Sloppy Zhang

Okay, so I typed up a long post, but deleted it, and started writing a shorter post, but that turned out even longer, basically it came down to this: You cannot base a relationship on false premises. Man or woman, you have to be honest when laying the foundation. You have the moral obligation to help someone you love and are in a relationship with lead a fulfilling life. And sometimes that means breaking up and moving on to someone who will help them fulfill their lives. This happened with my uncle. He started making a lot of money in his business, and started to become well known. He wanted to start up a family. He had always been really athletic (played football in high school and some in college), he had come from a large family (6 brothers and sisters, dozens of cousins). He wanted kids who were athletic and to grow up in a large family atmosphere like he did. Help each other out, meet on weekends to play football, have fun at holidays. So he started looking around for women he thought were "fit". He really did. Would only date tall women from tall families, 'cause he wanted his kids to get bigger than he was (and he was already 6'2" or something). He met this woman who was smokin' hot. She was tall. Came from a good family, she also had a lot of siblings. They got along great. He was making lots of money, they just moved in to a big house. Oh, and she couldn't have kids. And she knew it. My uncle did not. She hadn't told him. So before they got married he would talk to her about having a lot of kids, he was like, "I grew up in a family with 7 kids, would you mind?" She was like, "oh no, no, that would be great, I also have a lot of brothers and sisters." I mean, they would talk about this at family gatherings, all the kids they were gonna have, how the family would get even bigger. She knew he wanted kids, and she just kind of went along with it, and hever told him. Then they got married. And THEN he found out she couldn't have kids. Well, at the time that side of the family was pretty religious, so getting a divorce was out of the question. And they were still rich and had a great house and nice cars, but my uncle still wanted kids. So they paid for all kinds of procedures to try and get my aunt pregnant. And she'd have a baby conceived and then the baby would die, and they went through this process dozens of times. Tore my uncle apart. They were finally in their late 30's before they had their first kid, and the drugs and procedure they used to have him is no longer legal today because of the risks to mother and child. The kid was really sick at first, but he turned out fine. They had a second kid two years later. And that was it for the kids. My uncle's no longer really religious, and divorced her last year. Their marriage really fell apart in the last years they were together. There was a lot of deceit in their marriage besides the whole child thing. But it basically boils down to, my former aunt KNEW that my uncle wanted a lot of kids. She was like, yeah, no big deal. But she withheld the information. Lived in a nice house. Bought a lot of nice clothes. Went on a lot of nice cruises. And got a boatload of money in the divorce. She basically stole the life from my uncle, in no small words- not only his present life, but the life that he could have had. It's one of the lowest things you can do to a person, to take a life that they HAVEN'T EVEN HAD A CHANCE TO LIVE. You aren't even giving them the opportunity. So maybe you should meditate on that. Dang, this post wound up pretty long too. Sorry. And look, more pie guy, people can disagree and still get along. But this is a very large issue (large in the sense that it is a very weighty thing, kids, life, choice, etc). I don't have anything against you, but I do have some stuff against some of the actions that you are suggesting. I don't agree with dishonesty in either end of the relationship. If there was someone on this board saying, "my boyfriend doesn't want to have kids, but I have secretly stopped taking the pill without telling him", then I'd be telling her, "that's wrong you need to tell him." But you're the one here right now, so you're the one that I'm responding to. No hard feelings against you personally. Seriously.

1) Pretty much any of B.K. Frantzis' books. Great mix of philosophy and practices- let's you "connect the dots" between what it says in something like the Tao Te Ching, how you can implement that in your practice, in your life, pretty much anything. 2) Qi Dao - Tibetan Shamanic Qigong. Simple and straightforward book. Practices might be too simple for anyone who's been into qigong for a long time, but I thought that the philosophical parts talked about in that book really clicked for me. I also do a lot of dream work, and liked how he talked about dreams. The entire book is available to view on google, thanks to the author very much for that, but I did purchase my own copy because I liked it so much Books I am in the process of reading but are great so far: 2) Qigong for Total Wellness, by Dr. Baolin Wu. 4) A Light Warrior's Guide to High Level Energy Healing, by Michael Lomax. Again, haven't completed either of these two, but they are excellent so far and I can't wait to get through the rest of them.

