Sloppy Zhang

Read the tao te ching

Depends on what you're trying to travel to.... Travel to a reality in which you're a top cell biologist who cures cancer. Learn the formulas, bring it back, cure cancer. Viola. Confirmed. Of course, you have to ensure that the reality you travel to is the same except for the thing you're selecting for. If you travel to a reality in which human cell biology is different, then when you bring it back here, you might just have made the next great medicinal weapon. Hurray for you. Of course, this means that there will alternately be realities in which you can't travel to other realities. But that would mean that if you traveled to them... hmmmm.... But I suppose if you were to become enlightened and transcend your sense of "I" then it wouldn't really matter, hm?

Thanks everybody

Thanks! Emphasis should be put on "study", I don't have the time or space to practice anything I read a lot about a lot of things, mostly. One of these days I'll get my ass in gear, though... one of these days....

Thanks Cool avatar, btw

Generally speaking, "following the breath" as meditation helps because it centers focus on the breath, but not so much that it's not relaxing, but just enough that it keeps you engaged enough to prevent your mind to wander. "Bruce Frantzis'" "Relaxing Into Your Being" outlines a good breathing meditation throughout the course of the book. "Opening the Energy Gates of Your Body" takes it a step further, and provides you a good framework for more continual process.

Yup. Pretty much, if you're paying for porn, you're doing something VERY wrong. I can't speak to spiritual decline or Asia in general. But I know a bit about Japan. I've been a couple of times, and studied there for a semester. I know lots of Japanese people both in Japan and in dense Japanese communities here in the states. Also, I'm American born and raised in America, so I'll be contrasting it with what I know of American culture, and make no claims on how it contrasts with "western" culture at large. Also, I'm a guy, so I'm writing from a guy's perspective. Basically, their culture is very different from ours, and I think that they are having to cope with some very different issues which are unique specifically to their own culture. Japanese culture is big on appearances, in/out groups, things you do out in the open vs things you do behind closed doors. You're supposed to know your place relative to everyone else, and you are supposed to act accordingly. Failure to do so results quite literally in social ostracism. Allowances are made for kids up to a certain point, but beyond that, you better know better. Foreigners are also allowed a bit of wiggle room, depending. When I went there I was conversationally fluent, so most people assumed that along with my language knowledge, I also knew the culture. Thankfully my Japanese teacher in the states was from Japan herself, so she filled me in on many of the major pitfalls. There were one or two instances in which I was blindsided by something, and acted inappropriately, and I felt the consequences. In some ways it was worse for me, because I was expected to have known. So that's something you have to understand. You don't make a move unless you know what the group is thinking, what the group dynamics are, who's a senior and who's a junior member, the history of the group, etc etc. Not at all like the rugged individualism that's been crafted in America for decades. In America, it's better to make a move and screw up than it is to hang back in be silent. In Japan, it's better to hang back, be silent, get the lay of the land, and only make a move when you know that it's going to be okay. For sex itself, it's not that big a deal. In general. But it becomes a big deal depending on who you're talking about it/doing it with, under what circumstances, etc etc. Again, the in/out groups, closed/open door groups, and above/below relations come into play. So now we come to the general Westernizing of various cultures. Basically, more independence for younger people, more independence for younger women, and a throwing off of more traditional habits for how you meet and interact with people. And basically... traditional values won't help you in a non-traditional setting. So if you're trying to, say, meet some ladies, and the ladies are waiting for you to make the first move, but you want to hang back until you get a chance to transition from the "out" group to the "in" group... well guess what? It ain't gonna happen! I think that's probably one of the reasons why foreigners can go into Japan and get scores of women, because they aren't hamstrung by always waiting to make the first move. One of the guys who studied abroad with me was a Japanese guy, but he was born and raised in America. Even though he didn't stand out like I did, he was just as good at pulling chicks as I was because he wasn't operating under the same cultural bounds as many of the native Japanese guys were. So what happens when you are a sexually frustrated dude with no interpersonal outlet for sexual needs? Well you turn to porn. And what happens when you've got a country full of great artists and animators? You get anime porn. And what happens when the in/out cultural groups are so strict that you're never really allowed to (or maybe you just never allow yourself to) even interact sexually with girls/women from a very young age? You've got a lot of pent up tension, and that results in ridiculously fucked up anime porn Oh, and crazy fucked up anime porn isn't anything new to Japan. The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife. So that's my take.

