Sloppy Zhang

How do you know this?

Awesome

Well see it varies. You might be able to use karate in order to overcome a potential mugger. Karate has given you the power to overcome that. But maybe if someone is planning to detonate a dirty bomb in your area, perhaps the siddhi of foresight could help you get out of there

How about you go embrace your powerlessness when someone is punching your face in, stabbing you with a knife, or threatening your family, friends, or loved ones, or currently harming them.

*raises hand* I train for powers. Enlightenment and freedom and all that stuff sounds good too. And being a good person and being happy are all some very nice by-products. But in my very humble (or not so humble?) opinion, I'm already a pretty nice, compassionate person. But powers seem immensely convenient and helpful. And if you could get them through various types of training..... yeah. Sounds like something worth having. I do respect the experiences that other people have. But.... well..... yeah, still something I'd like to experience for myself. As to songs' proposed topic for the occurrence of enlightenment, I find that I cannot comment on it.

Haha. Well look, a lot of cases for people blatantly ignoring any new data that did not form with their belief, their agenda, or what have you. Not a bad case, and it's quite believable. But that could go any way, whether you are arguing for the existence of a spirit, the existence of dinosaurs, the existence of aliens, etc etc. Who's to say they WEREN'T being rational? Maybe the rest of the world, the rest of the population, didn't fit into the calculation, but it had to make sense to somebody. At least, if you believe the first rule of economics (as my professor taught it), and that is that people are rational. They just might not be operating on the same scale of rationality as you

Sounds awesome, Gerard. Sorry if I have missed this in any of your past posts, but what is your style of bagua? Who did/do you study with?

Ya Mu is the name of a forum member. Real name Michael Lomax. His method is Stillness Movement. In fact, here is his profile

Well these are a few that are off the top of my head, in no particular order.... FiveElementTao I believe has experience in various styles connected to Maoshan. I don't know how connected they are to Mao Shan specifically, but Kunlun seems to be a relative of some of that stuff, and as a result freeform and scotty miiiight be able to point you to something (that's a big "might" though). Not Mao Shan, but Ya Mu seems to have a wonderful system, each to access, easy to perform, from what I hear has great benefits, and seems to address everything- energy for healing, for martial arts, for opening astral senses/communing with spirits of varying levels, and things of that nature. Again, not Mao Shan, but still looks pretty legit and worth a try. Starjumper7 seems to have access to a good system, makes comments that reflect lots of experience. Gerard, as he has already done, would probably recommend bagua, but that's pretty hard to do on your own anyway unless you have access to some pretty high quality guidance. But lucky for you you're in Taiwan so you can work that right out. Um...... more will probably come to me later on. No guarantees that any of these people will have what you are looking for, or that they will be able to teach you/provide any exercises they can do long distance. But if I were you and wanted to get a handle on some methods that I could do on my own, before I found a live person to train with, I'd start by asking these people. And I hope none of these people are offended by my volunteering their help for them

But even that position is not a rational one, and irrational people are going to believe what they want to believe anyway. The problem is that there is not enough significant proof out there for many people. You got a lot of people who are making admirable efforts in researching various areas of the "unexplainable", but nothing is really getting picked up because nobody really takes it seriously. And it's not like the people who "work with spirit" are doing much to help their case. With all the "prove it to yourself" or "spirit can't be proven" or "disbelieving will sabotage yourself", there's a vicious cycle of rhetoric which prevents people, even within spiritual communities, from going after physical proof.

