Encephalon

Sounds like a potentially favorite drug of mine. I LOVE the stuff that lets the subconscious percolate upwards,but that's just me on drugs. I did an awful lot of hallucinogens when I was at Lowry AFB back in the 70s!

Just took the family to see the Green Hornet @ our local $3 theatre. Below is the preview we saw for Hollywood's next Marvel Comics big screen extravaganza. Top talent, state of the art production...hell, it may even be a good story, but have you noticed how we are being systematically infantilized by Hollywood? The following book really touched on this subject. Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole by Benjamin R. Barber http://www.amazon.com/Consumed-Markets-Children-Infantilize-Citizens/dp/0393330893/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1299989205&sr=1-1-spell My quick theory is that the more a population begins to feel disempowered the more they depend on movies to indulge in the fantasy of omnipotence and superpowers. It's also true that screenwriting as a craft has eroded over the last generation, but jeez! (Buy your MovieMagic Screenwriter software Now and get busy!)

Ha!! That's what we do best here at TTB!! Haven't you noticed? Unsolicited psychological advice from unqualified strangers is even better! I've had plenty of that, and I keep all of it in an 'idea file.' Have you ever visited http://whiterockcrossing.com/ ? It's not too far from garland. They look like they have their act together pretty well.

My wife works for Kaiser and my surgeon does 15 shoulder joint replacements a month here in LA. I trust her completely, and yes, my post-op PT starts on the 23rd. I've already been assigned exercises, and am a little surprised by how functional I am. Still don't have the strength to trim my nails or us3 a can opener, but at least i can type with my R index finger. being able to write during this down time was my greatest concern. I think im not to far away from Ibu 800mgs/3x with 1000mgs acet.My hand is always worst in the morning, stiff as a board and numb. I absolutely love marijuana, for all kinds of reasons, maybe too many of the wrong reasons. I take my 1 year birthday cake tomorrow at my Marijuana Anonymous meeting. I'm not sure that I belong there, but life has been awfulkly good without a year's worth of reefer. The pain level has come down since I first posted this 4 days ago. I'm just surprised by thew nerve damage to my hand, but it was one hell of a procedure. Thanks Shak.

Viscosity is a dreadful thing indeed. I carry a can of paint thinner everywhere I go.

I'm indebted to Dr. Loy for so much. He's pretty popular in the American Buddhist community, and I haven't found a writer who can tackle technically dense subject matter and make it so reader-friendly. I'm about to take the plunge with "Nonduality: A Study in Comparative Philosophy." The closest I have come to wrapping my head around the subject came when I was digging into Jack Kornfield. I do think there is value in plunging into original texts, but when it comes to Eastern thought, I think it's necessary for westerners to have good maps and tour guides. Any other Loy fans in here? I've read - Money, Sex, War, Karma: Notes for a Buddhist Revolution The Great Awakening: A Buddhist Social Theory A Buddhist History of the West The Dharma of Dragons and Daemons: Buddhist Themes in Modern Fantasy I'd love to touch base with other fans.

Yep, it's incomplete all right. People do their best to call attention to your rampant misogyny and your practice of projecting your own self-hatred onto others, particularly women, and time and again the subject just seems to bounce off your forehead. I also find your practice of exploiting your victimhood in order to solicit sympathy profoundly repugnant, but nevertheless, you seem to perform a critical function in here. I can't imagine a woman who would regularly vilify men being allowed to continue for more than a couple of weeks, and yet you've been getting away with it for a year and a half.

I have, and until such time that I can visit MO or a reputable chi kung institute out here, I'm going to stick with Chu Nei Kung.

Thank you for not letting me off the hook. Honestly, if a little old lady showed up at my door every Saturday night with one joint and said "Here ya go, young man. Have fun, and I'll be back same time next week," I'm 90% confident I could use MJ as Dr. Weil suggested; as a once a week tool of inspiration and recreation. But the day I bought my medical MJ license was the end of moderate use and the beginning of daily consumption. Weekly use was great for generating ideas for writing projects and stretching routines. Daily use completely destroyed my ability to focus and short-circuited the creative benefits. (Yes, said it - benefits.) I think this guy has some important ideas about addiction that have remained in the dark for some interesting reasons. He's also profiled in the film "Zeitgeist: Moving Forward." Great Buddhist title for his book "In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts." I was so glad to hear him speak of the moral scorn we level at drug addicts. Our culture demonizes them because they make our addictive socioeconomic order look bad. After all, addictive behaviors are really good for the bottom line.

i'd like to thank everyone for their contributions. Hopefully a time will come when energy practitioners will be able to further quantify the effects of different drugs on practice.

I was listening to my wife manage a conference call this morning and she sounded so professional and organized and I told her so and that I was proud of her. She kissed me and thanked me for mentioning it and then told me that it was entirely unscripted. This made me laugh because when I first met her in college biology class in 1998, she struck me as a total airhead. Seems she couldn't find the pointer in the eyepiece of the microscope. But, she was hot and went after me, so go figure.

So, the pot thickens.

nevermind

I hope you'll forgive me if I come off as pushy. It's not my intention; I'm deadly serious about this subject and genuinely intersted in how you plan to resolve this, because it's a question we're all going to have to wrestle with. And let's face it, some will be proactive with their response, and some will simply become a victim of circumstance and die, not exactly a path of Taoist fortitude. So, on with the "obvious" questions. You look like you have almost as much grey hair as I do, but you claim that you've never fit in anywhere. Is there something you're not telling us? That's a long time to go without finding a way to belong, unless you're prematurely grey! People go on and on about needing to feel part of a community. It's something they long for, they say, when in fact many of them I've known are only looking to rob other people of their time and resources. I'm not suggesting this is you, but I refer back to my earlier point. If you really want community then you have to cultivate yourself into a resourceful and talented person with valuable skill sets that other community-minded people will want to have around. If your idea of community is be free of any and all demands made on your time, you should consider a monastery, if you think you could cut the entrance requirements. Your only other option is to be financially independent. A lot of college grads are going back to farms and ranches. Life can be much worse. Since the most important industry of the future will be small-scale food production, you might narrow your skill set there. Sorry. This is just the stuff I've studied and thought about for years.

