cheya

Secrets of the Pelvis for Martial Arts: A Practical Guide for Improving Your Wujifa, Taiji, Xingyi, Bagua and Everyday Life, by Michael Buhr. This book looks really interesting, pretty good reviews on Amazon. Anybody read it and/or know the author? Buhr also has a blog at http://internalgongfu.blogspot.com/ I REALLY liked his most recent post. Gonna have to delve further.

*Bump* (Can't help thinking about Nungali... )

Well.... now that you've said that, of course you should! (Curiosity killed the cat? )

Welcome, Xanda!

"Are Humans Solar Powered? Are we, too, solar powered, like plants? It’s no longer a question, it’s an answer. Summary of TEDxtalk: Water, Cells, Life by Dr. Gerald Pollack, a water scientist at the University of Washington, tell us where the energy comes from that supplies our bodies with get up and go. In it, Dr. Pollack challenges the long-held explanation that the bulk of our energy comes from food, in the form of calories. He provides an entirely new and very exciting paradigm, one that will open up new dimensions of body energy for accelerated healing and vitality. And he shares his unexpected laboratory results to back his explanation up. This will surely be a seminal TEDxtalk. In it Dr. Pollack makes two unexpected and paradigm-advancing points. Hold onto your hat." http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/are-humans-solar-powered The links at the bottom of the article are pretty mind boggling too!

Well, I don't have a clue what it actually means, but what would make sense to me is if it meant something like "Not daring to act before heaven acts." So... always following heaven's lead. Humble before heaven.

Thank you Sagebrush! Looking forward to checking that out.

Hi Rene, Glad you like it! It's from the Tao Te Ching: A New Translation with Commentary. She explains a lot that I just never got from other translations. This was back when I was so into it that I got a bunch of translations... but her commentaries really are helpful at putting things together I otherwise miss.

I like what Ellen Chen said about this chapter in her general comment (included below), which helps me make more sense of and see more connections between these first few chapters. Her translation doesn't seem to differ much: 1. Tao is a whirling emptiness, Yet in use is inexhaustible. Fathomless, It seems to be the ancestor of ten thousand beings. 2. It blunts the sharp, Unties the entangled, Harmonizes the bright, Mixes the dust, Dark, It seems perhaps to exist. 3. I do to know whose child it is, It is an image of what precedes God (Ti) Her General Comment (followed by a couple pages of Detailed Comments...) "In Chapter 1 we witness the bifurcation of the everlasting Tao and name into the duality of non-being and being. In chapters 2 and 3 we are given the distinction between natural opposites that arise together and complement each other and value or moral opposites that break up the unity of nature and vitiate human life. In this chapter we see how opposites, which issue from Tao, become again identified when they return to Tao. Tao is the dark womb that pours out (1) and receives back (2) all beings. Its unceasing fecundity is due to its unceasing activity, blending and preparing all that have returned to it for their reemergence into the light of existence. As this unceasing creativity Tao hardly seems to exist, yet it is prior to God or the Lord on High. (Sorry I left out a number of chinese words she includes in the translation. I could put them in if needed/helpful.)

Bump. This is indeed a great Sufi article!

Dust, thank you again! For some reason, "compassion" has never satisfied me as a translation, and I really appreciate your expansion on this. From what you have offered, I prefer "tender love of (all) life", and also wonder, not going buddhist here as in the filial bit, but could it be love for the Great Mother, as the source of all life? And now maybe you'll have a go at "frugality"?

Thank you Dust! That was helpful! Curious about your understanding of the first two terms as well... Compassion? Frugality? Just how we might normally understand those words? Thank you!

@ Brian, Not really experienced in this, but I would first put a real sealant on it (to keep stuff in the wall from getting out) and then maybe paint that with something like the PlusUltra (to keep new stuff from re-infesting the wall). And I would be sure to research to find the least reactive products possible on the chemical sensitivity sites. Or maybe Baubiologie groups or practitioners would be a good place to start. (Building biology (or Baubiologie) is a field of building science investigating the indoor living environment for a variety of irritants. Practitioners study how the environment of residential, commercial and public buildings can affect the health of the occupants, producing a restful or stressful environment. Building biology - Wikipediahttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Building_biology)

Well... if I was sure it was the wall, I would first vacuum the walls and ceiling (vacuum must have a really good HEPA filter on it so you're not just blowing more toxins into the air..) And then I would use something like this (never used it, just found it with google) http://www.radonseal.com/molds/mold-cleaner.htm . And then I would try to find a concrete sealant that people with environmental/chemical sensitivity had found to be tolerable. There are bound to be sites for people with toxic reactions to their environment that would give you more experienced and specific advice than you will get with DB. Depending on the strength of your various detox pathways, one kind of toxin can give you a whole lot of trouble and another, hardly any at all. For instance, a friend is terribly sensitive to mold, and I'm not... but VOC's give me bad headaches and he has no problem at all with them. Hopefully even if you have to use some chemical products, you can find some products that control the toxins without causing more problems. Good luck!

