sean

Touching account Mike, thanks for posting that.

Great story. I am constantly amazed how pregnant with creativity this "Emptiness" we dip into is.

This gave me chills. I'm familiar with this idea but you drove it home powerfully. I remember listening to some masterful NLP work several years ago that addressed this ... the therapist asked someone how they know the difference between what they see "inside" their head and what they see "outside". In a flash it struck me that what we call the "outside" world is just the result of information processed by our eyes and run through our mind's eye with submodalities that "flag" this information as "outside". So we are having powerful powerful visual hallucinations constantly ... ie: when we zone out for a minute on a rich visual memory of what we did the night before. But "sane" people sort this information in such a way that we can make a distinction ... we perceive the memory as "inside" and the result of visual processing as "outside". Obviously this "hallucination sorting" is vital for primitive survival, but it's hallucination sorting all the same. Interesting food for thought, thanks.

That's a decent split, I've never heard those terms, pretty cool. I think it's really good to be aware that obviously there is not a single teaching/teacher that represents the whole picture. There is that saying, something like "seek not to be like the Master, seek what the Master sought". Gurus are just promoting what has worked in their experience, hopefully with some humility to avoid creating annoying cultish behavior. It's up to each of us to take what we are being told with some degree of critical thinking, testing the work and seeing how it fits with our unique situation. I really dug that Ken Wilber and Dave Deida mp3 I posted for that reason. It points to the possibility of a unified spiritual community of teachers who each have their own strong points and who call on other teachers to help fill in the gaps. Then the "one supreme Guru" vs. the "only ultimate Avatar" ego battles are not necessary. A big sigh of relief for mature seekers everywhere. I really hope I see this type of deep spiritual community building in my lifetime. Adyashanti is very aware of this concept, btw. I remember once I was in satsang with him and a woman began asking more and more specific questions about how to deal with her boss. Adyashanti kept pointing to the Ultimate. Finally he addressed her specificness head on and said something to the effect of, "I'm sorry, this stuff isn't my area of specialty. I am not much of a psychologist. I'm really only good at repeatedly pointing to the Absolute in creative ways." I was really touched by his response because it wasn't dismissive of psychology or the need for other skillsets at all. He was just being frank about what he is and is not good at. If you are trying to learn how to cook Indian food, get a reliable herbal diagnosis, communicate better in your relationships, receiving healing energy transmissions, learn how to fight, and develop a witness to the Unchanging Tao in each moment, you may need as many different teachers. And that's fine IMO. Choices are what Western civilization is all about. On TTB I find myself promoting the more connected, form-based practices a little more ... I think because from the perspective of my particular life ie: my relationships, financial abundance, career fulfillment, etc. I could use more felt connection to the physical/sensual/detail-rich world of physicality, my relationships, my body, etc... IMO I already have a great deal of the stoic witness-to-emptiness going on naturally, perhaps even to an unhealthy extreme ... Also I tend to root for the underdog and this obsession with being-dry-male-absolutist-monotheism to the exclusion and repression of doing-wet-female-relative-panpsychism has been going on for so long I'm just doing my little part to tip the scales for a generation. Sean

The whole modern Advaita Vedanta stream of teachers/teachings is really big on emphasizing the absolute and relatively refusing to address the particulars of form. In some ways they are even more extreme proponents of emptiness than Zen. It's interesting work. I just listened to this great discussion between Ken Wilber and David Deida that wonderfully addresses the continuum between the witnessing/being emphasis found in, ie: Advaita and Zen and the flowing/riding/doing emphasis of say Tantra and Taoist Alchemy. Anyone still having some confusion over the supposed Bodri vs. Winn dichotomy should definitely listen as it's a very coherent nail in this entirely illusional coffin.

