liminal_luke

This makes sense to me. I don't smoke, but I wonder if living in Mexico city--not know for the cleanest air--also contributes to a down mood?

Hi Old Green, If you're willing to go into it, I'd be very interested to hear more about how you've benefitted from Sun Salutations. I haven't done them much, but am always playing around with my practice and considering trying new things. Thanks! Liminal

Thanks Taomeow! Yep, certainly makes sense that there are times to be more withdrawn, and other times when a more outward push is called for. Yin and yang I guess.

Sins of ommision, eh? Yikes! Here I've been skating along, smugly comfortable with avoiding at least the big, glaring abuses of power. Now that you mention it though, my powers, supernatural and otherwise, are chronically underutilized. If I don't use my powers I figure I won't be noticed, and I'm more comfortable disappearing. It's a false comfort though, perhaps akin to an anorexics false refuge in an ever-decreasing bodyweight--the numb semi-suicide of taking up less space in the world. Time to wake up. PS. I have the perhaps not exactly supernatural but nevertheless quite unusual power of being fearlessly self-disclosing in a public forum.

Ah ok, learn something new everyday. I thought it just referred to a furry guy or a furloving guy and was going to tell you that maybe you aren't as unique a taobum as you think....but, uh, I stand corrected.

I am, but then I suspect I'm the "1 other," and you already knew that. Is a furfag a furry guy or a furry guy admirer?

My Very Special Powers I can feel comfortable traveling alone in most parts of Mexico. I can walk 10,000 steps with my pedometer with only a few stops for caffeine re-fueling. I can go to numerous workshops and retreats and not practice anything I learned there at home and still feel good about the experience. I can listen to people and usually get a pretty good feel for what they are feeling. I can stay at hotels that don't have cable, hot showers, or even toilet seats. I can eat at fancy restaurants all by myself. I can encourage people to do the thing that makes them happy-- even if it's not the same thing that makes me happy. I can be ok with getting older. I can fail at something over and over again, and still believe that I'll eventually get it and keep trying.

Hi Lindelani, I can imagine how the voices would be annoying or upsetting, especially since they are, as you say, in contrast to your own morals and values. Please be gentle with yourself. We all have thoughts and impulses to do and say things that, in real life, we'd never actually do or say. Some of us have voices that say things that are contrary to things we'd do or say in real life too. The important thing to remember is that whatever the voices say is no reflection on who you are as a person. It might seem like the voices are the devil, but that does not, in any way, make YOU a bad person. Having voices in your head is a symptom, like any other, that something is going on for you. Think of it like any symptom such as a cough. If you had a really bad cough that didn't go away you'd go to the doctor and see if your lungs were ok. Having a cough doesn't make you a bad person. It makes you a human being with a body that isn't perfect, just the same as all the other human beings on the planet who also have imperfect bodies. I think your plan to talk to the doctor at school is a great one. Hope you find out everything is fine and that the voices get better very soon. Take care, Liminal

Hi Lindelani, I think it would be worth seeking out a professional medical opinion on this. You could either go to a general practitioner to begin with or, if possible, a psychiatrist. A doctor will ask other questions to get an idea of what's going on with you, and possibly order tests to make sure nothing is going amiss organically with your brain. Of course, you're not obligated to do what any given doctor says. Think of them more as expert advisors, and educate yourself. A medical professional would be able to get more of a sense of what's going on for you and, hopefully, rule out anything serious. Are you living with family? If you're comfortable talking to them about it, perhaps they could help you arrange going to a doctor. Another possibility if you're going to school is to check it out with the medical person there. Most schools have a nurse you could talk to, and that would get you started. Getting information, and possibly treatment, from medical professionals is an important part of taking care of yourself--something we all need to do. Good luck! Liminal

Sure, I believe it's possible to mess oneself up with fanatic practice. Generally though, we have the opposite problem. We pick a great practice (such as vipassana) and when unpleasant feelings and sensations come up--ie, signs that things are starting to really work--we bail. Of course, the trick is knowing the difference. And the best way to do that is to ask an experienced teacher whose traveled the way your going before. Exactly what you did.

