you seek, but motivation is as important as that which you're looking for.

I'm not claiming to be an expert on Taoism, but what you're pointing out is spot on. I'm afraid you won't be getting any reasonable answers to this. Furthermore, dying is also natural. Trying to postpone dying or to even become immortal is unnatural as well. A lot of people, myself included, believe that a lot of what is called "taoist" is not true to the teachings of Laozi and Zhuangzi. I won't say those deviant teachings are always and completely without value though, because I think it's fine to question anything, including nature. Even a dream body, which we all can admit is completely immaterial, can die in the dream, and is not immortal. As for holding back ejaculation, I think the real reason people do that is to prolong their sexual pleasure. Claiming that it has a higher spiritual purpose is pure bullshit in my view.

http://www.menshealth.com/men/fitness/moti...M10000013281eac I think it's safe to skip to page 2 and start there, but I am linking to page 1 for completeness.

Taboo?? I don't get that perception at all. In Buddhism psychic powers are explicitly listed as one of the fruits of the contemplative lifestyle, right in the suttas. Plus Buddha has taught the 4 foci of power sutta, which is a sutta whose sole goal is to teach you a way to develop psychic powers. That's just Buddhism though. This was one of the thing, in fact, that attracted me to Buddhism. I wasn't attracted to Buddhism because it would liberate me from suffering. My goal was to make my life more magical, and from what I read, Buddha was the best magician. That's why I spend so much time studying Buddhism. I had very little desire to stop suffering and a lot of desire to become more creative in life. Why even bother to verify them? Assume they are fake and move on. When someone "out there" has some siddhis, that doesn't help you. In fact, someone having a siddhi is not even a guarantee they can explain to you how you can attain it too. Or if they do explain it, they might not explain the best manner of attaining it, and may saddle their explanation with all kinds of unnecessary trials and tribulations and so forth. Ignore other people. Let other people float in the periphery. Of course talking to others can be nice sometimes and so on. But don't obsess on seeking magic externally through other people. Well I have a method that works and I describe it all the time. No one cares. No one wants to pay the price. Acquiring power is easy. The short advice is just "know thyself." The longer version is something like this: Understand where the limitations come from. For example, where does gravity come from? If you believe its source is external to you, game over. You cannot control externals. If it's internal, you're still in the game. OK, so if gravity is internal, how is it that you don't feel yourself causing it? Ah, now you're getting somewhere. This process is what contemplation is. Just continue investigating like this until you understand the nature of limitations very profoundly. Be ready to maybe spend multiple lifetimes on this. Second, once you understand the nature of limitations, you will come face to face with the price of magical power. You'll understand what it costs. What you will lose when you begin to use it. If you're not willing to accept that loss, then guess what? That's the end of the road, at least until you change your mind. If you can accept the loss, you can keep going.

It's not true that none of them have dealt with it. You're just not careful in reading. Short answer is that if your meditation leads toward relaxation, it can help with myopia. The thing is to maintain the same relaxed meditative state while not meditating. Otherwise your myopia may be gone after meditation, but then after you spend 1 hour on the computer, it might be back. So the trick is to hang onto a good visual habit. Read the book that Magitek linked.