Trunk

We, as a rule, don't delete posts. I was just about to post a late response to your question, glad you found the answer. Welcome aboard! - Trunk

Yeah, this was an exception that I didn't announce. "Banned" really is not a good word for it, but yes... it was a mutual decision: he is focusing elsewhere (dedicatedly, on his life) and requested that his account be deleted (which we don't do) and there were some intermittent issues with him that weren't working out on the board. Sorry, I won't go into further detail. I sincerely wish him well. I see in him a good heart, a poetic soul, and someone who is moving forward through challenges. Best wishes and Love to him and those in his life, Trunk p.s. Only well wishes allowed on this topic. No comments allowed that could be taken as dispersions of Songtsan's character.

the secret to power is not in using power, it is in subduing power. centering, vertical integration. gradually healthier, happier.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_LJVfKN2iI

~~~ topic moderation ~~~ Be respectful, considerate when commenting on someone's posted art. ("Everything" is suspended from the board for 2 weeks.) - Trunk ~~~ /mod out ~~~

Good work! My fav from your fb photos Would you describe your internal process in making a painting? ... I think that people often have difficulty clearly connecting their internal art with their external art.

A couple of relevant links below. (The million $ point is acknowledged by *every*one as being a *really* bad thing to do, but books still get sold promoting its' use.) 1. Healing Tao cautions. (TTBs thread accessible to members only) 2. Essential reading external link: (available to anyone on the www) Essays/posts by 5 different Healing Tao instructors cautioning about the "Healing Love" and "Iron Shirt 1: Packing Breathing" practices within that system. I suggest that you find a local dr of Chinese medicine and get regular acupuncture to clear up this situation. (Herbs might help secondarily, but acupuncture is much more on target for your situation.) You're out of your depth, and out of the depth of advice from amateurs over the internet, to solve. The sooner the better. As far as things you can do on your own to assist: cardiovascular exercise (running, swimming, biking) and stretching with gentle breathing (hatha yoga) will assist ... but most probably will not be enough to solve this alone. - Trunk

~~~ admin statement ~~~ Members can post most often faster than the moderation team can get together and decide what to do about a situation. That's why we've invented the "immediate suspension until we figure out to do with this mess", which is what I'm doing now. I've temporarily suspended Simple_Jack while the moderation team sorts out this situation. - Trunk p.s. This is not a presumption of guilt, but a practical act to staunch the chaos while mods discuss. ~~~ /admin out ~~~

One thing I learned long ago on the internet forums: No one person can cover all the legit angles in a conversation; it's just not possible. If you get half a dozen (well spoken intelligent) people, each giving *completely* different angles of a topic ... well, it's really valuable. I'm just one guy.

Yes. .. and very difficult to find *any*one, *any*where, to help you with repair... and *if* you can find someone, the repair process is long. Sifu Matsuo's teachings, methods, system is the best, by far, that I've found that would help you avoid the wreck in the first place, and help you repair if you're in need of repair. (I'm not saying there aren't other resources, and that various systems/teachers don't have important parts to offer... obviously I can't have studied with everyone, I'm just one person... I'm speaking from my own experience.)

Sifu Matsuo uses a dance analogy in the KYMQ dvd, which I think is apt, and I'll give my own version of it... It's fun to improv dance. We all do it (I do it, and love it, and am often surprised at what comes through)... it's experimental and developmental, but it's not everything. Compare dance to: - just flailing around.. there's a big difference between even improv dance and just flailing around (and even just flailing has some place, but it doesn't have the structure of dance). - then compare amateur improv dance to someone who is professionally trained, say a ballerina (or any other variety). You're *not* going to become a professional ballerina just messing around. Now, here's the kicker: In the esoteric internal arts there is no limit to the depth of power that you can access, gradually over a life time. Deeper and deeper, more and more profound stronger energies over time, and at certain points major jumps in amperage. Once you start getting into higher levels, if you're just messing around, you can get really f###ed up. It's like a sail boat with weak unorganized mast, rigging, sails... it's fun to go out on the small local lake with that, no problem. ... but at some point, if you keep this up over your life (and if you seek out teachers), you're going to get gail force winds that you'll be expected to receive, use, integrate skillfully... if all you have is that little improv boat, you'll end up a wreck. Learning structure from an authentic system is important.

