sean

Freeform, glad to hear you're in on the challenge! Good to set your goals realistically when around lot's of family. For me this is really hard as well.... also, like Yoda, when I am around old friends and family I have very large drinking responsibilities which has a tendency to lead to 3am cheesesteaks and chilli dogs and soft pretzels and pizza and other garbage that Philly folks pass for food. TwoTrees, awesome report! And interesting recipes, thanks for posting. I think I am a little too lazy for something like this right now, but I'm curious how that faux meatloaf goes. Ok, so my update. I've already reported on my durian disaster. Fortunately I didn't explode from being the only idiot to ever eat the white part of the durian. I will have to send a postcard to the entire continent of Asia to let them know that someone finally confirmed this. After my durian shake I snacked on seeds and nuts and fruit. For lunch I had steamed kale, broccoli and mushrooms over brown rice. Now I just got home and participated in The Durian, Part II. Freeform you are so right, when it's cold it's not as daunting. I had the durian in the fridge the whole day, so I took it out, scooped out the three remaining compartments of goo into a tupperware container, and made a shake with a big blob of durian, raw milk, raw honey, a banana and some strawberries. I must say ... VERY TASTY! I am done talking trash on the King of Fruits. Now I just need to get my hands on that little queen so I can see what a King and Queen shake tastes like. Mmmmm.... Ok, as for my mood. It's only been a little rocky. A little tired and grumpy at a few spots, but so far this has been a piece of organic vegan cake. Also, I think I got a taste of that energy tingle you are talking about TwoTrees. A nice pleasurable shiver up my spine earlier in the day. I think my body is really happy because I normally don't go this long without some kind of refined flour. Sean

Nope, my teacher is Liu Ming. http://www.dayuancircle.com/

OMG, LOL! I am such a silly roundeye. I think I expected the edible part of the fruit to be white because when Cam was out here he and Lezlie got Durian shakes at a Vietnamese restaraunt and they were very white. I don't know if I am going to be able to stomach the yellow buttery sacks, Owl. Dear God. *shuddering* Maybe if I throw it in a shake with a bunch of other things. How do people usually eat Durian Owl? In a bowl with a spoon or something?

Yoda, just take it down a notch. Slow and steady wins the race. When I started shopping at Whole Foods groceries is really one of the key things that kickstarted my spiral toward better nutrition. Going all natural, organic is a great step. Ok, so has anyone here ever cut open a Durian fruit? All I can say is WTF? I felt like I was in a science fiction movie and was performing surgery on an alien creature. It's the white meat I sort of expected but there are pockets of the most disgusting smelling yellow ... the only word I can think of is intenstines. It was quite a shock. You're not supposed to eat this yellow shit are you? I just cut out pieces of the white fruit, washed off the nasty yellow gooo and threw it in my blender. My finger still smell pretty gross.

Wow, Ming said people with 5's and 6's are pretty rare. He said the only Fire-6 he met drank around half gallon of vodka a day for 50 something years, presumably in a kind of instinctual qigong to cool herself off so that people around her could handle her. Otherwise she was just too intense for her family. Cool! Thanks for that link. Still waiting for Ming's response on that document. Sean

Hey Matt, welcome to TTB. You seem like a really nice guy, I think you'll fit in here perfectly.

I have a big document here that Ming handed to us on Sunday called "The Twelve Animals and The 60 Combinations of the Celestial Stems and Earthly Branches". I just wrote him and asked if he could send me a digital copy and if anyone posts their chart in here I will copy and paste the text for their four results. (I don't want to just slap the whole thing up here, not sure he would be ok with that).

Well I got impatient and started my 7 day challenge today. Actually more like Sunday afternoon. Feel free to join in and report your progress in this thread if you'd like. I think it must be psychosomatic, but I had a great deal of trouble getting out of bed today. Kind of like how when I used to smoke I could easily go a full day without smoking because I knew I could have one at any time, but but when I would try to quit, that first day or four seemed like torture. I did a blended shake in the morning, steamed veggies w/ brown rice in the afternoon then snacked on fruits and nuts the rest of the evening. I am pretty fucking hungry and kind of cranky at the moment. Day one and I am already thinking about a nice burrito. I walked through Chinatown in the afternoon and picked up a giant ugly ass Durian fruit though that I'm looking forward to hacking pieces off of and putting in my shake in the morning.