Nnonnth, I haven't caught up on recent posts over the weekend yet so I've probably missed something that explains your feelings ... One thing I wanted to say is that this forum isn't just about Taoism ... many of us are dabblers in many traditions. I know of three other members off the top of my head who are into Fries and Bardon. Fries is also on my must read list and I'm slowly plodding through Bardon's Initiation into Hermetics at the moment. Currently building my "white mirror". Oddly finding it much more difficult than the black one. Anyway ... you are always welcome on The Tao Bums. Sean

Welcome Mike! Great to see you here. I was happy to see your introduction earlier and was going to ask you/remind you about posting that amazing play of yours into Contributed Articles and you beat me to the punch. Awesome. Also, Healing Tao is fine to mention here, quote here, link to from here. Winn has told me it's cool to quote posts from the HT forum here w/ links, etc. so it's all one big happy family as far as I'm concerned. I personally don't go to the forum there anymore because then I want to post and when I post the dumbasses really come out of the woodwork for some reason and then I feel bad for the rest of the members. Anyway ... welcome to The Tao Bums! Beautiful photography on your website btw! Sean.

Karen, it's funny you should bring this up. I also have a background in hypnotherapy and the first time I ever experimented with EFT was from that perspective and I didn't get a whole lot out of it from that frame. I guess I kind of thought, ok this is a trance induction with unnecessary TCM references and I'm aware of that so why not skip the spiritual trappings and just do an regular induction? Now that I've gone through some Taoist training and have a much deeper felt sense of my energetic body, meridians, accupoints, etc. EFT felt much more effective ... like a very simple way to balance the energetics around an issue. Thought you might enjoy hearing my experience on the other side of the coin on this one. Sean

Hagar, it's cool. I really can use good, clear Zen bamboo smacks of simple clarity sometimes. I am a romantic I have to admit. I tend to embellish my stories with more texture and aesthetic than required. It raises my bhakti I think. I like the Japanese minimalist frame though. I think I can get into it. Driving to the airport on 3 hours of sleep this morning. Grey sky pouring rain. Windshield wipers on high and the familiar sound of tires on wet highway. Leaning against a trash can in baggage claim, washing a bland muffin down with a chalky protein drink. Not used to this beard, wiping my face after each bite and sip. People bustling, rushing, tugging luggage. Where is Lezlie anyway? I'm already tired of this floating world today. The Japanese fiction I've read is really interesting. I think traditionally the Japanese really prefer prefer cutting through excessive ornateness. Short, to the point sentences and yet a rich story still unfolds. It's just another kind of story though. I think there is this conception that Zen is somehow closer to describing Truth because it seeks to to do so more simply. But really it's just a different form. One cultures particular preference. Maybe in the sense that Zen's simplicity makes more space for Silence it has some unique merits. I think different styles of trying to frame The Unframeable probably all have various strengths and weaknesses. Magick doesn't have to be just a rebellion from the truth of boring reality. Mundane and ordinary is just one way of looking at what's there. Magick is another. And all the while the Tao slips through the cracks of both and neither. Sitting in zazen tonight. Cutting through this illusion. Nothing special here. Meditating this evening. I am inspired to think of the complex choreography of neurons occuring in my temporal cortex. A long day is almost over. Taking a seat to refresh my soul. Shakti and Shiva come to dance blissfully up and down my sushumna. I am absorbed into their ecstatic Love. Sean

You fit in with: Spiritualism Your ideals are mostly spiritual, but in an individualistic way. While spirituality is very important in your life, organized religion itself may not be for you. It is best for you to seek these things on your own terms. 100% spiritual. 100% reason-oriented.

That guy is just the friggin' man.

Great to see you hear Karen! Welcome to The Tao Bums. I'd been meaning to write you and tell you that I dabbled with EFT and found it a cool technique I want to play with more, so thanks for the info on that, I really appreciate it. People, Karen is an amazing healer who has been through the trenches and back. If you (or someone you know) is looking for a wise, caring soul to help you develop a simple, gentle and effective diet and lifestyle plan tailored for individual needs to holistically support healing of all sorts of issues ... stubborn, complicated stuff like fatigue and allergies, compulsions, sleep disorders, anxieties and a ton more check out her website and shoot her an email. She's a lovely person, for real. Sean

