thelerner

I went through a bad back many years ago. As always a surgeon said cut. I ignored him, ultimately strength and flexibility turned out to be the saviour.

I agree with this. To some extent its a question of Being natural, which may be a loaded term because of cultural bias and garbage. Still for the collective humanity, I hope being natural includes deep peace, joy and sorrow. I think to be true to our selves and true to the moment we need to feel sorrow or joy when the moment dictates it and afterward return to the deep peace (hopefully tinged with joy). What archetype do we aim for? Cold Ascetic ? Innocent Child; or mixture of both??

I don't think we want a billion dollars or a different girl every night. We want security, a little luxury, yet we also want meaning and accomplishment. A few millions sounds great, though I'm happy with what I have. One good mate seems infinitely better then 100's of one night stands. The cold glass of water is preferential to the most expensive drink most days, most of the time. Reading a book like 'The Millionaire Next Door' rips up the stereotypes and you learn the majority are intelligent, with it, people. Desire can be good, it can move us down the path. It's a good star to follow, but bad if its a heavy pack on our back. I do not strive for a supernatural enlightenment, instead I aim to be a complete human being. Not perfect, but in superior health, superior happiness, at peace with my environment and leaving the world a little better for my presence.

Hell yes, matter of fact if I could fulfill half my desires,wants and hopes I'd give up my chance at enlightenment. There was recently a lottery with the chance at winning was 1 in 160 million. Some people see enlightenment as having similar odds !, if so, giving up my chances for enlightenment this life time, for a few million dollars, good family, friends, fun, learning, contentment.. seems like a great deal. Very rational. Maybe next lifetime I'll be born into a culture that's a little more open to the concept of enlightenment and I'll have a head start in that life. Or maybe the one after that.. maybe I have all the time in the world, or maybe not. So for this one I accept my desires, acknowledge my shadows, and strive to live a fulfilling life.

Not sure if you're still around, but if you are I'd suggest getting into meditation by means of guided meditation. They're training wheels, but sometimes thats what a person needs to get up and running. I'd suggest starting out with Anna Wise's work from her Higher Performance Mind set. It's a very good series because Wise has a foot in the scientific world as well as working with high level mystics. Once you begin to have a foundation there are Taoist guided meditations, shamanic, series you could explore. Ultimately you need to sit in emptiness, but meditation series like these give the mind something to chew as the body learns to open and relax. If you're interested, PM me. Sincerely, Michael

What!! not practical. Next you'll be criticizing my idea for an exploding sword gun . a weapon with the motto, you only need to hit them once.

Nice & affordable. I was at Northwestern University and saw a graduate group project on a renewable tiny house. Very cool, roof was solar, it caught rain water and redirected, purifed it and stored it below, composting toilet, super efficient dc lighting and gadgets. It was meant to be fully liveable off the grid. Expensive because it was one of a kind, but it had some excellent ideas incorporated into it.

Even if the highest truth is x + y = z, it means nothing. It means nothing and gives you absolutely nothing. In my opinion the power behind a person like John Chang is long hard time on the mat. You begin with 4 hours a day as a beginner from there it expands greatly. In other words, whatever the 'secret' is, its meaningless unless you start on the 1000's of hours of practice needed to get up the first few rungs.

I'll add: The nature of War is This: I can accomplish good by killing or raping the other.

There was a guy I met in Chicago who lived in an apartment building and had his electricity cut off so he could live more in tuned with nature. Candles if he needed it, the apartment was hot in the summer, cold in the winter, though not too bad because everyone else had heating. He seemed to have a pretty advanced practice. Very cool dude, a true urban taoist.

I voted no, not for the world until mankind has changed its nature. Anarchy breaks down into either survival of the fittest or rule of the most ruthless. The definition 'allowing others to live as they see fit, so long as it doesn't interfere with someone else's life' needs to have the word, 'hopefully' at the beginning, because there's this paradox within anarchy of not having an authority telling you what to do. So how do you control those who would dominate and steal from them. In a good group with strong morals anarchy would be great. But in a large group of average people who run the spectrum of mostly good, a few great, a few bad; you eventually get the worst rising to the top, because there's no force to stop them, and if you create a force that could stop them, IT eventually becomes the force that needs stopping. I said it was paradoxical situation didn't I.