Thanks for your confidence in me Interesting article though. I'm not totally sure about the exposure to violent media bit- maybe, I'm not sure. Maybe it's a result of my meditative practices, but I've been exposed to a lot of violence in the media. Some of it I don't really care about, because I know that in cases of entertainment it's just pretend. But some stuff really gets me. I first noticed a change when I watch the film "Inglorious Basterds".... I dunno, something about the violence in that really disturbed me. Well not disturbed, so much as.... I dunno, bothered me I guess. Who knows. I try not to worry about it though Also, great post Twinner!

Selfish in the sense that if you're with a girl who you know wants a kid, you'd be more concerned with what you want and keeping your own interests at the top of the list while concealing facts from someone you're in a relationship with, rather than being upfront and honest with her. She's investing so much emotionally in the relationship and you are not giving her the respect and courtesy of sharing important, life changing information. If she leaves because she wants a kid that badly, that's her right to follow through in her life choice. It's fine if you have made a different choice, but NOT if keeping it is at the expense of hers, and it's THAT which is selfish.

Good luck with that. I guess another thing to watch out for is the language barrier. If you aren't able to communicate with words, he may decide to teach you through direct experience. I'd work on some pretty heavy conditioning before you start training- some masters don't hold back during training.

For someone focused on transcendence, I think that you still have some pretty selfish attitudes. But hey, what do I know?

Thinking about this thread puts me in physical pain. Then again I just woke up and am still pretty stiff from sleep.... still though... ouch....

I've never heard of this master, though something about this style seems legit. Normally I'm on guard when it comes to people who just "create their own style", especially when they make claims like, "oh I just picked it up somewhere." That usually means they made it up by themselves after watching some kung fu movies or something, or that they aren't part of a credible lineage. Usually I'd suggest going to their website, or calling in, and asking who their teacher was. Most credible martial arts schools cite their lineage. If they don't have a website or a contact number, major red flags! Probably not a credible style if that's the case. Though every once in a while there is a legit guy who just doesn't have their life together, or they don't have enough students to fund an actual place to train or something, but they still might be part of a legitimate style. But those people usually only accept students in person, and sometimes you need a referral from another well known teacher. But keep in mind that super traditional teachers like that are really strict, and if you can't cut the training, they might just tear your head off or something.

Thanks for the breakdown!

I haven't had a choice in my life Most love runs away from me

Understanding, first off. Understand that those people are not on the same level as you, higher or lower, recognize that their goals in life may be different than yours. Understand that to a large part, they are just the product of their past experiences, same as you, and their experiences might be different than yours and may lead them to value different things. I try to have good humor about it in those situations. Try to humor the people. They want to talk about something, well try listening to them. It's easy to be a good listener, most people love to talk about themselves and their situations. Most people don't have access to a good listener, because we live in a society where everyone is trying to one up each other. Example: "Yeah, I was on vacation for two weeks in the Bahamas last year." "Oh really? I was there for four. Did you go on a cruise?" "No... I.... stayed in the resort hotel and walked by the beach a few times...." "Oh you really should have taken the cruise, I had so much fun!" "oh...." So, I bet you could probably do a lot of good by just being there to listen and interact with the people there. You might learn something. Everyone and everything has a lesson, if you are open to it. Note: I don't work in an office, but I'm a college student, I run into my fair share of mundane world oriented people and problems.

If their drive is never going away, than hiding the issue is not going to resolve anything. Lying about it, by saying, "oh it's just that I don't want kids...." or withholding the information about the vasectomy is not going to change her attitude toward the issue. She'll probably keep pushing the matter and, again, put a lot more emotional investment in the matter until eventually it comes out that you had a vasectomy. So if she isn't already turned off by your sterility, she'll be even more turned off by the fact that you were lying and playing games with her- a lot of women will leave you right then and there, vasectomy or no. It'd be much more respectful to her and to yourself to just come clean, say you had a vasectomy. Then, it's "here's the situation. what are our options" as opposed to, "you were lying and making me run in circles for X amount of time, now what are our options?" With the second option she has even less reasons to stay with you than before. That to me sounds like a very bad reason to have a vasectomy. It seems like, please don't take this the wrong way, an immature, knee jerk reaction to a situation that makes you feel uncomfortable. It's fine if having kids isn't your thing, but you need to come to terms with that, and you need to come to terms with the man's role in creating a child, and the woman's role in creating a child, and what your goals are, and what your significant others' goals may be as well.

