thelerner

It takes a brave man to call himself a noob. It takes an even braver one to point at them and say 'hey, look at the noob!' ..<stolen from old Saturday Night Live skit> Welcome to the bums

sometimes I'll hit the

Things fall towards the center of gravity well. For us on earth that's the center of the earth. Drill a hole down and an apples fall accelerating towards that center. As it it goes past it'll decelerate, going quite far but not back to the top, til it reverses. Springing down and up, less each time til it stands vibrating in the center of earth where it'll be eaten by the mole people, who love apples and fig newtons. I tackled gravity problems in high school, writing out games for my Apple II computer. Gravity was a formula, throw in Objects, give them mass, maybe some velocity and with Newtons formula in place, things reacted automatically very earth like. It was fascinating. Newtons mathematical formula allowed me to recreate a sense of reality graphically. The nonsense geometry highschool suddenly was practically in describing the relationship between two points. Programming brought math to life for me. This site is well written and includes a little math http://www.livescience.com/50312-how-long-to-fall-through-earth.html "I guess you can imagine it like a waterslide that takes about 40 minutes to fall through that takes you to speeds over 8 kilometers per second (17,895 mph)," said physicist Alexander Klotz at McGill University in Montreal. "Halfway through the ride, gravity would switch directions and you'd go from right-side up to upside down. You'd have to grab onto the other end or else you'd fall back down the way you came. If the waterslide was made of glass, it would be like zooming through a sea of lava."

It may be a few years late for great concern. Mizu's last post was over 5 years ago, so he's probably moved on to industrial arts or is doing quite poorly. We'll probably never know. Between SillyBear and JoeB, the original post said he'd just read 'Falon Gong' and was thinking about it, so the guy lives dangerously, continually.

Carnegie Hall.

I don't think we need to get Einsteinian on this one. Keeping it simple, old school Newtonian, answers the question.

From member Aetherous: As cultivators, we are supposed to cultivate who we want to become, what we think we should be like, etc, primarily. A practice that opens you up, kind of obliterates your sense of self, that's no longer my path. Some practices destroy things, some build things. What we focus on in life, we increase.

I did the seminar after hearing positive things from several very experienced and respected members here spoke highly of it. I was also somewhat active in the original Kunlun forum. While the majority seemed to gain from it (or simply moved on) for some it was not a good experience. One member here, loved it, got a lot out of it, but early on it blew his circuits, too much energy (yo Cameron). Another member who was also very enthused, shared it with his kids and ended up having those reptile .. uh visits. Most don't, but in my mind I've heard enough so that its good to have a warning. I don't think Max is sending anything or has any negative intentions towards students. The problem might be a phenomena of the brain trying to make sense of an energy sensation and turning towards archetypal imagery. Which happens, kundalini is very snakelike. So, warning good, defending good. I stand by recommending the seminar to people interested, but practices that are powerful, can also burn, especially if your not careful, like the OP who was sensitive and did too much, too soon.

Speaking of ego.. Yes, I do this. Just in case God tries to steal my stuff. I can blast him. same with camels, I've had to shoot 3 of them.

by Stormbehemoth This might be similar to a practice mentioned in Glenn Morris's Pathnotes book. In that book, he said that if you stared at yourself in a mirror in a darkened room, with the right state of emptiness your image would disappear. Years ago, I was able to do it. This seems a similar kind of practice. I'm out of town for a few days, but people should try it and report back.

With any energy practice, too much, too fast is bad. Slow and steady preferably with the guidance of a live teacher. I did the standard 3 day Kunlun seminar and enjoyed it. Not a practice I stayed with, though I'll hit the position every now and then, and let my body do what it does. But when things heat up or get strange, slow down or stop for your own sake. Especially when you don't have an experienced teachers feedback. Unless you have good mental balance and equanimity, its better to stay away from such practices. Feeding energy into an imbalanced system will cause chaos. Luckily there are tons of simple meditations that are based on grounding.

I don't trust the universe any further then I could throw it. Not when I read the newspapers or study history. Heck, just 635 million years ago, last April, late in the Proterozoic Eon, was 'Snowball Earth' where the Bitch tried to wipe out all life here. yet, yet.. the universe has been good to me. it's, it's.. .. mom. so i thank it, act respectfully, enjoy the good times, and build spiritual strength for the bad. that's my plan.. thankful, respectful, enjoyful, building endurance.

What.. what you trapped in the Matrix, here? What was it like?

Fingers crossed. Were that it was so. Too many times, hopeful studies have not panned out for the wider public. As if cancer and tumors are trickier and more Frankensteinish then anticipated.

Great choice, have fun, may you moderate in less interesting times .