Figuring out the absolute ideal for a given person at a given moment in time is hard. It might require lots of reading and research, a bit of experimentation to figure out what works on an individual level, and a finely honed ability to listen to your body. Eating better than 99% percent of the people around you is easy. Cut out sugars, limit grains (especially wheat), and don't eat anything that comes in a box.

A question for Taomeow and other taoist alchemists: Taomeow: I've read in several places your take on taoist alchemy--that it is a process of turning shen to chi, and chi to jing and not the other way around. That makes sense to me so my natural next question is how. What schools follow this progression and how can a person tell if a given practice is going in this direction? I've mostly followed two different paths, healing tao (a la Michael Winn) and Kunlun/Yi gong, and while I feel great benefit in both approaches I'm not sure whether or not either of them does what you are talking about. The healing tao approach is explicitly alchemical, there are different levels of kan and li etc. Thing is I suspect they are going from jing to shen rather than the other way around. As one progresses from one level of kan and li to the next the process takes place at progressively higher levels within the body. So you start in the lower dan tien, move to the solar plexus, heart, upper dan tien etc. Also, is it your view that kunlun ignites an alchemical process that goes from shen to jing? It seems profoundly opening and centering to me but I'm not sure if it's meant to be alchemical. Thanks in advance for anybody whose practiced these or similar methods and wants to shine light on these issues!

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I don't have a definitive answer to this question but I'd like to put forward my understanding for now, and perhaps others will chime in with a more authoritive answer later. Qigong: Exercises and systems, usually moving, to strengthen the chi. Thus you could do a set of moving exercises to strengthen the kidney chi, for instance. Working with post-heaven energies. Neigung: More meditative techniques to alchemically change the elements. Kan and Li...manipulating (cooking) the yin and yang energies in the body (and cosmos) to refine them into something else, something deeper.

Thanks JB, that makes more sense to me now.

JB, For me reading your posts is like looking at an abstract painting at a museum---you intuitively sense that it's brilliant, but what does it mean? Maybe I'm just not at a point experientially yet where this stuff quite makes sense. Are you saying that by doing something like focusing awareness on the ltd (how I take it a person might fill the generative force and restore vitality) the stage is set for shen to jing alchemy?

I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that the bushman don't have homosexuality in the sense that we imagine it today. That is, there aren't enduring same sex romantic relationships that parallel heterosexual relationships. I think this is true in many cultures actually, but it doesn't mean guys don't have sex with each other. They do, it's just that they don't bother to think of themselves as gay because of it. I'm living in Mexico now and in many places here that's exactly the way it is. There are guys who consider themselves gay and are very effeminate (obvio) and sometimes dress as woman, and the guys who seek them out for sex (always as the "top") and don't consider themselves gay in the slightest. (Of course there's also a lot of gay culture in Mexico that's similar to the US too--just depends where you are.) I remember hanging out in a gay bar in Oaxaca years ago, or at least I considered it a gay bar-- there wasn't a woman in sight and the guys were clearly interested in each other. Turns out my opinion wasn't universally shared. This guy turned to me and asked if I was gay. I said I was and asked him about himself. He said he wasn't gay but liked to have sex with gays. Go figure.

