thelerner

I think you can understand the U.S by living in it. China is so big and diverse it could take several lifetimes to live in China. Or so I'm told. Both are filled with treasures if you know where and how to look.

I never gained much expertise but others in the Kap 1 class reported heat and quite a bit of sweating. Ofcourse there's Tummo and there's TUMMO. Feeling heat and having sweat pour out may be a far cry from sitting on a frozen tundra drying sheets that have been frozen stiff. I think tummo, at least the lower level is a Siddhi thats relatively obtainable, more so then the other exotic feats. I also think its benefits go beyond heat, that at heart its a purification ritual. Best done with care.

Good luck and God bless. Michael

Not a bad idea, but my thinking is most of the correspondence will be through Private Messages here between people. Keep it simple. Slow, steady progress. Just a few lines a day on how things are going in the discipline. Ofcourse everyone is different.

Yup, sometimes you gotta hit'em in the funny bone cause thats where they expect it least .

You won't get a master, but consider putting in a call for a mentor in the '30 Day 30 minute Mentor' thread. They say the teacher will appear when the student is Ready, note thats NOT when they Want the teacher. So, to help get ready for your future master you could put in a post that says your looking for a mentor to help your .. sitting or standing .. or MCO.. practice in the 30 Day 30 Minute Thread in the General Discussion site (now on page 2). We're still experimenting with it, and its almost October. I'd love to see some hook ups. I'm very happy working with TaoMeow next month. I suspect being direct in what you want to study, as well as keeping it simple, ie sitting or standing practice may help get a connection. You could also Private Message people here you respect and ask them. Keeping in mind people are busy and the professional teachers here 'do it for pay.' Again, no master, but if you hook up with the right person, in 30 days you might be far advanced from where you are now. Not necessarily because of them, but because they inspire you and by process of reporting and feedback, you get a little more hard core.

There are problems, I just don't think as dark as people put it. The police do have accountability. There is an internal investigation on there conduct. Quote"The Police Department will look into a complaint that an officer wrongly used pepper spray at a demonstration against Wall Street last week, Commissioner Raymond Kelly said Wednesday. Internal affairs will investigate the claim made by a 25-year-old woman and others, Kelly said. Video from Saturday's Union Square incident shows an officer blasting a cluster of women with pepper spray. Two of the women crumple on the sidewalk in pain. One screams. Kelly says the video leaves out tumultuous conduct by protesters who illegally tried to block streets. There have been about a hundred arrested since the protests began more than a week ago, mostly on disorderly conduct charges. A handful were arrested on more serious charges of assaulting a police officer and obstructing governmental administration." The police deserve more then public lynching, where a camera looks and how its edited do matter, because they don't show the whole picture. It would be different if there was clear shot of the event. The shot shown is moving frantically, and I expect shot by a biased party. Some of the protest was on private property. People have the right to set up rules for there property. In the U.S. is lawyer and lawsuit crazy. I'm have no doubt people filmed are lining lawsuits now and hoping to line there pockets. The people do have power and they have cameras. I'm just thinking back to the 60's where there was a defined purpose, there was real brutality. This is the age of 'the people'. Millions are joining the Tea Party, waving guns and shouting slogans. The people aren't in danger, common sense is.

Jeez if thats what you call jack booted atrocities, you live a sheltered life. In the 60's and 70's, when my Mom marched there high pressure sprays, police dogs, being run off the road, shootings and bombings. In the 30's & 40's they were just shot. Through out the MidEast people who stood up were getting sniped, disappeared, there families brought in for torture and viginity checks. These yuppie kids are being told to move, give attitude, get pepper sprayed and cry out at the injustice. Poor babies. It not nice, its rude, its heavy handed, but Jack booted atrocity?? No. They need a handy wipe and espresso quick and they're getting it. Plus establishing there street credibility. There demands?? Who the hell knows, ask 5 get 3 different answers, none of which they have solutions too.

I guess if you work at it you can convince yourself everyone is evil or works for evil controlling ends. But, there are those who believe in universal healthcare, not for totalitarian control at home, but because it will improve preventive care, better outcomes in general then what we have now, save lives, save millions from bankruptcy paying giant medical bills, save businesses money (its 15,000+ an employee/family now). Actually from what I've seen, many neocons were against Libya, if for no other reason then Obama was for it, and the pendulum is swinging towards American isolationism.

As I recall one of the ingredients in Daniel Reids long life wine was human placenta!! male & female sea horses too I think. If his age was true (& I'm skeptical) then whatever skills he had weren't transferable. His wives, children and disciples (like the General mentioned) seem to have lived and died normally.

I really resonate with this. I love the explanations and clarity of Buddhism, but too often people get into 'how many angels on a pin' discussions based on dogma, some of it cultural bound, and not the heart of Buddhism.

I think there is value to PUA for shy guys; it could help them open up. But putting numbers on woman most often due to figure and breast size is poison.

On the site there was a pop up for a free service to see if I needed an exorcism. What the chances I would need one I'd hit the button? 100% I'd expect.

Forget humanity. In the end what counts is what You do. If you need to get 7 billion people working for the same cause you're going to have to become very very very good at waiting a long long time. In that period of unknown length, one person could accomplish quite a bit.

Awesome video, I'd never seen the last half. I've always thought a great teacher trumps the particular art. If there's a genius teaching combat sewing, then thats the way to go. With the caveat in real life classes that are closer and reasonably priced have an edge over those 100 miles a way and charge big bucks. I really enjoyed my years in Ki-Aikido. (IMO)A good art should be about more then fighting.

