sean

i sure need to be constantly reminded! to me it's amazing how many layers to this onion there are. how many times after a layer of holding disolves i think "ahhh, wow! this is it! holy crap, i can't believe i thought i was present in that previous layer. what a joke. i was still stuck in an intellectual map of what i thought presence is. damn, how weird, how did i miss this!". and then, sure enough, that layer dissolves. and from the new layer i have the same aha about the one i was just in. humbling, at least! yeah, this is fantastic, it's simultaneously more advanced and also a prerequisite to the relational presence with others that i was speaking. you mean while experiencing relational presence type interactions, or just generally speaking? come to think of it, the answer to both is that i think throughout my day to day, my breathing is just plain terrible, rife with holding patterns, obvious signs of stress, struggle, shallowness, you name it. really only in my sitting meditation practice do i typically find any decent awareness around how neurotic my breathing is. but this is definitely something i want to bring more attention to in 2011 and on. best, sean

having face to face conversations with anyone that can maintain eye contact, especially through any little uncomfortable states that come up. e.g., when a slightly longer than usual silence occurs and for a moment neither of us is quite sure exactly what to say next. for us both to just be with that fully without shifting eye contact, or going up into the mind to think "oh shit, what do we talk about now?". this creates a space for a beautiful, relational, meditative state in my experience. not sure how to describe in taoist terms, maybe an extension of zuowang? sitting together and forgetting ourselves. it feels like our ancestors probably experienced this, in a way i think it's a doorway to love, which historically even non-overtly-spiritual folks wrote endlessly about. imo, this simple experience can have a profound impact on our relationships -> community -> society. sean

hah, love this one. Sean

Thanks Franklin. Good to hear confirmation on this system from another bum. It seems fantastic, but all I have to go on is my intuition since my knowledge of TCMA is minuscule. I'm enjoying Yusen's teaching. Very detailed. I'm only on the first lesson, working on the first two standing exercises. They are kicking my ass after only a few minutes! I have my work cut out for me it seems. Sean

It's free, just click Add to Cart, go to Checkout, fill in your info, they are not going to spam you, and you'll get the download link. Worth the trouble, it's a great lesson. Sean

Bagua > Tai Chi. ;p Hah, totally not trying to imply that. Hope I haven't offended you or anyone by even posting the quote. In some ways it's out of context as the entire book is devoted to speaking extremely highly of both arts without downplaying either. I guess I was just kind of surprised by the quote because I'd always just assumed Tai Chi is THE Taoist movement art, whereas Bagua, Xing Yi are more inherently martial. To read of Bagua's distinctly Taoist roots was fascinating. Sean

Interesting Jess, thanks for that background. PS - This paragraph of yours from a few posts back is really sticking with me. Seems like great advice, thanks for sharing.

Nice tip, thanks. Any tips for a sore ass and a weird gait for the 24 hours that follow a long ride? Sean

Great to see you sharing here Ryan! To any bums who are frustrated with intense/chaotic/painful lust energies, sexual compulsions, e.g., masturbation/porn addiction, I recommend you check out Ryan's work and even consider connecting with him for a one-on-one. I've watched him focus more and more deeply on effective solutions regarding these issues for a number of years now, and he personally helped me with some emotional release work that was quite profound. I've also spent some time with him in Costa Rica and he's a great guy, fantastic energy and presence and very much on the path. Sean

Yeah, he gave two standing postures to start out with, and in both emphasized creating some internal tension where the elbows are pulling down and even inward. Not sure what BKF has to say on this yet, or what any of this even means, I'm just a newb. Sean

Liu Ming, a Taoist priest in Oakland, CA teaches a pretty intense course on zi wei in English once a year or so. I wish I had recorded all the classes when I took this, they were fantastic. He gave me permission but I only ended up recording a handful. Here is one of them: Liu Ming - Polestar Astrology - The Emperor Also, his free introduction to zuowang meditation mp3 is excellent. Sean

Great post Sloppy Zhang. Exactly what I wanted to hear more about. Sean

Thanks for all the encouragement and cool links! Check it out, just stumbled across this passage, via Bagua and Tai Chi, by Bruce Frantzis: That last part (bold emphasis is mine) struck me as interesting. Curious if anyone has thoughts on this. Sean

