Sloppy Zhang

Because it's not good to throw pearls before swine...... No, seriously. I used to think information should be free and people and teachers should just be out there. Then I read up on some politics, learned how funds get diverted into certain "dead end" projects but the people behind those projects are influential, stuff like that. I was like, the word needs to get out. So I go and start talking to some friends about it. Most of them blew up in my face. They got all angry, oh how dare you say that about our political system, it's the greatest in the world, at least it's not a dictatorship, blah blah blah blah blah. A few people got interested and kept researching, but for the most part the response was overwhelmingly negative..... Now imagine you came up to someone and just started telling them that reality isn't what they think it is, that their spiritual beliefs aren't really what they think they are. If they didn't ignore you because they thought you were nuts right off the bat, then you've just succeeded in seriously pulling the rug out from under them. They usually react in denial, and sometimes in anger. A lot of times it turns to ridicule, and they really will drag whatever you say through the mud. So for politics, spirituality, etc etc, I really do screen my friends before I talk to them about it. Some people I know will not handle it well. Some people have more open minds, are willing to critically examine something with all of the facts before they make a decision, and in those instances I'll open up to them a bit. But other than that.... you know...... Experience has made me a more secretive person If you really want to know, take something you really care about and something you know a lot about, but is obscure and generally not well known or accepted as fact (even if it really IS fact), go out and start telling people about it, and see how people respond.

I don't think this is a "soul" thing, I think it's a "maturity" thing. Most 20 year old guys, or early 20 year old guys are NOT thinking seriously long term. They're in college, or fresh out of college, wanting to take on the world, take risks, do crazy stuff, live their lives. They may have done some crazy stuff in college, and want to continue their craziness in their professional careers, getting multi millions of dollars by the time they are 30........ Sufficed to say, not all of them are concerned with cultivating the things that women find attractive in a long term partner, namely- house, class, etc etc. I think that this: I'd bet it's because "If I could find this in a 20 year old, I'd grab it in a heartbeat" Is something to consider. Just make sure you are attracted to him, and not just attracted to all the things he's got, if that makes any sense....

I'm still working on getting it perfect (I'm rather inflexible), but from the short amount of time I've spent in it, it is one of the best ways to get into a good posture. My body is erect, spine is straight, but I can get relaxed and comfortable without having to slouch. I feel really balanced, almost in perfect harmony, just by sitting in it. I haven't held it long enough or done enough meditation in it to comment on it energetically though. But from a physical perspective, it is quite unique

Who are these masters? Who are these kings? Granted, Randi has his own issues, but for the most part...... I agree with That Guy. People who claim to have psychic abilities need to show they have psychic abilities. If I say I can shoot a three pointer in basketball, but when someone asks me to prove it I say something like, "well I don't want to show off." Or, "most people can't do it so you probably wouldn't understand if I showed it to you." Most people that would hear me say that would think I'm nuts and just bullshitting everyone. And if I started up a basketball camp I bet NO ONE would pay for it..... Then these meditation guys say stuff like, "meditation can improve your sense of well being, your health, and may even lead to psychic phenomena....." It's like, whoa, what? Okay, the first two that's all well and good.... but the last one needs proof. And people who clam up as soon as you ask for said proof are shifty in my book. They are quick to use the word "psychic" to stir up interest in their system, but then they flip about and talk about how it isn't for showing off.... If you didn't want to show off you wouldn't have mentioned it in the first place!

Start making youtube videos, dress up, wear a funny hat, start speaking in a funny accent, or just sound like you are spaced out, hold your hands together in a prayer position while sitting in full lotus, then make some t-shirts. Pretty soon you'll have followers in no time. I'm half joking and half serious.

