sean

I guess you have a point although I wasn't presenting the quantity of his believers as proof of his attainment, just more as support for the idea that it's not impossible for individuals to awaken early. My statement just wouldn't have been the same if I said "spyrelx you would have to ignore this guy down my street who is like 17 and I'm pretty sure is enlightened." Anyway, if you haven't already you should read up on Ramana Maharshi, his words are way more powerful than statistics on how widely acknolwedged he is. (In fact, PM me if you are interested and I will lend you one of my favorite spiritual texts, Talks With Ramana Maharshi.) ... Staying on topic, I think it's really interesting how most of us, most of the time myself included, are convinced of the near absolute truth of semen retention as pre-requisite for spiritual growth. And there seems to be a lot of evidence for this, from our own direct experiences with lowered energy and diminishing results in our practice, to the extremely common injunctions against against it in many mystical-religious texts, and even the scientific evidence supporting the significant physiological drain on the body produced by ejaculation. Still I'd like to crack this subject open as much as possible. First off, we should all be personally clear on what we mean when we say "spiritual progress"? What are we trying to achieve here? There are probably more answers than members since each of us has many layers of desires for why we approach this Work. I think it's important though, to be reminded every now and then to stop and clarify our highest intentions. Are we seeking Wisdom? Health? Freedom? Sex? Selflessness? Power? Love? Happiness? A less bumpy ride through life? Next, how does avoiding ejaculation fit into our primary intention(s)? To me it seems obvious that semen retention without proper cultivation is either pointless or dangerous. Most Catholic priests don't strike me as the pinnacle of spiritual awakening and frankly neither do any of the die-hard Taoist/Buddhist "retentionists" I see online. Maybe I am being too judgemental, but I am at least twice as judgemental of my self. Is it possible that we are just seriously deluding ourselves? Maybe even dangerously? Do we really have access to authentic cultivation teachings concerning sexually active retention? Is it possible that, like many ancient beliefs, retention teachings are at least partially rooted in superstition. And that we, the sexually confused West, have latched on to as dogma? Is it a requirement or not? And if so, what is it a requirement for? I think these are serious questions that may be taken for granted despite how deeply the way we answer, and the attitudes, beliefs and behaviors that arise from the way we answer, impact our lives and relationships. IMO spiritual progress is marked by the search for and acceptance of experiences that awaken us from the self-imposed dream of separation. Separation from what? I don't know how to word it, so I say One, Tao, God, True Self, Being, Now, Love. The impulse for physical sexual union can be thought of, metaphysically, as an impulse toward spiritual Oneness. I think the process of safely learning to experience sexual pleasure without ejaculation is a useful tool for teaching men a lesson (that they probably need more than women, especially in bed), namely the value of the Now. The value of goal-less Love. Action within Being and without lust for result. Qualities I believe are at the heart of awakening. I think the main idea is to stimulate spiritual experience, not save our load so we can be tough and maybe live 10 extra years. So at this point I'm not sure I buy the idea that ejaculation, regardless of context, and intrinsically in and of itself leads to lessened energy and spiritual regression. Maybe a lot of this draining effect has to do with our beliefs and our practice. But I'm also not quite ready to jump into Guy Johnson's experiment either. I think I'll stick with my latest jing refinement practice and also my search for the elusive Heartgasm. If you've made it this far, thanks for reading ... Sean.

Mine too! Can't wait to get off work and check it out.

spyrelx, that might be a good rule of thumb but you also would have had to ignore Ramana Maharshi who achieved full realization at age 16 and is one of the most universally respected saints. In this case I do think the age factor is an important consideration. Most of us probably didn't start noticing lowered energy levels from jing loss until a little after mid-20's, true? Perhaps Guy will step in and respond in this regard.

