Apech

Thanks that looks like a useful site. John

Thanks Marblehead, Looks like I should buy that book. Bet the fish pond is looking good now. John

Where's that from MH? its brilliant!

Perhaps we should start a new topic on this because it is a biggy. I'm not sure that everyone feels the way I (we) do about the external. I know that the original Jungian definitions of introvert and extrovert were something like people who derive their energy from inside or from outside. For extroverts the outside world has the 'comfort' of being solid, definite and full of stimulation - while perhaps (I speculate) they see the internal subjective world as dark and uncertain. In terms of K ... and I have only just started using the K word by the way ... then I would say there are stages beyond the raising of K which are about the balance (or more than balance - perhaps union?) of opposites. I once agreed with a friend of mine that you could define the spiritual path as follows: in : out : outside-in : inside-out. ... then you get beyond all dualities. (I can explain this idea if you want) John

Thanks Marblehead.

Hi S-curve, Happy to discuss more. The external world is a constant source of mystery to me - although I have worked hard not to be too much of a miss-fit or at least to be comfortable with my own at-oddness with what everyone else sees as so natural. When I was younger this was the cause to me of some angst but now I feel more at ease. I think this duality inside/outside is key in mystical work, although ultimately not real like all dualities it appears as very real and the two worlds which co-exist have different rules - so for instance a solution which works internally may not apply externally. To make ourselves whole we have to master both halves - because they operate as two halves of ourselves - the inward looking and the outward looking. This is my conclusion anyway. What do you think? John

No coincidence you made pulse soup after dark lentil is the night.

Hi Bruno, I read your OP and was going to reply but couldn't think of anything to say other than - yea, its tough! I have one observation on the reading thing - if I understand what is happening to you. Concentration raises energy ... I used to find that after a long drive where I was focusing hard on the road when I sat to meditate my mind would be absolutely buzzing - but that the energy generated wasn't particularly useful. When I tried to read it got even worse. I could focus really hard on each letter to the point where I felt I could lift them off the page (if this makes any sense) or a big blob of light would form in front of my field of vision and I couldn't really focus at all. This latter effect is often accompanied by physical buzzing of various kinds. I think what you need to do is learn to scan read again. When we read ordinarily we do two thinks at once. One part of our mind scans the text for meaning while the other part checks for accuracy - its a mixture of focused and peripheral vision. What can happen is that the focus part can over dominate and this makes the peripheral bit wander off or sometimes blank out. What you need to do is let go of the tension which makes you want to over-focus ... and then think light heartedly about the meaning of what you just read. I haven't explained this very well - but I hope you get something from what I have said. best wishes John

OK just want to say this - I haven't read anything that defends communism on this thread just attempts by some of us to put it into context. The way I see it is that communism is part of mankind's social evolution and has to be understood as such. Obviously the actual examples of communist states are not perfect and indeed are not real communism but attempts to work towards such an ideal state. There seems to be a tendency to make this equation; capitalism = freedom, communism = bondage. As people interested in Taoism and spirituality we are (I would say) all interested in personal freedom. Also we think that knowing ourselves will lead to this kind of freedom which is perhaps more a mode of being than a physical fact. For instance we could be in a physical prison but because of our liberated consciousness still feel (and be) free. We would all also (I would think) prefer a society which allows us the personal freedom to think as we wish and to practice our own form of mysticism without persecution. Beyond that I think we would all find it a very poor society which acts so as to prevent personal freedom of expression. This is a kind liberal-ism ... if you doubt this here is the definition of liberal from the on-line etymological dictionary: liberal (adj.) late 14c., from O.Fr. liberal "befitting free men, noble, generous," from L. liberalis "noble, generous," lit. "pertaining to a free man," from liber "free," from PIE base *leudheros (cf. Gk. eleutheros "free"), probably originally "belonging to the people" (though the precise semantic development is obscure), from *leudho- "people" (cf. O.C.S. ljudu, Lith. liaudis, O.E. leod, Ger. Leute "nation, people"). Oddly a lot of US style Republicans would object to the world liberal ... even though they go on at great length about freedom. This shows how slippery these terms become in the hands of politicians. Capitalism does not mean freedom or a free society because it has a technical meaning which is this - the system in which the means of production (traditionally land and factories and so on - as well as the funding mechanisms that support them) is owned privately. In this system an individual offers their labour power in return for wages but the profits of the enterprise go to the owners. That's it - that's all capitalism as developed in the industrial revolution really means. Everything else we say about it is really about how this system works out in practice. It does not have personal freedom built into it in any way, in fact for most people it is a question of being a wage slave through which the whole of your life is shaped and by the fact that the company owns you. Very few capitalists are like Bill Gates, most are corporate workers who pretend to have entrepreneurial skills and are not necessarily free. They tend to be products of the corporate culture repeating the slogans which the company feeds them but quite often framed in terms of 'creativity' , 'thinking outside the box' and all that stuff. Equally I would imagine, and I stand to be corrected by those in the know, those who live in a communist state who want to succeed probably have to be signed up party members. This puts them in the same category as the company man. If they have freedom then it is in secret. So actually, as a mystic, I want a society which leaves me alone as much as possible but because I believe in compassion which also helps the vulnerable, the sick, the elderly and so on. I would also like the government to keep the economy on an even keel so I am not thrown into destitution and can feed myself. Its very hard, I believe, for those who find themselves in the midst of turbulent change, to continue to do spiritual work. Just some thoughts Cheers John

