thelerner

I'd go further and say with regards to the Golden Flower that the translation is difficult and purposely incomplete *. That's there are blanks a teacher is suppose to fill in, ie written instruction, and protected verbal instruction that was not supposed to be written down. *That its purposely incomplete is not an original idea, it comes from a source that's studied it deeply, one I quoted in another Golden Flower thread. *Was it Shangri La?" No, it was.. Buddha. We didn't have him, the west was generally lacking in meditative practices. There were some mystical/religious but they were rare, watered down or cloistered, rarely main stream. We killed off or disregarded our shamanic heritage, but the East kept it alive and had access to the ideas and concepts of meditation for a millennia.

So much of the initial question has to do with our idea of what chi is, how its stored and used. I protect my Chi, first by staying healthy- Wholesome food, sleep, exercise. Secondly is the mental/spiritual game. Trying to keep a quiet mind. Third, cultivation, sitting meditation, forms... And hybrids, walking in nature, sitting on the ground.. gratitude, listening to dharma talks. needless to say, I'm not poster boy for the above, but I work on it in my own 'two steps forwards, one step back' way.

me too, but the trajectory is strong. Everything starts as a seed (cept for things that don't)

I'm guessing that in the past, in the East meditation was such a wide spread cultural phenomena that the average person was pretty accomplished in it at a young age. So a couple hundred ago, starting with the Golden Flower, the average Easterner already had years or decade + of meditation experience under there belt as part of there life style. I think this trips up many Westerners who try practices that move quickly (I'm thinking Healing Tao here). It's not that the practices don't work, its that most Westerners lack the base, the fundamentals that other cultures picked up from childhood. Just as without memorizing the addition and multiplication tables, advanced math is going to be problematic.

From my readings meditation should begin and end with attention on the dan tien. That's not to say work shouldn't be done with the 3rd eye, but too much too fast and without enough grounding and one can get into trouble. Get into woo woo territory.. spacey, ungrounded.

Minke DeVos from Silent Grounds has great one, Deep Body Smile. Takes you through the bodies system in a very Daoist way. On her Tao Basics CD. Giles Martin has a good indepth meditation slowly lighting up the bone structure in The Bone Dreaming Meditation on his Sleeping Chi Kung album. Similarly most Yoga Nidras do a good job working and relaxing the outer body. My experiences with these types of meditation is generally deep relaxation and a nice feeling of clearness. For example near the end the Deep Body Smile has you slowly shining on a cleansing light on both sides of the brain, clearing out the mental cobwebs.

One word, Plastics. No, that's not right, the one word is Compartmentalize. Do, what you gotta do to survive. Work the boring job, and train yourself not to complain internally or out. When the clock strikes whatever, do your thing, have your fun, live your free life, preferably on healthy terms. I'll add the more needed marketable skills you have the more options you get. You can be dragged screaming and fighting into this, or you can surrender to the reality of Western life. Think of yourself as two people the worker bee who 'does it for the money' and the hedonist. You can keep your eyes open for a dream job, but ultimately most jobs get pretty tedious. This one goes out to you and all the other dreamers Westenra It's not all bleak, there is a 5 o'clock world where you can do you thing, and have your fun. As we get older we don't have to put away all our childish things, but we do have to postpone them while we make a living.

A simple system would be standing in horse stance and breathing with a 7 count in, 7 count hold (w/ slight belly tension) and 7 count out. That should produce some heat. You can throw in the visualization of in breath adding fuel, the hold concentrating the heat, and the out breath a bellows and you should get even more. Not a practice you want to over do, but not a bad one to have in your repertoire. After most seated meditations you should be able to rub your hands together vigorously and produce substantial heat between them. Infact the better I meditate the hotter my rubbed hands seem to get. Then I'll press my eyes gently and rub them on my face and around my head..etc.,

Good video. Though its cooking the books a little, imo. I'd welcome more investment into newer safer nuclear systems as an ingredient to the whole energy picture. Nuclear is still costly from building to end of life and storage; very expensive and with quite a bit of baggage. True there's been less investment the last 10 years, but go back 20, or 30 years and I bet you'd see for decades it got the bucks and renewables languished. The money spent on re-useables, has worked. Those investments 8,9 10 years ago etc., laid the floor work for massive gains in price/power generation. Modern set ups are producing at competitive prices A catastrophe in solar and wind is negligible compared to worst case nuclear, imo. Conservation seems as key as production of energy these days. I just reduced 450 watts of 'light' in my house to 51, plus the bulbs are supposedly good for 25,000 hours and produce little heat- thank you LED's. A nice savings. Each car we buy tends to have better and better mileage.

True, yet to my perhaps uneducated eyes, such things are legendary.. rare, somewhat mythic. Like virgins births, if Caesar and Socrates were virgin births then its tacked on to any would be messiahs resume. Can't help thinking you've got well known saintly people, who've done miracles etc., who simply die, just like the rest of us. So, if an average monk disappears without a trace, he must have been a saint who hit rainbow body and left without a forwarding address, whereas the heavy hitters running the school will often simply die and be buried. You've told the story of a Westerner who disappeared from a monastery and it was assumed he must have hit ascendance, but seems he could have simply slipped away in the middle of the night. Likewise the saintly people who've died might have been living buddha, they just didn't disappear at death for whatever reasons.