Hold, it I got a Chinese person here, He says he's doesn't think he's bigger then the gods. So at least 1 out of 1.1 billion doesn't. I think if we did a poll, you'd find out most Chinese don't and you've set up a straw dog argument. If you want to blame Emperor Quin or Mao, do it, but you shouldn't consider the whole nation culpable. You can just as easily be in awe of there wise scholars, emperors and immense spiritual heritage. I understand the passion, the cultural revolution unleashed horrible things, the worst upon the Chinese themselves, but that was a specific event in thousand of years of history. Sure its after effects echo on. I see things like the occupation of Tibet is not a 'Chinese' thing, its a human thing; seeing another's land and resources and stealing it.

Ripping events from the history books and pinning them on a whole people is the Birthing Mother of atrocities. The right choice is to blame the individual who murder, rape or ordered it done. To blame a whole culture is to play in the same bloody mud hole. "Give me a chance to obliterate Hitler when he was just a baby and I would do it." Willing to murder a baby, very impressive. If you can go back in time, don't kill or rape baby Hitler. I get the feeling History and the Powers That Be, don't work that way. Those with godlike powers had better tread carefully in this world. Acts of destruction are easy; prejudice and hatred are easy. Win or lose I'd rather see a more creative, more loving way to deal with the problem (such as bringing the baby to our time). If it failed I'd wager the plan to murder would have too, but at least you acted in the best aspect of humanity.

I agree. I get the feeling most 'religious' wars were land and resource grabs done under the cover of religion. Same old same old, label another group as 'other' and steal there stuff. Sometimes religion is the cover, other times skin color or nationality.

Reply One: I choose YES. Matter of fact as I've gotten older and more disciplined I have greater control of my thoughts and emotions. I'm no Spock, but I'm not at the whims of monkey mind either. Reply Two: Ain't nothing free about it. Having Free Will means examining the basis of all your premises and actions. Making sure they're sound and your not moving with the cultural herd. A good life is not lived on autopilot. Its all about being true to yourself and figuring out what yourself is.

A trick runners do (its also in the book Chi Running) is after a run lay on there backs with there legs up and against the wall, ie they look like an L; laying down with legs resting straight up on a wall. This tends to 'detox' and drain the leg. My wife does it and it seems to help. P.S. I assumed you were doing 4 or 5 hours of horse stance a day .

Blend some cooked squash or sweet potato into chicken soup add peanut butter and some hot spices and you gotta nice Caribbean thin goin on Mon' . Throw a handful of baby spinach into any smoothie, you can't taste it, but get a nice nutritional kick.

Letting it sink in... Methinks thousands of years ago people were still stealing others land and resources. Split all the land up evenly and first comes civil war(sorry Indians your reservation is now being subdivided to harry, dick & george other land owners owners may also be pissed and fight), second famine (no factory farming, food production falls dramatically), third after a few generations, same old shit as land is divided, redivided; bought, sold and stolen; as the descendants of the original dividers strive for the 'currency' society now values. China tried something similar in the Cultural revolution, Rwanda and Mozambique tried it a few decades later, it tends to end in disaster. Such fair dividing ended up turned countries with food surplus's into places of mass starvation. It sounds good, but at least for now, mankind isn't up to it. There are solutions for fairer living but I don't this is a good one. Maybe the best way to apply is small, but then communes tend to fail, because they require so much hard work and its easier for the 2nd or 3rd generation to chuck it and head for the city.

Can't help myself, Ignore if serious practitioner. You were warned. The gamma waves put the monks into a deep meditative state and allowed them to explore other dimensions; but there drawbacks too. When they got angry they turned green and changed into green behemoths who took no shit.

