Encephalon

OMG

If your plight is similar in any way to millions of other families, then you've got a significant challenge on your hands. I am reminded of my age when I begin to render suggestions; I was 25 in 1985, when John Bradshaw and his PBS series "The Family" started airing constantly and his books and speaking tours were all the rage. I take it for granted that EveryOne knows about John Bradshaw until I am reminded of another up and coming generation. There are ample resources for dealing with dysfunctional families and codependency. An abundance of psychological and spiritual tools is perhaps one of the few advantages of this point in human history. The issue is beyond the scope of online chatrooms, including this one. The Taoist principles that you can learn about in here will serve you well, but don't imagine yourself removed from "the undifferentiated ego mass" that is the "family," in Bradshaw's lingo. You are part of that mass, and unforeseen problems can arise if you imagine yourself removed from it for an instant. I'm sure every public library has the series on dvd, and you could certainly get the book by the same name. Good luck with a huge subject.

Sage advice for a teenager... go get hammered and screw your lights out! Sounds good to me!

I'm a cheap bastard, so I don't want to pay for it, but am willing to trade the files I do have with someone who comes through for me. Thanks.

Binaural Beat technology does not yield immediate results, but you're right; this BB is not particularly terrifying.

This happens when you write poorly and throw punctuation out the window. Poor communication is the price you pay.

Phukkinnayy!! Thanks, man. You just saved us a bundle. Okay - I already know I'm going to become psychologically dependent upon the "Chakra Balancing" BB. And "Earth Energy" may generate some mild-hallucinations... for free! Thanks again. Be sure you all do yourselves a favor this christmas and get a decent pair of noise cancelling headphones.

I must say, Chunyi Lin's Guided MCO meditation that comes with the Level One pkg is awfully convenient, and it seems it could go a long way toward alleviating some of the focusing problems normally experienced in beginning meditation. Just counting the breath while staring at the wall, Soto Zen style, is a bitch, but inhaling and exhaling through the major gates of the MCO gives the mind - AND the body - something else to work with. I'm not a beginner but it sure would have come in handy several years ago, but that's Monday morning quarterbacking.

A heated chocolate/walnut brownie a la mode, drizzled with raspberry sauce and topped with 1000mcg of LSD. That should take care of the sniffles.

I rely on Deng Ming-Dao for heavy questions like these. Healing Fire cools. Water seeks its own level. No matter how extreme a situation is, it will change. It cannot continue forever. Thus, a great forest fire is always destined to burn itself out; a turbulent sea will become calmer. Natural events balance themselves out by seeking their opposites, and this process of balance is at the heart of all healing. This process takes time. If an event is not great, the balancing required is slight. If it is momentous, then it may take days, years, even lifetimes for things to return to an even keel. Actually, without these slight imbalances, there could be no movement in life. It is being off balance that keeps life changing. Total centering, total balance would only be stasis. All life is continual destruction and healing, over and over again. That is why, even in the midst of an extreme situation, the wise are patient. Whether the situation is illness, calamity, or their own anger, they know that healing will follow upheaval. 365 Tao

I love this routine. It is simple, effective, and does not require a lot of time. I quickly built myself up to the 21-rep sequence since I'm in pretty good shape, but I did have one mishap; I went through a period of cramping in my anterior neck muscles. I felt the cramping deep in the throat, a very odd sensation. Rites #2 and #3 can put a strain on them. I now make sure that #2 is done with a complete rest between reps, just to give the neck a break (no pun intended). Cramps are now history. Any other precautionary tales out there?

I'll give you that, but you have to admit, Chia is not the first author who starts cannibalizing previous works in order to fluff up ideas and book sales. I own three of his other titles. The practice seems to be especially visible amongst the health/fitness/consciousness genre (see Pavel Tsatsouline!).

These "Self vs self" arguments are regularly prone to semantic traps. As individuals, we of course have our unique personalities and character traits because we are all subject to different contingencies. But the "self" as a distinct, separate, eternal and unchanging identity is the concept that we take for granted, even though it's a social construct. "Identity as fountain" is more difficult to conceptualize, but it's as Taoist, and Buddhist, as one can get. Absolutely. When the ego is subordinate to the Spirit, everything's cool. It's only when the relationship is reversed that we make a mess out of things. I suspect that, except for a handful of souls on the planet at any one time, the romantic ideal of an egoless personality is just that, a cognitive beacon that keeps us heading in the right direction. I'm not sure where the escapism manifests, unless it is on behalf of an ego that is still too fragile to be let go of in the first place, in which case, it would be delusional if not escapist. I think the Eastern archetypal figure of egolessness is the Bhodisattva, someone who's got their spiritual act together so well that they work on behalf of the liberation of all sentient beings as they would work on their own, which are one and same anyway, yes?

Sorry, I'm not Serene Blue, but I think she's referring to this - How to Practice the White Skeleton Meditation for Curing Illness, Getting Rid of Pain, Developing Your Psychic Abilities, Purifying Your Chi Channels and Achieving Spiritual Awakening By William Bodri When Shakyamuni Buddha was alive in ancient India, he taught an incredible variety of different meditation methods for people who wanted to enter into the state of samadhi as a means to climb the spiritual path. One of the spiritual cultivation methods he particularly emphasized was the skeleton visualization technique, which is the topic of this special report. The other method he emphasized was anapana, or breathing practice, which you can find described in the Anapanasati Sutra. This is from a pdf file available on line. White Skeleton.