Good one. "A great Indian sage, Ramana Maharishi, said that the intellect has only one useful purpose, and that is to continually ask the question, "Who am I?" Oddly enough, though Ramana was considered a very high jnani (one enlightened via the intellect), his perpetual question, "Who am I?" is a pure form of bhakti. If one is only interested in answering that question, life becomes pure bhakti/desire for truth. So, if the intellect is used in the right way, it merges with the heart's deepest longing for divine truth. That is how the intellect can help us make spiritual progress. If the intellect is not brought beyond reason to the stage of simple divine inquiry ("Who am I? Is there more than this?"), then it is little more than a machine that is prone to build too many castles in the air. The intellect can be very seductive that way. From our inner silence the intellect can be channeled usefully. When it is, it merges with bhakti. The guru is in you." --- Yogani

Opinions follow ... The magickal paradigms of Yoga and Chi Kung are mostly based around an energetic model of the universe. It's appealing to more pragmatic, scientifically minded people who are turned off by worldviews involving numerous deities and "other worldy realms" that sound too fantastical to have any basis in reality. The idea that a subtle, immaterial energy is pulsing through channels in your energetic body and that you can work with this energy in various ways is not quite as strange or daunting as some fantastical dark ritual like speaking with a god. But what if this Chi is not quite as cold and mechanical a substance as the energetic model often treats it? What if Chi is alive and sentient? And what if the different patterns and shapes that Chi can take on represent distinct, living personalities in the energetic fabric of our universe? And what if we, just for the hell of it, were to name each of the different shapes of energy we experience in our lives? This is how energy magick can begin to shift and blend with magick that seems so far out to you, and probably to many people. The kind of magick involving deities. Spiritual magick. It's not far out at all actually. At least no more so than communicating back and forth with a voice in your head everyday that you falsely assume is your Self. Here's a scenario. Let's say we have a friend, Kyla, and she is doing some intense pranayama work. She notices this powerful energy starting to pulse in her perineum. As she experiences this energy on deeper levels, she notices it has what she considers a feminine quality. Suddenly she finds herself almost compelled to name this energy. She calls the energy "Shakti". One night, deep in meditation she has a very clear image in her mind of a beautiful woman dancing for her. She knows it is Shakti and Shakti says "I love you Kyla". She has been touched. Afterward she goes on to approach this pulsing energy in her perineum with respect. She treats this "energetic shape" as if it were a real being with consciousness and emotion, instead of just an inanimate, soulless form of bioelectricity that she can flip on and off and push and pull through her body at her whim. Uh oh. Kyla has started down the ominously dark, ludicrous, evil path of insane Harry Potter spiritual magick. In this scenario Kyla simply took an energetic pattern she was having an experience with, and named it in order to deepen her experience into a relationship with a living form of energy. It's in no way different to the shang qing Taoist belief of living, intelligent spirits inhabiting the organs. And there is a lot of merit to this approach. Humans are social creatures before conceptual ones. Language probably evolved first as a means of communicating with the tribe before it became internalized as a way of telling stories in our heads and creating selves and egos. We are probably hardwired more for sophisticated communication with sentient beings than we are for abstract thought because we have doing the former much longer. Moving chi through the body definitely has power. But it can quickly get co-opted and become an intellectual process. That's why the Chinese systems put so much emphasis on movement. When you let yourself believe for a moment though, that you can communicate with almost anything in your life as if it were a living god, there is much power there. Much more of the brain, body and emotions are drawn into the interaction. And of course more power means a greater risk of giant success or giant failure. This is a deep deep way to draw yourself into the divine though. And many many spiritual paths utilize it, giving people something human/animalesque they can communicate with. All legitimate paths of magick involving deities start out with these personal experiences of configurations of energy that are then named and treated as real. In our example, Kyla has named a god. If she were to go on to teach other people, and were to tell them about Shakti and hopefully show them how to get in touch with the same energy that she has named such, then a religion of shared experience and worship begins to form. And a Shakti archetype is also being carved deeper into the stream of reality, into the Mind of God, perhaps resonating more powerfully then when just Kyla stumbled across her. More and more life is being breathed into Shakti as an independent form. Pretty cool stuff. Of course this is all just my wild speculation that I am making an interesting story out of. I agree, it can seem like many of the more obvious wackos are drawn to what is openly called magick nowadays. And I'm sure we could wax on and on about stereotypes relating what temperaments are drawn to which type of path, what their character flaws might likely be, what they might do that is "just too far out". It's fun, but I think it's hard to really accurately judge a whole paradigm based on just a handful of self-described magickians who've had some imbalances. Even poor Jesus got a little crazy sometimes. Like that one time he broke out that whip and just started thrashing on dudes selling crap in the temple. So about the experience I had. It was profound but not "other worldly" because it happened to me, right in this world, in my bedroom. I was probably 19 or 20 years old. I did deep holotropic breathing with my door shut and all the lights out for several minutes. I spontaneously sat up and began doing a wild, spontaneous dance in a circle. I felt like a shaman. Then a glowing violet female face appeared in the center of the circle I was dancing around. I stopped and looked at her. Stunned, but not as much as I would have expected for having what many psychiatrists would basically deem a psychotic, open-eyed hallucination, I noticed the face was casting light that was illuminating my room, casting shadows on my things which I was fascinated by. I asked the voice "Who are you?" She said "God". I was like WTF? She sensed my confusion. At the time I didn't believe in God. I was an atheist and interpreted all of my magickal work in psychological terms. Also, if any being appeared to me, I expected it would be a fun little deity, not capital G, God and as a woman? She said, "Higher Self. True Will. Whatever you want to call me, it doesn't matter. Just lie down." So I lay in my bed and she said "Now, heal". Then waves of light came out of an aura around her face and travelled down the length of my body. It was really neat, I remember picking up my hands and letting the light travel over my hands and cast shadows on my body. I was mesmerized by the fact that, if this were a hallucination, it was incredibly rich with details I would have no idea how to consciously make up myself. I closed my eyes and fell into a deep sleep. Sean

