Sloppy Zhang

Yyyyyyyyeeeeeeeessssssssssssssssss? By the way taobum, care to share who you are and how you know so much about Mo Pai?

I don't know how close it would be to the actual structure. In fact, I don't think that it is the actual structure- for me, it just feels like a good representation. Like the difference between me drawn a cup on a piece of paper, and a skilled artist drawing a cup, and then an actual cup. For me, if I was doing a side view, it would be two parallel lines on the side and one flat line on the bottom. Like a box without the top. Yeah. That's my cup. From an angle, it might be a poorly drawn cylinder, and you might have trouble figuring it out what it is.... But with a superb artist's rendering, you're going to see the cup. Other ways of looking at the universe, other cosmologies, are rough. I don't look at it and go, "aha, a cup!" I go, "eh, well, if you turn it to the side and if you picture it a little differently in your mind, yeah, it could be a cup." In terms of cultivation, I've recently been doing a lot of studies with Hermetics, namely Franz Bardon's "Initiation Into Hermetics." The system makes sense. Everything is laid out. He has his own way of looking at the universe based on the five western elements (earth, water, fire, air, space/void) and he connects them to different parts of the body and different attributes of the soul. But when I am in meditation, I don't feel it. When I'm feeling my body, I don't feel that the elements are there. When I meditate and clear my mind, and observe my body, I have to conjure up a picture in my mind of what it is I'm supposed to be seeing according to the system. It just doesn't work for me. Now take something like Joel Signeur's breakdown of the elements using the five phases model, the breakdown of the chakras that he describes. For me, that makes sense. When I meditate, when I stop thinking and just observe, THAT is what I see in my own body. When I am sitting in a park bench gazing at a pond, or looking out a window to the mountains, it's the Yi Jing that I see- Heaven, Earth, the rest of the bagua, and their interactions. This doesn't mean that one's better than the other. Plenty of people get along great with Bardon's system. It's certainly a lot more accessible and open than many Daoist paths. But for me, it just doesn't work. LOGICALLY though, they cover the same ground. Each of them has a method for explaining the same things. You can draw parallels. "Ah, this thing in one is this thing in the other." So maybe a large part of it is subjectivity. Objectively they could be the same, but for each person, there could be a different feel. In any case, neither of them are actually the thing itself, I don't think. The Yi Jing and other Daoist ways of explaining the universe are good ways of describing what I feel, but in the end those too are constructions used by us to understand an abstract concept. Well I think part of it is maybe that subjectivity. One of the things Joel Signeur mentions in the video is that the world is in a wood phase right now. Wood deals with rationality and logic. Just think about it- the best way to discredit someone is to say they are "illogical". I'm not talking about an argument per se, but to discredit them as a person. "Don't believe what that person says, they're crazy." It doesn't matter if you have all the proof in the world, if someone sees you as incapable of using logic, you are pretty much thrown out by society. Even though plenty of people make very successful careers based on non-linear, non-logical thought. And when they are successful everyone "ooohs" and "aaaahs" and they say, "how do they come up with that stuff?" So perhaps part of it is, we understand something from one perspective, now it's time to understand it from the "logic" perspective. Now we have to explain the how and the why. It's just a phase. So part of what you have to do is appeal to logic. Joel did it in the video. He mentioned how the European guy connected the beating of the heart to the pumping of blood, whereas Chinese medicine had discovered that a LOOOOOOONG time before. And Joel said, "if they discovered that so long ago, and Europeans just recently caught up, what else has already been discovered that the western world has yet to validate on its own?" That's a pretty logical thing to say. We've taken one step, and Chinese medicine doesn't stop there, so logically there must be other steps to examine. But then you get into stuff like profits and greed. And assumptions. There's the assumption that many people have that, "if it's true, science would have discovered it by now." A lot of responsibility is placed elsewhere (that's not new).