Cool. Do you mind posting again when the forum launches? Just in case I forget

It depends. If your partner says she wants kids, and you're like, "I don't want kids." She might just be like, well maybe it's something that I can convince him about, or maybe we can agree to just have one or maybe two. So she might spend all this time talking to you about it, or having it on her mind, and it might be a very long time before she finally finds out you had a vasectomy, in which case she'd feel that she just wasted her whole time trying to work with you on a solution to the child problem and you weren't even being upfront with her about it. If she wants to have kids, then that's a choice that she made and it's where she wants to take her life, and doesn't she have a right to be with someone with the same goals? If you don't want to have kids, or have a vasectomy, then trying to get with a girl who wants to have kids really badly might cause some problems. You could adopt, you could try getting a sperm donor, maybe there are ways of providing your own sperm, and in general come up with some way to get a kid. But if the fact of the matter is that you don't want any physical children anywhere in your life that you have responsibility over, that live in your house, or whatever part of the "having a child" process you don't want, and she does.... well, not many ways the relationship can still work out. But that's not any different than any other type of relationship, and I don't see how withholding information or denying the existence of any extra information or even downright lying about certain information is very healthy in most cases. And I don't think the subject of children is a subject that can just be ignored or brushed away with a change of wording in most committed relationships.

Yeah, and there are guys that want to have kids and women who don't, or can't. And if you keep it a secret the longer the relationship goes, especially if you know of their desire, and you don't come forward with it, it will cause problems, because like you said, they will find out. What's wrong with being in a relationship with someone you are on the same page with? I don't like to spend money for no reason, so should I marry a shopaholic? No, that's a recipe for disaster. Like Rainbow vein said, honesty. Unless you don't plan on having a long term relationship, then yeah, don't come forward with it. Not the way I'd personally go, not something that I really suggest doing because, I mean, it's a little bit dishonest to the other person. Unless you don't feel that a lie of omission is a big deal, but that's kind of a separate moral issue. Anyway, do what you want, but at least try to consider the other person's emotional investment.

Sometimes I read threads as a guest without logging in because: Plus I don't sign in unless it's important, and I usually don't respond unless I feel the need to contribute, or raise an issue, or sometimes if I have a momentary lapse in judgment and just post for no reason.

Thanks for the recommendation! *adds it to growing list of things to learn and people to visit* **Yes, there is an actual list I keep**

I don't know much about astrology, still have to review stuff from that video too, can you explain what you mean by "yang-fire rising over active wood" and stuff means? How do you find out about stuff like 1966-Fire Horse? Also...... 10pm to 3:30 a.m. is not enough sleep very few reasons why I'd get up that early, maybe if I had to write a paper, but if I'm going to be up at that hour I usually just pull an all nighter Thanks for the suggestion, I'll have to look that up.... and find a face reader!

From the very beginning it sounded like something familiar, then I clicked the link on the bottom for more and taking to Wan's facebook page. Oooh boy. Yeah, it's kind of a good story. But yeah, like Marblehead said, sometimes you have to make a choice, and like Marblehead said, accepting responsibility is the best way to go. Even if you regret the decision later on, you have to keep in mind that you did what you did in that moment with the best information that you had, and that led you to knowing what you know now, for better or for worse. Though I also agree with what that article said: when true love comes your way, you have no choice

Well.... finally done with the whole lecture! All in all, very, very good. Loved how he went pretty in depth with all the elements. Also liked the segment on astrology, he really broke down the trigrams really well, I thought. The only thing I didn't really get much into was the face reading... not sure how I feel about that. The other thing I kind of didn't understand was how various things were stimulated and how it was positive or negative. He talked about organ times/five element years which impacted organs. So if you have a weak organ, a time or a year in which it is over stimulated will be bad for it. But if you have a healthy organ, some stimulation could boost its performance? Well, thinking about it some more, I guess it's one of those things that is relative and depends on the situation, no hard and fast rule. Duh But yeah, great, GREAT lecture. Thanks so much for posting! I've really wanted to get into the five elements for a while, and Chinese astrology, but both of them are so daunting to get into @_@ this was excellent.

