Dreamingawake

You might get a kick out of this!

that guy must look like popey. Giant forearms and blind in one eye

Nicely put Paul

@Eric LMAO that's the first thing I thought of when I saw the thread title!! I was gonna post that same video but you beat me to it!

I can definitely understand what you mean. That said. . . Unless there is some external molevolent entity involved, or if your brain is physically damaged/malformed/whatever, every thought is a choice. If one chooses not to examine thier thoughts/choices or their concequences, then they risk delusion on par with the health of their choices. Whether it's as small as low self esteem or anger issues, or as large as thinking your a hotdog who has been kidnapped by the pope who happens to be reptillian, it's still cause and effect. Once you sink deep enough into the delusions you've created it can be very difficult to find your way out without help. Non was just posting a couple weeks ago in the ormus thread about women honking and smiling at him. He also mentioned a group of girls hitting on him which he brushed off. Now he's here posting about how he has never had any positive interaction with any female ever. While I'm not a doctor, it seems to me that either he is desperate for attention or he is controlling his thoughts so poorly that he has become unstable. Without a professional to help him regain control it could be very difficult for him to get out of this maze of his own habits/thought/choices. However, before any progress can be made, the doctor still has to get a patient to: A. Realize there is a problem & B. Take control of their thoughts/choices I believe the reason psychological dysfunction tends to be percieved as a character flaw is because on some level people understand at least the basics of what I just said. Again, I'm not a doctor nor am I trainig to become one. This is merely my experience and understanding so if you know better (or just think you might) please feel free to correct my thinking. I do hope non gets the help he needs. Life can be so much more enjoyable than his seems to be. P.s. Please don't mind my grammar/spelling, I'm posting from my phone since I'm at work=P

they undoubtedly heavily edited the bible to suit their own purposes. There is still a copy in Vatican records of an entire chapter telling a story of Jesus teaching lazerus which was excised for political reasons. It seems lazerus was instructed to visit jesus' room at sundown wearing only a lion cloth. My guess is some sort of meditation but the church feared this could be misunderstood/misused so they ganked the whole chapter. I've also read letters between early bishops describing hell as a useful lie. They said even though there was no hell, if it helped bring people to god then surely they would be forgiven. While I don't have links anymore ( All this was YEARS ago) I can't imagine all that info just dissappearing so if you do your homework it shouldn't be too difficult to find for yourself. P.S. Please excuse my grammar/typos/spelling as I'm posting this from my phone =)

I was actually aware of this LONG before dan brown came along and put it in a book. Saying that it didn't happen because the book was fiction is like saying the holocaust never happened because Schindler's list was a work of fiction, or that london is fake because Harry Potter is just a movie. Lots of things from history get mixed into works of fiction. There are lots of scholarly works explaining how the catholic church invented (and heavily edited) the bible. Or at least there were back in 2002-03 when I learned about it. You just have to do some research.

Relax sunshine. I'm not insulting you and I didn't take anything personally You might want to follow suit. I happen to like emoticons (they're so cute ) and I was in an especially goofy mood last night. I also never said that demons weren't real (quite the contrary IME). I simply thought your post was composed entirely of baseless assertions. If you want someone to understand/believe you or to take what you say seriously, it helps to explain yourself and how you came to those conclusions with some form of logic rather than just saying this is how it is. I could come out and say that pink leprechauns stole your socks but that doesn't make it true and gives you no reason to believe me. It's just a baseless assertion with nothing to stand on. I actually did ask you some very particular questions about your post but since you apparently missed them here they are in no particular order: 1. How did you come to the conclusion that we're all born dead inside? 2. Why do you think being good is unnatural? 3. How do you know that the entire history of the world was all 'heavy and dark' before jesus came and saved the day? 4. how do you know that jesus saved the day at all? there is nothing original about jesus' story as it's an almost exact cut-and-paste of MANY deities before him. Please try and explain these without telling me how unhealthy I am or saying that I've been tricked by demons. Also try to avoid things like 'i just know', 'thats just the way it is', 'because I said so', another emotional outburst or any other form of deflection. I would like to take you seriously (seriously.. not joking) but if you can't properly explain your ideas then that becomes really difficult. Thats partly why my post was so goofy. When I read your post I literally burst out laughing. Again, I WAS already in a goofy mood so it's not ENTIRELY your fault.

That sure is an awful lot of assertions and judgements for just one post Care to back them up with some examples/observations or maybe even a bit of logic? Basically, I mean show your work (like in math class back in elementary). How did you come to the conclusion that we're all born dead inside? Why do you think being good to others is unnatural. How do you know all of history was 'heavy and dark' before jesus came along and saved the day? Maybe it was all sunshine and roses or maybe it was horrible but horus saved the world. Or it could have been mithras. All three have nearly identical stories but horus and mithras came much earlier so maybe they did it and jesus just took credit Or maybe I'm dead inside because demons( ) have creeped into my soul and im just trying to lead you astray from the ONE TRUE GOD :wacko: edit: typos

wise words

I actually have several of his daoist magic books. they're interesting but yeah not a whole lot of depth. My understanding is that they're not meant to stand alone but instead are used in his classes. I would love to get my hands on his medical qigong books though, as well as the nei gong book whenever that comes out.

I came to a similar conclusion as the first pic through contemplation way before I had ever heard Daoism. I figured it as 'the punishment is part of the crime." If you hurt someone, they're gonna want to hurt you back. If you kill someone, their friends and family will want to come kill you. The list goes on and on. It was a hell of a realization for me because it dawned on me that if your actions have consequences, plus the suffering inflicted by you conscience, then why would any god or gods need to go out of their way to punish you on top of all the rest? That would be just like this:

Perhaps preserving the teachings means reaching out in new ways to entice people to come train. Showing the external technique while withholding the internal means that if you want it you must come learn it properly. Especially if you warn them of the dangers of trying to figure it out themselves. If you keep it secret and way up in the mountains then no one knows who you are or what you know. They have no reason to seek you out and your super-secret-squirrel methods die with you. Just a thought.