This should be rich. I'll give you a chance man but you're off on a bad foot and I'm guessing you know exactly why so I'm not even going to explain. For starters you can drop the all caps thing asap.

Stop typing in all caps, particularly in your topic titles. Thanks.

Ahhh... my beautiful little narcissist. *kiss*

I think Yoda has a great idea and I want to update the terms of the challenge. Basically let's each do our own 7 day challenge. Pick a dietary change that you think will be good for you, that you are attracted to AND is not too huge of a vibrational leap for you so that you do 7 days without trauma. Think challenging but FUN, like a good workout. So if you were hesitant to join in because of the diet I suggested, just ignore that, that's just what I am going to do. Think up your own. I think it would be a great idea if, when we start the challenge, we could all post the criteria we chose for our diets in our signatures, so it's easy to see what we are all going through. What do ya think? Glad to hear you are in TwoTrees! Cam, come on dude, join the party. Doesn't have to be drastic, just pick a small challenge. We don't want you on the shitter for 7 days. Sunshine, you too. I'm sure you can pick a challenge. Maybe, for seven days pay close attention to your instincts before you eat anything to refine your relationship with your instincts. BTW - The problem I see with instinctual theories is that our bodies, minds and emotions have gotten so out of whack from being raised on so many refined foods so our body sends us signals that aren't necessarily "true". In the same way a smoker's body craves a cigarette. Yoda, looks like you are way ahead of the pack in terms of already being closest to pure raw. Shame there is not money involved in the challenge. Tripledots, awesome. The 7 day raw + beef jerky challenge. Sounds like a plan. turtle, thelerner, glad you guys are both in. Let's see how fast we can agree on the terms. Maybe we will start it even later then Monday. lotusbud, why can't you cook rice? Anyway, preparing 3 fully raw meals in one week are great terms for this challenge. Let us know how it goes. Sean

Thanks! It's quite a process. SOOOOooooo many little template files and images and color settings and CSS and tables, and divs etc., etc., etc. Still a ton of work to do, I could put another 40 hours into it and there still'd be plenty more tweaks on my list. Here is a mockup for an update I have planned soon to change topic view up a bit. Lemme know what you think... It frees up a lot of room and gives this whole new horizontal strip to the right of the avatar and member information to start adding features ... for example I want to build a feature that will put "recent blog post" in that strip. So if you are reading a post by, say, Yoda or whoever, in Taoist discussion, you could see right next to their avatar a link to their latest blog (practice journal) entry. Also a link to their member gallery could be put up there (if they have one) .... lot's of stuff. And it frees up a lot of screen real estate for the post itself, so Cam would have that much more width for posting higher resolution porn before I delete it. Sean

Placeholder FAQ Help

Thank you both! The template is still pretty crazy, I have a lot of work to do. So many little details in a template. But the sun is coming up so I guess it's time to sleep.

I added a links section. Feel free to add links. Moderators will approve relevant submissions. Sean

Didn't like the links system so I installed a different one. Check it out by clicking links above. It's visually much different from TTB but I'm not going to skin it just yet because I'm working on a new, very different template for TTB anyway so I'll just wait. The links directory is a little different from most. It's in the non-hierarchical del.icio.us style where any link can have a number of tags. Very taoist-geek. Pietro will be proud. It's pretty fun to surf, just click on any tag under a link or in the tag cloud at the bottom (the tag cloud links get bigger when there are more links with that tag) and also it will suggest "related tags" for you. Oh, I will have to code in a "suggest a site" feature, the software doesn't have that. Feel free to email me if you want a link in there. Sean

I don't see why not, sure. You considering in?

I wonder if we all have ADD sometimes.

Totally. Great job Ian! This really is an inspiration.

Hehheeh.... Ok, so I spent exactly 30 seconds creating the ranks here. They are silly I know. Here are the ranks, next to the amount of posts you need. Member -1 Tao Master 25 Tao Addict 40 Tao Wizard 65 Tao Bum! 100 More than open to suggestions on changing them. Sean

redirect to thetaobutterfly.com?

What if we just have each post on it's own entire page with the butterfly at the top AND the bottom. Then we could even make the butterfly bigger. Like I am thinking at least double that size.

Actually I think I will add that butterfly to everyone's profile this weekend. I will have to widen the forum so that it can be that big too, I don't want to resize it at all. Do you think it will look wierd having a butterfly that huge though under everyone's avatar?

Just finished reading this article Todd, I learned a lot from it. Thanks for posting.