I was recently told that Robert Bruce had some good work out there, and when I read through "Astral Dynamics" I started to see a lot of things that had come up with me in my own dream work that I couldn't explain- so I have some respect for it because, well, I've validated it with my own practice beforehand, then again, everyone is different. Rawn Clark has great work, it's too bad he doesn't like Robert Bruce's stuff As far as methods, I really don't like the "set alarm, wake up, go back to sleep" method. Maybe it's cause I'm lazy and I don't want to get up before I have to I've never actually tried the method though, maybe it has fast results. For me the stuff that works is examining your dreams and trying to find recurring themes and elements, really focus on recognizing them, as well as increasing your awareness of various situations in real life, and fairly quickly you'll see some element in your dream and you'll realize it's a dream. Recently though for me, I've become lucid without any dream signs. I'll just suddenly go "whoa, dream." It might have to do with general awareness that I cultivate through meditation, or it might be because of energy work. However, I DO suggest that training to get a continuous, fully engaged awareness at all moments will get you into lucid dreams fast (though admittedly it's hard to do with the monotony of life). For me recently I've started to have a lucid dream in my first set of dreams, then in later REM stages gone into "regular" dreams, though there is some back and forth when it comes to when during sleep I have them. It just comes down to practice, and attitude. Try to have fun

Thanks for posting that quote! There are types of meditations where your focus is on the image of a deity, a mandala, or some other type of thing where you get absorbed in the image's energies and it helps you to sort of become that image. So in light of that, a balancing symbol that represents all the energies that are in circulation would help to, well, balance (at least in theory, and apparently in practice as well!)

Perhaps you should try living without fire for a little while

Yes, I've heard of looking at hands both as a way of "reality checking" in wake time and dream time, as well as enhancing lucidity and stability of the dream once you've become lucid. I've also heard rubbing your dream hands together, or spinning your dream body helps to stay lucid if you feel like you are using it. Looking at my hands has led to some of my most tactile and realistic dreams I've ever had, so there may be something to it

I agree, and the thing is that, if you find this to be true, what our perspective considers to be the future is contained within that NOW moment. It's the problem with language. By its very definition "future" implies some thing in a sequential order that happens after the present moment, and has not been experienced. But pulling away from language, the concept, "future" does not actually exist- we created the concept to explain how we view the world, which is limited. And to say "the future has already happened" is also incorrect because that talks about the past, but the past, present, and future all exist NOW. I, you, a guest reading this post, we are all our past, present, and future selves right now at this moment- though we may not be able to perceive it. This concept allows for spontaneity. It allows for unpredictability. The problem is that those terms as well are, to a certain extent, created because of our limited perception. So, it is a paradox. There is a bit of a language problem. How can you make a new choice if you are your future self that has made a choice? Can you make a different choice, but you would be that person anyway. But you still can. I think you still can. I see absolutely no limits to this. I totally agree with everything that you and TzuJanLi have said about pretty much everything. And I don't think any of it is affected in any way, shape, or form by it. Our perceptions might be affected. Our language barriers may have problems conveying the true meaning. But I don't think it halts anything at all.

Glad you liked it Yeah, what is "reality" and what's the difference between "bananas" and "enlightenment"? While I've never tried any past life regressions, I have read a few methods for doing so from a few people. One of them that I came across had a fairly typical method where you would mentally go down this hallway full of doors, and each doorway would open to a new past life. Some doorways would be bright and shining, while others would be dim. A dim door represents a memory in which you have learned the lesson, worked out the karma, know what you need to know, etc. A bright doorway involves you seeing memories that are leading you to your present situation- baggage you still carry with you. So maybe some dogs you need to let lie, and maybe some dogs are all sprawled out on your couch when you wanna watch tv

Yes, they are excellent movies! Chinese martial arts don't have a very good track record when it comes to stuff like that...... Then again, it depends on who's keeping score. Ask the Chinese and they'll tell you one thing. Ask a non-Chinese and they'll tell you another. So who knows?

Yup, someone posted that on journik a while back: http://journik.com/community/pg/blog/LAkeqi/read/36683/also-known-as-naega-shinjang-gi-ma-sae Wan's response (it's on that page):

A crucial part of his actual technique (aside from just philosophizing all the time) is standing in horse stance. Gi mah sae. There used to be a video up on homosanctus.org detailing it specifically, because apparently some details in the stance make it a billion times better than just normal horse stancing. Then he came out with "oh haeng gi mah sae" which I'm not sure if it's the same thing, or if it's the horse stance with some added details thrown in. Anyway, he tells people if they wanna get anywhere they gotta hold that position for at least an hour, more the better, so at least he's got people doing it! Not too long ago he had a little campaign on his site, journik.com where he had everyone post a video of themselves on youtube doing gi mah sae and told them to put it in the title and link it everywhere. Pretty much put himself on the google map there in one day. A very good move... however exploitative it might have been... (do a google search for "gi ma sae" and see what I mean!)