I have no idea of what he's talking about, but I admire that he's framing it from within his schools philosophy, rather then stating the position as an absolute. I was just in a discussion about chi/ki. And I could say from a Japanese angle, ie Ki-Aikido Ki is considered this.. the definition and understand is pretty different then Chinese schools, but that's not to say its wrong or doesn't have its uses. It'd be wrong for me to state it as an absolute. So, Namdak saying from '..the standpoint of Dzogchen', is using his school's viewpoint, which I believe is from a smaller subset, ie Tibetan Buddhism.

Good to have more FP practitioners here. While its one of oldest and longest running threads, it's a practice that's rarely mentioned outside of a single discussion. It'd be nice for that to change. I'd love to see more threads discussing its practice and philosophy.

All of it, Good advice. Yet we can't begin to choose such winter practices as appropriate or not, until we've tried or at least been exposed to the ideas.

Can't say I've heard of it. What kind of methods does it use? Does it use Forms - ala chi gung? Internal energy meditations - ala nei gong? Diets or belief systems?

We often don't notice when things run smoothly, but its been weeks or months since the board gone down or had problems. Thanks everyone working behind the scenes, for keeping the 0's and 1's in there proper place.

bump any questions you'd like to ask teacher members of the forum?

From member Phil- Your body reacts to every single thought and adapts to those underlying believes. If you think Alcohol and Sex is bad for you per se your body / subsystems (like endocrine- / nervous- / immune-system) will do everything to help you in supporting those thoughts..

FWIW, Super moon in 2 days. The moon will be about 26,000 miles closer then usual. http://www.newsweek.com/supermoon-2017-full-cold-moon-728118 Not saying this is the cause, but tidal forces are strong. 5 five minutes of research.. most sources, solid ones, say no link. But not all- https://www.express.co.uk/news/weird/886905/Supermoon-cause-earthquakes-tsunamis-gravitational-force-Sunday

Things aren't all or nothing ie everything fake or everythings real. Going further with that, I assume some masters aren't above using some trickery. That a fake youtube video doesn't mean the master is fake, even if that particular trick is. You can be an amazing scholar/meditator/martial artist with deep understanding of mysteries and it gets you diddly. But put up a video with yourself doing parlor tricks and you get notoriety and finally students who can learn from your decades of study and expertise. Lying.. advertising.. is there a difference..? Well yeah, there is, but.. life happens..

Dec 1, no money for Trump (& only usual $ to Heifer), weight has gone from 207.6 to 200.4 this morning. About what I expected. First month easiest, then increasingly harder as I move against set points. Though as Taomeow pointed out, its good to internalize my body wants to shed the weight. That I'm cooperating with it, to achieve a healthier life. In any case Dec 1 I'm at 200.4, 7.2# loss. I will be 5#'s less by Dec 31st, same penalties apply. Continue better eating habits and adding more exercise to the mix. 12/28/17 Not going to well. Decembers nasty due to parties and gifts of food, and harder to take long walks and bike rides. I find myself stuck between 197 and 198,with a few days to go. Thus pulling out the big guns. I'll fast again. Which means I will be able to eat for my upcoming Sunday New Years eve party. I'll do the Tim Ferris 36 fast from Thursday night to Sunday night. I should lose the 4 or 5 pounds by Monday morning. Perhaps half water weight, but under 195.4 my goal for January 1. Plus even with the water weight, at 197.4 I'd still be 10#'s under what I started at 2 months ago. I'm also thinking if I succeed in losing the 5#'s this month, to renegotiate the Promise and consequences to a 3# loss a month. To make it more likely I'll keep on track. Acknowledging weight loss gets harder as you go on. 5#'s the first month was easy, 2nd hard, third might be very hard. Instead of setting myself up for failure, better to set a more realistic goal to meet and beat in order to carry on the journey for long term success. Doing the

Couldn't find it in Itunes Store, where it'd be easier to download. Link?

Materiality gets a bum rap, maybe it should, many benefits to keeping things simple but.. stuff is good and I like gadgets. I go through headphones because they get tangled and mangled in my pocket. I bought these because they were cheap but had very high marks on Amazon. Wotmic Wired Headphones In-ear Headphone Sports Earphone Wired Control Cable Clip Stereo Sound Noise Cancelling Earbuds Black well worth the $10, good quality, stays well in the ear and better sound then the $29 apple buds. Because they're more in ear, I can listen to music at much lower volume. I like the Amazon Echo smart speakers. I used the Black Friday/Cyber monday to get a few more, the Echo is $29 from $49, not the greatest sound, but hooked up to speakers it's as good as the speakers plus I don't have a great ear. I wake and say Alexa what time is it, what's the weather, play Beatles or Fleetwood Mac. I can load it up with 120 of my own songs and it'll play them on demand. Great alarm clock and timer. Answers questions haphazardly, and tells jokes. It's a nice future is here kind of thing. I'm sure googles and apples smart speakers are also good. And I'll be able to voice chat with my sisters, if we ever set it up. Oldie but goodie, Love my Spoonk. The thorny yoga mat that induces a relaxation response. Enjoying my Instant Pot, many benefits to pressure cooking. Makes it easy and safe. That's all I can think of lately. What about you guys, anything you'd recommend?

Often the persons aim, helps determine what branch or style of gi gung they begin to study. What are looking to get out of it? Course, if you're looking for a live teacher, often the options are limited, but a good teacher nearby with frequent classes, can be worth more then an excellent teacher half a world away or one who teaches through books or videos.

Don't know much about combining such things, but I do know Licorice is a classic 'transportation' add in to many formulas. In some formulas so is regular old pepper. Hopefully some people with more experience will add there two cents. Some combo's probably aren't good.