Dear "Ron Jeremy", You've declared "tao war" on Tao Bums, my girlfriend Lezlie, my personal friend Lozen and me. You've stolen a copyrighted article Lezlie wrote from an online magazine, hosted it illegally on taobum.com, and defaced it with insulting comments. You've taken a de facto copyrighted photograph of Lezlie and myself out of the Tao Bums gallery and defaced it with insults, writing the words "whore" across Lezlie's forehead. If you are curious, all these things have actually hurt my feelings. I'm serious. I've done nothing with Tao Bums the last few months other than try to somehow creatively accomodate your growing abrasiveness and lack of even basic respect for other forum members. I've tried everything I could think of besides just simply banning you, despite suggestions from several other Tao Bums to do just that. I've created special threads to house your flames, frequently having to move your inappropriate, racist, homophobic and misogynist rants. I restructured the entire Personal Practice discussion so that forum members could have the power to remove these types of posts themselves. I created a "Pit", a subforum in Off Topic for posts containing personal insults, not even realizing at first that the only posts truly matching this criteria would be yours alone. These measures only made you act more and more insensitive, finally erupting in your latest tirade. You've left me no choice but to require all your posts be approved by me or another Concierge. You are on full moderation. If you abuse even this, you'll just be banned. As for your "war", it's in your mind. No one is fighting with you. Ron, this is the kind of man I am. I am a man with the guts to use my real full name. I am a man who prefers transparency and openness to games, who strives to harm no one. I am a man struggling with just barely enough courage to keep my heart open, despite how much it hurts sometimes to move through life like this. And behind even this; behind my words, behind my avatar, I am just a regular human being like you. And I really did consider you my friend. Even told you I loved you like a brother once. I feel foolish for being so trusting and naive now. It will take me time to learn and heal from this. You've betrayed me terribly. You could have easily chosen to communicate simply and directly about any issues you were having here; with the forum, with me, and or any of it's members. I would have done everything in my power to hear you out and help you. Instead you chose to act alone, spitefully and in complete disproportion to any injustice you've been victim to. Again, please stop. Sean.

Wasn't that one just straight up celibacy?

See, and I thought I totally had you pegged as a 7 with an 8 wing. I guess you are 9 with 8. I'm an Aries born in the year of the Dragon by the way.

Sounds like a killer morning routine you got there neimad!

Great post Thelerner. Sometimes i wonder wether at least part of the draw toward esotericism is a drive toward feeling somehow special, unique and "expempt" from the same rules as those we judge as ordinary and "just the rest of the herd". We have basically the same ups and downs, no? Yet maybe we get to subtly aggrandize our issues as having more spiritual significance. I think this is probably a subset of what monucka described so well, of using various spiritual concepts to hide our garbage from ourselves, or decorate it to look pretty. The Truth might be a bit more boring, and gritty and painfully mundane. Come to think of it, I think this is really striking at the heart of maybe one the things we all have in common. A realization, conscious or unconscious, that we are are at least partially stuck in a sort of addictive crazy dream. And the tools of this dream, because they are part of the dream, are not going to save us. So it's basically going to take a miracle for us to wake up. So at our best we are not trying to find newer, fancier dreams to replace our old ones. We are looking for experiences that shake us awake a little more. Reminds me ... I get into meme-theory on and off and there is this really cool concept of meme-cleaning memes. Most memes (especially very successful ones) are considered more or less viral and intent on replication at the hosts expense. Meme-cleaning memes, like meditation, might be a little different in that they more or less lack superfluous content except an urging for us us to examine what's really going on. PS ... While we're on the topic of what we have in common, I am somewhat of a personality test junkie and have always wanted to ask this here, does anyone else know their Enneagram or MBTI types? I am a Type 4 with a 5 wing on Enneagram and INFJ on MBTI. You can take a test that will tell you what you are for both here: http://similarminds.com/embj.html Sean.

Cool!

That'd be great! Thanks Yoda.

Not the dark side Yoda! NNNNNnnnnnnnnOOOOOOOOOoooooooooo!!

Cool! Tell me more about the Mighty Atom! Has anyone read his book? Scott refers to it as his favorite book of all time I believe. Really should pick it up one of these days.

No problem. I'm moving this to Forum and Tech Support since you can hopefully see the posts there now.

I dunno, last I heard he was stationed in the Fatherland trying to pick up on German girls and find a secret society to infiltrate. Triple Dottie, where are ya buddie!?