This is big in Germany. There is a great exhibit in Berlin. In fact if you rent the movie Anatomie (with sexy Franka Potente) there are lot's of great shots of the pieces in it (and it's also not a bad movie). I caught some pieces similar to this in the "Sensations" exhibit in Brooklyn years ago. You know, the one that Giuliani got upset about because of the dung on the virgin Mary art piece. I think $25 is not a lot to check this out. It would be a cool meditation and I'll check it out if it comes near here. Sean

Cool post hagar. I still don't quite get where you are coming from with "There is no such thing as magic". It seems like we probably just have different definitions. BTW - I use the spellig with a "k" to differentiate between stage magic, ie: card tricks, and real magick, such as Chi Kung and meditation. I'm curious what you mean when you say "magic" so I can better understand what you think is bogus. You seem to be saying that magic is a superstitious way of looking at phenomenon, and that all things, even crazy stuff that seems insanely mystical has a logical explanation. It's a good point. Very scientific. If you take it far enough you would probably find yourself being somewhat of a determinist. Which is also pretty sane. Then the only magic is whatever pushed this huge chain reaction of matter into motion a long time ago. A big accident most likely. Maybe a big bang. The rest is just clockwork, nothing magical here. No problem. It's a hard pill to swallow. That we are cogs in a big machine with no intellent creator. I think it's very useful to get into this frame. Very Zen in a way. Dry insight. Nothing special. Magick is just a fairy tale we make up to create drama and make things seem interesting. On some level, everything is unexceptionally predictable. 100% explainable. But this is also just a story. It's just a perceptual position. Sometimes it's useful and even fun to tell a different story. A story of magick! A story of intrigue that is on fire, and culminating in an eternally hallucinatory, living breathing, Now fueled by unpredictable Chaos and Tao. A story of Love and Mystery that is beyond any comprehension ever. It's easy to start the story. Just look at how science cannot truly penetrate even the simplest things. Look at how any model that you adopt to explain things has a magickal component. Science, philosophy, magick, alchemy, shamanism, mysticism, psychology ... lot's of magick in there. And all the while Life emerges on ... inscrutably occult. Sean