As a note: when I talk about "proving" something, I mean proving it on the physical plane, in the most popularly shared plane of physical existence. Meaning if you were going to stand out in Times Square and perform some feet, most everyone there would acknowledge it. You could argue that reality is entirely subjective, and I would agree with you, but that there is a reality that most of us share. Some of us may see spirits while others do not, but I'm sure we all see a speeding bus coming our way, and get out of the way. Paranoid schizophrenic people certainly have their own subjective reality, and sometimes act in extreme measures due to its reality, but how much of that reality is shared with those around them? So for ease of conversation, let's stick with "popularly shared physical reality" on this one. Of course you can't really prove the existence of spirit. If someone says, "well such and such happens on the spiritual plane of existence", you can't really prove that. But you can prove things on the physical level. If you say, "the powers of the spirit can cure cancer", "the powers of spirit allow me to move mountains", "the powers of spirit allow me to fly", "the powers of spirit allow me to defeat dozens of enemies at once", these things are physically demonstrable and physically verifiable. Now if you are speaking metaphor, or you are talking about the things the power of spirit allows you to do in the realm of spirit, well we can't really prove that down here, can we? Unless two people travel spiritually to the same spiritual place, observe something spiritual, return, and share the same account, and we check that there was no way that they could have physically communicated or came up with a story beforehand, well then we might be getting somewhere. So yeah, spirit is spirit. Don't know of any real ways of arguing against that. But physical is physical. If someone has something that can be "proven" or "disproved" on the physical level, well then they should do it. Unless the powers of spirit constrain them, but we have no way of verifying that, now do we?

I don't know how far you are along in your process of moving, but.... Are you moving to Taiwan BECAUSE you want to meet a master, or are you moving to Taiwan and you figure it'd be a good chance to meet someone? Because there are a lot of really skilled people on this forum, and a lot of exercises which can get you quite far along in your development which you can find well enough on your own without having to up and move to Taiwan.

(just as a note, I've met one person who had gotten weird pop-ups from this site just one time, it should be safe if you've got a good pop-up blocker, and have good computer security. It works fine for me, just a warning, if you're concerned, don't click!)

I was stepping outside the whole cultural discussion for a bit Even if you're from the same culture, sometimes you just rub people the wrong way, or they rub you the wrong way, and there's just no compatibility, even if there's no discernible reason! Not saying don't try, I'm just saying, pick your battles!

Kind of like how if you say a word a bunch of times, it starts to lose its meaning, and how it sounds really strange, and you realize it's all just arbitrary.

Bold mine. Some people you are just not going to get along with. Despite your best efforts. Sometimes you are just not going to like someone for no discernible reason. Sometimes working on it doesn't help, so sometimes you just gotta let it go.

I just wanted to point out that I think this is a very important point. I am not an expert, but I've taken my share of comparative literature, and literature criticism courses, and done fairly well. And one important part of research is looking at the surrounding history of a text, comparing other texts that came before its time, or around the same time, which authors of the text in question may have read, been familiar with, heard of, studied, etc etc. Outside material gives you perspective that a contemporary reader might have had, but which you, dozens, hundreds, or thousands of years later, do not. And seeing as how various books might not always present historical facts as a historical fact, or contain various slants, outside material gives you a broader historical/ideological look at the circumstances going on in the book, and gives you tools to analyze the work you're looking at. Basically, outside material has been very, VERY important in every course I've taken. But I'm no professional.

Many cultural developments had historical reasons for doing so, some of them going back a long time. So while the FORMS of certain habits might be different, their underlying aspects are not. So the way in which you show respect for someone might be different, but showing respect for someone is still universal. I have a friend who is very touchy. I was not raised to be touchy, and to mind peoples' personal space. So when he gets all touchy, hugging, or being rough or wrestling around, I'm like, dude, chill. And he's like, "why do you not like me man?" So, you know, you just gotta work things out as they come along. I also studied as a foreign exchange student in Japan, and lived with a Japanese family. Yeah, some of the processes and ways of doing things were different. But many things were still very much the same- wake up, go to school/work, come home, spend time with family/friends on holidays, go places and have fun, etc etc. The shapes they took were, in some cases, different, but the elements were still there. As to contact and killing sexual attraction.... I don't think so. Even in Japan guys and girls still had ways of getting physical. It just wasn't flaunted out in public (as much, as younger generations are coming up with their own ways of doing things in some areas). So just because you don't see a guy an a girl walking down the street holding hands, or making out, or walking in on people having sex in an airplane, doesn't mean it's not happening. There are lots of ways to boost sexual attraction even without physical contact. The words you use, glances, social cues, can send messages. If you get a series of one word responses from a guy/girl, that's probably a clue they don't want to talk to you at the moment, and if it continues, maybe try talking to someone else. But if you ask someone how they're doing and they wind up telling you what their most exciting summer vacation was, well maybe that's a sign that moving in a little closer would be okay It's a two way street. Regardless of whatever cultural norms there are, people DO have a "sixth sense" that they rely on frequently, whether consciously or not. Most people can tell if you are being a genuine person. Most people can tell if you are genuinely sorry if you make a cultural faux pas. Most people can tell if you are a happy person who is comfortable in who they are, and is willing to make a genuine effort to get to know them and interact with them. If you seem shifty, overly nervous, secretly resentful, or self sabotaging (consciously or not) then they are less likely to, well, "put up with you".