I share your sentiments. I'm back in here after another self-imposed ban because I'm recouping from surgery and am getting a little bored, but I still get a kick over what gets posted. And of course you're aware that I have a well-earned reputation for murdering young souls for sport. I wonder what it would be like if I had access to online forums starting around the age of 8 instead of my access at the age of 38. What are the implications for socialization? What would it be like if you grew up in an environment where you could expect to disseminate your slightest whims with impunity and never be challenged? What would happen if we were suddenly obliged to unreflectively accept everything someone posted in the interest of making nice? Jesus, you wouldn't believe some of the things some members have demanded from me. On second thought, you would. It's too easy to arrive in midlife and lament the intellectual and social impoverishment of the following generations, but I often feel like my generation, born in 1960, got the last decent shreds of what public education could offer. I dropped out of HS in 1978 because I found marijuana to be infinitely more fascinating than HS bullshit, but grades 1-8 were pretty darn good. We got the 3 Rs and I made it into jazz band, Star Trek was still a distant plausibility, Kwai Chang was offering an alternative, and Chick Corea, John McLaughlin, Weather Report, and Jean Luc Ponty actually demonstrated real musicianship. That was a fertile time, and it really seems that by 1984, we lost the ability to even communicate, just like in "1984." Well, as a man with an expectant wife, you can bet my kid won't be sucking the teat of public education, nor will (s)he be going on line and working on diabetes. I'm musing now, signing off.

Thanks for the Heads Up. I make use of Noah Levine's talks and guided meditations podcasts available at Against the Stream Meditation Society. This is Buddhism, not Taoism, and mostly geared for people in recovery. So if you have friends struggling with addiction issues, please spread the word. Thanks. http://www.againstthestream.org/ click on audio - Itunes link

I've been an armchair Buddhist for almost 30 years, and have engaged in Buddhist meditation and serious study for maybe half that time. Buddhism will most likely remain my intellect's philosophy of choice because of the way it organizes psychology, science, environmentalism and social justice issues. "Growth of the heart by way of the mind," to quote the Dalai Lama, resonates strongly with me. On the other hand, I'm coming into what is only my fourth year of Nei Kung practice and my own independent study of Taoism using the 2 dozen books that have been recommended to me by TTBums and others, and I have to say that my 4 years of Taoist personal practice have yielded more progress and growth than three decades of Buddhist study, and I'm sure this is readily attributable to body-mind fusion, the alchemical nature of zhan zhuang. As an American male with a boatload of psychological baggage that comes from a toxic brew of dysfunctional upbringing and deep immersion in the addictive sociopathy of consumer culture, my zhan zhuang, my Nei Kung practice, and the practice of incantations as formulated by Hua-Ching Ni have dissolved much of the self-loathing that I have carried with me and which lies at the heart of the crisis in western culture. When I think of all the millions of men and women incarcerated in America's prison-industrial complex who have been offered free instruction in the practice of Transcendental Meditation, something I once practiced and find of limited value, I can only despair that zhan zhuang has not yet been offered to this population, as I can easily quantify the benefits I have received. To borrow a term from one of our crustier American teacher/practitioners, Gary Clyman, Nei Kung practice increases our "deservingness," our sense of the inherent dignity and worthiness that is the birthright of every human being, and once acquired, wields a powerful healing influence. It's certainly done wonders with my Alkie-Pothead persona. Ultimately, I am confident that some form of Taoism will survive into the deep future as it will be indespensible for the small percentage of human beings who live to see the 22nd century. (According to Ken Wilber and the folks who've formulated the modern social science of Spiral Dynamics, no more than ten percent of the population has ever really grasped some measure present-time awareness, and this has remained constant over time and place.) I see the ten percent of the population who are natually gifted, intelligent, resilient and lucky(!) who will avail themselves of the most effective tools to ensure their survival as the exhaustion of fuel and resources (food) bring modern consumer culture and civilization to an end over the next three decades. Barring a nuclear or biological holocaust, you can bet that surviving populations will be harnessing all dimensions of Taoism, particularly energetics, medicine and self-defense, to survive. I think it's safe to say that the modern Chinese Taoists who recently emigrated from Taiwan and Honk Kong to British Columbia will be doing well long after my fellow Angelinos have been turned into jerky or fertilizer. So I guess this is how I see Taoism surviving: ironically, in small communal units of fiercely independent and self-sufficient individuals, not unlike the ancient Taoist villages that once dotted the Yellow River Valley. Please pardon my obvious streak of romanticism and a somewhat pessimistic forecast.

Some of you who've seen Zeitgeist: Moving Forward will recognize this guy, and may even catch the Buddhist title of his book - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZ-FAX4Pz8I&feature=related

Take for example this: if to the colour of midnight to a more than darkness(which is myself and Paris and all things)the bright rain occurs deeply,beautifully and i(being at a window in this midnight) for no reason feel deeply completely conscious of the rain or rather Somebody who uses roofs and streets skilfully to make a possible and beautiful sound: if a(perhaps)clock strikes,in the alive coolness,very faintly and finally through altogether delicate gestures of rain a colour comes,which is morning,O do not wonder that (just at the edge of day)i surely make a millionth poem which will not wholly miss you;or if i certainly create,lady, one of the thousand selves who are your smile. e. e. cummings