doc benway

Do you think it would also help to practice Beng Quan to strengthen the liver for those of us who practice Xingyiquan? Beng is Wood and known as crushing. I've practice Xingyiquan for a long time but never with the intent of addressing organ imbalances. Do you have any experience in this?

My (opposite) argument: I disagree. The "system" is a toxic environment, that is designed by profiteers and politicians to rob your power. Because it is rotten to the core, no growth can take place there, and one must escape into solitude (preferably into some non-American, non-European country) and find a guru, as soon as possible. Only through solitude and/or an environment of great peace, can we find ourselves and achieve liberation. (note: this exercise is so very ) Now what happens?

I just did it in the Dao vs Brahman thread! And after thinking my thoughts and doing some (very minimal) research, I think I believe my argument!

I'll take the opposite position and say that Dao and Brahman are conceptually very similar. In my view (as of 8:39pm today), both the Indians and Chinese are saying that there is something subtle and profound behind the veil. Something invisible, infinite, beyond time, and beyond human thought or conceptualization, that is the foundation of existence. This something is what we come from and return to. It is everything we are and everything we are not but it is subtle and elusive. It can't be named, held, seen, heard, felt, or tasted but, at the same time, it can be all of those things because it is us and everything around us. It is what we are when we are not us but also when we are us, we just don't recognize it as such unless we are awake to it. To be a sage is to live in accordance with Dao (Wu Wei) and to be liberated is to recognize one's true nature as Atman/Brahman. Both the Indians and the Chinese brought their respective, unique cultural biases and attitudes towards describing the indescribable. The Chinese, being the practical minded people they are, emphasized process over spirit and so used a word that has the quality of a verb, Dao. The Indians, tending toward the spiritual, describe Brahman more in terms of transcendent spirit. I would say that both were pointing to the fundamental nature of reality when they coined the terms Dao and Brahman.

Whether or not to use entheogens depends a lot on what you are looking for. If you are looking for new experiences, shaking up your sense of reality, breaking down some conventional thought processes and that sort of thing, entheogens are very effective. For some people, these sorts of experiences are helpful, maybe even necessary, to get them pointed in a spiritual direction. I'm not convinced that they really produce meaningful spiritual growth for most who use them. On the other hand, if you are looking for the truth - spirituality, the nature of our being and existence. I don't think entheogens are very helpful. They will shake your tree and loosen some nuts and bolts that society and culture has tightened in your head. But it is a very different thing to approach truth and reality. A sober mind and body is as close as you can ever get to your true nature, the way you have grown out of this world. To pollute it with chemicals or entheogens, even natural ones, takes you farther away, rather than closer to, the truth. To approach truth you simply need to study yourself. No need for anything external. What are you thinking? What is the nature of thought? How do you behave? Where does that response come from? What do you feel? How do you relate to others and the environment? This is the mundane, boring, banal, but absolutely essential work that is needed to walk the spiritual path as far as I'm concerned. For some folks, entheogens are helpful in the beginning. For others, entheogens are highly toxic and I've seen irreversible psychosis in two friends as a result. For many, they become more entertainment than anything else. And it is very important to recognize that a lot of the insights we have while intoxicated are very misleading. Just my $.02

I think that the only reason to do it would be for YOU, not for them, and not for the relationship. Perhaps, there is some residual pain, or conflict, or blockage in you that could be released as a result. Maybe not. But I think it is about you, not them.

I appreciate that. I think you are correct and I think it would be valuable for me. I am going to give more serious consideration to addressing this with them while they are still relatively young and healthy. Did you approach your folks separately or together?

From the Western medicine perspective, this could also be a symptom of nerve root irritation in the cervical spine. Depending on age and genetics, this can be from narrowing of the neural foramen where the nerve root exits the spine. In a younger person without degenerative narrowing yet, it may be some bulging or inflammation of the cervical disc. This will often respond to stretches as mentioned earlier - one particularly good one is to sit or stand erect. Retract your chin straight back, not up or down, and hold for 10 seconds. Relax and repeat frequently. If you are doing it correctly you may feel tightness, stretching in the strap muscles at the front and sides of the neck. Also gentle stretch to the sides and forward are good. Flexing back (tilting the chin up) can be irritating.

