Sloppy Zhang

Arrrrrgggh! If I had psychic powers I'd take that challenge, put Randi in his place, then get fame and fortune!!! There's my ego for you! But videos like this make me sad

I assume you are asking me, since I'm the only one who put "they" in my post By "they" I mean those in charge of the education of the future generations of America. Teachers, parents, mentors, etc should all push for more material taught in an engaging, relevant way. American history, politics, and economics tend to be taught very dryly in most places (at least, that's been my experiences out of public school). On top of that, they can get pretty complicated pretty quickly. So what you get is massive amounts of disjointed facts, blips of factual statements which stand on their own, and not considered within a broader context, and not used to build anything out of. The dots are not connected. 1778 this happened, 1845 this happened, 1901 this happened. Memorize, right on a quiz, you are done. Disconnected from the context of the times, and disconnected from the present. So what you get is a bunch of facts with absolutely no relevancy or lessons learned. And people wonder why history repeats itself? Because most of the people who "learn history" are not "learning", they are "memorizing" history. They aren't critically examining it and drawing parallels to the present. "Oh we're so much smarter now, we'd never fall into the same traps". Riiiiiiiight. I thought this video did a good job of presenting a lot of information in a simple, fun way. Past problems are made relevant to today's situation. Factual dots are connected, and in layman's terms.

Well I guess how you view reincarnation and what you do with that knowledge/belief depends on the system/tradition. Some systems don't view reincarnation to mean like, "oh hey, be a good person so you'll be rich and not a bug in your next life", but more like a, "you should understand where you're coming from, the karma you have, why you are the way you are, and how that influences the decisions you make in the present, which could lead to a particular future". I agree that you should live in the present, but that doesn't necessarily mean you should not keep the past or the future in mind!

Ask around on the magick section of these forums: http://forums.vsociety.net/index.php And maybe you'll find some people who can answer that in the positive.

Just from the book. It's solid and all around awesome. Low impact physically, works directly with specific channels. Well balanced. Just as an aside though, he mentions all the time that there are a lot of sets out there that all get the job done relatively well. Dragon and Tiger is just one set which he personally found gives a lot more than you have to put into it (as in, you don't have learn complicated movements, don't have to be physically strong, don't have to already have opened specific channels, don't have to memorized a lot of movements, etc). There are other sets out there and if you are doing something that you like that seems to be working for you, more power to you. I'd recommend it if you don't already got a similar practice, but if you do, don't feel like you gotta go out and pick it up.

Along the lines of the reputation, I really do feel like he's creating and targeting a market. It seems he is very much trying to bring these practices to as large an audience as possible. As such (at least in his writings), he uses very generalized terminology. Not a lot of actual Chinese words. He doesn't do anything more but hint at any abstract energetic or metaphysical topics. Nothing that would scare off your average Joe, or make them shut down from culture/information shock. Which cuts both ways, because while on the one hand you get access to incredible material, if you really want to dig deep and really know a lot of nitty gritty stuff, well, you're pretty much kept hanging! I for one think he's got a lot of knowledge and a lot of experiences, and a lot that he could share on some very deep topics, which back up some of the off hand side comments he makes about things, or complicated issues he steps around, and that's why I will continue to pursue practicing with him.

I've heard some people say that, for the most part, people do reincarnate like that. They carry over the karma of their deeds, their family deeds, the deeds of their nationality, religion, race, global region, etc etc. For the most part. If you believe in that stuff.

Well for me I don't know so much about reincarnation, but I have realized how cyclic things are. How you repeat the things that are done to you onto others, how they repeat onto you. Even a cursory glance at history will reveal many of the same things, the same struggles, being fought over and over and over again. Each time they say, "this is done, we have learned our lesson", yet each time we repeat the same actions (whether they lead to good or bad, happiness or not). Even if you just look at it on the scale of one life, there's a lot of stuff you'd want to liberate yourself from.

I'm not an expert on Sagan, what he said, or how he said it, but from the way you presented it in your post, he didn't give in a little bit with regards to reincarnation. He merely pointed out an occurrence which runs counter to what we would normally expect, and consistently does so, and would merit further observation and inquiry.

They need to teach this in schools.

Anecdotal story- A girl I know told me that her parents told her (because she was too young to remember), that as soon as she started to talk, she would always identify herself by a name that wasn't hers, and would talk about what she did at work, which was acting as some assistant physician somewhere in Geneva. Her parents corrected her until she got it right, then the girl forgot about it, but her parents told her about it as one of those joke, "guess what you did when you were a baby?" kind of stories. Anyway.