To find the meaning in life. To become incredibly rich, immortal, and have hot steamy sex all day with various beautiful women But that doesn't mean that there IS a meaning in life. And it doesn't mean that my meaning will be the same as another person's. There may be one overarching meaning (what I personally think), but then again, there might not be, I might be fooling myself, and I freely admit it. Which is, again, why threads like this irk me...... "What's the point of health if your life is cluttered"? Obviously there is meaning to the person seeking health, and unless they complain about their life being cluttered, then they don't think it is and they can do without your judgments.

What's the point in having a life full of order if you don't know what the point is...? There is a dangerous assumption here: that things inherently have a point. Sometimes I'm not sure if it really does. People do things because they "find" meaning in them.... but maybe they "create" that meaning. On top of that, there is this entire hierarchy of things..... order > sex, meaning in life > health. Since when? According to who? Who says if your life is in order? People look at my desk and see a cluttered mess, but for me it's in perfect order. All the pens I want are off to the right, my phone is to the left, papers I've been using recently are on top, papers I have yet to file away are under those, and reference books that I need are behind my computer. It all makes sense to me, then I have people coming to my desk and saying stuff like, "cleanliness is next to Godliness" then look off to my desk..... You know what I have to say to that? Fuck off! Seriously. Same with paranormal/psychic powers and stuff. People are like, "oh well those don't get you anywhere." Well what if your sole purpose is to get those abilities? Things are what they are. No more, no less. Everyone is so obsessed with attaching extra things to something. Someone has health. What's the point? HEALTH IS HEALTH. PERIOD. Hot steamy sex? IT'S JUST SEX. PERIOD. Psychic powers? JUST WHAT THEY ARE. All of these questions are based on a few assumptions that not everyone shares. Not everything needs to have some obvious point to it (though some can make the case that everything has a point even when you don't see it )

Today I was eating a bowl of Raisin Bran, I got halfway through and realize I hadn't eaten a single raisin at all, and I wondered why my Raisin Bran had no raisins..... suddenly, every spoonful after that had 4-5 raisins. I didn't start scraping the bottom with my spoon, I didn't start stirring it up, it's just that all these raisins showed up when I thought about how I didn't have any....... But when you think about it, all the raisins already had to have been in the bowl from before I even thought about it....... and what if I had never even thought about the raisins.......

Breaking news: knowledge is power, people who have power want to keep their power and will do whatever it takes to keep their power in as few hands as possible.

I have had similar experiences. Most of them involuntary, and I can only rarely, if ever, do it "on cue" when I want. And, you know, that's the trick. Sure, some people can swish a three point shot in basketball.... the trick is to do it "on cue", to do it in front of your girlfriend, to "prove it", to say that it can be done. Otherwise we're just kids sitting here saying, "oh yeah? Well I did......"

I think the whole "belly" thing is just that- a "belly" and not "fat" in your belly region. I can't really think of many good examples, but if you look at a lot of old Chinese art depicting martial artists, monks, some immortals (perhaps?), and a few other characters, they are all drawn with a little gut. Well, not a "gut", but just a little bit of a "stomach". They are "skinny", but not "ripped", but very far from fat. That's kind of how I pictured it. Basically, an expanded diaphragm/abdominal region from long hours of deep breathing. Same thing with guys who lift heavy weights, they have a bit of a "belly" from repeated deep breathing (I think an earlier picture of Chuck Liddell shows what I am talking about).

Thank you

sounds like Wan Still, thanks for taking the time out of your day to post I didn't see any joke in Findley's post.... I think he was just saying "taoist chan" so that people reading wouldn't think, "oh, yeah, zazen", but something a little bit different. B.K. Frantzis in his books stresses the difference between the Zen techniques that were taken to Japan and the more Taoist influenced Chan. So no need to flip out over semantics

This old thread has some good information: http://www.thetaobums.com/index.php?showtopic=1566 Basically, the dan tien is not the same as the chakras, there are other parts of the energy body within different systems that more closely relate. In terms of feeling- keep trying, eventually you'll narrow it down and you'll feel it very specifically.