I'm not trying to justify anything. I see what I see just the same as you. This is something I put in my post: Just didn't know if you saw it, and I reposted it when you mentioned the "unfolding "Now"" I can't say any more than I've already said. I see your point about making decisions and trying to justify what I want to be true. Believe me, I've learned that lesson in a very hard way. I see what I see. You see what you see. Maybe we see something different? I don't know. That's the issue that's a topic of my interest right now, but it has nothing to do with this thread! I've said all I can say.

Can you clarify a bit what you meant? I find what you say interesting and was wondering if you were referring to something specifically. Choose what wisely?

Is this really something we can laugh about? Sorry if it's already been posted, I haven't stuck with this thread since the beginning...

Yeah, when observing your own life, and stuff like that, you really have to try to NOT put your own spin on everything. I like the Daoist cosmology because when I look at the universe, even when I DON'T think of the Daoists in particular, I see the cosmology. It's one of the reasons I got into Daoism, because I had already seen aspects of it my entire life! And it's also what's prevented me from getting into other systems- they have a certain view of the universe, and when I try to see the universe their way, I can't! Sometimes they say, "well you just have to practice" and my response is that if it's something I have to construct myself, then I might as well just write a fictitious novel! Something that, I think B.K. Frantzis wrote in one of his books was that if you can dissolve/let go of something, then it wasn't really real. Maybe someone else said it and I'm incorrectly attributing it, so I'm sorry if that's the case. Maybe a lot of people have said it. But basically, for me it's about stripping away. When I personally strip away something, I see stuff like qi, the five elements, the bagua and Yi Jing. For me, it's there. When I look at animals, I see Daoist principles. When I'm doing something new, I apply Daoist principles and everyone tells me I'm a natural. For me, it really is the key to the universe. I don't want to depress anyone if they study something like the Yi Jing for a long time, but when they "strip away" the Yi Jing turns out to be the thing that is stripped away. That's totally fine. I don't think you should force it. But I don't want to discourage you from studying the Yi Jing either! Ack, this post is going crazy! Do it, and look at the universe. Whenever possible, break it down, strip away, see the underlying structure. If the underlying structure YOU see isn't something that's written in a book, toss the book, IMHO.

I heard that it might have been a copyright thing. The rights to the title "Kung Fu Kid" or something along those lines I think had already been purchased by someone else, and they couldn't come up with some other title along those lines. And seeing as how it was a remake of a culturally well known story.... eh, "Karate Kid." I think culturally everyone knows the difference between "karate" and "kung fu", even if their image of "kung fu" is Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon or someone like Jackie Chan...... oh, wait, Jackie Chan's IN the movie, good, so everyone will pretty much pick up on the "kung fu" thing. If they don't, they have bigger problems. "What's in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet." - William Shakespeare