Pretty much. And texts that spout universality of religion, spiritual experiences, and revelations of a deity don't mesh very well with any plan to create a religion in which everyone must either bow before you or be killed because that's what your divinely inspired texts say.

And what happens if, like martial arts, you do not seek them to show off or domineer over others, but so that, in situations like your dream president example, you can act and know that those who you want to protect will safely be protected? Just because someone might take powers, or martial arts ability, and abuse them, does not mean they are without merit in and of themselves, or that one should not seek them because they can be abused. I must again refer to a film that I find to be a powerful example of the point I'm trying to make, The Counte of Monte Cristo (2002 Film). The man's only crimes were that he was content with his life (he had always been poor), he met with recent success (was a trustworthy sailor and got promoted to captain over his first mate), and was loved by a childhood sweetheart. His colleagues and even best friends, wracked with jealousy, hatched a plot that he was powerless to stop. It was only after he became educated (gaining mental superiority), and learned to fight (gaining physical superiority) that he was able to win in the end. (the film takes a slightly different turn than the original novels did, but anyway) My point remains that humility is good. Non-violence is good. But what happens when you are targeted BECAUSE of that? I think there is nothing wrong with having "power" to protect yourself (and others) against that. Now you might choose to use it defensively or go off and seek revenge or use it to show off and gain social status and all sorts of other stuff, but that's up to you. The powers, in and of themselves, aren't inherently not worth it because of the actions individuals take to have it.

Know what you want, never settle.

All righty, so I've been pondering a few things recently, and I'd like to share. I'm sure most of us are familiar with things like emptiness meditation, meditation following the breath, meditation focusing on the dantien, all while letting go of thoughts and things like that. And that's all well and good. But at the same time, there are things which involve something being done. Take lucid dreaming for example. In order to lucid dream, you have to become lucid during a dream (bit of tautology for you ). Yet if you go to bed and just decide to empty your mind, you may or may not become lucid (in my humble experience), yet even if you do go to bed thinking, "I am going to become lucid", you might not necessarily become so either (in my humble experience). Same goes with energy work (the topic of which has, I know, been kicked around some)- if you just empty your mind and do some of the above practices, will energy circulate, or do you have to do a specific energy circulating practice to do any effect? Yet if everything is one/empty/whatever, (and I think the above types of emptiness meditations are quite nice), and you practice emptiness meditation and your practices involve that, how (if at all), do you get stuff done/have stuff happen?

Otis- great thoughts, and nice example Now see that's a good way of looking at it, but in my humble opinion, that's only good if you're talking about theory. Let's say that you want to have a lucid dream, for instance, and you trust it to happen spontaneously and then.... it doesn't! What then? Let's take it a bit further, let's say you are practicing an IMA, let's say that you are giving into wu wei or however you want to phrase it, and you need to perform the right technique at the right time, trusting that it will spontaneously.... and then it doesn't? You might argue that finding a way of doing something takes away from its spontaneity, so why bother trying to find a way to do it? But I do not agree with that viewpoint. You can do something consciously, but also be able to do it spontaneously. So how do you, not only do something spontaneously, but have a way of finding out that you CAN do it should the circumstances arise in which you need to do it? And then, taking it further, subsequently practice so you know how it works, and know that it can work and in what ways in can work when you do so spontaneously?

Seeing all the ways in which children are variously abused or taken advantage of, it's no wonder people would rather cultivate various forms of power/abilities than love. But as alwayson pointed out, that's not to say that abilities and love are mutually exclusive.