I fully support and agree with this position, and it's the position that I take as well. There is a LOT of material out there on basics, and nowadays, depending on where you look, a fair amount of material one or two steps up from basic. A far cry from mastery, but still fairly decent material to get you going. It would be a waste of a student's time, a student's money, and a teacher's time for the student to show up, and the teacher to tell them, "ah, I see, you want to learn, okay, do this basic exercise which you could have discovered on your own." In my opinion, it's much better to do everything that you can with what you do have, so that way, when you get a chance to work with somebody, after spending your hard earned money, you can really hit the ground running, really get into the meat of the practice. A lot of questions arise, and then are resolved, simply through practice. You can ask a teacher, or discover it on your own. If you've got access to a teacher, good for you. A lot of people don't. And I argue that if you've got a lot of personal diligence, you can work out a lot of solutions on your own. If you can contact other experienced practitioners (like on TTB's), you can work out a lot of solutions on your own. And then when you've got something you can't otherwise solve on your own, or learn on your own, you can go find a master, and you'll be all the more ready. But what do I know? My theory (with regards to transmissions), is if something is real and true, then if you do a procedure properly, you are going to get the result. If energy is really out there in the universe and in the human body, if it can be collected and controlled, used to heal, used to boost spiritual enlightenment, then you should be able to do it by virtue of being a human being. Someone had to be the first to do it. Things related to cultivation should be as apparent as gravity. Now I understand that some people are metaphorically blindfolded, and that a transmission helps to metaphorically remove that blindfold, or give them the metaphorical scissors to metaphorically cut the blindfold as an ongoing process on their own. But if someone knows they have a blindfold, and has a means of untying the knot, pulling it off their face, and/or finding their own scissors and removing it themselves, then they should be able to do so! And if the end goal is really the same, then their result should be no different than someone with transmissions. But again, what do I know? Again I voice my hearty support for and agreement with this position!

Woot!

Saw the first one and really enjoyed it. Couldn't really get into the second one, but maybe it was just 'cause I wasn't in the mood.

I would throw in another vote for B.K. Frantzis, specifically the book "Opening the Energy Gates of Your Body". Incredibly comprehensive book that is packed with information that you can continue to practice for the rest of your life. Frantzis keeps the book techniques pretty low impact physically, and low energy metaphysically. But if you've already got something that is generating energy, the methods in Energy Gates will help you let go of that energy, balance the body, open it up, and prepare it for stronger energy flows.

Interesting stuff, and things I'm struggling to work out right now- what is real, what is just my perception, what is just my assumption? What am I projecting onto others? Etc. See I used to do stuff like that (not to your extent! hats off to you), you know, crazy stuff. Thinking, "I don't care what other people think" and "I'm just going to do my own thing". But then one day I was walking down the sidewalk, and I thought to myself, "what if I did something crazy right now?" And I realized I really didn't want to. Prior to that time, each time I did something, there were always people around me- talking with me, laughing at/with me, egging me on, things like that. Basically, it was validation- no matter how crazy I seemed, there was always at least one person who was around me. So, you know, as crazy as I was, I must have been normal, right? But when I thought about what it'd be like if it was just me, no accomplice, no camera man.... I dunno, it just seemed very different...... And to the sexy saxman- AWESOME! But I must admit, when I heard sexy saxman, I thought of this guy:

Well in my opinion (keeping in mind the advice about not listening to advice from the internet! ).... It all depends on how you retain. Are you getting aroused, but not ejaculating? For this you could be in for some problems, and if you're doing this, you should ejaculate every once in a while (couple days to a week), because the stuff wants to come out, and chances are good it will come out anyway (see the thread about the person ejaculating when reading spiritual stuff- semen ready to leave didn't get ejaculated, and it got out through muscle contractions throughout the day). The only caveat to this would be if you had some extensive qigong experience, had a method of purifying/cleansing parts of your body, circulating and balancing the energy, etc etc. This is not something I have experience in, so don't ask me. Most complete traditions have aspects to them which deal with sexuality, so you might want to turn to one of those. But again, the sexual practices would be just a PART of a much larger practice, and there should be teachings to handle this stuff. If you are not getting aroused at all, and just going through life and not masturbating or having sex, and not thinking bad thoughts, then, well, keep doing what you're doing. I wouldn't suggest doing something crazy (like tying up your penis at night) to prevent ejaculation. Again, some things are just meant to leave the body, and sometimes that means a little extra semen. Don't worry about it. I believe scotty said something in another thread to the effect of, "you lose more energy worrying about it than you do in the act itself". Very applicable here, IMHO. A healthy lifestyle plus a well rounded cultivation practice would off set any "energy loss" you'd get through nocturnal emissions (I put "energy loss" in quotes because you might not actually lose much, if any, energy through the actual act, but a lot more by agonizing over it) Now I don't mean to get you bogged down, but there are a lot of threads that have cropped up in the past about this. Use the forum search for things like, "conserving jing", "semen retention", "nocturnal emissions", and things of that nature.