I suggest some kind of thought observance/contemplation meditation, or maybe just emptiness meditation, or maybe meditation while contemplating on a certain concept (like love>lust). Seems like the physical/energetic work is there, but the corresponding working involving your view of the world/how your mind works is not. As in, when you aren't "distracted" by your wife, work, your oneness with the world, when all of that stuff is taken from you, your base desires are still there. So you need to work on 1) taking stock of what you have 2) doing something about it.

Well, there are a few subtle differences in the way that magic approaches things to some more eastern traditions. Some traditions focus just on realizing the inherently empty nature of all phenomena, and are just like, "well, that's all you have to do. Realize that, and you are done." The magic oriented people I've talked to (the ones who know what they are doing) also agree. But, of course, until you reach the point of total realization of that, you are still bound by the rules. I think goldisheavy has said similar things in other threads. A rhino can be charging at you, and you can say "it's an empty phenomenon", but until you reach the point where you fully realize that, you are going to get killed by the charging rhino. The magic approach recognizes, yes, it's an empty phenomenon..... but, there are other forces out there, also inherently empty, which you can manipulate to make the empty rhino not charge at you. The final goal is, yes, realizing the truth behind everything, uniting with the Godhead, whatever you want to call your own form of enlightenment/realization, it's all more or less the same. Except that in western traditions they teach things relating to this "illusory world" and how to control this "illusory world". Yes, in the grand scheme of things, you are still working with things that are illusions, things that are empty. Yes, it's very easy to get caught up in the illusions and lose your path, get stuck on working with the mundane for lesser purposes. But, you know, when a rhino is charging at you....... Eventually in magic you develop out of working with the lesser stuff, you move beyond and up to higher levels. Some traditions just focus on the higher levels from the get-go. It really just depends on what (if anything) you want to experience along the way. You can take an airplane or you can drive. If all you care about is getting from A to B in the shortest amount of time, well take the plane. If you want to do other stuff in between A and B, well drive.

Hey ralis, sorry if I'm answering your question kind of late, but here's my opinion, influenced heavily by an article that prophecy wrote on vsociety: Basically, one should cultivate both. The thing Bardon stresses the most is even development, and to a certain extent developing the self fully before going out there and interacting with stuff. For example, some systems of magic rely heavily on evoking/invoking deities, performing rituals, and beseeching a higher power for help or asking for knowledge. And, you know, that is fine and dandy. But it can be highly useless if not downright dangerous for someone who doesn't have a high level of personal development. Some beings might not even respond to someone who they do not see as cultivated. Sometimes spirits can get angry at some nobody trying to boss them around. Other times a spirit you didn't call on will take the guise of the one you did call on and try to trick you. A cultivated person, who has worked with energies and has his own mind under control will have a discerning eye and will be able to tell if the spirits he/she is working with are in fact the ones that were evoked/invoked. Someone who has worked with, say, the water element will have a much easier time getting along with other water element entities because that person is more familiar with that element, and other entities will be more receptive to someone who has learned to match their "frequency". Not to mention that a cultivated person will (according to what many advanced practitioners of Bardon's system claim, I have yet to attain this level myself) gain astral senses, clairvoyance, clairaudience, etc etc and that allows you to communicate with spirits/entities/deities, again, for the purposes of learning/doing stuff. In some instances, these entities will even teach you how to increase your own faculties, and may even lend you some of their power. But of course no one is going to get to that level without putting in the required amount of work. Someone who can work well with the elements can, of course, shape things on their own without the aid of spirits/deities, but in some instances a spirit has better control over certain things, so it's just a matter of efficiency to ask for aid. And, again, sometimes an entity is willing to teach you how to do it yourself, as well as do it for you. But that depends on if they like you, agree with your purposes, if they feel you have reached a proper level on your own, etc etc. Again, though, that's not something I have attained, but it is something that a lot of advanced students say, I'd like to get to that point, and that's one of the reasons why I've started to devote more of my time to Bardon's practices. To the point about awareness and mindfulness: that is very helpful and definitely a huge part of the equation, but not the WHOLE part. You can observe all you want and know how things work, but the trick is being able to put things into motion. Now, if you don't want to do that, then you don't have to. But a large part of magic IS putting things into motion, not only being able to see causes and affects, but to cause some affects on your own. Sure, this can be dangerous and lead to morally bad actions. But an evenly designed system (as Bardon's is) also teaches moral cultivation and awareness of thoughts and things like that, so it's not just teaching you to do whatever you want. For Spirit Ape's question about the daoist magic: I honestly believe it really is all very much the same, just with different ways of labeling it. For a while not too long ago I was really trying to just focus on qigong and meditation, and put Bardon's system on hold, mostly because I liked the paradigm of Daoism better, the ideas of energy work, etc etc. But the thing is, there's not a lot of information out there on how to put that stuff to use. I started to read the "Opening the Dragon's Gate" book about Wang Liping, and it was describing some of the daoist magic and stuff..... and it all sounded very much like some Hermetic magic descriptions I have seen. Except that there's far more material out there (and for far cheaper) on Hermetics that actually TEACHES you how to do it, as opposed to just TELLING you about it. And that's why I've decided that I would devote myself more specifically to Bardon's work at this point in my life. Daoist qigong has taught me how to relax, how to feel, how to ground, and lots of good things. But there are definitely other modes of operating, and Bardon's system really touches on all of them.