re: KYMQ, parts... Here's a quote (that I still stand by) from the DGS link in my signature line: Here's a KYMQ thread here at TTBs. It's a practice that, if you just give it time to develop, can go a lot of places ... I eventually went to various places with it that weren't in the dvd (some noted in that thread). I find that *any* practice around hand energetics, that I've since tried from other systems, I've been much better oriented due to KYMQ. Yup. As I say in my dgs signature link, I'd start with both: 1. KYMQ 2. Heart of Bagua (aka, "Bagua Circle Walking: Single and Double Palm Change") I'd also add the Kuji-in mudras and you can get started with those for free on wikipedia. They complement this work beautifully, ime. Sifu Matsuo has videos on Kuji, and some people love them, but I found that the wiki article is enough to get started and all you really need for that is the hand positions (I don't do the mantras, just the hand positions). With those 3 things, you'd have plenty to work on for several years (or forever, depending on what your hunger level is). It's been between 2-3 years and there's still a lot that I've to learn from the bagua dvd. When you find practices that tap into primary principles, they go endlessly deep. With KYMQ, I feel I'm comfortable with the pieces and I can continue deepening. With Heart of Bagua, there are still pieces that I've not even learned to comfort yet. I latched on to just several pieces of that dvd and made them my main practice for a long time.. lots to develop. I know that this stuff wasn't available way back when, but... If I'd bought those in the 80's when I got into this stuff, it would've saved me many thousands of dollars in searching, tremendous amounts of energy put into debugging less effective approaches, injuries and recovering from injuries from poor practice ... the list goes on. I can say from involvement with *very* high meditation schools that the above approaches will help develop you physical and energetic bodies so that you can better withstand - and integrate in a healthy fashion - high end transmission. A lot of schools are giving out very high end transmissions these days and it's difficult to find a system of practices that allows your body to really deal with that... Sifu Matsuo's approaches are *very* helpful that way, imo... though I haven't heard him talk about it that way, it's my experience. His practices build the right things, slowly, structurally, in many different ways. Sorry to be verbose. /rant off - Trunk

I've been able to share about teachers whose teachings I've found helpful, and have learned about ... countless teachers who I've learned various pieces of the path from. Books, ideas, diet, miscellaneous beyond recounting lol lol, a group processing that no one person alone could've ever done (I certainly couldn't've).

Of course I really like that also, and can echo many of the comments already given. Some introductory lobby posts have impressed me enduringly... There was a man that joined some years back, he lived in middle america and had a basement bookshelf full of esoterica which no one in the surrounding community knew about, only his wife. ... there's occasionally an introduction by someone in their late teens / early 20's who picked up a copy of the tao de jing for the first time, or who started having mystical experiences.

*That* explains it, lol! When I was around that age I loved to hit people, loved to get hit. (With pads or - earlier than that - under the water in water polo; never hurt anyone really.) Yup. (Far seeing for you to be able to say that.) ime, any time you leave a martial or spiritual... well, almost *any* group, someone will take a dig at you, usually someone significant in the group, maybe the teacher, maybe the PR person, maybe to you as you're leaving, maybe after you're gone to others... it's kind of a knee-jerk rxn to protect the reputation of the group or something primitive psychology about staying-in-the-pack. I've found that the less I say about why I'm leaving, the better, "my life, my own reasons, thank you for the time here, really learned a lot and appreciate it a great deal", gives them fewer targets and is actually respected more. best, Trunk

~~~ me again ~~~ Thread unlocked. Please everyone, take 3 deep breaths, walk a circle 3 times singing your favorite mantra of peace & love ... and either talk, or don't, but - above all - be cool. ~~~ /out ~~~

~~~ ADMIN ACTION ~~~ I'm stepping in on this one. 1. Banned RongzomFan. RongzomFan has had several 6 month suspensions in the past, plus various warnings (public and private) and shorter suspensions. His posts frequently contain out-right insults and consistently are intolerant of the variety of views which are inherent to the structure & intent of TTBs: civil conversation inclusive of diverse views. RongzomFan, you're just not suited for this forum. 2. Gonna look over the rest of this later in the morning; it's 1am and I just happen to be up to do other things. - Trunk ~~~ /ADMIN OUT ~~~