Seconded, times a thousand. On top of that, the way of breathing that he teaches is a manner of breathing that you can incorporate into your life 24/7, which means it is a lifetime of practice in itself beyond whatever time you have allotted. On top of that, the way it teaches you to be aware of your body beyond mere visualization or pre-programmed exercises means that you can begin to asses what is healthy and not healthy for YOUR body in each and every unique situation, without having to rely on a prescribed manner of standing/sitting/moving. When you can recognize when your energy is being blocked and when you are moving past your own 70%, you will start to recognize what you need to change in your life to be healthy, and you will start making much more progress, because instead of taking two steps forward and one step back, you'll be taking a step and a half forward with no steps back. In this way you can also start to align your body better, which you can also carry with you 24/7.

Who's dismissing them? Certainly not me, I hope I said that pretty specifically. For me, personally, the possibility for them to exist is there. The reality that they very well may have existed is there. The reality that, if they were truly immortal, they'd still exist today is there. It is what it is. And it is certainly not something which would be accepted with modern skepticism. So in that sense, they simultaneously do not exist At least for me. I'm perfectly capable of believing both at the same time. This bothers skeptics because they think I'm rational up to a point, then I just fly off the edge. And it bothers "believers" (what would I call them, hmm?) because I can listen to their stories and then respond with a smile "prove it". I can't speak for anyone but myself. But I know what got me on it. And it was a fraudulent martial arts teacher who could spin a good yarn and keep his students quiet with the same old lines like "sifu says this, so shut up and train" and things like that. Is it possible that names and places could be faked and believed in a credible manner? That the Chen village is an elaborate hoax created by the immortal magic of Zhang Sanfeng to disguise his spreading of the true taoist tai chi teachings? Well yeah, it's possible. But you know, when I can look up someone and find their name, date, residence, family tree, and who they generally studied with, I start to believe it a little more. Another fairy tale? Call it whatever you want. It is what it is. Sometimes it is the same as something, sometimes it is not the same as something else.

They did and did not exist Why do they have to come from someone in particular? Taoists and members of countless other traditions have been living in the world and exploring themselves and consciousness for thousands of years. With each generation, their collective body of knowledge gets passed on, remembered, and refined. Why did Zang Sanfeng have to view two animals fighting and then pass it wholesale on to someone? Why does Lu Dongbin have to exist to reveal the entirety of internal alchemy to his student, who passes it on in some dubious lineage to someone now teaching it? Can't it be enough that these practices exist, and that we got them from the previous generations? And is it asking too much that these practices not only exist, but that they can produce the results that they claim to? I don't think it's too much. We don't need to create a legendary figure to be a font of knowledge. Countless hardworking cultivators brought it to us! We are responsible for bringing it to others! If you've got a practice that can bring about immortality, great, use it, teach it, spread it to the world! What do you gain by spreading around stories of some immortal who could fly on clouds and defeat 100,000 bandits? What does anybody else gain? Absolutely nothing.

A legendary tai chi master... as in, hear lots of stories... as in, no confirmation of his actual existence. His existence IS important to people who insist that tai chi came from Zhang Sanfeng (or was otherwise a purely taoist creation), because they connect him to Jiang Fa, who is then connected to the Chen family. So that way, when people say "Tai Chi came from Chen village, which originally practiced a shaolin form", then taoist people who want a lineage can say "well where did Chen learn it from? The Taoist stuff came from sharing and learning with Jiang Fa, and Jiang Fa got it directly from a Zhang Sanfeng lineage, so there!" Yes, the philosophy is Taoist. The health and energetic principles that are used to develop health and power are Taoist. The martial strategies are inspired by Taoist philosophy. All of that was used to enhance and revitalize a Shaolin martial art. So yes, tai chi is taoist. And it can be taoist without having to grasp at straws in the hopes that you can somehow connect yourself to a legend. That aside, it was common practice in China for people to attribute their art to a legendary founder. So... yeah. Not to say that there isn't value in what's there. Just that you shouldn't cling too desperately to a legendary story, unless you've got some facts. Here's a good snippet from an article on Chen Wangting on wikipedia (and follow up with the sources cited in the article for more reading):

If the goody-goody stuff doesn't work... Tell her to clean up her crap, or find some other place to dump it (as in, kick her out). I don't know what the financial situation is with the apartment and everything, and who's name you're renting it, but there are laws about getting people evicted and how you can give them notice ahead of time, so if it gets to be serious, give her notice, and if she doesn't get her act together, have her evicted. You know. If it comes to that.