be free from sorrow... or make that sorrow your home pray for peas on earth. (continuing the leguminous revelation of the truth behind existence).

To be honest you make it sound like some second rate management training manual. I don't read it all the way you do but I suppose that's just how it is.

Aha I'm glad you brought this up ... the top countries practice the Nordic Model or similar: Wiki on Nordic Model and to quote from this: (my bold.) This is different from the British model which seems to me to suck people into dependency. However in 2003 when this table was produced UK was doing well and the issue was the number of migrant workers flooding into Britain to take up jobs. By the way I do not take the US position that you shouldn't have welfare cos it makes people idle, I think that the highest duty of the state is to protect, educate, shelter and keep healthy its people. In fact if governments did this instead of conducting illegal wars the world would be a better place. No it should have intelligent support which does not breed dependency. I call the welfare system here a sugar pill because it breeds dependency and is designed to make it harder and not easier to escape from. For instance a person on benefits gets free prescription medicine, housing costs, tax rebates and so on to the point that to make it economically viable to come off benefits they would have to find a very well paid job as the first step on the ladder. I would like to see the Nordic Model introduced here. Ok but not sure what the difference is ultimately. I wasn't over reacting I was just accepting that I didn't really know much about USSR. Maybe I had a point though because I would suggest that all regimes in Russia have this same problem of governing such a vast and diverse country. How do you hold such a thing together into a coherent state without centralized bureaucracy and control ... the person of the Czar or the Supreme Soviet isn't it all about the same thing? Maybe?

Gold, the figures are quite hard to come by but I have the following quote: "So, to summarise, just over 50% of working age poor people live in households where nobody works and 70% of workers in poor households are low paid. How this has come about will become clearer when we look at why poverty has risen dramatically since 1979..." (Published by Centre for Economic Performance ) and you can get more info from this site: Poverty in UK ... they are saying that it is not just about pure numbers - although these must be quite high but about how these inequalities are focused into certain households. So if you are low paid or out of work there is a 50% chance that no one in the household works ... or this is how I understand it from a quick read. What they don't give is the total numbers of poor households but if these are taken as benefit dependents it may be around 30%. In the area where I live its more like 60% and there are over 50% households were someone is disabled or long term sick. In Britain the way things work people on low income are effectively sucked into ghettos of disadvantage. No they didn't - this is what I was saying. The sugar pill or sticking plaster of capitalism (not socialism really) has had major knock on social effects, one of which is massive and growing wealth disparity. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. This is not healthy for any society IMO. Er ... well it is factually true that no one for saw this issue properly and economic migration creates local pressures on housing, schools, hospitals and so on - but overwhelmingly migrants benefit the economy. Many communities such as the orthodox Jewish community who live near me have never integrated fully ... I don't see the problem - they live their lives as they wish and don't cause anyone problems - that's up to them. Other communities do bring issues like organised crime and so on but they need to be tackled. Most integration for most people is economic - they aspire to be middle class and as they do so their behaviours conform - problems arise where prejudice and stigma prevent this happening. OK I hang my head in shame for making sweeping assumptions about a country that I don't know enough about. Mea culpa.

Hmmm things seem to have got rater personalized on here. If everyone calms down there's an interesting debate here. I think there is a kind of irony about social benefits, welfare and so on - because it is a curse in modern Britain that large numbers of people choose not to work. In fact there are third generation kids growing up whose families have never worked. I don't know the numbers but its too many. The socialists talk about the dignity of work because they grew up in an environment where being hard working was a great virtue but the safety net of welfare which they introduced has become a way of life for some. The real irony though is that welfare reforms came in to keep people at the bottom of society quiet in times of depression. People looked at the 30's and the Great Depression and saw that the social upheaval and suffering it caused led directly to the rise of fascism and the spread of communism (because they appeared to provide the answers - while the capitalists were clueless). Welfare as it exists today is actually a sugar pill offered to people to stop them rioting and far from being anti-capitalist it is the way in which capitalism has adapted to survive more or less intact when everyone predicted collapse. Similarly the way in which the Soviet Union was run was more to do with how do you keep this vast amalgam of different cultures and ethnic groups together and stop the whole thing collapsing - by offering full employment and by demonising the capitalist west.

