thelerner

For relaxing tension on the back, I really like the Spoonk (https://www.amazon.com/Spoonk-Cotton-Acupressure-Massage-carry-bag/dp/B0052YK8RO). The yoga mat for sadists, it is a mat w/ 1,000's of little spikes. Lying on it hurts for the first minute, then the relaxation response kicks it. Maybe from pressure points or endorphins from the little pricks, don't know, but it's very relaxing for the back. A similar pain is pleasure comes in the form of cold showers. Doing some hot, cold, hot cold, seems to trigger a deep relaxation response. Stimulates the blood flow and the immune system. Beyond that when I had a bad back, the doctor said the only long term cure was in building up strength and flexibility; and he was right.

True, but its accompanied by more bitching, moaning and complaining.

How are your eyes during meditation? Are they closed, open, half open. Is your mental focus still going on through your eyes, ie eyes closed but focused on the third eye? Or eyes half open focused on the floor or the tip of your nose? Hands, too? How are you keeping them. From relaxed on lap to formal 'Zen' bridge? Any formal mudras. Are they on your lap, your knees or against your tan tien? What are you doing hand and eye wise and why? These days I'm sitting half lotus, and switching from my normal eyes closed to half open focused loosely at the tip of my nose. My hands are relaxed fingers together and against my dantien, ala Movement Stillness style gi gong.

I've found this hypnotic induction to be one of the deepest around. Having you repeatedly go deeper and deeper. No ecstasy but it puts you under deeply which in itself is a form of trance paralysis. Best listened to while lying down. Haven't listened to it, but she has a short one on astral projection. Note if it was as easy as listening to a 10 minute script then everyone would be doing it. That's not to say there aren't lessons and some enjoyment to be learned from it.

This time you beat me to it. The youtube'd song I mean.

Practice.. is actually a pretty big word. What aspects does a complete practice need? A sitting meditation. A moving meditation. A standing practice. A wisdom practice, ie listening to 'dharma' ie speeches on right living/thinking. Energy practices including and beyond what is above. I've always thought beginners should look around. See if there are any local teachers from chi gung to yoga and what's inbetween. Try things out, see what you like, give a chance to things you dislike. Balance. See what connects, what is fulfilling then marry it, and be willing to flirt with other practices every now and then. Stuff I've done- Last year, after decades of mostly cerebral meditative practices, I did something hard and physical. Wim Hof's 10 Week program. Heavy duty breathing, loong breath holds, and amazing cold conditioning. Very physical stuff requiring and developing good will power. Now I'm back to 'just sitting', but using form and methods I learned in a seminar from Stillness Movement meditation with some standing and chanting mixed in. Simple stuff, that helps me sit longer and better. What do I get out of it? I don't know.. peace, some sort of reset. I

I'm skeptical of the video and expressing it in a flippant, sarcastic way. Not the highest level of maturity but better then using it as a way to insult other people's art. ie let sleeping flame wars lie.