Not ignorant at all. I think they are not well known. I'd never heard of them either until I ran across the Steve Barnes video through Sonnon. Here's some links: http://www.lifeevents.org/5-tibetans-energ...n-exercises.htm http://www.shapeshift.net/5tibetans/ Sean.

Prasara promotion ends Wednesday (August 31st). Not sure how much it will go up afterwards, but I just placed my order now. I also picked up Ana Forrest's The Pleasure of Strength which is hard as hell but also very very good. Ana really breaks down the poses in exquisite detail and clearly has a deep understanding of biomechanics. I also grabbed Yoga Shakti which is the most beautifully produced Yoga video I've ever seen. What's more is that it has this really cool "Matrix" feature where you can design your own practice from I think like 30 pieces into nearly endless combinations so every time you approach it can be a fresh sequence. Another cool feature of the Yoga Shakti DVD is that you can turn voice over instruction off and just have the music, which is cool because it's kind of annoying after you've seen a sequence like 500 times and you are listening to the same instructions over and over and over again. Sean.

Are you on the Advanced level? I think you can zip through advanced in like 15 minutes if you have it memorized. Re: knuckledragger, I think if you do a search on RMAX there are some posts explaining what that means. I've forgotten. Sean.

Make sure you are clicking on the subforum name, ie: "Forum and Tech Support" or "Off Topic" and not just "Basement". If you still get this message, try changing your cut off date down the bottom right to "Show All" and hit "Go". Lemme know how this works out. Sean.

Interesting topic. I had to think about it and it made me remember how much I used to love the forms on Winn's CKF 1-4, particularly the form in #2. I used to get so high from doing it, I would just do the form all afternoon before work, and late into the evening afterwards. Eventually it kind of lost it's buzz somehow and I started feeling like I was just standing there flapping my arms around. Funny how things shift like that. And it didn't seem like just sticking it out was helping much either so I mostly dropped them from daily practice. Munch, I agree about having focus. It's likely the ideal ... Right now I feel like I am at the "Taoist Kindergarten" stage where I get to run around having fun with the various practices, trying to figure out what does and doesn't work for me. Sean.

Hmmm... that's interesting feedback. Maybe I'll send her WW instead. I read somewhere that Scott said you could even start out doing WW while seated. And I still haven't tracked down who has the 5MM.

Please explain more, I don't understand your question. Are you unable to see the other forums?

In order to avoid confusion with taobum.com, and also to bring the site name more in line with the spirit of it's inspiration, The Dharma Bums, I've changed the domain name to thetaobums.com. I've setup automatic redirects on taobums.com so all your bookmarks should still work. I think the change has been seamless but please let me know if you experience any problems. Thanks! Sean.

Oh, Yoda, I was recommending the "Five Minute Miracle" tape by Steve Barnes. It's a fusion of Sonnon's "Be Breathed" protocol with The Five Tibetans. (Speaking of which, who has that right now?) I recommended it over WW because it was for Karen who has fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue and 5 Tibetans can be approach even more gently than WW. You can do just 1 of each Tibetan and build very gradually. When I first got WW, I did it twice a day every day for a few months and it produced several detox type reactions way more powerful than anything I've experienced from even extreme Yoga. These had even me in bed so I didn't want to recommend to Karen on HT at first. As simple as WW looks, I think it can stimulate toxin flushing, bring up and release residual muscle tension (tension chains), and bring emotional issues to the surface for processing/release. 5 Tibetans can be approached more gradually ... you could even spread all five out through a day if it was too difficult to do them all at once. Sean.

After all this time I didn't have the Tao Bums forum email configured properly. I noticed this because I made a change to the way new user's are authorized (they must validate their email address now) and the emails were not being sent out. It's fixed now. Which makes a cool feature available. If you go into any topic and click "Track this topic" at the top right you can "subscribe" to topic and be notified when anyone replies in it. There are even various options for how often you want to be notified. You can even subscribe to entire Forums by clicking "Subscribe to this forum" at the top right when viewing any forum. So replies to any existing post or any new posts in that forum and you will be notified. You can manage your subscriptions (including unsubscribe) under My Controls>Subscriptions Sean.

Very cool. I've never done that with the arm slapping motion. I'll try that this evening.