I've struggled with anger, still do. As everyone has mentioned, there are reasons. Often lots of them. Our lives are filled with causes for anger. I think that anger can become a habit after a while. It can feel safer than things like vulnerability, shame, fear, and so on. But, ironically, we still repress it and it makes us sick. When it's is an appropriate reaction to a threat, it is healthy. When it becomes habitual, not so much. There may initially be very valid reasons but one concern is that you don't know how to express the anger. Expressing anger is a social taboo and repressing it is very unhealthy. It's been my experience that most people suffering from chronic pain are physically manifesting repressed anger and rage. Not a good place to be. I would echo everyone else in suggesting that you look carefully at the anger. You can start by feeling it in your body. Don't fight it but don't necessarily act impulsively either. Be with it, feel it, don't push it away too quickly, learn to make room for it. When you get more comfortable feeling the anger and can be with it for a while, you may be able to see what's under it. Anger is almost always an indication of something else, like others have mentioned, it's reactive and protective - is there fear there? frustration? envy? discomfort with vulnerability? shame? And these things are not usually straight forward. There may be layers of things. Now I don't really mean to say that you have to analyze it all. And the other thing is, you can't necessarily make those feelings go away. But I think that awareness of the anger, becoming more comfortable with, and accepting the feelings that it stems from are very important. It's the repression and frustration that lead to the anger and rage. When you can see the source, and accept that the feelings are natural - every one of us deals with similar negative feelings - then they begin to lose power over you. As long as they are hidden, you're helpless. It's definitely worth the effort. It can change your life. Good luck!

Ironically, waking up to this and working on my relationship with my kids has not translated too well to my parents. I don't feel nearly the drive to improve the relationship with my folks that I do with my kids (it's not that bad but could be a lot better). Similarly, if I didn't take the initiative with my kids, I don't know that they would make the effort...

I guess I responded because your post struck a chord with me. When my kids were young, I worked very hard, very long hours, and did the best I could to be a good father, at least that's what I thought at the time. One day, I looked back and saw it very differently. I could see how I had been too selfish, distant, and even mean and demanding. I was able to see my behavior as if I were someone else. I could see the negative impact it had on them and our relationship. I could see my own father in my actions (he had been very distant and tough) and it hit me like a ton of bricks - enormous guilt and regret. It was the truth that has hurt me the most to date. The good news is that I woke up. And I recognize that I did the best I could with the tools I had at the time and, most importantly, that it's never too late to work on relationships. So for the past several years I've worked very hard at improving my relationships with my kids and it has paid off.

Stimulated by another thread, I thought it might be interesting to see the breakdown of our spiritual practices. How many have always been committed to one path vs multiple. If this is a BTDT poll... sorry. I didn't see anything when I searched.

This is so true!

I agree Aaron. This is very painful to recognize. I had a crisis around the time of the Rwandan and Yugoslavian genocides. It's what led me to begin a spiritual investigation. Even more painful is when you see the capacity within yourself for causing another's pain. But recognizing these things is good. Once you see the capacity for cruelty, you have the opportunity to do good instead. You get to choose. I don't think that the innocence that you refer to can ever, or should ever, be recovered. I do think we can recover a childlike fascination with the world and our lives and that is extremely enriching. The innocence that allows us to believe that such human cruelty does not exist is an ignorance and it is dangerous. I do think that we can recognize our common humanity and develop a very deep capacity for love and compassion, however, and this goes a long way to balancing the pain and suffering as Marble alluded to.

It does look like that! My brother went through an artistic phase and did some copies and re-interpretations of some Francis Bacon works. I really liked this one so I use it sometimes for an avatar. Thanks for noticing!

My intent for the thread was primarily to see how many of us have stuck with one practice throughout our lives. I was initially going to have two options only - one practice, more than one. I settled on three thinking that there may be a subset of folks who were "raised" a certain way and then adopted another practice and stuck with that. As for me, I've been influenced by a variety of teachers, both in the flesh and on paper. I've sort of synthesized it into an amalgam that seems to work for me currently, more or less, and like some others I'm not an -ist and don't subscribe to an -ism. I try to keep an open mind (but could definitely improve that skill!) Thanks to all who contributed so far.