In my humble opinion, a lot of the "consequences" for accepting various types of world views are assumptions made on our parts that we attach. For example- 1) Concept: you've already made a decision Conclusion: life would be dull and boring, we'd just be another mechanism without any responsibility. My thoughts: that concept does not, in my mind, automatically create that conclusion. If I have already made every decision that I am faced with, that doesn't, in my mind, make my life dull and boring. It doesn't free me from consequences or responsibility of my decisions, and it doesn't mean that I don't have to go through a decision making process. For me, it's actually kind of cool to think that the "future" has already happened kinda like sci-fi, makes life more interesting for me. So where does spontaneity come into play? You can still be spontaneous. You can still make some whirlwind decision.... but that decision has already been made. But you are making a new decision. But that decision has already been made. So you make a new decision. It's a constant paradox. Both are true. But neither are true. I love paradoxes. I always have. Random chance can still happen, and you'll never see it coming. But at the same time, it's already happened. You can still be passionate and have a love for everything, even though you've already encountered it. Maybe this is touching on an aspect of "the great Now" that I've seen mentioned in a few places. There is no past or future, just now. To say it's already happened is somewhat inaccurate, because it is happening in the present. You are your future self NOW. Your decisions are being made NOW, the decisions you make 5 years from now are happening NOW. They've already happened which is what got you here NOW. Maybe it's because I don't always think logically, and enjoy (not) doing so I am able to accept paradoxes, and that all possibilities happen simultaneously. Same thing with the thought that: 2) Concept: there's no good or evil Conclusion: people are free to do whatever they want I don't necessarily think that there is some ultimate good or evil out there. But at the same time I don't think that it entitles people to do whatever they want. There ARE people out there who make that conclusion, and do horrible things to themselves and/or others. But I do not think that the concept definitely makes it so that the conclusion always happens. No offense to anyone, but I find it rather silly that "well if people do whatever they want and hurt everyone then morals fly out the window" is the counter argument that ALWAYS comes up when someone suggests "hey, there might not be any absolute good or evil in the universe!" It's just.... can we be a bit more original? You can say I have "morals", but I don't know where they come from. For me, they are internally there. Maybe it's cultural conditioning. Maybe it's my own subconscious mind at work. Maybe they are instilled there naturally. Maybe they do not exist and are constructions of my own mind. I think everyone should look within and find their own morals, but at the same time, I don't really think that you should just say, "oh, I looked inward and found my own morals, lying, cheating, and stealing are okay with me!" Maybe they just go against my own morals? Maybe a universal sense, I don't know. However, I just don't think that a lot of the conclusions that people make, and more specifically you, TzuJanLi, always necessarily follow from the given concept. I hope that post made sense. It's hard for me to convey what I mean when it comes to this, because it's very abstract. It's not one or the other. It's not sitting on the fence. It's not a shade of gray.

I don't really have "data", merely a few observations that I have taken. 1) If you believe theoretical physics about the whole dimension thing, our future selves already exist, we just haven't viewed that cross section of our lives yet. Living as three dimensional beings we can only see things at our level, and since the "future" has yet to cross our plane of existence, we have yet to view it. But if you think about it, our future selves already exist, and all the decisions we've made in the future have already happened- we just don't perceive them that way (please see at least part one of the video I linked to understand this part) 2) Rawn Clark wrote his article on his Eight Temples meditation project in 2002. He said that the meditation project started four years prior, in 1998. In his article, he mentions that people showed up for the meditation project essentially "from the future." So here, in 2010, if I decided to try his meditation project and go to the astral temple for the project, I would meet him and his students as they were going through the project in 1998. People in 1998 would see me as being from "the future", My 1998 self, who at the time wasn't even interested in meditation, hadn't even come close to discovering this meditation project, and was nowhere near close making the decision to do it. But my decision had already been made. (please see the link I provided above and peruse through his website, on the first page there's a link to the "Eight Temples Meditation" article, click on the flag for the language of the article that you want to read it) ***note*** I haven't done the Eight Temples meditation project myself. But if I decide to do it, the decision would have already been made, and if I decide to not do it, that decision has also already been made. Of course, this could all be wrong. Theoretical physics may be wrong, and Rawn Clark could just be seeing some funky astral disruptions that only look like me from 2010. I am merely offering it to this thread as another aspect of the issue. People always think of "free will vs. other option". It's always a linear type thing, with branches or forks in the road. You go down one branch, and arrive at another, you go down one fork in the road and meet another, and you make choices as you go, unless there is some higher power which has a plan to dictate where you go. But what if you've already made the choice? You have free will, but you don't have free will. You have both, yet neither. Seems more Taoist to me, so I like it Plus it totally blows your mind to think about, so it's fun Unless it doesn't blow your mind and you think it's garbage, in which case...... feel free to move along from this post! But you've already made the choice, to believe it, to not believe it, to have an open mind towards it, to shut it all out

I'd ask my spirit guide to tell me an epic story that I can turn into the next big novel + movie series. Maybe a, I dunno, 12 book series with 14 movies to it? Yeah, a couple billion dollars there. Not to mention legions of adoring fans and years worth of spin off products and royalty fees. Or ask my spirit guide to see what everyone else in my class is writing about when I don't have a good paper topic! You could also go see movies together, and admission for your guide is free, so it's like two for the price of one. Though some people might say you're crazy when you are saving an "empty seat" for your spirit guide. You could also ask your guide to be on the lookout for someone who might jump you, so being mugged is never a fear. All kinds of reasons why you'd want to find a spirit guide.... and those are just the mundane ones! And, you know, more broadly, if you didn't know what to do in a particularly crucial situation you could always ask your spirit guide for uh.... you know, guidance.