I'm also inspired, maybe because I can hardly bring myself to do it. At first, practicing in front of people didn't really bother me. But now that I'm at my point, I just can't do it. It feels like they're in there with me, like, practice is a time for me to explore myself and dig up inner stuff, but I feel other people are in there and looking at that internal stuff, and I dunno, it just makes me feel really uncomfortable. But maybe that's back to the whole ego, sense of self, wanting boundaries, etc etc The best experiences I've had were when I was alone, when I knew that it was just me, and I could delve really deeply without any risk of someone "interfering". Which, if you think about it, is kinda silly, because if you seek to be one with the universe and all that, that would include all the people (friends, family, dorm mates, strangers, etc etc) who "bother" you (or at least me). I'm fine facing things on a universal scale, but not on a personal one probably because universal things are abstract, but person ones have faces and names and relationships to attach to those concepts...

Well obviously insights and observations from teachers are important, they're half the equation in the learning process! I just feel that 5ET came out of the gate with a lot of judgments and assumptions. Sure, they stemmed from his personal experiences, but he drastically extrapolated them and came up with a situation that "must" be correct, simply because it conformed to everything he "knew" to be true (about life, about how young people think, about the internet, etc etc) As a young person, I tried to examine and shed light on each of his assumptions and points he was trying to make about younger generations- which to someone else might look like "making excuses", which indeed would make me seem "defensive", then come the old, "oh hey man, no need to be so defensive, we're just talking! Geeze, you internet generation kids think the world is all about you, don't you?" not very constructive. I dunno, it's hard to have a straight discussion when everyone is asking loaded questions and making loaded statements. It'd be a great load off everybody's backs if we could just say, "hey, this is my experience", and wait 'till we get more views than just our own before coming to a definitive conclusion.

Well one of the points that William Mistele raised in the article I linked is that some people, even when they are in the act of apologizing or making amends, cannot help but sneak a few digs into the people with whom they are conversing, principally my re-framing whatever terms that person has used in order to paint their position in a different light. You can notice it quite a bit in 5ET's post above yours, lazy cloud. (and in a few other places from a few other people!) At the same time, I've seen 5ET purposefully bait people and play games. For instance, someone in another thread asked a question, and 5ET's first post was, "what did your teacher say when you asked him/her?" At least from my position, it's pretty safe to say that the person was practicing on their own, otherwise they would have included insight from their teacher in their post. But it seemed like 5ET couldn't resist bringing up the topic about absolutely NEEDING to have a teacher, for nothing else will do, which not only is a point that has been beaten to death, but for some reason he did NOT just bring up the topic DIRECTLY, but had to circuitously bring up the topic by forcing the admission of the person. If he genuinely wasn't sure if the person had a teacher, he could have just asked, "do you have a teacher? If so, have you tried asking them? If not, are there any in your area? Where do you live, perhaps I can help?" In my opinion, actions like that are rather sneaky, and reek of some pretty serious personal issues- that of relishing superiority, and forcing others to acknowledge that superiority themselves. I have no problem with people who have different philosophies than myself, I have no problem with people feeling the need to bring it up whenever they see fit. But good lord, if you've got something to say, then just fucking say it! And if you've got a disagreement, then good lord, respect the other person's opinion and experience! Rolling your eyes at the person you are trying to make amends with doesn't help your cause, no matter how many times you say, "but what I said was...."

Yeah, I reached a point just a little while ago when I realized, "hey, this whole problem exists because of my attachment to "self", because I feel like I am being violated, but if there's no I, then there's no problem.... hmmm....." But it does require a different way of looking at things, and of living life trying to play the game the "old" way just doesn't work, doomed to failure, and back to square one...

*pats wayisvirtue on back*

What's funny is that each group will see the other group as falling into these categories Our forum is a paradox. On the one hand, you do not gain much experience unless you get away from the computer and actually do stuff.... But on the other, the point of a discussion forum is to, well, discuss, which, by its very nature, runs counter to the philosophies that many of us here follow! I guess as with many other things, there is a point of diminishing returns, and you have to be able to realize at what point your returns diminish. There is even at a point during training in which, if you keep training, you won't help yourself, so it's best to take a break. TTB's is a great way to take a break. But it's also good to know when you need to take a break from TTB's. And it's funny because each group will see the other in that statement as well! Person A: "You need to stop talking and get a real life teacher." Person B: "Great point, person A, you deserve a pat on the back!" Person C: "Teachers need to be more open about their methods and abilities." Person D: "Great point, person C, you deserve a pat on the back!"

Well you know they dumb it down a little bit more and more the further down your level you go. Your college undergrad bio is a little less complete than it probably should be, then you got your high school AP bio, then you got your high school honors bio, then your regular bio, ya know, so I'm not professing to know all the ins and outs. I just remember asking my teacher about it when the subject came up, and she said, "yup, it's all still in there." (meaning the instructions for how to put together stuff)

Aye, many a good post has been made with absolutely nothing to do with many a thread title.