The purpose of this thread is to community brainstorm ideas for connecting with training partners (1 or more people together for the purpose of training). While my primary intended emphasis is to provide ideas for people to connect with local training partners, it could also be a little bit of connecting across the internet. I'd like to brainstorm ways for people to easily connect with local community around them, often with no connection w/ TTBs at all... though I suppose we could also explore using TTBs as somewhat of a springboard... What I'm *not* really interested in at this point are ideas to change/expand the existing structure of TTBs to facilitate this. I've got enough on my plate right now, and my preference is to first fully explore various ways that people have gone about this, do go about this, without changing what we have here at TTBs (though I admit there are some appealing ideas along this line, it's inevitable that we fully explore that too, and I'm not going to 'report'/hide/squash/be hostile towards posts that explore this, I'm just not going to put any personal nor managerial energies into it at this point. It's not first. ) (Gonna tack on some posts from another thread.) How have you connected with training partners in your local area? What format/s work for you? What problems around this have you found? - Trunk

Another fraction of an idea: 1. Buy a dvd (edit: or book) and let other TTBs know about it. 2. Co-practice privately in an e-mail thread - as that allows more detailed discussion of method that might violate copyright law if shared openly on the forum, or maybe you just want to share step-by-step with certain people you met here on TTBs. Of course, the above kind of spin-offs already happen... maybe room to expand on it though.

Link to that map? I know we had one around here... don't know where it is.

~~~ ADMIN STATEMENT ~~~ Some quotes from TTBs 3 Foundations document: ... and so on. Anyone who is not clear about this, please re-read the entire document. regards, Trunk ~~~ /ADMIN OUT ~~~

Yup. I had a friend over a while back and we're learning from the same video. I'd missed a stepping technique that he totally got and loved. We reviewed the video and now I'm diggin' it too! (If you have the luxury of having an iPad amongst you, it's the bomb for practicing in the back yard - or anywhere outside.) I like that it allowed the flat hierarchy of TTBs to be replicated in my back yard: neither of us are really teachers, but we still learned a lot from each other as well as had guidance (through video, at least). Way cool. I think that co-reading w/ a friend any classic is also a good idea. Reading the classics (of any tradition) helps you to develop deeper roots so that when you are learning a modern system you have a much better context of what the modern system is presenting. Important. I think it'd be a good idea for the community to brain-storm ideas like this, nifty little do-able ideas for developing local culture outside of TTBs' digital sphere. I think of TTBs not as a final destination, but more like a train station. Yeah, meet people, chat, connect with resources, learn, all that stuff ... but also, find a teacher/school, root that in personal local practice, develop that further by training with local friends. It takes more creativity and initiative, but contrast that arc with just focusing on TTBs forever without that local growth: not healthy. Not healthy for individual members, not healthy for TTBs, not healthy for long term growth of local cultures, not healthy for participating in life. - Trunk

I think that, in the west, there is a huge cultural deficit for Taoist (and eastern-eclectic) activities and support. Since westerners don't have a lot of resources around them (local teachers to study with, local friends & training partners to hang out, practice, and talk with), they come here. It's just because eastern-eclectic (except for maybe yoga studios) is in it's cultural infant stages in the west. I think that, also for the above reasons, there is a lot of mis-placed energy and attention here at TTBs. Energy and time that would be better spent locally with like-minded training partners, in-person, gets spent in digital-land cyberspace. I think that it's critical that TTB members reach out and make local connections in their lives in various ways, to help foster grass roots local culture where you are. This could be done lots of ways, on your own or in concert with a school/teacher (local or distant) that resonates with you. Otherwise, a bunch of time, energy, attention continues to get displaced into cyberspace. Look towards long term local cultural development, long term personal health, along these lines. Be creative, your culture needs you. TTBs serves legitimate purpose/s but, imo, it's over used for lack of local development. - Trunk p.s. I think that most of us feel we're not ready to teach, and we don't need to. Gather around a teacher's dvd for teaching. Host a little training party, serve tea, learn from videos with friends.

I think it's a generally confused topic, people mostly receive counter-productive instruction re: the mco (and so achieve nothing or actually hurt themselves over time).