Initiation Into Hermetics by Franz Bardon. There are commentaries on it around the net by Rawn Clark, William Mistele, and some guys at vsociety.net (a user named Veos wrote a good commentary, and another user Prophecy writes a lot of articles on the subject). It is very similar to a lot of qigong and stuff in many respects. The thing with that book is it's rather light on Hermetics philosophy. It gives a few concepts, then gets into stuff you can actually USE. A lot of systems teach rituals first, and those rituals and stuff have the form behind them, but not the power. Their reasoning is that you add power to them as you develop. IIH teaches you to cultivate energy/power first, so you can begin to work with certain forces, and then later on adds rituals to make it a more formalized thing. But first and foremost is the cultivator's own ability, rather than the ability of a certain ritual or key words.

Yes well then the question becomes who has the imbalance and what is considered "normal"? Maybe WE have the imbalance which makes us NOT be psychopathic killers- maybe the killing instinct is what keeps the population under control, but since we are all broken, we have gone out of control! Maybe I really DO enjoy doing that stuff, and it's SOCIETY that is broken. Who gets to dictate what is normal, and who is imbalanced? At what point does materialism and stuff stop being "unnatural" and start becoming a "natural" thing as more and more people do it earlier and earlier in life?

When you make love, make love. As for losing energy in general, in general, the only energy you lose is the energy that you give it- if you think and worry about losing the energy all the time, you're going to start losing more energy than you probably would have. When it comes to making love, the energy you experience by being in contact with your girlfriend, the emotions you feel, and whatever energy/hormones are circulating around are probably going to more than make up for whatever energy you think you are going to lose. Make yourself open and receptive to that (quite healthy, IMHO) love energy, rather than trying to bottle up your sexual energy. So quit putting so much energy into thinking about it, and you'll be fine. At least, in my experience.

In general, I'd say that the water method that B.K. Frantzis teaches is awesome. But really, "water" and "fire" are really polarizing, and a bit unnecessarily so, when I do the dissolving practice, I don't think of the "ice to water to gas" metaphor, but instead another metaphor he uses in the book: a tightly clenched fist which you relax into a soft fist (ice to water), and then opening your fingers and spreading them naturally away from the palm (water to gas). When I apply that idea to blockages I feel, I feel like I really "release" them in a much more tangible way, both mentally and physically. Also, it doesn't seem like a "water" or a "fire" approach, it just feels like a good method to help clear stuff. Furthermore, it gets you in touch with energy without having to accumulate energy to do it. That way, when you start to accumulate energy in the future, you can see problems as soon as they begin to arise, since your level of feeling is more honed, as opposed to feeling it in a more powerful and dangerous form later on. Only downside, though, in general is that when you DO want to start working with energy, there's not much material out there on that in the form of books (he said he only wants to put the really safe practices out in books, so you are less likely to hurt yourself doing something wrong, as opposed to an energy intensive practice). After that you'd have to track down someone he's certified to teach those methods, or go to a seminar (which are kind of expensive)