Mega thanks to Joel Signeur (chineseshamanism.com) for recording such an awesome lecture. It's packed with info. Really bringing a lot of ancient, obscure knowledge to the public. Also like to thank everyone and everything out there. So many lessons contained everywhere. Also thanks to the frustrations and hardships in life. Got a lot of great lessons about myself and life from those.

Yeah spiders are also my problem.... The other day I was thinking, "along my spiritual path I will probably have to overcome my fear of spiders." Then the very next day I looked down in my carpet and saw something stuck in it, and I thought it was a speck of food and I wanted to pick it up because I didn't want bugs to get in it. As I touched it, it was hard and crunchy and stuck to the carpet and when I yanked it out it was a dead curled up spider that I touched!!!!!!!! lskfj;sajf;alijf;aljsd;f Freaked me out a little bit.... Me and my predictions for the path

Well thanks for being honest about it. I don't know what to feel about the future. On the one hand, it seems like the world is heading for oblivion. People are preying upon each other NOW, it's just veiled in bureaucracy and social norms. Maybe it will become more blatant? Then again, in every era people thought society was going to crumble. Maybe to a certain extent it did. But isn't that the cycle? Birth, maturation, decay, death, birth, maturation, decay, death. Maybe I'll be one of the lucky ones who survive the "cleansing" process. Maybe I won't be. Hopefully I'll be fine with that. Maybe I say that now but when the time comes I'll be scared shitless. I guess that's why you gotta get your life in order and be satisfied with every single day that you live. Because you might not survive one more day, so you should be at peace with yourself all the time. So... yeah. That's all I got.

So do you have any solutions? Or is the only non-naive answer to just say "ah, we're all screwed anyway" and just sit and wait for it to happen? I have some corporate contacts who want to pool money to start building a private army, so when the shit hits the fan we can establish a military dictatorship and steal all the food from the little people hiding in their holes. Like my grandparents. I never really got along with them anyway. They too shall fall to my corporate-dirty-money funded army! Yeah I'm starting to apply some of that stuff to what's going on in the world too

Five years ago my grandparents bought a house that was 3 hours away from any major city, stockpiled a year and a half's worth of food, and began collecting guns. They were convinced that within months there would be a total economic and social collapse, and that the guys with the guns and food would be the ones calling the shots. So, stuff didn't collapse when they said it would. But they've worked hard for the success they've had, never taken any handouts, and are still firmly convinced that any minute now, the poor, unable to be sustained by the handouts from the rich, are going to rise up in revolt, what hasn't fallen through economically will fall through, there will be years of chaos, strife, and dog eat dog might-makes-right living. But now it seems like things are about to collapse. Let's all start stockpiling weapons and buy houses in the middle of nowhere. I already have four identities across three countries, and I have homes in two of them. I'm ready to go anywhere in the world I need to with multiple bank accounts, and if I can't get out of the country, I can retreat to my fortress with a ton of food and weapons. In the meantime, I'll keep working, try to be smart with my money, and every once in a while check up on some of my foreign homes. **notes** I was joking about my international identities, but not the actions that my family has been taken. I'm a junior in college right now. I'm not ignorant about the job market. So, I wouldn't say that I'm being naive. I know all the facts. I'm up to date on all the current speculation. But the computers were supposed to fail in 2000 and we would be thrown into years of chaos, strife, and dog-eat-dog might-makes-right lifestyles. I've got what I've got right now. What happens in the future happens in the future. And much of what makes the future is what you do in the present. So if you are terrified in the present, your future will be terrifying. There are going to be people who aren't worrying, and the worriers will be telling them they should look to the future and prepare. And there are going to be worriers, and people who aren't worrying are going to tell them they shouldn't worry. And everyone will be doing it wrong.