So in another thread I mentioned these two videos: Imagining the Tenth Dimension Pt 1 And: Imagining the Tenth Dimension Pt 2 Basically, in the fourth dimension, past, present, and future are one. Since we are third dimension beings, we can't perceive the whole of a fourth dimensional object, so we can only see one cross section at a time- and that's the progression of time, past, present, and future. That said, any choice you make has already been made. It reminds me of the movie Matrix: Reloaded, where Neo is talking to the Oracle, and he says he doesn't know what choice to make, and she tells him he's already made the choice, his job now is to understand why he made it.

This is assuming that souls are bound by time and space. Rawn Clark, a high level practitioner of Franz Bardon's system (his website here: http://www.abardoncompanion.com/index.html) has an "eight temples meditation project". Basically, he has constructed eight different temples for different sections of the kabbalah in an astral/mental sphere, and he and students travel there to conduct lessons and rituals. You can read the details of it on the website, but one thing he noted was this: When he and his students did the meditation project, other people arrived at the project from the future. Basically what he did was each month they focused on a different temple. He'd send out a packet of info, then two weeks later they'd do the ritual and write back to him of their experience, he would compile that, send it out to all his students with info on the next ritual, and by that time they'd have a couple weeks to reflect upon the material for the next meditation. Then Rawn Clark put up the meditations online, so anyone visiting the site wishing to do the meditations could do so. And if you read the meditations at a later date, decided to try them out, and showed up for the meditation, you would not be there alone, you would be there with everyone else as they were going through it the first time. Trippy, right? There is a two part video about imagining the 10th dimension: Part 1 Part 2 In explaining the fourth dimension, he talks about how humans would be one long snake type thing, where our whole lives, from infancy to adulthood to death, would all be seen at one time. But since we are third dimensional beings, we are only able to perceive cross sections of the dimension above us. Thus, we experience our lives sequentially. But that's an illusion, because really we're already there. Let's extrapolate that out, and assume that past lives and reincarnations are real. There is no separation. We are our past incarnations and future incarnations simultaneously, but since we are limited in our perceptions we view them sequentially. Furthermore, since various astral/mental dimensions are not bound by time, we experience things when we experience them. So why do we have to come up with an explanation for a higher population? More souls? Maybe more souls are incarnated. Or maybe people are incarnated into multiple bodies simultaneously, but we perceive only one at a time due to our limited senses. Robert Bruce talks about some very mind bending things in his book "Astral Dynamics" when it comes to making a double that you can project and running into it. I won't go into it because my post is already pretty far out, but it's just another example of how, well, the universe is really a mind flip.

If anyone's a fan of the manga series "Bleach", the main bad guy in the most recent chapter said: "Reason exists for those who cannot go on living without clinging to it."

Well if you put any weight in what says, From: http://www.lemondrop.com/2010/06/10/psychic-sylvia-browne-on-ghosts-angels-men-and-her-new-book/?icid=main|main|dl3|link3|http%3A%2F%2Fwww.lemondrop.com%2F2010%2F06%2F10%2Fpsychic-sylvia-browne-on-ghosts-angels-men-and-her-new-book%2F

I suggest you peruse this older thread to get some ideas. There are some valuable gems of wisdom in there that I have found valuable and that I have discovered ring true for me in that thread. There are also people who claim you can meet spirit guides in dreams, normal dreams and lucid dreams. I have tried without what I initially considered to be success, but upon further review of my dream experiences I think that perhaps the discovery of something is possible, so perhaps you could try that avenue as well. As you are able to reach deeper and deeper levels of meditation you will also discover some interesting things, perhaps guides in that form as well, so keep up some kind of meditation practice. To that extent, I have found qigong helps to energize the body to keep it healthy for meditation practice, so you might want to look into that. For starters, I recommend B.K. Frantzis' "Dragon and Tiger Medical Qigong" system. The instruction manual is kind of pricey, but it is top notch inf. "Opening The Energy Gates Of Your Body" as well as "Relaxing Into Your Being" and "The Great Stillness" also teach good energy work + meditation techniques that let you go as deep into yourself as you are willing to go.