Is it painful or uncomfortable? I often feel very solid after qigong, almost like I'm made of stone. Never occurred to me that it might be a bad thing.

Well for all the talk of supposed dental benefits I find it strange that most of the modern world has banned fluoridation. In most of Europe it's identified as a class 2 poison (whatever that means) and before they decided to force americans to drink it, fluorides only legal use was in rat poison. Now instead of paying for expensive safe disposal methods, aluminum companies sell it for a huge profit. It's also strange that in every country where fluoride has been banned, cavity rates have plummeted. But I'm sure this is all just coincidence so pay no attention to the man behind the curtain and look right into the zombie-box..er.. wonderful wonderful television... :wacko:

Reminds me of the movie "beerfest" the grandma told them to train for a beer drinking contest by drinking goat piss. They asked her why and she replied "because if you can drink goat piss, you can drink f**k anything!" Non-sequitur of the day...

Yep I've read that because of the frequencies of light emitted by T.V. most people drop into a very suggestive state within 30 seconds to a minute of staring at the boobtube. I wonder how being in a suggestible state while watching a show that suggests alien abductions are so common that EVEN YOU may have been abducted might affect someone. Especially right before going to bed.

Penn and Teller are admittedly in their own words "biased as all f**k" but just as you said, there are a lot of poorly trained hypnotists out there. Whats "proper" and what really happens are almost always different no matter what the subject matter. So what makes more sense? That there are as many alien abductions as there are home invasions or that people desperately looking for answers are being handed a convenient excuse? A boogyman to pin all their problems on? After all as your post points out, regression is powerful enough that even a well meaning hypnotist can literally rewrite a persons past with a slip of the tongue.

just watched it the other night. I thought the 'real' chick had a genuinely creepy vibe to her. About as real as any other horror movie but it does get points for atmosphere. If anybody here is familiar with Pen and Teller's "bullshit," they did an episode about people recovering abduction memories under hypnosis. They got a therapist who ran an abduction support group to let the sit in on and record a 'recovery' session. This therapist placed the person under hypnosis then proceeded to lead them through the whole thing. Therapist - where are you? Patient - in my car T - do you see a light? P - yes T - Is it behind you in the air? P - yes T - Is it aliens? P - yes after the session, the patient was happy to have 'recovered' these memories and thought it explained all his problems. BTW he also joined the support group. :wacko: Are aliens real? probably. There's an awful lot of space out there. Are they abducting people from earth? Sure it's possible. Are all (or even most) these people who think they've been abducted right? I seriously doubt it. A friend of mine talked to the leader of MUFON who's been searching for and studying UFO sightings for god knows how long. This guy said in all his years and all the thousands and thousands of cases he's investigated, there is only one that he suspects might be genuinely alien. Just a passing anecdote, but still, it does put things into a little perspective.

Yeah pride is a tricky subject for many, many people. I suppose this has to do with religious and philosophical doctrines like "pride comes be fore the fall." Most people don't seem to differentiate absolutely between pride and arrogance and really seem to get bent out of shape about it. I'm actually a little surprised nobodies started yelling at me about the horrors of ego yet :lol:

kali yuga hit the nail on the head IMHO. The real issue here is not anger or jealously, but rather your own self esteem. Deep down you feel unworthy, inferior and possibly unlovable at some level (you'd be surprised how common this is) so of course anything that affirms that (to you) in your life will feel like an attack on your already malnourished ego. You hate her success because it reminds you of your perceived lack. Whether you meditate or not, try to focus on the things in your life that affirm your value and try to make a habit of finding all the little things about you that make you so wonderful . Focus on the qualities you like about yourself and work on the things you don't like. In this way you can steadily build up your self esteem until situations like this girl seem irrelevant. Also, don't be afraid of pride. Pride in your accomplishments and in your inherent value is good and not to be confused with arrogance. Arrogance can be understood as unearned pride.

If you just want to change your outlook, then that is a relatively simple matter. Every thought, emotion, etc. creates a neural pathway in the brain. I think of it as a groove. Each time you use it, you wear that groove just a little deeper and it gets a little easier. This is why some people have problems with anger. They've dug those grooves so deep that it's hard NOT to use them. It's almost totally automatic. It's the same for negative people and happy people as well. This can be turned to your advantage in the same way. If you take little moments throughout the day to think things that make you happy and amplify those good emotions you can dig new grooves and literally rewire your brain for happiness. To increase the effectiveness, try to step back and watch your thoughts. Try to cut out daydreaming of the past or future whenever possible. If you catch yourself being negative, immediately try to redirect your thoughts to something more positive. You will probably notice that many of your negative thoughts are imaginings of the past or future and this realization makes it easier to stop them. If your digging new happy grooves and actively avoiding old unhappy grooves, the negative grooves will atrophy from lack of use and eventually fade away. The Secret Smile is an excellent technique for this if you want to do it as a formal sitting practice. If you understand the basic concept as outlined then it's a relatively simple matter of consistent awareness. If you make a constant effort throughout each day, you might be surprised how quickly results come. You know your getting somewhere when people start asking you "why the hell are you so happy all the time?" hope this helps.

Life is a game; play to win (however you define that). Try not to get too bent out of shape about it or you'll never make it out alive

Isn't that a self-negating concept? If there are NO truths, then your statement claims that itself is also untrue. If you believe your own statement is untrue then why post it? Daoism (at least to me) is about developing yourself into a 'real' human being. Something which has been exceedingly rare in my experience.