Sloppy Zhang

No, but as someone who is skeptical of all such experiences (even when they happen to me), I would just like to present a line of questioning that you may or may not like to follow further (sorry for bugging you if you've already done this), but what kind of situations did you dream up, and what actually came to pass? For instance, if you are worried about your job shutting down or lots of people getting fired, and then it happens, well, look at the economy. What are the chances of that event happening, how likely is it that it occurred merely in concurrence with your own probability calculations for the future? Was the event spectacular or singularly surprising in any way, or is it an otherwise likely occurrence, it just happened to happen to you or people you know? Etc etc etc.

I asked some of these questions as well, until I got introduced to B.K. Frantzis' material. I don't know if Lao Tzu practiced those exact things, but I do know that practices from the "water tradition", both theoretically and practically, are a lot more in line with things you'll read in the Tao Te Ching than stuff you'd find from blended practices, which have more in line with some more "upward" minded, "persevere against the flow" type things.

You know you're in trouble when even the KKK thinks your protests are out of line

Assassino! From my limited experience, people don't need much permission. As in, it doesn't take more than a nudge to get them going. Many times they are stopped by rules that exist nowhere beyond their own mind. Best example of this are the social groups I saw in high school and still see in college. I've always been friendly with people from a lot of backgrounds. But it always astounds me that people have all these "rules" in their head that they can't talk to a certain person, can't go to a certain place, can't do a certain thing, even if they WANT to, because all social hell is going to rain down upon them. Many times they are looking for an excuse. "Well if Sloppy is going then I might as well go". "Well if I'm reading a book, it's okay, right?" "It's a children's movie, I can be silly if I want!" And many times it doesn't even have to be a good excuse. Almost seems a bit pro forma at times. 1) Want to do something 2) Problem 3) Fill in excuse 4) Permission granted Anyway, I also recall one of the videos of Gary Clyman that was linked, and it was also about the issue of permission. His thesis stemmed from the fact that everybody's parents had told them all the things they couldn't do in life. Which, as a matter of fact, was the reason his dad was the best dad in the world, because his dad told the young Gary that Gary could be whatever he wanted to be. Gary had that permission.

Well I had something more serious in mind, then I read this: Know what you want twinner I was going to do something like suicide, but since you want it to be eastern studies and philosophy, I don't know. I'm not very academic when it comes to either of those subjects. I tend not to take an academic approach to things I'm actually interested in, which in turn makes it not very suitable for a formal or otherwise structured debate. Have fun.

[Actors and celebrities get paid too much money for contributing absolutely nothing to society other than stupidity, which is more like adding a negative] Actors and celebrities provide wonderful entertainment for all of us saps. They deserve the billions they get for doing no real work, because, you know, standing in front of a camera and having sex with lots of people and coming from a rich family is really hard work. They had to get lots of good karma in a past life to be born into the one they have now!

Those weren't your only choices you know I wasn't looking for you to pick any answers. But, IMHO, those are the lines of questioning that you should look at when examining a dream and understanding it's impact. It's far more reliable than trying to decipher symbolism which changes from culture to culture, era to era, and person to person. Anyway, dreams are fun

