Sloppy Zhang

Thanks for the recommendation! While it's hard enough to find good books on eastern methods, I find it's even harder to find books from western authors and western systems that are anything but fluff so it's good to hear there are some good books from other people than the usual suspects

I've been a member of his old alchemy page (Talisman) then on homosanctus (Hawkeye) during Wan's "absence" then signed up for Journik (Hawkeye) when it premiered. I kinda phased out after a while when Wan started uploading new videos, and I haven't logged onto anything associated with him for a while now. He banned me from his channel for some comment I made on one of his videos (he made a video about seeing a bum and he was like, "that guy has lots of stories, but he's a loser" and I asked him "in an old video didn't you say not to judge?" and he was like, "you don't know what you're talking about- banned") He's a mega shady character. He has a history of sudden starts matched by sudden disappearances. He really cashed in on the 14 year old crowd that wants to be naruto in real life. It also helps that he's Asian and that the west has highly romanticized the "ancient secrets of the orient". All he's gotta do is put on a karate gi, spout out some Korean (familiar terms which only sound new because nobody is familiar with the Korean terminology), and recite from the Dao De Jing and everyone thinks he's a freakin' buddha. My theory is that he bailed on everyone like he bailed on all his other failing projects. But for months he couldn't come up with a new idea, and when he looked, new people were still being drawn to his stuff even though he wasn't doing anything. So he came back to the crowd, told everyone he left so they could "figure things out on their own and grow" and kept teaching, focusing a lot on self help and things. The thing about Wan is that he's like one of those "false math proofs", like the one where you can prove 1=2. It starts off right. And it ends right. But somewhere in the middle there's a step that looks right, despite the flawed conclusion, but if you really know your math rules, is actually wrong. Wan is like that. He says all the right things. He draws from all the right places. But at the end you're like, "wtf? How'd he come up with that?" Wan did get me interested in meditation for more purposes than just calming your mind. He was the first person I encountered who suggested that meditation can be used to DO something (magic, alchemy, etc etc) which was a very important connection for me. Luckily for me he left when he did. That got me to branch out, learn genuine teachings from genuine teachers, and when he came back, and I reviewed what he taught, I realized that he talked a lot without really saying anything. That said, he IS a good internet marketer. As I mentioned in another thread, Wan got all his followers to do Gi Ma Sae on video and post their videos. So pretty much his stuff exploded across the internet over the course of a single day. Exploitative? Yes. Clever? Yes. Mewtwo- My advice to you is whenever you see a good article or site posted on thetaobums, to post it on journic, and link here for where you got it. I used to post things I found helpful on Journik. Most of them were ignored by all but a few people. Though I don't really agree with all of Wan's methods or what he does, he DOES bring the subject of meditation to a lot of people. But I guess in that way it's kinda similar to drugs for spiritual use- some people use them, open up, then seek other avenues of development. Some people use them, open up, and then never stop using them.

Please do!

I didn't know what pose that was, so I looked it up on google images.... Seems to me like if there were any powers connected to it, the porn industry would have found them by now....

It's not that hard to believe...... 99% of the time, the schools that teach these arts are not teaching the methods necessary to be successful at fights.

So there are a lot of "hot topics", systems, teachers, etc here on the forums. Kunlun, for example, Spring Forest Qigong, KAP, and a few others (we all know what they are anyway ) Not that these systems are bad or ineffective or harmful, or great even (please leave such discussion for their respective threads), but how about we talk about some lesser known systems? You know, the systems that are good, but way too simple or straightforward, or may even without the dramatic flair that sets of the raging taobums fires What have you guys seen, heard, or (even better), done that you think more people should know about?

This, and this:

Eh, the rules on bullying are different now than they were in my day. I was bullied when I was a kid, and stuff like that didn't help me. Maybe it would work nowadays though. Because kids are masters at fighting [edit] I guess some personal bias is shining through here. I've had personal experience with both of the types of bullying we described here. I was bullied, and no amount of going to authorities/authority figures helped. I had to take the situation into my own hands and put a stop to it, and I've always had that philosophy and never had any problems. I've always been a nice guy though, only once, years later, did I catch myself starting to bully someone, and I put a stop to that right quick and we became really good friends. Shortly after I initially put a stop to my own bullying, I saw someone else being bullied. They were the typical nerd stereotype, and he was sort of a friend of mine. The problem was I was also sort of friends with the guy doing the bullying. Anyway, one day the nerd guy just tore off and beat the shit out of the guy doing the bullying. Except this kid did it in the middle of the school cafeteria, he got suspended for a while, then was in isolated learning for a few months. Next time I saw him he was much beefier. The thing is, I was partly responsible for that kid being picked on, and for the trouble he got in because I didn't help him. I guess this bleeds into my opinions in terms of spiritual traditions. If someone is hurting, I think if you can help them, you should. Obviously you shouldn't be giving guns to kids, and you kinda have to read the situation and the persons involved. But in general, if you take the time to trust someone with knowledge that has helped you, they recognize it, and return the trust. Just my experience though. Others have different experiences which affect their decisions.

Or.... kid fights back, and then doesn't pick on other people because he knows how it feels. Maybe he helps other people, through direct intervention, through teaching them skills, or through just being there. Both situations happen all the time.

D'OH!

Love to everyone who takes the time out to make a post!

Powerful analogy, but I don't think it's correctly related to this particular situation.... It'd be more like, I dunno, if my dad was a combat veteran, and he told me some trick that could seriously injure somebody in a fight, and my dad told me never to use it unless I was in serious trouble, and I shouldn't tell other people about it, but at the same time I had a friend who was always getting beat up after school each day, and he tried to fight back, but he didn't know how to fight, and just got beat up worse. Do I show that friend the trick that could put the bully/bullies down, or do I hold to the promise I made to my dad not to use it or share it?

