Ian

Many of the books of William Patrick Patterson are useful. Eating The I for an account of his own involvement, The Struggle of the Magicians for a historical view of why some of his most promising students never quite made it, and Voices in the Dark and Ladies of the Rope for intriguing snippets quoted from actual meetings. Fritz Peters' books, Boyhood with Gurdjieff and Gurdjieff Remembered are among the most compelling first-hand accounts of the man himself. Recently reissued, too. And if you're really into it, there are a few passages in a book called something like "A quest for the unitive vision" in which a channelled teaching tries to explain why Gurdjieff struggled to impart his clearly stupendous attainment to others. Read it in a shop, don't buy it. My impression is that little from his teachings has really survived because he refused to generalise. Each person would get exercises, physical and mental, tailored to their own state, and was warned not to pass them on to other for whom they wouldn't work. I read every word I could find about and by Gurdjieff for about 3 or 4 years. I still have his picture on the wall. Dunno why, really. Something about his face gives me a sense of something or other.

Root: open (31%) Sacral: under-active (6%) Navel: under-active (-13%) Heart: open (25%) Throat: open (31%) Third Eye: under-active (-44%) Crown: open (38%) Seems, at a glance, to be a very close fit to what I'd assume. Thanks for that.

I tried my first green smoothie the other day and it was gross. The spinachy stuff just didn't blend, merely shredded into tiny pieces, which made it difficult anf quite unpleasant to drink. Do I simply have a shitty blender? If so, is there a recognised threshold of power above which this won't happen? Or is it a shape thing? The blender I used is a squatter thing than these pictured on this thread. More like a food processor. Hopeless? Yours floundering in ignorance, I

Try this lot: http://www.markblackburn.org/Papers/WhyBeRaw.htm http://www.cat007.com/insulin.htm http://www.rawfoodsupport.com/read.php?f=1&i=25161&t=25161 http://www.rawfoodsupport.com/read.php?f=1&i=34086&t=34082 http://www.davidwolfe.com/ http://www.freshupnorth.com/blood.html http://www.mercola.com/article/sugar/sugar_cancer.htm http://www.rawfoodsupport.com/read.php?f=1&i=55884&t=55884 http://www.towardsfreedom.com/articles/CookedFoodEffec.html http://www.rawfoodsupport.com/read.php?f=1&i=33543&t=33543 http://www.rawfoodsupport.com/read.php?f=1&i=25934&t=25836 http://www.rawfoodsupport.com/read.php?f=1&i=33544&t=33544 http://www.quickfasting.com/index.html http://www.rawfamily.com/home.htm http://www.rawfoodsupport.com/read.php?f=1&i=26249&t=26078 http://www.rawfoodsupport.com/read.php?f=1&i=22418&t=21756 http://www.rawfoodsupport.com/read.php?f=1&i=22418&t=21756 http://www.rawfoodsupport.com/read.php?f=1&i=23364&t=23361 http://www.vegsource.com/ http://www.rawfoodsupport.com/read.php?f=1&i=55884&t=55884 http://www.therawworld.com/ http://www.wildmanstevebrill.com/ This is a list that Ed (use to post as "nobody" on HT) gave me a couple of years back. Some links may have died by now. Hope helps, I

I second that. A really good book. I

Definitely different. (I'm told) Dan tiens are about storage and are suitable for this by virtue of being a place where many nerves meet. Chakras are much more about receiving and transmitting, facilitating energetic interaction with the environment. In fact, I was told recently that when the sacral and solar plexus chakras are completely cleared (not just open but cleared), then you start to get direct perception, the chakras are no longer needed to communicate in and out, and they turn upwards. I'd never heard that before.

Did anyone save that S Biel post from years back about what to eat to replenish jing (i.e his emergency procedure in case of ejaculation)? I thought I had, but I can't find it. Cheers, I

Others have more than they need, but I alone have nothing. I am a fool. Oh, yes ! I am confused. Other men are clear and bright, But I alone am dull and stupid. Oh, I drift like the waves of the sea, Without direction, like the restless wind. Everyone else is busy, But I alone am aimless and depressed. I am different. I am nourished by the great mother.

The warm feeling refers to the opening of the ming men area, and if I recall, to subsequent movement in the spine. I haven't experienced it, so can't help you much. Around the sternum what I felt was in the area behind and only just beneath the sternum, i.e. half obscured by it if you look from front on. Like a very high solar plexus. It may be particular to me that I happen to have a lot of gunk there. But what was remarkable is that never before, in class after class, has my attention been directed so far beneath the surface of the body in that area. Hope helps, I

At the end of the first day of the workshop I went to last weekend, the teacher did a demonstration where he walks towards a volunteer with dowsing rods to show the distance at which various chakras register. He then explains that if you go to a party that night, all open from the day, and drunk people stand in this radius, you'll basically get their hangover. (any the same with any negative stuff.) And he then gets the person to act as if they are trying not to be noticed and approaches them again, and their field has shrunk to about a quarter. It's a really effective demo. Anyway, I suspect that you can only be completely vulnerable all the time if you are so clear that no part of you will resonate negatively with external stuff. In the meantime the question for me is how to stay conscious of how open I am or ain't. And I'm finding the only guide I can use is in the physical. Literally how open I am, starting with gross posture and working in. I find a really useful practice is to say affirmations or mantra or whatever (something nice, anyway) and say it subvocally, so that it only just escapes my lips but can resonate in my body, spreading out from the heart (or belly, less easy). Then it becomes very apparent where the vibration of the words won't go. Dum de dum.. Better do some work. Good thread. I

I had an mp3 of Genpo Roshi somewhere which sounded pretty similar. Called "different selves" or something. Maybe it was the beta version.