Two things would have given Rand a much better legacy. One, if she wasn't such an extremist. Its important to realize self interest and capitalism are powerful motivators in personal happiness and national production. She takes it to an illogical extreme though. Deifying those sources as be all and end all. Moving to the extreme you end up with people who are self absorbed .. and monopolists who create feudalism. This kind of extremism made her personal life self destructive as well. You could be a distant admirer but to be a close friend or lover was to court disaster. She demanded irrational attention and to cross her, disagree, even use the wrong words, was to be not just written off but instantly despised. Second thing that would improve her legacy, better editing, cutting out long irrelevant passages. I liked Anthem very much, it was her shortest book. Atlas Shrugged and Fountainhead, rambled. my 2 cents. To summarize, her ideas were good and needed, but she took them too far. I find her biggest adherents have the same starry eyes and use the same language as hard core communists. Both systems take an idea to an illogical extreme that in real life crashes and burns. Moderation, moderation and a dose of pragmatism. Speaking about legacy. There's a site with anecdotes about Ayn Rand, some irrelevant, many dark, like- Rand often called her husband Frank “the power behind the throne.” Frank would reply, “You’d think I was the throne, the way I get sat on.” Friends would recount this banter as an example of how good-natured and funny Frank was. Frank became a depressed alcoholic. For years, he drank alone in bars during the hours he was banished from his apartment so his wife could bang a man twenty years her junior in their marital bed. Now, it’s not funny at all, is it?

My practice used to have purpose and goals. These days, none. I just sit. Sometimes I'll count my breaths to 100. It takes a while, then let it go after that. Just sit in emptiness, seems to have improved my golf game a bit. Like my life in general I give lip service to goals and purpose, but mostly I lay back or let my feet carry me where they will. In the morning I'll often listen to a guided meditation. Maybe a yoga nidra or something adventurous and trippy, or something that keeps me in the lovely twilight between sleep and wakefulness; sometimes I'll give my body a few instructions to heal, normalize, rejuvenate.. kind of stuff. I'm slowly getting back into Wim Hof method. Daily cold showers. Telling myself if I want wakefulness and strong immune system, I must push the lever to the coldest setting. In truth being summer its nowhere near as cold as it gets in winter, where its achingly cold. Next month I'll add the breathing. The deep rapid breathing isn't meditative, but I consider the long empty holds to be; a crazy meditation cycle in 80 to 200 seconds.

I find guided meditations and hypnosis to be crutches or perhaps aids in meditation. Fun and useful in the beginning, especially to get a taste for concentrated relaxed focus, but ultimately have to be removed or not made the main focus of ones practice. Good as an occasional supplement but you have to be able to get into state and just as importantly be on friendly basis with your deep quiet mind.

Which browser works best with TDB's? Any that are glitching? please state computer type and browser. For example I'm using Firefox (47) on a Mac mini (latest OS). Its been working fine. A year and a half ago, Spell Check mysteriously disappeared for a few months, then came back. Sometimes a new browser version comes along and it screws things up until they're updated.

There's an anime that my kids got me hooked on called Sword Art Online. Main theme is people trapped in a VR world by a gaming helmet that if they take off kills them. So they have to live in the world until the 'game' is over. By the second season S.A II, they've won, and the show gets into people who use the extreme VR technology for healing. Beyond the action story lines, like good scify it explores the ramifications of VR especially Sword Art Online 2, second half. A few weeks ago I went into the Microsoft store and they were showing off the latest VR devices. Nobody else seemed interested, the area was cordoned off. I tried it, the helmet was a bit weighty, and had hand controls but the resolution and response time was amazing. Whether in the bottom of the ocean watching fish and whales, or playing a 360degree space shoot up with both hands operating guns separately, the resolution experience was fantastic. Gimicky but very nice, also a little dangerous since you did on your feet, moving around blind to the outside world. It'd be easy to get in trouble. My mom is paralyzed in one leg and this kind of tech once mainstreamed could be of tremendous help to her (if she open to it, which is questionable for non-techs in there 80's). Matter of fact my daughter is going into Occupational Therapy. It'd be great to see it mainstreamed for therapeutic and improved living through connectivity. Especially if they can keep the price halfway reasonable.

okay.. so you're okaying hate speech by putting it together with 'Witch Blasphemer and Counterrevolutionary? Only a Devil would label something as hate speech? Great rationalization, it gives permission for spewing all kinds of bigoted, incendiary, racism doesn't it? From that sarcastic(?) point of view only the Devil would dare accuse a person of saying hateful things. Great way to justify hate speech. There's a modern current to justify hate speech as merely Politically Incorrect. Giving cover to call groups rapists and criminals and hide smugly behind Politically Incorrect label. There's a line, and it can be misused, but at the extremes, left and right there are nasty fringe bigots jumping on the political parties to voice hate speech.

Earlier then VR, some therapy used mirrors to trick the brain into moving parts deemed paralyzed, not miraculous but they saw worthwhile results. Could be tricking the brain causes it to rewire pathways. The brain may be more repairing then we know, if only we provide the right triggers.

Not so much anymore, but when I worked at it and was a bit hardcore, I'd say meditation helped my Aikido. After 10 plus years in a martial art perception becomes as important as technique. Meditation helped knock out some of the lag in proper seeing.. as if it cleaned up some of the code in perception.

In many ways google is our post modern god. all hail google. The Plex that knows all.