Believable (to me), and sobering. Curious what others think. "Surprised by the results of the 2016 presidential race, [Professor Jonathan] Albright started looking into the ‘fake news problem’. As a part of his research, Albright scraped 306 fake news sites to determine how exactly they were all connected to each other and the mainstream news ecosystem. What he found was unprecedented – a network of 23,000 pages and 1.3 million hyperlinks." ~~ from the important article "The Rise of the Weaponized AI Propaganda Machine" The Rise of the Weaponized AI Propaganda Machine "There’s a new automated propaganda machine driving global politics. How it works and what it will mean for the future of democracy." By Berit Anderson and Brett Horvath https://medium.com/join-scout/the-rise-of-the-weaponized-ai-propaganda-machine-86dac61668b#.4ue360des “This is a propaganda machine. It’s targeting people individually to recruit them to an idea. It’s a level of social engineering that I’ve never seen before. They’re capturing people and then keeping them on an emotional leash and never letting them go,” said Professor Jonathan Albright. ....it became clear to Scout that this phenomenon was about much more than just a few fake news stories. It was a piece of a much bigger and darker puzzle — a Weaponized AI Propaganda Machine being used to manipulate our opinions and behavior to advance specific political agendas. By leveraging automated emotional manipulation alongside swarms of bots, Facebook dark posts, A/B testing, and fake news networks, a company called Cambridge Analytica has activated an invisible machine that preys on the personalities of individual voters to create large shifts in public opinion. Many of these technologies have been used individually to some effect before, but together they make up a nearly impenetrable voter manipulation machine that is quickly becoming the new deciding factor in elections around the world."

Me too! And if you can lie on the ground while you're in the sun, you get doubly charged!

Don't feel like he's speaking to me at all. It's very impersonal. It just ... hits me good somehow Could I say my energy field just seems to be able to use it? (Still puzzled by the blimps thing... same as getting lit up?)

Blimps? I've watched it a number of times now, lights up something different every time.

RV, what a puzzling post! Where to start? I've never done tai chi, just taiji ruler, an entirely different practice specifically designed to help you feel and circulate qi. Yes I've read Liao and TTC along with many other books ... but I'm in no way a practicing daoist. Maybe more just a practicing qi junkie Yes, I'm standing wuji these days... but only because it's required for a class I'm doing on Meridian Massage (applying Chinese medicine principles to massage). Feeling the upward flow is easy for me after more than four years of daily taiji ruler practice. I never had much sense of the downward flow until I started that Light chat, which is one reason I'm so enamored of it. Healer/psychics had told me my crown was blocked. But apparently not anymore. Early on in energy exploration I got the strong impression that the qi had its own agenda, and that any agenda I might impose was pretty much inferior to the agenda of the qi itself. So I tend to get the qi flowing, and then let it do its thing. Guess that could be seen as kind of dao-ish....

Chemical Alchemy? Philosopher's Stone? Food Sources? Well, have at it! Oh... and Welcome to the Bums!

Welcome to the Bums! You're bound to have some interesting perspectives on the topics you find here. Looking forward to hearing from you!

On the other hand, some say there are no accidents... Either way, Welcome!

Here you go Fate: The Complete Works Of Chuang Tzu Translated by Burton Watson ... terebess.hu/english/chuangtzu3.html But though you may be one time a ruler, another time a subject, this is merely a ... Where can I find a man who has forgotten words so I can have a word with him?" ..... When the messenger had left and Master Lieh Tzu had gone back into his ... I found it using google search of the terebess.hu site. Hope it's what you want!

RV, I don't have a plan, not trying to do Taoist cultivation, just enjoying the downward flow of energy, entering the head, washing down, feels like a blessing, doesn't feel like shen diverging, although I probably wouldn't recognize that if it happened. Sometimes in the Light chat, the back of my head, or the top, or my forehead, activates. Sometimes the energy goes down and then rises up the back to the head. When I work other practices (standing wuji these days), energy flows up. When I work with Niwan, the energy sort of blossoms in my head and then cascades down. When I watch the Cousins shaktipat vid, my heart glows. So just exploring pretty randomly. Not very methodical! But whatever I connect with in light chat feels really benevolent and restorative..

For me it is. Others I have talked to there often don't feel it that way. Many don't feel it at all...