Just reading an article on what's happening with the Google prize **. I'll have to repost it if I can find. Pretty exciting though. Out of 16 candidates 5 have met the qualifications to be 'official'. Seems like most are piggy backing onto pre-arranged orbital flights. Interestingly, two are piggy backing on the same rocket pay load, so that has the potential for an amazing race as both are launched into space at the same time, same speed- racing to the moon to win $20 mill and bragging rights.. lots of potential for space war In some ways this is our modern, race to the Poles. A technological long odds journey that'll have people/mankind(?) cheering for the winner. addon> I don't think I understood this when I read about it months ago, that this is a probe, that has to walk and record for 500 meters. It doesn't have to come back and it's certainly not manned. Thus it'll only be a fraction of the price of sending up a living person. Especially seeing that most are piggy backing there probes onto commercial rockets that are already being sent up. http://www.geekwire.com/2017/google-lunar-x-prize-clears-5-teams-moon-race/ ** the race is to- to land on the moon, move at least 500 meters across the surface, and transmit images and high-definition video back to Earth. What the hell, I'll bite on MoonNite- The first terrestrial landing on the moon was September 13th 1959 the soviets Luna 2 mission. The first manned mission to the moon came a decade later, July 20 1969, Americans watched the launch, saw the film, watched the landing. Since then the US launched 5 other manned flights to the moon, literally using 100,000's of people, experts from around the world in engineering, manufacture, tracking. I find the unmanned landings to be equally fascinating. Lots of failures. The US had a dozen before Ranger 7, 8 and 9 in the mid 1960s, successfully took pictures and crashed on the moon. The Soviet failure rate was similar. It was expensive, there were huge technological problems to solve, but one by one they were. Because.. science progresses, we learn, our tech improves. You don't seem to question the power of your computer, high res TV, GPS, Laser printers, the jets flying 600 mph over head but rockets and traveling 250,000 miles to the moon.. you do. from Wikipedia-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_landing After the unsuccessful attempt by the Luna 1 to land on the moon in 1959, the Soviet Union performed the first hard (unpowered) moon landing later that same year with the Luna 2 spacecraft, a feat the U.S. duplicated in 1962 with Ranger 4. Since then, twelve Soviet and U.S. spacecraft have used braking rockets to make soft landings and perform scientific operations on the lunar surface, between 1966 and 1976. In 1966 the USSR accomplished the first soft landings and took the first pictures from the lunar surface during the Luna 9 and Luna 13 missions. The U.S. followed with five unmanned Surveyor soft landings. The Soviet Union achieved the first unmanned lunar soil sample return with the Luna 16 probe on 24 September 1970. This was followed by Luna 20 and Luna 24 in 1972 and 1976, respectively. Following the failure at launch in 1969 of the first Lunokhod, Luna E-8 No.201, the Luna 17 and Luna 21 were successful unmanned lunar rover missions in 1970 and 1973. Many missions were failures at launch. In addition, several unmanned landing missions achieved the Lunar surface but were unsuccessful, including: Luna 15, Luna 18, and Luna 23 all crashed on landing; and the U.S. Surveyor 4 lost all radio contact only moments before its landing. More recently, other nations have crashed spacecraft on the surface of the Moon at speeds of around 8,000 kilometres per hour (5,000 mph), often at precise, planned locations. These have generally been end-of-life lunar orbiters that, because of system degradations, could no longer overcome perturbations from lunar mass concentrations ("masscons") to maintain their orbit. Japan's lunar orbiter Hiten impacted the Moon's surface on 10 April 1993. The European Space Agency performed a controlled crash impact with their orbiter SMART-1 on 3 September 2006. Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) performed a controlled crash impact with its Moon Impact Probe (MIP) on 14 November 2008. The MIP was an ejected probe from the Indian Chandrayaan-1 lunar orbiter and performed remote sensing experiments during its descent to the lunar surface. The Chinese lunar orbiter Chang'e 1 executed a controlled crash onto the surface of the Moon on 1 March 2009. The rover mission Chang'e 3 was launched on 1 December 2013 and soft-landed on 14 December. <the Chinese orbiter was able to take such indepth pictures of the lunar surface that actually showed the earlier US landing bases the tech they left there. Course early on we put reflectors on the moon that can shoot lasers to reflect back, thus showing us the distance to the meter. Cause.. science. Sadly the last man to walk on the moon died last week..

We need to focus on the unseen here. The most amazing person in this video is the camera man. Clearly he's a precog. Not only is he shooting a random event at the right time at the right angle, he's handling the zoom and moving the lens perfectly to catch the action. This unseen psychic is the real star of this video. Not the 'witches' or the stunt men in matching outfits or the guys in back pulling the wires.

Is there a way to show a high level of qi? Or a 'harmonized' heart, short of removing it surgically? Though I suppose a good teacher demonstrate equanimity and is rarely riled or angered. I don't think the best get caught up in pissing contests. Perfect in everything(?).. that's easy, imo no, not if they're human. Perfection is boring, unobtainable and in only in the eyes of the dazzled beholder. Flaws create character.

Welcome, you seem very accomplished. I'm unfamiliar with the term 'water pourer', does it mean apprentice or something deeper? Thanks

Instead of books, I'd suggest podcasts. There are some excellent ones out there that have excellent dharma speeches. For example Zencast which has many lesson by respected teachers. Another one I enjoy is infiniteSmile an excellent source for a modern twist on Zen inspired wisdom.

No, no, no it's a great name. Down in the hood we got the P-Bear, the Q-bear, the R-bear but nothing gets more respect then the S-bear

Will that affect the PPD's? Will they still have control to hide and delete other members posts in them? I hope so.

What I appreciate about S-bear is he is taking the time to explain foreign terms, and explaining the dynamics without relying on the often poetic and flowery language in so many of the classics. Striving to link the classics with actual practices.

I noticed today that some pictures I had posted in my PPD section, the cartoon one, had disappeared. I wonder if the update was changing up the rules for pictures to be displayed. Some were fine, others gone, with vague links. Like here http://www.thedaobums.com/topic/42057-deep-cartoons/?p=710989 the third comic frame is gone.