I've always wondered why everyone so desperately wants to keep all cats in bags. Why can't we let them out? I mean, unless you're taking some lolcats pictures and you need a cat or two in a bag but.... you gotta let it out eventually, right?

It's no different than any mechanism that goes on in the physical. Our eyes pick up different wavelengths of light, and our brain interprets those things as objects. Our ears pick up different frequencies of sound, and our brain interprets them as sounds. We then correlate objects and sounds to various concepts- we see a pencil, and we understand it's connected to writing, communication, learning, recording, etc. We hear the sound of a dog and associate it with pets, friends, playing catch, getting bitten, etc. In the Hermetic philosophy, there is the concept "As above, so below", and "as below, so above", so the energetic layer acts the same was as the physical layer, just, with energy. You directly perceive energy, and your brain correlates that energy to sight. But since it's not "physical" sight, it becomes categorized as "clairvoyance". Nothing is going on that doesn't already happy on the physical level. Unless you think just being alive is a delusion/hallucination, which may very well be the case anyway

Yes.

It's good to know my posts are being read! Thank you

Eh, I mean, do the research on the teacher. I've always had high standards for any teacher I sought out. I've always had high standards for what I wanted to accomplish in the martial arts. There are a lot of teachers that really only know the surface level. They'll teach you the motions and.... really, there are plenty of great books and DVD's that will teach you just the movement, and those usually range between $20-$60, one time payment, whereas I've seen places that charge at least $50 for two classes a month that teach half of the material you'd get in a book. There are lots of great, very high level teachers that have put their teachings in print or DVD format, where you get form training + tips + insights + philosophy. There's a LOT of really excellent material out in print. A lot more than people realize. If the teacher is really good, spend some time and see what they have to offer. If it's just people going through the motions..... eh, you can save a lot of money just by doing it on your own.

Listen to your body. I've studied tai chi and qigong on my own since I started (mostly qigong nowadays), and I cannot stress this enough- your body has natural ways of moving, and it WANTS to move in those ways. If you get your mind out of the way, if you discard notions of how you "think" you should be moving, your body will take over and do what is naturally healthy for it. Tai chi, from its very beginnings, was designed around the idea that a martial art should mix well with the way the body naturally wants to move and should cause as little conflict as possible. That said, most of the work is done for you- all the moves and whatnot are there, you just have to do them. The work that YOU have to do is listen to your body and adapt the moves to your body. Now this doesn't mean break the rules and do some other crazy techniques to throw your body out of alignment. Just keep all the principles in mind, do the moves, listen to your body (this involves more of letting your body tell you what to do, rather than your mind telling your body what to do), and you will be fine. (and please don't listen to anyone who says you can't do it on your own, that you will fail on your own, or some other horrible fate should you not train with a teacher!!!)

Damn. (in a good way)

A small article on it.

Aleister Crowley used sex at various stages in his magickal workings, perhaps you should look into some of his stuff (though Crowley's writing, from what most people say, seems kind of hard to understand unless you already know what he's talking about.... or so they say). Then again, accounts of Crowley differ- some say he was completely nuts, and way far off the track. Others say he was brilliant with the utmost willpower, so could partake in any event, from sacred to profane, without it affecting his balance in the least. Regardless, I seem to recall that Crowley was of the school of sex magick thought that both partners did not need to be on the same wavelength for anything to work. Translation: you didn't have to tell your partner(s) what you were secretly doing or that you were using the sex energy for something other than, err, sex. A lot of people take objection to this type of working, but whether that's just out of moral convictions or because they have not found it to work, I'm not sure. To that extent, Chaos magic also makes use of the energy generated during sex for magickal workings. "Stealing the Fire From Heaven" by Stephen Mace outlines the "neither-neither" method of chaos magic, where you take the energy generated by some event (in this case, case) and transmute it into a neutral form of energy (not good, not bad, hence, neither-neither) which you can then store or put toward some magic working. It should be noted here that the energy can come from ANYWHERE, not just sex. It could come from the frustration from an argument, it could come from the laughter of a really good joke, it could come from sex, it could come from the pain you feel when you get bit by a dog, anything. So not strictly sexual, but yeah.

They would probably get the notion that they were somewhere on the internet. Wait.... Naw, but really, change is constant, right? Some days we feel good, other days we feel bad, and thread reflect the moods. Sometimes there aren't a lot of new people who show up, so it's just the same old guys kickin' around the same old topics.... then the old people get bored and take a break from posting, new people come in and kick around the same old topics but are new to them, old people come in and are like, "same old, same old", then new threads get made and everyone is happy, then it gets old and everyone gets sad.......

Good post! I haven't figured out if another well known figure, Captain Jack Sparrow from the Pirates of the Caribbean films, is a Daoist or not. There's some ambiguity as to whether he plans it all out, or lives totally in the moment. But I'm sure he transcends both of those dualities anyway

Well that's kind of the beauty of it- when you reach a point where your intention is causing tension, you even let that go.

Yeah, in another thread I mentioned this story: here I saw it on tv when it aired, the woman was describing how she breathed, it sounded a lot like the Daoist breathing that I've seen taught everywhere, and she mentioned that if you just relaxed, at the beginning your lungs will start convulsing a little, but after you relax past it you reached a calm state where you can hold you breath for a long time. She uses it to swim in the ocean for long periods of time and has set a few records for free diving.