Dreams are tricky. I've been doing lucid dream work for close to 10 years now (had done it on and off as a kid, then I learned it had a name, that's when I really got into it). The past five years I've been keeping serious, daily dream journals. At first hand written, but whet it started taking me nearly three hours to hand write 6-8 pages, I started to type them. And honestly- most dreams are gunk. Crap. Mental junk. Projections, hopes, fears. Most dreams that aren't just crap are only MOSTLY crap. You might get a little bit of "higher" stuff, but it's so mixed in with your hopes and fears and other crap that the message is so distorted that it's useless, and you really don't even recognize it. Dreams that have meaning, I do believe, will smack you in the face. If you have to ask if it has meaning, if you have to ask if you're receiving a message from beyond, then you probably didn't get one. Chances are better that it's just you projecting what you HOPE a message will be. "An angel came down from on high and told me it was my higher self". Uh huh. Sure it did. Every ritual and process from every traditions that's more than 200 years old that I've come across shows such an event as demanding a LIFETIME commitment and a SERIOUS physical/spiritual event, and you think that it just floated down to you? But it helps you sleep at night, so there you are. A tried a stint as a dream interpreter at a couple of forums, but I didn't take all jobs, either because I wasn't feeling anything from it, I couldn't read it well, it was too individual specific, or I just thought it was gunk. Many people focus on the symbols, the visual, when interpreting dreams. I don't like that. Symbols are too individual. Roses mean love? Unless your fiance dropped off roses when they called it off to run off with their local bartender. Roses ain't so rosy. Also, don't be so quick to jump to the past incarnation conclusion. It's far more likely that they are just deeply rooted impressions. For instance, I felt drawn to the military for a long time (still do). A palm reader said I was in the military in a past life. Then my mom discovered some of my old baby pictures. There I was as a two year old dressed as G.I. Joe I noticed a lot of visual imagery in your post. Very descriptive. But really, it's just scenery. I tend to home in on emotions and reactions that people have- they are far more telling about what a dream meant to that individual. When you entered the area- how did you feel? Were you comfortable? Excited? At home? What did you think when you saw the severed head? Repulsed? Intrigued? Indifferent? Were you excited when you read the book? And so on. If nothing jumps out at you, and you just felt neutral, all I've got to say it was a nice dream, I hope you enjoyed it, you really want to get your hands on that sutra. Hope you do and you enjoy it And for the vividness- of course, it's a fond memory. But be careful about remembering "more as the day goes on". I can't tell you how many times I've sat to reread my dream journal thinking "oh, I remember this dream, I jump off the high dive next", only to get to the next paragraph that reads "then my giraffe friend said hi and we ate bananas". Memory DOES get distorted over time. Good and bad. Which is why I highly suggest, if ever you get into a situation which might involve legal troubles or a testimony or having to talk to the cops, write EVERYTHING down AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. Thoughts and impressions to. They can and WILL warp, and, God forbid, they can BE WARPED by others.

Like more pie says, your answers will vary from school to school. Bruce Frantzis in "Relaxing into your Being" and "The Great Stillness" talks a bit about the perspectives from his tradition. From my understanding, a good way to summarize his tradition's view would be, yes, ultimately enlightenment, freedom, discarding the chains, blah blah blah, but not at the extent of alienating and wrecking your life, because you ARE a human. You ARE eventually going to die. You DO need to eat. You DO need to sleep. You ARE going to want to have sex at some point. Like all the best like coaches and business people will tell you- have short term, medium, and long term goals. Ultimate goal is enlightenment? Okay, well rent's due tomorrow and you haven't eaten since breakfast. Unless you are going to be enlightened sometime between now and tomorrow, you should have a way of taking care of that.

I know It sucks to be the cloud that rains on the parade. But, you know, it always sounds better in theory. "I want to like like an immortal". "I want to walk the earth like an immortal". And "I want to drive several tons of metal at blinding speeds down a road full of bystanders like an immortal". The results are... not always ideal. Fare more failures than successes, if your measure of success is narrowly avoiding death unscathed. I did I've seen a couple of those clips passed around in different contexts. It's surprisingly hard to find depressing, sobering videos of peoples' lives being ruined by idiots. I guess it's always more fun to glorify reckless behavior. That's not to say I condone or condemn either one, and that's not to say that I think any one particular thing is going on in any one particular place. It's just that each side tends to gravitate towards two different sides of the issue, and both tend to have nice clips to link to. And it's easier to say "wow, that guy is awesome" when you don't see what happens the other 99 times someone tries to pull off the same stunt. It's a good song. Don't think it particularly fit with the tone of the video. But still good. "Life is a waterfall. We're one in the river and one again after the fall."