Welcome to TTB. Enjoy your stay John

Thanks. What I had a problem relating to on this thread was that for me the subjective (if I can call them that) experiences like visions, energy movements, sounds, lights, weird body changes - I was/am quite at home with. I didn't think I was going mad and it didn't freak me out at all. I am not saying this to praise myself but just that is how I am built. What really freaked me out were the sudden and precipitous changes in my life, in my external world. I had great difficulty with the day to day world and couldn't understand it, I didn't know how it worked. Now looking back I would say that this was a major imbalance between inner/outer in me. The experience of raising energy made this worse and not better. I find it hard to describe this strange alienation I felt but it is as if you are suddenly precipitated into a foreign country where everyone else is speaking a different language. It took me a long, long time to sort this out and it wasn't very pleasant at all. I just thought I would make this point because I don't suppose that I am alone in this. John

Hi, I'm actually beginning to get a handle on this kundalini discussion and relate it to my own experiences. I've got one observation and one point of clarification. 1) (the observation) I think what perhaps has not been pointed out is that awakening energy does not just produce internal or subjective 'stuff' but actually life direction changes. If your karma is 'challenging' to use the modern euphemism for 'bad' then your life gets difficult in ways it was not before. Its as if you have moved out of the safe zone and all sorts of situations emerge - people react to you in new ways which are not always positive. You can see where I am going with this. But I would say that this is all about learning and not about disasters - so you do have to learn to keep the faith ... because in a way you asked for it. 2 ) (the question) the energy, shakti knows what it is doing, so actually the stuff is generated from us not letting go and not wanting to change ... the energy is not doing weird things to us, we are doing weird things to ourselves through resisting. That is the question ... yes/no? Cheers John

Vortex, I can only think you have misconstrued what I was trying to say and this may be my fault. I recognise the quotes from the TTC although not sure which translation that is. I do understand the difference between non-duality and non-judgement and I do not consider Stalin, Mao, Hitler or even Obama, Mandela, Gandhi or whoever to be the good ruler as defined by the TTC. So I don't understand your point and can't answer it. John

Cat's eye nebula (Hubble)

wobbly spurts of glee!! they can mess up your carpet best use a tissue.

Stalinism does not equal communism. Just thought I would remind people. The Russians actually played more of a role in defeating fascism than the other allies. I haven't read any posts here that seek to defend Stalin or Mao but it strikes me as very, very odd that communism is treated as an absolute evil by people on a (principally) Taoist forum - when Taoism sees all such judgements as relative.

just to make a contribution to the debate, I was thinking along the lines that a) you gather personal power in order to effect change in your life building towards freedom, you do this by challenging fears and boundaries and breaking down routines (warrior and hunter). b ) qi ( or enhanced qi) is the effect of gathering personal power on your body/mind. Now I've written it out it doesn't sound as good ... funny how things sound better when you think them (ha ha). Cheers John

Yes - there is a thread on this if you search for it - some on here use the I Ching solely in this way and not for divination. If you study the Great Treatise then you can understand the patterns which underlie the Hexagrams - it is worth doing this just to understand the beauty and elegance of the book. Cheers John

If you are not a native English speaker then you express yourself very well. I think it is important for you not to get anxious or obsessed with the issue of masturbation and porn. Its true to say that maybe its not the best sort of repetitive behaviour to get into and the point has already been made about setting up unhelpful neuro-cycles - but you are probably not doing yourself that much damage - it would be more damaging if you were older I think but (and I'm not being patronizing) you have plenty of time. Retention or non-ejaculation only makes sense in conjunction with some kind of practice, meditation or qi gong or the like. I noticed you said that you seem to have lost interest in most things in life and I would suggest that something that builds physical fitness and focuses your mind on learning a skill (like a martial art) would help. You need to establish balance in your life, outer/inner, active/passive, body/head. In particular its important to understand your own emotional responses to things and you can only do this in the world i.e. not in your head. If you are worried you have a medical problem you should of course see a doctor. I hope this is helpful - if not just dismiss it because it is just my thoughts. Cheers and good luck John