You answered your own question when you wrote "but at the end of the day here I am," and again when you wrote "Some... thing... that keeps fueling the ego." We'll always have that hunger as long as we identify with an "I" that doesn't exist. If we look for the I, we can't find it, but there is something better, and I quote from David Loy what cannot be said any better -- "Rather, the bottomless, festering black hole can transform into a fountain and become a refreshing spring gushing up at the core of my being. The bottomlessness of the this spring means something quite different than before. Now it refers to the fact that I can never understand the source of this spring, for the simple reason that I AM this spring. It is nothing other than my true nature. And my inability to reflexively grasp that source, to ground and realize myself by filling up that hole, is no longer a problem, because there is no need to grasp it. The point is to LIVE that spring, to let my fountain gush forth. My thirst (the second Noble Truth) is "blown out" because a letting go at the core of my being means my sense of lack evaporates as this fountain springs up." After the ecstasy, the laundry, eh? (to quote Jack Kornfield.)

I read Mantak Chia's "Wisdom Chi Kung" last night. It's only 140 pages, and like so many of his books, 80% has already been covered in his previous works. But there was an interesting parallel between T5T and his explanation of the "Spinal Cord Breathing," a technique of rocking the torso in such a way that activates the three pumps of the sacrum, Door of Life, and cranium. It's very similar to movement #3 of T5T. So now, when I do T5T #3, I make sure I tuck in the sacrum at the same time my head bends forward. This dynamic stretching technique feels far more efficacious (?) than without the sacral tuck. These are also consistent with some of the movements in Gurmukh's Kundalini Yoga practice (DVD).

A zen meditation center will not charge you a dime for basic meditation instruction. http://www.nashvillezencenter.org/

Welcome to the Human Condition!! There are approximately seven billion others on this planet who share your predicament, give or take the fifty or so who've managed to transcend our Earth-bound plight. Meditation is a life-long practice. Trying a "handful" of different techniques over the course of one week is not the way to start out. The effects are cumulative and and take many months and years to accrue, so I wouldn't expect dramatic, earth-shattering experiences too soon Zen meditation centers are located in hundreds of metropolitan areas around the world. They can introduce you to the simple breath-counting technique that slows down all the mind-chatter. If you are fidgeting too much, you may find it beneficial to take the yogi's ancient advice and practice yoga before meditation; once the body is calmed and relaxed, the mind will follow, but remember, this will not be a spontaneous experience either. Changing the mind using the mind calls for superhuman strength; changing the mind via the body will almost certainly prove fruitful. Where do you live?

A lot of folks in here have nailed their intellectual history. IMHO, "A Dazzling Darkness: An Anthology of Western Mysticism" is the finest resource I've found if you're really in the mood for digging into the Western mystical tradition and ferreting out the parallels between East and West. There isn't a huge overlap, but the examples that exist are profound: Plotinus, Meister Eckhardt, Hildegard of Bingen, Thomas a Kempis, Julian of Norwich and others who, of course, were persecuted for heresy by the Catholic Church. Most of the western tradition maintained the centrality of a personal god, of course, but some of these mystics could be classified as pantheists (a very hip idea indeed). http://www.amazon.com/Dazzling-Darkness-An...6481&sr=1-1 Used copies available for $0.01!! For the purpose of putting the western mystical tradition within the context of the Western intellectual tradition as a whole, you can't beat "The Passion of the Western Mind," by Richard Tarnas. http://www.amazon.com/Passion-Western-Mind...7253&sr=1-1 Then... Pick up a copy of "A Buddhist History of the West," by David Loy, and let me know if Loy doesn't blow your socks off. http://www.amazon.com/Buddhist-History-Wes...7506&sr=1-7 Regards, B

I have a half dozen titles and I keep one in my coat at all times for those mundane moments that creep into our daily lives. The Essence of Tai Chi by Waysun Liao is one of my favorites. http://www.shambhala.com/html/catalog/items/subject/31.cfm

I'd get a copy of this http://www.amazon.com/Energy-Work-Healing-...5411&sr=1-1 with an entirely western vocabulary, Bruce reveals an awful lot of tricks for opening up meridians throughout the body, especially hard-to-activate areas such as the feet and legs. This book has been well received by a number of members in here. It won't conflict with your orthodox training, but try not to mix things up too much.

Yep.... bored out of my skull... here in the San Fernando Valley with nothing to do... ...so tell me, did you mean to call yourself "Hydro" as in the term for "water" in ancient Greek, but suffered a bout of poor spelling, or is there some personal significance of the word "Hyrdo" as in "Higher Dough"? I'm so bored that I simply must know.

Anyone out there who has personal experience with the advantages of increasing to 2-3 times a day? I can only assume that you start feeling much stronger externally, but is there a palpable difference with internal energy? I do my Embrace Horse ten minutes after T5T.

I post a thread linking the connections between ancient Taoist communities and sustainable post-consumer, post-suburban alternatives, and I get a half dozen responses. A prepubescent stool sample signs in two days ago with infantile rambling and gets almost 1,000 hits and over 70 responses. Something tells me this says more about TTB than "Dark."