What technique do you use for reverse breath? As I recall the healing tao method was pretty literal, the stomach sucks in as you breath in. On meditations I have from Master Chen at Wudangtao he has a simpler method. He just has you tighten the anus a bit and get a feeling of the universe rushing into the dantien. Little or no emphasis on sucking in the stomach. Ofcourse this might not be his full on reverse breathing, but just the breath style he wants for this particular meditation.

Any music you recommend to listen to while you do the Angry Rooster? I'm thinking something like dada dada da da dah

Exercise is good, but most weight loss is from eating less and better. Substitute soup (bean soups good and filling, cream soups not so much), make big pots and have it throughout the week. Also good big salads, lots of veggies, easy on the dressing. Higher protein is good, eggs, lean meat or edamine. Fiber helps with hunger. Simple metamucil (i.e. psyllium seed), they even have fiber wafers that are sweet and have a good bunch of fiber, so they work well as a treat.

I've learned from Michael Winn. He's out there, but he's met, trained and hosted masters, and he's gone to some deep places. He ate with us, answered questions honestly. I did an IChing reading with Stigweard where you ask a question and he gives an in-depth answer via I Ching. I don't know about the mystics of it, but the answers are a bit of Rorschach test. They point you in directions and help you think of solutions in elemental terms. It was worthwhile and certainly not expensive. On the deeper end is Max of Kunlun fame. I did his seminar and I respect him as a teacher of experience and considerable juice. Do I believe his far out stories. Ummn, well I file 'em into my Esoteric, Eccentric Unknown file. Same as the stories about UFO's, same as the stories about Atlantis. I like Bardons work, but at the upper upper levels you're calling on air sprites and earth spirits etc., Rawn Clark wrote about a group of his that meets up in Dreamtime. I neither believe or disbelieve, its simply outside of my personal experience. Most of the best teachers and deepest practitioners have some pretty strange, out there, beliefs. As long as they're cool, and don't expect me to share there beliefs, then I don't care.. big world, lots of beliefs. Matter of fact if you don't believe some freaky unearthly thing, I wonder if you are a heavy hitter. As long as they can function well in the world, Crazy can be very good. Crazy looks at the world in different ways; it brings the energy and dedication that few 'sane' people could muster. Within most teacher's crazy there is a truth, maybe not a literal one, but some solid allegory that if I believed in it, I'll be a better practitioner. How do I keep from getting scammed? I look for fair value. In my eyes a few hundred dollars for a multi day seminar is understandable. Over that and I get suspicious, I don't like guru types who profess they have the only way, don't take questions, put on airs or try to sell me lots of extras. Again, teachers have a right to earn a living. Still I've found most Esoteric teachers promise more then they deliver; not because they're lying, but because they have had some special students go 'very, very far', the potential is there, but most won't. I don't expect enlightenment from a seminar, I expect to learn something I can use in my life, a technique or insight. Frankly the 'advertising' on Kunlun raised my skepticism, but enough people on the board whom I respect went to the seminar and were blown away. Just one life, had to try it. It wasn't that much money and I could use the vacation and meeting up with a couple other bums was a nice bonus. Similarly even if I don't believe in the IChing, astrology, palm reading, tea leaves etc., if a person comes recommended by a friend and its not expensive, I'll try it. Put my beliefs aside, silence my inner skeptic and listen intently. We'll never learn if we don't stretch our minds, challenge our beliefs and try something new.

Can't say I have much to compare it to, but I really like Michael Winn's fundamental II DVD and like the simplicity of PanGu form.

I just picked up 'The Ultimate Financial Plan-Balancing Your Money & Life' by Jim Stovall from the library. I usually disdain many business writers, dislike Rich Dad, Poor Dad writer, luke warm on Suzy Orman and many others. But Stovall use of taking philosophy of money and life, and apply it to real world situations comes off as the right level of balance. His philosophical tones makes the solutions easier to understand and swallow. Good book. Well written, I'll see if the library has his book 'The Ultimate Life' next.