Different people ascribe the 'Tao' man differently. To some he's a wizard, scholar or martial artist, to others- simple and childlike. In truth they probably don't follow any stereotype unlike those who 'try' to become them. To me, he is in the world but not of it. He gives complete attention to what he is doing, but cares little for results or acclaim. They can feel things deeply while still remaining detached. They are masters of acceptance, moving towards harmony with there environment and inner selves.

Thank you. What a fascinating man whose life story covered so much of modern Chinese history, its problems and involvement with the outside world.

Straw dogs are treated with deference until they serve there purpose. They may be discarded after that, but no need to trample them. Perhaps recycle. Plus the wise can admire, find meaning and value, in the worthless and empty. Nature is one of out teachers and we have much to learn from her, but we have others as well.

My interest in golf has gotten me back into resale shops- Salvation Army's, Good Wills.. not to mention resale shops in expensive neighborhoods can have less amazing deals but some great pickings. For clothes, they're unbeatable, I've picked up suits for $5 to $15. Expensive dress shoes for $5. I think the secret is being picky and only getting what is in very good to excellent shape. Nothing that looks used or worn. For setting up a house or dorm they're unbeatable. As far as golf goes they have clubs for $1.99 and golf bags from $5 to $10. Good choices too, many people get new clubs every few years. There's a certain enjoyable anti-snob feeling to playing with $2 clubs versus those spending $100 or more on a single one. And you get to blame your poor shots on something.. ie damn you $2 club, you've hooked again.

I wonder about that. Sorta like in the book The DaVinci Code where the bad guys kill and torture dozens to keep there horrible secret - Jesus was married and Mary is the Grail cup. In truth, no big deal to anyone. If someone has limited ability to sometimes read minds does that really affect us more then the millions who have limited ability to hack into our computers and steal our information and digital identities? Are we to fear them more then conventional hackers? Face it, the reason Geller wasn't kept a secret and spent his life bending spoons, hawking books and suing others is because his powers aren't real useful. Not that it wouldn't cause some changes, but I don't think they'd be as world changing as so many scify series insist, ie that they must be controlled and/or eliminated. In truth, technology has given us the psychic abilities past generations dreamed of. We just take them for granted. ie transmitting thoughts 1,000's of miles with phone or text. Moving 100's of miles an hour in a plane. Killing things by pointing and moving my finger, with a gun.. etc.,

I'm also skeptical of Geller. I did look up the CIA report, it is real. Real and true are different things. As likely the CIA kept it secret to have him work to there advantage, to me its as likely that they created it and leaked it to the Russians as false flag. Or they were truly fooled. I'll call it 20/40/40 I don't know, you have a released CIA report believing it, and skeptics who've shown him to be a fraud at other times. From the research I did in the 1980's I found there was tantalizing anecdotal evidence, but little conclusive repeatable scientific testing, ie some people would get high psi scores, but not consistently. Further scientists were continually falling for con men because they were trained to observe things very closely, thus easily misdirected. Whereas magicians, are trained in trickery, deceit and false direction and are much harder to con; willing to consider that people will spend $1,000's of dollars and 100's of hours of training to pull off 'impossible' magic. A good mentalist/spiritualist/conman will have plants both people and electronic to discover things they could not possibly 'know'. The subgroup of magicians known as mentalists have been known to pull off psychic viewing stunts similar to Geller's. Not proof he used such stunts but its possible. I never saw the movie Men Who Stare at Goats. According to the OP, Geller was the model for the main character. Not that it would prove anything, but I'll have to look the movie up on netflix.

Pushups and squats, easy sets. Not a pill, but they get the blood moving and that helps mind, memory and wakefulness.

Any particular company you used? ie swab and mail kind of place? If you have time, what else did it go into, how deeply into ancestry?

Just used a neti pot for the first time in a while. Good, gotta remember to use warmer water though. Also, when allergies get bad, I don't see anything wrong with occasionally using some over the counter medicine to ease the symptoms. Particularly if it'll help you sleep or get through the day. Last year I was getting allergy symptoms during the winter, which seemed strange. I believe it was my car. I was tracking in snow, it warmed melted repeatedly, ultimately creating mildew, causing mold that triggered my allergic reaction. Since then I bought plastic floor covers with deep wells. So water may evaporate but doesn't stay on the carpeting for long periods. It's solved the problem. Sometimes taking a deep look at cause and affect. My daily paper's weather section shows which allergens are high. Its good to track that against how you're feeling so you know what your triggers are. addon> I should probably confess. This was the first time I used a neti in maybe a year. Clearing the second nostril I threw up a little. It's such a strange queasy feeling. I usually use warm water but this time was using a gallon of distilled that felt cold. It's a good practice, but not an easy one til you do it regularly.