That's awesome farooq! I've never done Bikram. I used to get this little bedroom I lived in cookin' with a thermostat and a few space heaters and do some ashtanga though. Very fun. If you're into Sonnon and crew, here are a few good threads pertaining to Bikram I enjoyed: 1 2 3 4 Yay! Sean

Dear Nietzsche, you've been a reliable friend all these years. I have to admit, it was annoying when you you consumed my interest with such intensity that I failed my junior year of high school and had to go to summer school. But I forgive you because it was worth it. Love, Sean A selection of Friedrich Nietzsche quotes: Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything. Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies. All things are subject to interpretation whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth. Ah, women. They make the highs higher and the lows more frequent. It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages. At bottom every man knows well enough that he is a unique being, only once on this earth; and by no extraordinary chance will such a marvelously picturesque piece of diversity in unity as he is, ever be put together a second time. The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends. This is the hardest of all: to close the open hand out of love, and keep modest as a giver. All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking. I would believe only in a God that knows how to Dance. In heaven, all the interesting people are missing. Art is the proper task of life.

One of a very few, really good, edgy Japanese rock bands to make it out of the underground there, yet still criminally neglected outside of Japan, the talented and ecclectic Yura Yura Teikoku. BTW - Not sure what's up with this bold red thing, I'm just going with it though.

My cat's name is Aleister. I've already ranted enough about my views on Magick. It's what we are all doing. Some people abuse tools. Just so happens a lot of the people that are most obviously abusing tools tend to call their practices "magick" so the label gets a bad rap. In the same way that lot's of people who call themselves Christians are just nuts (no offense) and so people write off Christ when actually that's also what we are all doing. Heh. Sean

Yeah man, it looks cool as hell. Talk to tummoessence, he can tell you lots I'm sure. He's been around the block and I think he's helping organize the Tui Shou seminar in his neck of the woods up in Sacramento. You could probably peep the Chicago one without a huge journey.

Redfox, really glad to hear WW is opening your practice so profoundly. Yoda told me that he read that Mantak Chia says if you can open your joints, the Chi will flow naturally through your body (something like that. Yoda you around?) Reading your post makes me realize what a great gift Scott has created ... I probably take it for granted sometimes because I just do it so often I forget how pivotal of a relationship it has to my success in meditation, Yoga and now Jujitsu. Are you jumping on the Intu-Flow bandwagon with us? Ships tommorow! *Rubbing paws together* I think Intu-Flow will be a nice bridge between my Warrior Wellness addiction and a Clubbell addiction ... I swing here and there but haven't gotten completely hooked yet. And I think Clubbells take the fascia opening to the next level. Really cool concept thaddeus. Close to what I was striving for in my article "The Simplest Realization Ever" where I equate the heart of spiritual practice as being basically a sophisticated form of hedonism. Your statement grounds lovingkindness practice into the body more than I'd ever considered. Wholesome emotions as in inside-out practice to unbind the physiological restrictions hindering the flow of spiritual pleasure. Nice one. I've found this same thing through not resisting an awareness of environmental sounds. Often when meditating it was subtle inward-and-quiet=good, outward-noise-distraction=bad. Lately, probably prompted by "Come to your Senses" I've been treating environmental sounds as part of the flow of meditation. Really simple little tip but it opens up my being to include the miles of physical space around me (car horns in the far distance, etc) ... my previously antagonistic inner vs. outer starts to blend pleasantly. Sean

The Doomriders this week.

Thaddeus, I've heard this stated before but it never clicked like it has now. You are pointing to a very interesting interrelationship between body-mind-emotion. IMO it relates to the limitations of approaching "opening" from a purely physical means ... for example, the fact that even after rolfing many clients sink back into their old habits, because they haven't addressed the emotional issues that contract them into their habitual patterns. And it also relates to the limitations of purely "inside-out" approaches, ie: meditation, that could use a well-deserved kickstart with some yoga, warrior wellness, tai chi, clubbells, deep tissue massage, etc. etc.