I guess the drawling, casual tone of voice I tried to type with didn't quite make it through. Anyway, no, it's not too urgent. I guess I've got a couple more days before my bones start to crumble.

Just got a mail-out from Mr Winn pushing this spherical chair. I won't paste the entire spiel, as it is lengthy in the extreme, but if you put "Sit-A-Round Ball Chair" into google you'll find the same thing. He's doing it for $129 plus shipping. Which would be not bad if it's as good as he says. But his marketing is frequently, er, enthusiastic, so I wondered if there was any personal testimony going. Jeremiah?

You're probably borderline between 65 and 75cm. 85 definitely too big for sitting. May depend how much of you is legs. If in doubt maybe try the smaller first because it'll likely be half the price. I was sure I needed a huge one until Pietro showed me the tension in sitting that much higher .

I think that a couple of brilliant realisations and will make a huge difference to your life. Nice one. Infinite love does manifest in some seriously twisted forms, doesn't it?

Very well put. Yes to both, I reckon. I certainly notice that I struggle, in body-centred meditation, to get anything like the depth which it sounds like others achieve in formless practices. And I am prepared that it's a long slow path. The progression, as I understand it, is that you can first feel the physical body, then the sensation within it, then a unification of that sensation such that you wouldn't have any awareness of indivdual body areas, (this may become a sorta visual thing) then the stillness between the sensation and then you're more or less home. (Give or take a few tens of thousands of hours of letting all the knots of karma disperse without reacting to them.) I've read quite a few stories of people who develop extraordinary mental powers and then have to try to apply them to the body afterwards. And I get the impression, though I'm way out of my depth here, that it is quite challenging, in that it involves in at least one sense a bit of a reversal of their previous practice. I know at least one "achieved" buddhist who is now studying alchemy. Nice problem to have, tho. What keeps me on the slower and, to me, harder path, is Sifu's insistence that the body, quite literally, IS your karma. What you don't deal with in the body you will face in life. I think where you need to get to, for it to really start working, is the same state for all. Which simply requires any practice where you will do it long enough to give up trying and let it happen., however long or not long that be. Does that make sense?

Yep yep yep. Best model I've heard is that psychedelics enhance your mental/spiritual capacity/velocity, but at the expense of bodily energy. Then you have to do all the drudgery of bringing your body up to the vibration of your mind, which you're then even less inclined to do because you know just how easy it would be to have another wild and visionary state instead. Having said that, I think there are degrees. I reckon plant stuff has more genuine teaching in it, (but often its own agenda). I know at least one high level buddhist who tell his students not do do psychedelics, but has a certain respect for ayahuasca as being more genuinely transformative that the other options. Even there, though, I've heard that shamanic training of the better sort shows you the way by doing it lots when you're young and still have kidneys, and encourages you to give it a rest and sort it out for yourself as you get older. Apparently you can meet lots of gnarly old men in the jungle who do amazing stuff when on ayahuasca but revert to being unpleasant old bastards straight after. Having said all the above, in this day and age, brought up as a westerner with an intelligent suspicion of christianity as done at school, how else are most of us going to get an awareness of other dimensions? About half this board started out as space cadets, I'll bet. Not me, of course, mother. P.S. Try a few hours alone in a house in Manchester, convinced that you were, until just moments ago, the only being on the planet who didn't know that you had to choose between being predator or prey, and that now you've worked it out and refused mentally to join them, the predators are coming to get you!

If you folks enjoy a good stretch, then I would include Dirk Oellibrandt's Meridian Chi Kung in your considerations. It addresses physical and energetic (and more, probably) together. There are beginner and advanced moves for each organ pair. Opening, then power, then integration. And they're well stretchy. Some of them you just gottta do it as your range allows because if you try to copy him you'll laugh and fall over. But you guys sound like you're way strectchier than me already, so it might be a challenge. And the DVD is much better than the video was. Advert over. Please return to your Easter and act natural.

Here's mine: Enlightenment is realising that the real part/aspect of you is immortal. Immortality is creating a vehicle so pure so that that realisation can be embodied as continuously as you want. My impression is that both have stages/levels. Hubba hubba, I

The whole issue of manifesting is Darkened Horribly by the introduction of Noel Edmonds. For those not British, Mr Edmonds has plagued our popular culture for twenty five years or so, presenting numerous television programmes of ever-decreasing quality. His career had plummeted out of existence, after a series of freak accidents and something terrible called Crinkly Bottom. Now, he's back, and gives all the credit to a book called The Cosmic Ordering Service, written by a German Lady, the principles of which seem very like Abraham's. Archbishops are critical, and so am I, but for very different reasons. Never mind Karma, and responsibility. The facts are clear. Anything which returns Noel Edmonds to us is Satan's work. Brits, support me.

My boss just told me that there are people in New Guinea, south west coast of, possibly, who do this as a standard cultural practice. They never sleep for more than 2 hours. Perhaps just to avoid being eaten? Or am I stereotyping?

Two suggestions: One, as people have said, do something straight after. I'd suggest a bit of flushy-downy movements. Two, end the meditation at a stage where it's "easy". I don't know how it applies to emptiness meditation, as what I do is very body focussed, but the idea is to stop when you feel good, not when everything is painful and lumpy. Alternatively, use the irritation as another chance to practice. At least it suggests that your meditation is doing something. Happy crucifiction time everyone. I

Also, if you're in UK, go see Dirk in Belgium when he's doing medical chi gung. Usually does two organs per week. Links from Barry's site, which I believe is itself linked from the links bit of here. Link link. link.