LOL. So much for organized moderator conspiracy. ;p Sorry, didn't even notice your poll, I just saw enough interest and figured we could try it out. Thanks for creating the poll though. Sean

http://www.thetaobums.com/index.php?/forum/161-tao-teh-ching/ The full description is: Forum to discuss classic Taoist texts such as the Tao Teh Ching, I Ching and Chuang-Tzu. I figured keep it a bit more open to any classic Taoist text to start out, whereas Book Club is for more or less anything, sound good? Best, Sean

I've been rather busy the last, well two years now frankly, and unfortunately have not had the time or attention to detail for moderating The Tao Bums as I used to. I've been telling myself that it's just temporary, but I'm starting to realize this community has outgrown me. Soo... I'm looking for someone, preferably an already established and active member of the community here, who wants to help out. Pretty simple job, and you'd really be helping out me and the community. If you are interested please email me at [email protected] if you are interested, with a link to your TTB profile (top left) and I'll explain further. Thanks! Sean

Just had a pow-wow with the rest of the concierge team about the "reputation system" and concerns from the community. My intention for activating this feature was really for the focus to be on likes/dislikes of posts and not on any sense of accumulating positive/negative reputation for members here. As Stigweard's announcement post explained: Naturally this valuation we would all be doing is totally subjective, I don't want to provoke existential crisis over what valuation means, is this in the Taoist handbook, etc. Really the gesture behind using it is, "Wow, this post was really insightful and probably took this member an hour or two to type all this out and contribute this to the community. And it's a wonderful response to the original poster. I don't know if I have anything to say in response to this right now but I do want to show I like this post *click* LIKE". There are also some longer term benefits of us using this feature. For example, I can create a feature to show you "most popular posts", or "most popular posts this week". Also I can make different kinds of topic views available to you. Imagine being able to click a setting where when you view a topic, replies to the topic-starting post are sorted by liked-count descending first and date of post ascending second. Could be interesting. (This is how Reddit works). In any case, I do understand the concern from some of you, especially with the ominous sounding "Reputation System" title. So I made some changes. First, I removed the reputation visibility component that calculates accumulated reputation points and shows them on member profiles. That was never the point, I should not have even turned that on to begin with. Second, I turned off "dislikes". I don't think they're necessary. Facebook is doing just fine taking over the entire manifest universe with only a Like button, I don't think we need a Dislike. Now there is only the one happy option to "like" a post. I hope this alleviates any weird feelings about this feature. Sorry if we freaked you out with the whole reputation thing. Let's play with this simple "Like" function for a few months and see how it pans out. Best, Sean

FYI, been juggling 10,000 things and haven't compiled the interview yet so keep firing away if you have more questions. I'm hoping to carve out some time this evening... Sean

Really happy to see these additional excellent questions, this is great stuff. I'm going to wait until later this evening to start organizing the interview questions, so if you have more questions for Bruce keep posting. Thanks everyone! Sean

Great questions, keep 'em coming. I'm going to organize these over the weekend and send them to Bruce on Sunday. Thanks, Sean

Cool talk, make sure you watch the whole thing it gets particularly interesting toward the end: http://www.ted.com/talks/vs_ramachandran_t...vilization.html

Ok, it's late and I'm tired but I just want to spit out a first draft of a new guideline. Feel free to discuss. No more personal insults in Taoist Discussion or Personal Practice Discussion. Completely disagreeing with a person and their lifestyle choices is fine. Finding someone's opinion, technique, politics, approach, etc. absurd, evil, stupid, ridiculous is fine. But no insulting (or links to attacks) of individuals, nationalities, genders, political preferences, or lifestyle choices. Here is an update of our insult policy, please read it and abide by it: This may seem restrictive but I think it'll force us to grow up a bit and think about how to present our perspectives intelligently without just flinging unproductive rudeness at each other. No one, including the originating poster, gains anything from statements like "So and so is a complete moron" or "XYZ sexual preference is abominable". If you have an opinion and you believe it's relevant to a topic at hand, post it as constructively as possible so we can learn from you, debate with you, ignore you, whatever. If you can't abide by this simple constructive guideline, create a rant in "The Pit", a new little Off Topic subforum for the more primitive breed of taoist war. Sean.