Origins and development of taijiquan. If Zhang Sanfeng existed, then where is the lineage which goes directly back to him? Which style of Tai Chi is from him, and how do other styles fit into this? For instance, you can trace the lineage of the Chen family tai chi pretty much right back to the founding of Chen village. You can see when, where, and with whom Chen Tai Chi broke off and became Yang style, Wu Style, Sun style, and where and with whom it mixed with other arts. The article in the original post says this: Who did they teach? Where did they teach? Who kept passing it down, and where/when did it transform into what is seen today?

Nothing worse than getting a chance to meet a master, and hearing someone ask a question that could be answered with a quick google search, or by reading some already published material.

Depends on where you're coming from B.K. Frantzis talks about it. The tai chi philosophy and energetic and health stuff is Taoist. The ways it implements the physical movements is in line with Taoist energetic/health principles, and it seeks to use Taoist philosophy in combat. Yes. But the movements themselves had basis in a Shaolin related style, which a certain Chen family member modified after he learned things related to Taoist health and energetics. So again, it depends on where you're coming from. Frantzis, for example, really really really likes Bagua. He mentions things like "it's the only purely Taoist art", which is true as far as his lineage goes, as he learned from Liu Hung Chieh who learned the Bagua circle walking and energetics and spiritual development directly from Taoists. It's abundantly clear that martial lineages coming from Doing Haichuan (so Yin style, Cheng style, etc) are mixes of Shaolin with circle walking, because it's a well known fact that Dong Haichuan only really accepted students who were already proficient in a martial art, and he taught them bagua principles to augment what they already knew into their own style (so for Yin Fu it was luohan quan, for Cheng Tinghua, it was shuai jiao). It should be noted that both B.K. Frantzis and Liu Hung Chieh learned a lot from these martial art lineages of Bagua as well, though later on and at higher levels, moved on to the more purely(?) Taoist monastic style. At least that's how I understand it. Hope that clears some stuff up.

Taoist philosophy in practice: B.K. Frantzis' "Opening the Energy Gates of Your Body".

There's much to learn from women's orgasms

Everything- chill out. Don't put so much pressure on yourself to perform. You're giving yourself performance anxiety, and are messing yourself up. Then you're messing yourself up for messing yourself up, and causing a downward spiral. Chill out. Ever hear that story about the student who asked the teacher how long it'd take for him to be enlightened if he meditated for an hour a day, and the master said "ten years", then the student says what if I meditate for two hours every day, and the teacher goes "twenty years", and the student goes "three hours?" and the teacher says "thirty years"? It's like that. The more you freak yourself out about it, the further away it's going to get. The more you try and tighten your fist around it, the more it's going to escape. It's dreams for fuck's sake, they're ephemeral Try to ham fist your way through it and you'll never get anywhere. thelerner- I know what you mean about the tiredness and stuff. I think it's nerves, really. B.K. Frantzis talks about nerve stress in his book "The Great Stillness". He talks about it in terms of sex, where back in the day even farmers working 12 hours a day could still have sex all night, but in the modern world of 9 to 5 people have ED or can't go on for as long because even though they are working less, everything combined has literally fried their nerves. Same thing happens with sleep. If you fry your nerves through the day, and then on top of that stress yourself out over dream recall, you aren't going to get your rest, and the rest of the next day you'll be tired, even if you objectively got 6 or 8 or 10 hours of sleep. So take it easy. Don't freak out too much about dream recall. To all involved, enjoy the experience Dreams are fun. They're natural. Enjoy it. Play with it. If it happens, great. If not, whatever. Move on. There's a lot of pressure to perform, because if you fail one night, that night is gone, so you really want to make each night count. But when you do that, you set yourself up for failure.

Why do we even need to judge? Bill Gates made decisions which led to an objectively profitable business which brought him great personal success. He also used that money for research for things that wouldn't otherwise have gotten done, and that research may go on to help people who otherwise wouldn't have gotten a certain kind of treatment. Actions happened. It is what it is. Why do we need to even say if they were good or bad?