I've been reading this book "The Happiness Trap" about a psychotherapeutic modality called ACT (acceptance and commitment therapy). There's some pretty interesting stuff about how to approach thoughts that I think might be useful in terms of sexual thoughts too. Basically the idea is not be at war with our thoughts and try to push them away but also not to "fuse" with them, not to identify too strongly with our thoughts. It's kinda like vipassana for therapists. Here's some of the techniques and how I might use them if the thought came up that I wanted to indulge myself sexually. (1) Say "I notice that I'm having the thought....." So when the sexual urge came up I'm say to myself "I notice that I'm having that sexual urge thought." (2) To realize that it's a story, and notice that your telling yourself that story again. Say to yourself...."Oh, here's that I've got to have sex right now story." (3) Put the thought to mucic in your mind. Sing "I've got to have sex right now" to the tune of Jingle Bells. (4) Say the thought to yourself using a funny voice. Say "I've got to have sex" in a Darth Vader voice or like Bugs Bunny, etc. I've only been experimenting with these techniques for the last hour or so but I've got to say they do seem to work to "defuse"--to get some distance between myself and my thoughts.

I hear ya K. At least I think I do. A related thought: if we use our ability to identify with our non-dual selves to blunt the pain of dualistic injustice--and thus not bother working to make the world a just place-- well, is that an ideal solution? Just because I might be able to align with a part of myself that is beyond sexual orientation, beyond gender....does that mean that I should remain silent in the face of homophobia, sexism? Or maybe that's not how it works practically speaking. Perhaps people who are in touch with that level of their being are just as inclined, or even more so, to make the world a better place-- even in a more narrow, everyday dualistic sense.

Thanks for responding SereneBlue. I kinda thought that was the policy and it's fine with me.

In the first page of the insult policy thread Sean writes "but no insulting (or links to attacks) of individuals, nationalities, gender, political preferences, lifestyle choices, etc. To me this would seem to indicate that sexist, racist, and homophobic comments are already prohibited. Some confusion about the rules is understandable though, since to my way of thinking, a lot of insulting comments have slipped through the cracks uncommented on. The moderators have remained strangely silent so far. How about it mods...is the supreme court prepared to rule on this issue?

If you like, please substitute the words hateful/loving in place of stupid/smart. That's actually closer to what I really mean anyways. I'm willing to grant that there are plenty of smart homophobes out there but there are no loving ones.

A few things... I'd like to thank everybody whose supported me on this forum. Everybody whose "liked" my posts, and spoken out against what I see as pseudo-intellectual support of homophobia. I'd especially like to thank you Seth for your fierce advocacy. Mostly, thetaobums is filled with wonderful spiritually evolved people who want to help each other in a spirit of friendship. You all help me remember that when the posting gets tough. I do think racist, sexist, and homophobic comments hurt people. Certainly, I've felt attacked and said so. Maybe it's not so bad though. It brings up stuff that's good for me to look at. The reason homophobic comments hurt so much is that I haven't completely worked through my own issues with this. I like to think I'm pretty far along, but clearly there's still work to do. Ultimately, it doesn't much matter whether white wolf or anybody else likes me; it only matters whether I like myself. And that's something for me to deal with. In the end, I don't think it's possible to moderate out sexist, racist, and homophobic sentiments so I personally think we're going to have to let them stand. The thing is that it's usually all mixed up with what appears to be sincere inquiry and there's just no way to sift out the hate. Take the bushman issue for instance. Whether or not there's homosexuality among the bushman, I really can't say. It feels homophobic to me when pythagorean says there isn't though. I strongly suspect that all that bushman business boils down to a clever anthropological cover for prejudice plain and simple. There's no way to prove that though, and whatcha gonna do--outlaw discussion of bushman sexuality? Here's the question I think we as a community have to ask: are people allowed to say stupid things? I think they are. Taobums isn't perfect, and as an open forum it can't be perfect by it's very nature, but it's pretty darn good. Stupid comments are a small price to pay for having an open forum like this one. As long as smart people continue to speak up and challenge small-mindedness I think it's worthwhile to stick around. Liminal

Good advice Aaron. Letting it go now. Thanks

edited to let go of sarcasm Pythagorean, Didn't mean to say you were attacking me. Only that I felt bad. Not the same thing. I'll get over it. If you have information to share well that's a good thing and I've enjoyed your posts in the past. I just hope we can all approach each other in a spirit of friendliness even when we disagree. Liminal