How much exercise do you get (20-30 minutes, up your heart rate, go for a sweat, ect)? What is your diet like? Might I suggest you go outside, take off your shoes, warm up, do some stretches. Grip the ground with your hands and your feet. Get in there. Pat your whole body to get the blood flowing. Do some jumping jacks. Do some push ups- remember the grip. Run, alternate your speed and intensity- start slow, explode into a sprint, even out with a nice jogging pace, then finish hard. Get hungry. Eat a burger. Drink a coke. Have a milkshake. All that stuff about the lower vibes of slaughtered animals stopping your spiritual practice? Yeah, maybe you need to bring yourself "down" a little bit. Root. Get in touch with your animal side. Listen to some music that really gets your heart pumping and your blood boiling. Get angry, feel like you wanna tear somebody's head off (no one in particular, just get pumped). And get physical with your girlfriend. Give her something real crazy to think about And then all the other stuff about clearing, grounding, and letting it flow. Associate yourself with ALL aspects of the spectrum. You've spent some time on the high end, now spend some time on the low end, and once you feel evened out, a healthy mix of both. But sometimes it's easiest to relax and open up after sex and otherwise being pumped up for a while.

Unfortunately, many people are not immortals nor are they immortal.

Keep this in mind- you have ALWAYS felt your heart beating and blood pumping. But your brain has pushed it to the background. Kind of like how people who live in crowded cities can sleep even with loud traffic outside the window, while someone not used to it will be unable to rest. You have physically felt your heart and blood your entire life, just as the city dweller physically hears all the sounds outside. You have up until now relegated it to the background. The brain has designated it a non-threat. Duh, because it's your own body! For some reason you have gone through some process in which you have consciously or subconsciously deduced that it is somehow bothering you. Don't. It's not real. Get back to reality. Nothing has changed. You've just looked under the hood. Don't let the look of your engine scare you away from your ferrari

So I got some laughs from this video, not because of the subject of galactic magic (any relevance to previous or ongoing magic threads is purely coincidental, this is in no way a comment on or a rebuttal towards anything being said in those threads), but because of the subject of teachers, seminars, and control over the weak minded. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOBE0yqiMHo&feature=relmfu

Jedi school dropout, hadn't seen that one! Nice

I may have to go under general anesthesia sometime soon. I can only wonder what's to happen. So far my options seem to be: A) Go to sleep, wake up, no events. B ) Go to sleep, crazy events, wake up fine. C) Almost die, crazy events, wake up. D) Die.

Interesting thoughts I kind of think about it like, say I lost my keys. I know I had them yesterday, but I don't know where they are now. The me that had them yesterday put them somewhere. The me that is now knows not where. So for all practical purposes, it was a very real "yesterday me" that put the keys somewhere. If we could meet and discuss, he would surely have information that I do not, and we would be different people. But the past self was, is(?) still me. And technically, I "know" where the keys are, it's swimming around in my mind somewhere, I just don't have the right triggers to easily recall the memory I figure future selves, or higher selves, are much the same way, except the present self is the past self, and somehow we are meeting. But that doesn't change that all of them are "me". But I dunno

Haven't had much experience with kundalini itself. But with general energy, feeling, and otherwise intense situations, sometimes it's better to let the energy flow and just get it out of the way. One of the biggest problems that I can think of with high flows of energy is an unprepared, blocked system. Trying to jam the energy back in might prove futile and potentially worsen the problem. I might, keeping in mind my own personal experience, suggest "getting out of its way" by clearing out any blockages you have, healing your system, and preparing for intense energy flows (as always, I find myself recommending "Opening the Energy Gates of Your Body" by B.K. Frantzis for stuff like this). Don't work directly with the energy so you divert your focus and attention elsewhere- it's strong enough without you adding your own energy to the mix. And don't forget the arms, legs, and head. I'd also suggest trying to disperse the energy as much as possible throughout as much of your body as you can. Buuuuuut keep in mind that I've had no experience with it. But if it suddenly happened to me now, I'd do the above, and then ask here