Maybe what you think you want isn't what you really want. Maybe what you are trying to tell yourself that you want isn't what you really want. How about instead of trying to fix yourself, you take note of what is. What is it you really want? What is it you really want to avoid that's preventing you from doing stuff? Maybe you find and explore what it is you really want, before you start trying to fix yourself into doing what you think you "should" be doing.

Caught the last three or four episodes of the last season on TV. It was pretty gripping, even though I was jumping right in to the middle If anyone seems interested, I'd suggest checking it out.

Not every "thing". Is a knife "good" or "bad"? Depends. Is knowledge of human interaction "good" or "bad"? Depends. You could use it to score chicks' numbers, bed them and bounce the next day, or you could use it to navigate your way through a variety of contexts to find truly wonderful people, and engage them in such a way that it makes the experience pleasurable for both of you (pleasurable in more than just the sensual/sexual sense). If you want to call people "creepy" for learning about it, if you want to call them "insincere" or "out of the moment" for having an outlined idea of what they want to do in a conversation... well, hey, that's on you. But unless you're some enlightened universal spiritual force of consciousness (and you could be, you know how I hate to make presumptions about what other people have realized...), you are acting with the same underlying cost/benefit, trial-and-error based decision making processes that the rest of us are using. Except you probably learned them young and didn't consciously think about it, or at least you don't recall consciously thinking about it, and it's so finely honed now that you react so instantaneously that you just assume it's "natural" or "spontaneous", when really it's about as "natural" and "spontaneous" as a fast break in basketball- you've trained for so long and so hard that when you see your chance, you go for it without thinking. You just do. So good for you. But recognize that not everyone learns in the same way. Where have a heard that one before.......

I'm just an asshole who loves to have the last word. It's also a taunt to people to keep it going. Because if they keep going, they go against what they previously said- which shows lack of integrity with their words. If they stick to their word and leave, I get the last word. So either way, I win If you really didn't care, then it wouldn't matter. If you did care, then you re-engage and you've fallen right into my trap, mwahahahaha It's step one in "working out personal issues through an internet forum"

Ah, hmm, read the book Focus, yes, but relaxed focus. You want to feel what you feel. Don't set out trying to feel anything. Just set your awareness on a place and feel what you feel. Kind of like when you feel yourself, another person, an animal, feeling around in the dark, etc etc. It's a receptive feel. Not an "active" feel. You just put your hand (awareness) out there (on a spot in your body) and feel what's there. From there, you relax and release, dissolve it. Similar to B.K. Frantzis in the sense that his emphasis is on feeling rather than on visualization. But again, it's got to be a RECEPTIVE feeling. You can make your mind see anything that it wants, and you can make your mind generate whatever feeling you want. Want to feel heat in your dantien? Focus hard enough, and you can do it. Want to feel cold? Focus hard enough, and you can get your body to shiver from the cold. Does it mean that you are actually cold/hot? Well get a thermometer and find out But generally speaking, no. You can think that you're eating a cheeseburger all you want, you can taste it in your mouth as it waters. But does that mean there's a cheeseburger in your mouth? No. Same thing with energy. You can generate the sense of a "feeling" doing whatever the heck you want. But that doesn't mean it's actually doing it. First, you've got to have a receptive feel, and find what the energy is ACTUALLY doing, where it is ACTUALLY at, before you can even begin to think about moving it around. Ah, hmm. There was an article on this on Frantzis' old site, but when they revamped it, I haven't seen it reposted. Basically, it was about a guy he knew who was some pretty hot shit in hatha yoga. Made money as a contortionist and everything, very well known for easily getting into some difficult poses and being able to comfortably hold them for hours on end. He sucked at Aikido and Tai Chi. Why? He was stretched, but he wasn't actually relaxed. If your body is carrying tensions, it's possible that, through stretching, you just stretch the tensions along with them. So be careful with this. I suggest combining Frantzis' dissolving method found in the book with stretching. Then you've got an internal stretch going, where you aren't just stretching out the muscles, but you are, in the process, dynamically dissolving the tensions, which actually help to make you stretch further, and at the same time make sure you are RELAXING into the stretch. And the more you're relaxed, the better your energy will flow.