I'll offer another translation, this one by Hu Xuezhi It is a translation with commentaries geared toward interpreting Tao Te Ching as a guide to cultivation. Chapter 37 WIthout taking any artificial action, Tao functions free of any lapse, accomplishing all things perfectly. If a king can hold onto Tao, All things will transform spontaneously to submit to him. If any desires arise in the transformation course, I should subdue them with the nameless simplicity. If I hold onto nameless simplicity, All desires will transform to submit to it. To be free of desire brings about the stillness, And all under Heaven shall return to what they naturally deserve. Here is his commentary- First two lines: Tao accomplishes all things perfectly without taking any artificial action Lines three through ten: Figuratively, these lines represent the proper approach for dealing with stray ideas and passions arising in the course of recovering the True Nature. When any idea intrudes upon the heart, people should hold onto Nameless Simplicity, specifically, the quietude, the stillness, and the natural state to let the heart be quiet once again. By staying in constant stillness, all the Shen of all the organs and all the viscera will be fully recovered to the Original Primeval State, and the Great Harmonious State will prevail.

I've had a fair amount of acupuncture, guan jiu, and some other traditional Chinese work and never heard of anything like that. I'm definitely not an authority and I have a foot each in the Eastern and the Western paradigms. My BS meter would have been off the scale.

In my own experience with Buddhist and Daoists concepts and practices, they are addressing the same issues but from different perspectives. The type of practice you choose will depend on what suits your particular needs and personality. And you may try one for a while and then switch. Many folks do... In fact, that gives me an idea for a thread.

The first thing my Qigong teacher addressed was proper posture, then natural breathing.

If you do the practice, including the warm up exercises, as recommended by Bercelli, it takes 20-30 minutes. As Trunk said, you can shorten it. My experience so far is that the warm ups are important and it is valuable to give the exercises enough time. Shorter practice sessions may still be worthwhile, however, I can't comment on that from experience.

Very challenging question - what is truth? One definition is 'to be in accordance with reality.' So then, what is reality? Is reality a thought or concept or is it something that goes beyond thought and concepts? I would apply the same approach to truth. So if truth is something that transcends thought and concept, how best to approach it? Can we use thought to transcend thought? All thought is conditioned and truth, if it is reality, must be unstained by conditioning. So can thought, which is the product of conditioning, ever approach truth? Krishnamurti loved to work with this problem and his approach was to invite us to try and see our condititioning because if we can see it, there is hope to drop it. Only then can we hope to understand how to approach truth.

I'm not personally traumatized or afraid. Death is a natural consequence of life. I just find it objectionable when people jump to conclusions based on junk science in the face of large volumes of well developed data to the contrary. It's unfair to the thousands of dedicated researchers and health care workers who have poured their hearts and souls into working on this problem for the past 30 years. All of it lumped together as a scam based on minimal or no real data to support your claim that "HIV is a scam." But that's fine - you are certainly entitled to your opinion and if this movement improves the lives of the unfortunate folks who are suffering from this non-illness and their families, I will be happy for that. Based on the best available data, Mbeki's policies cost the lives of over 350,000 humans - many of who were children. Perhaps that's all a scam, perhaps not. That is not my claim, that was a study out of Harvard. Looking at problems with a fresh and critical view is healthy and valuable. Questioning conventional wisdom is important. Ignoring the large volume of well developed data in the field in favor of pseudo-science will help no one. I don't want to derail this thread any further. If the existing research on HIV/AIDS is all some sort of scam in your mind because you've watched a few youtube videos, I'm certainly not going to try to change your mind. No hard feelings, we'll just have to agree to disagree on this subject. Be well.

The science behind AIDS/HIV denial isn't much different than Intelligent Design... http://www.physics.smu.edu/pseudo/AIDS/ http://www.aidstruth.org/denialism/myths Great film, by the way ... http://www.badscience.net/2009/09/house-of-numbers/ http://movies.nytimes.com/2009/09/04/movies/04house.html Mbeki was a very great man ( ) . He got most of his information from AIDS Denial internet websites and probably killed over 350,000 people with his ignorance. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/26/world/africa/26aids.html?_r=1&hp Where do you get your data? I watched people die from this non-disease before chemotherapy was available and before the term HIV was adopted. Is it possible that the current theories about AIDS/HIV are imperfect? Of course. Is it possible that better understandings and treatments are in our future? I sure hope so! Is your irresponsible and gratuitous assertion well supported by data? No.

Have you ever watched someone die from this disease? I have. How about some evidence to back up your claim?