I don't know if this is what you meant, Taomeow, but it reflects a sentiment that I hold, and that sentiment is the reason I never got on board with all of the "higher self" paradigms. People make a big deal about meeting your higher self, communicating with it, getting advice from in, unifying with it, etc etc etc. But you are your higher self. At least, that's how I always viewed it. Why would I need to personify and then talk to myself in order to find out what I already know? Seems like a bunch of needlessly complicated and potentially maddening steps taken to simply remember something you might have forgotten. I can't speak to anything else in the thread, but I just wanted to throw that out there Interesting conversation though, so I will be reading

I've found I've used that strategy a lot in my academic career- it's certainly more time efficient to do that than it is to read through hundreds of different texts and come up with some new synthesis of the material. It's why I, personally, have found some of the most thought provoking historians to be professors on tenure and hobbyists. They have the time, inclination, and find it leisurely enough to read through the obscure stuff without the pressure of having to churn out some material. Now as we're being critical, let's not forget to be critical about our OWN culture and our own methods. As the History channel has started to say, let's look at the "history made every day". I've taken a couple courses on media and journalism criticism. Basically, one of the other things our fast paced culture has done has urged news reporters to churn out a story without doing all the research or checking out all the facts. Case in point- all of the conflicting accounts of Osama bin Laden's death. Where he was shot, why, how many times, etc etc etc. Story comes out, revised story comes out, revision to the revised story, etc etc etc. And if there's no reason to, why would you have to revise a story? It would only make you look bad and ruin your own reputation, so you gloss over mistakes. And then those go on the record book. And then it comes out that you were wrong, but the story has been passed around so often by so many people that by the time the truth comes out... what can you do? It's really too late to do anything about it. Case in point- Facebook or Apple. People realize that Mark Zuckerberg or Steve Jobs aren't the upfront, honest business people we like to think they are. I can't tell you how many people have said "after watching the Social Network movie, I'm going to quit facebook!" only to go back to it in a couple of days. As with religions and martial arts, people will pick the history that they like, the one that makes them look good, the one that reinforces the way that they live and the thoughts that they already have. People aren't looking for the truth- they are looking for things that will help them sleep at night.

Cool. Yeah, this post was edited.

When you reach a point that it's clear that they aren't listening, and that your time is better spent elsewhere. As you talk to more and more people, you begin to recognize patters of conversation. You start to get a pretty good idea of where the topics are going to go, and how the person is going to respond. When that happens, you say what you need to say, and don't waste your time talking to a wall. If they aren't going to listen, then they aren't going to listen, but that's not to say they won't remember something you said at a later date and then come back to it (one of the reasons I am supremely frustrated by people deleting their own interesting posts!)

In those little boxes, with that little dude sitting at the top corner, is what I was referring to. Basically, step by step, you start off breathing, and your awareness of breath only gets to the back of your throat, say, to start. But as your awareness gets better, and you relax more, you can follow your breath further down your throat, eventually to your lungs, then diaphragm, then dantien. In the book they are mostly separate from the main text, so you wouldn't really be skipping to keep reading, but do the practice at your own pace And that's what, to me at least, it sounded like what ChiDragon was referring to when he asked you to tell him where the breath stopped- as in, are you breathing all the way down to your belly, or are you getting caught in the top of your lungs or in your throat? But I could me wrong

That's exactly how it's taught in "Relaxing Into Your Being" And the difference between learning from a book and learning it through back and forth text over the internet is...... But this is good. It means we're all thinking of the same thing

From what I've seen, some people just want to get super energized super quickly.... And at the same time, be able to masturbate or have sex as much as they want but still be considered "spiritual". And as to your digression, I find the culture to be a tad bit hypocritical. Things are hyper-sexualized, but it's only okay if it's in the form of a movie, tv, or music video. If you actually act out something like that, hoo boy, what a no-no. If you do, you keep it behind very, VERY closed doors. You know, because an upstanding politician or businessman can't have sex with his wife. Of course he does, or else where do the kids come from? But everyone is sure that it's only on birthdays and Christmas, and only for approximately 6-8 minutes, and only in the missionary position, of course. Any other position is for hookers and porn stars.