Mentorship may be too loaded a word. Maybe what I'm suggesting is closer to sharing. I don't expect actual teachers to be involved in this, because they're professionals and are paid(rightly so) to teach. I do hope that if you're going to share something with someone else you have a level of expertise above beginner. Honestly for many people to have a 'mentor' relationship with the goal of better sitting or zhan zang standing is perfect. If you don't have a regular practice, or if you want to deepen one getting advice and feedback from a senior student is going to help. It will also help the mentor, because to teach is to relearn. I'd recommend keeping the practice simple. There is nothing wrong with basics. I Want to have Lucid Dreams, Astral Travelings, but what I'm working on is dream recall. Slow and steady wins the race, move along step by step and you climb mountains. There is another agenda too. That is bringing people a little closer together. Send emails back and forth for a month and you know what..you've probably made a friend; and thats invaluable in this world.

On question 1, Why didn't the powerful Tibetan meditators use magical powers to defend Tibet against the Chinese. I think Mewtew nailed it. Siddhis are evidently not all that powerful. I've seen live videos of John Chang with the power of a match and even a double aa battery, amazing but martially less useful then a slingshot. 2. Rwanda happened after the Black Hawk down incident. After losing lives and having service men broadcast torn to pieces and dragged naked through streets it was simply unpopular to intervene in African affairs. Which is unfortunate we could have saved lives, ironically by killing and destroying many other lives. The U.S. is a great fighting force, but terrible peace keepers. Point us in a direction and we can wipe out whats there, but intricate peace negotiations, we generally suck at. We're not the most culturally sensitive people. 3. Cuba. The U.S. was already tangled up with China and Russia and felt it best to take back Cuba subversively. Failed miserably and decided the best course of action was containment. We tend to overly romanticize things and over estimate power. Take the fabled Shaolin temple, I quote: "The monastery has been destroyed and rebuilt many times. In 1641 the troops of anti-Ming rebel Li Zicheng sacked the monastery due to the monks' support of the Ming and the possible threat they posed to the rebels. This effectively destroyed the temple's fighting force.[6] Perhaps the best-known story of the Temple's destruction is that it was destroyed by the Qing government for supposed anti-Qing activities. Variously said to have taken place in 1647 under the Shunzhi Emperor, in 1674 under the Kangxi Emperor, or in 1732 under the Yongzheng Emperor." Mao's cultural revolution wasn't kind to it or dozens (hundreds?) of monasteries and the monks and masters within either.

On the practical side. Don't put all your eggs in one basket. With regards to investing in green technologies thats particularly true, most companies involved talk a great game, but few are profitable, many will go broke. Thats not to say don't invest, just make it a small percentage you can afford to lose. If you truly believe a banker and thief are equal you'll probably not make the wisest investment decisions. I'm increasingly finding that the best ideas for ending poverty are the simplest. A great book to read is The Boy Who Captured the Wind. Very inspiring on poverty and the human spirit. On a positive note. Invest in yourself. Find something your passionate about and can grow in. Find good teachers and learn. Travel broadens the mind and opens you up to new possibilities. Travel. Charity is always worthwhile. I like the Heifer Intl. We pay for clutches of chickens distributed to poor areas monthly. Their eggs give excellent nutrition and a product to sell. They eat bugs, scratch and improve soil, even there shit makes useful fertilizer, best of all they reproduce and can be given to others to create food and income. Since they're egg laying breeds, even my veggie son agrees with it. Investing... .5% means losing about 3% a year to inflation. You could invest in SHY a short term bond fund and make almost 2% a year. Thats tiny, but 4x more. Invest half SHY, half high yield corporate and you'll relatively safely double that. Keeping the money in a bank won't help or hurt anyone. There are a couple of high yield dividend stocks you could look into.

Hmnn, not to much band wagon jumping so far. The point of this thread is to get people involved with each other and a short practice for 30 days. I've made a mentorship connection with TaoMeow that will start in October and I'm very happy. What I'm hoping to see is others post to say they're up for a mentorship and see who bites and how. As TaoMeow has said there's not a whole lot of coaching in dreamwork, but the point is it puts a little pressure on me to succeed; someone I'll report progress and problems to. A person with some experience. We have some very talented people here. They're a resource we're not taking advantage of. We are too disconnected. Again I'm envisioning entering a 30 day period with another member here. It shouldn't take too much time, <30 minutes, nor should the emails back and forth, they should be kept on target. We're here to explore and learn a new practice. So I encourage other people to post here and say 'I'm open for a mentorship, I'm interested in X' or 'I know Y, is anyone interested in me sharing it with you?' Or drop the X's and Y's and just say your open to learning or teaching. Michael

I predict Change Sometimes when unhappy I predict Disaster.. some where some time and I'm always right. Sometimes I take news fasts, no TV, newspaper or radio I walk in the sun Watch children play I'm happier and think there's 10,000 good things going on I just don't notice. and the sun goes down again.

That is so cool. I am always amazed at the insights in your writing. My idea wasn't for this to necessarily be an exchange, but I'm quite happy with your offer. I'll PM you with my ideas on how to start.

The thing about the video is at the heart of PUA. That is..are we being manipulated and set up. The video itself is a set up, certainly the first part is unabashedly choreographed. The second purports to be real. But the first guys shouting come ons to woman as they walk by. Thats not real life. His intention is obviously to fail, wink or no wink. But there is value to the latter half, but it raises the question..its still lying heavily on manipulations and set ups. It works for meeting, but if you don't get past it, you risk becoming superficial.