So one of the meditation/relaxation techniques I've been doing comes mostly from B.K. Frantzis, and in his water tradition methods there is a lot of emphasis on relaxing, delving deeper and deeper, and feeling more subtle energies along the way that are always there, it's just that most people don't realize it. Through this deep feeling you can find your way to a Universal Consciousness, which you are always attached to, but not always aware of that attachment. Zen Buddhism as well focuses I guess on emptiness, letting go, clearing out mental stuff. Another system that I have been playing with in the past couple months is Franz Bardon's Initiation Into Hermetics. However, that system, in general, has this energy accumulation approach. You try to increase your vibration to get higher and higher until you can perceive higher levels of energy. Emptiness (as found in Zen), only seems to be useful up to the point that you can then concentrate intensely on one particular thing without other stuff cluttering your mind. Some comparison is drawn to some yoga traditions, raising kundalini and things like that, to unite with some sort of Universal Consciousness. So it seems to me that both of them wind up going to the same place, but they have sort of different views on it. Not necessarily that one is a "downward flowing" practice and one is an "upward flowing" practice, but one has an emphasis on subtlety, relaxing, and feeling, and the other seems to be about gathering, and increasing energy. What do you guys think about this? Is it really just two different ways of getting to the same thing? Or does each one find something different (a relaxed, flowing consciousness vs. a dense high vibrating one)?

Hm, no offense, I have respect for people who devote their time to the martial arts, and added respect for people helping others. But if you are teaching a martial art, you need to prove it works. Tai chi, bagua, xingyi, shaolin, hung gar, karate, all these "classic" styles didn't become famous because of their name. They became famous because the people who created them and their top students were good fighters. They got up in the ring, or on lei tai, or whatever, and they said, "I'm a badass, no one can beat me, if you think you can, step right up." And they beat them. Some of them were nice and just sent them flying a bit, some of them were rougher and broke some bones. But they all proved they had the stuff. Then their style had a famous name, people started spreading it around, claiming they could do all this stuff, yadda yadda, things got watered down but, it doesn't matter WHAT your style is, IMA, EMA, UFO, whatever, it has, is, and always will be, "put up or shut up". It's not just bullshido trolls that said that, EVERYONE has said that. And now in this present day we have recording devices so you can record fights. If people want to claim their style is the best, they need to have some pretty serious footage of some real fights. This isn't ancient China. You don't have to travel all over the country on foot on some pilgrimage to seek out the highest learning, then sweep the floor for 10 years, before someone shows you how to cha cha........ It's NEVER been that way outside of kung fu movies. Yang Lu Chan did it. His son didn't ride on his name, he got up there and did it too. Dong Haichuan and his students had to fight to establish their styles. Xingyi had that guy who did bengchuan all the time and apparently killed someone with it. Of course they didn't have youtube back then, so they can't prove it.... but people here and now saying they can do stuff DO have youtube, they should be able to do it. Sorry if that sounded like a rant, but I cannot stress how much I dislike guys who say things like, "come to my dojo and see what I can do." And whatnot. Get a video camera. Go to local MMA gym. Fight. Record. Post. End of story.

Yeah gold, that was awesome, thanks

Yeah, maybe "whatever the end goal you want it to be" should be what we should be talking about . Some people would say or think they are on in the same, others not so much. The end result is nice, but we have talked about that to death in other threads, though still interesting, the method is what I'd like you guys' opinions on