Encephalon

Deng Ming-Dao writes that the intellectual journey one takes should go from simple to complex, and then revert from complexity back to simplicity. We can still honor the joy of quenching our inquisitiveness and curiosity and still enjoy the big picture.

Alas, I have seen my own posts hijacked and taken in directions I never thought possible. I'll grant you it is disappointing when you're trying to construct a specific dialogue. I am not cued in to the dynamic you were attempting to explore. Is TTB a forum for divisiveness regarding who is credentialed to do and say what? Pardon me for missing an essential point.

I am almost always in agreement with Chomsky's assessments on social and political issues. The video link from Smile is no exception. Americans are truly suffering a dramatic reduction in quality of life indicators, but as Chomsky says, the fringe elements that are given a voice by mainstream media offer egregious explanations; the country is controlled by rich liberals, gays, unions, and immigrants, all colluding to destroy American values. Scapegoating on crack. The Nazis did the exact same thing; blamed everything on the Lefties.

OMG... what is a norbutron? Nevermind, I'll look it up!

My favorite Chomsky term is "cognitive hygiene." Could you explicate your comments, please? What exactly are you saying about Chomsky or academia?

There are a handful of people that understand my writings on Buddhism, geography, and human ecology. I can choose to restrict my conversations about these subjects with my colleagues who are up to speed on the subject matter. If I choose to share my ideas with others, however, I am obliged to gear down somewhat and make essential principles comprehensible. I don't expect my 13 yr old daughter to understand postmodern geography, but if my intention is to share interesting ideas with her, the burden of communication falls on me, not her. Your point as I see it is to argue that others are responsible for avoiding the communication pitfalls that are riddled throughout your posts. This is evidence (not proof) that sharing ideas is really not your concern, that a charitable meeting of minds is not truly your intention. Constructing intellectual scaffolding sounds more like the process you are engaged in. I never finished high school either, but I did go on to get a graduate degree. You can't blame the state of your communication skills on that experience. Your communication skills are the way they are because you haven't had to take them seriously yet. Metaphysics online; does a fuzzier forum even exist?

Excellent points, Gold. I would only add that it would be good to take a clue from the early Taoists who were fiercely independent and self-sufficient. They rooted themselves deeply into their communities by honing the skills necessary to live and evolve spiritually, the skills that may seem mundane but sustain all other work; gardening, carpentry, animal husbandry, medicine, etc. Definitely check out teaching in China. That sounds very cool. Reading "Emergency: This Book can Save Your Life" is so bloody informative and fun to read that it just might save your life. www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net will show you that you are not alone, and that the world we are moving into will need people like yourself.

There are very few people alive on this earth who can get away with calling Robert Bellah a New Ager in 90 seconds flat. My educated guess, however, is that this was just another flippant excuse for not thinking things through.

Vaj I have come out and publicly stated that it was mean-spirited of me to assail your reasoning powers. specifically, I believe I said that I had to concede that I am not informed enough about Nyingma to positively state that your spiritual development along the lines of that tradition is inauthentic. Butt... (and there's one of those heavenly butts) It would appear that I am not alone in voicing a very modest observation that your capacity to make your ideas comprehensible to others seems undeveloped at best. The worst I could say is that there is evidence of conceptual blind spots, which is pretty mild criticism compared to actually being accused of delusional, which I honestly do not believe you are. You have registered some intent on becoming a teacher, or at least taking the plunge into formal academia. I understand that critical thinking and formal logic do not figure prominently in your lineage, but geeeez, if you truly wish to share with others what is so beautiful about your worldview, communication skills really do come in handy. I hope the animus that has characterized my online blatherings in the past has been checked. I'm trying. "We may be seeing the beginnings of the reintegration of our culture, a new possibility of the unity of consciousness. if so, it will not be on the basis of any new orthodoxy, either religious or scientific. Such a new integration will be based on the rejection of all univocal understandings of reality, of all identifications of one conception of reality with reality itself. It will recognize the multiplicity of the human spirit, and the necessity to translate constantly between different scientific and imaginative vocabularies. It will recognize the human proclivity to fall comfortably into some single literal interpretation of the world and therefore the necessity to be continuously open to rebirth in a new heaven and a new earth. It will recognize that in both scientific and religious culture all we have finally are symbols, but that there is an enormous difference between the dead letter and the living word." Robert Bellah - "Beyond Belief"

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. Deng Ming-Dao - 365 Tao

That marijuana can enable you to relax is a fact beyond serious dispute, and as we all find out sooner or later, learning how to relax is the first step toward feeling our internal environment. Does that mean you should enlist mj? My readings on the history of mj in early China was that the plant was just too unpredictable. During the era when all plants, animals and minerals were being classified into the yin/yang categories, MJ resisted easy classification, and so it fell out of favor although it clearly played a central role in early Chinse shamanic rites. If you absolutely must continue to smoke, follow Dr. Weil's advice; do it once a week. Pick your saturday afternoon and set it aside for some kind of body/mind discipline. The goal for the following week is to reproduce without MJ the same level of relaxation and inner awareness. If you can't restrict your use to once a week, it could mean that you don't possess the maturity to use this plant in the best way it can be utilized. I asked Gary Clyman to clarify why he doesn't approve of it; was it because it introduces phantom energy experiences? No, he said. It just kills your volition. That being said, MJ is going to play a very prominent role in the medical system of the future, and I wish like hell that people would just wise up and get over it, but the war on drugs is mighty profitable for a huge sector of our society.

Congratulations! If you are 23, that means you came into legal drinking age about the same time that the global consumer economy danced the Victory Dance before imploding in 2008. You will never see a return to the consumer economy of Hummers and Black Angus and easy credit. You are now living a life in the death spiral of capitalism. Good timing! You can either refine and hone your skills to become a skilled operator in what's left of the consumer economy, or you can follow your heart and organize your life around it. Fortunately, the latter is gaining significance in this day and age. You are not alone. Millions of people want what you want. The following is a list of links that can get you in touch with many of them. www.ic.org Here you will find the international list of intentional communities, everything from taoist hermitages to full-blown, off-the-grid, semi-monastic, agrarian models. The good news is that the kind of lifestyle you want goes hand in hand with these alternative models, because they both place a premium on simplicity. If you can live sustainably, simply, eat well, live in a place with clean air and adequate room and serenity for your mediation needs, then you will have succeeded. Go out there and turn yourself into the handiest guy anyone would want to have around, and you will find joy in our post-consumer world. Tips on that can be found here. http://www.transitionus.org/ I've been trying to draw parallels between ancient Taoist villages and those that will endure as our economy undergoes the inevitable contraction to smaller, human scale enterprises. I find the parallels to numerous to count. Good luck with your search. Taoists have always been individualists, but even they need community. We all do. Don't try to go it alone and you'll be fine!

I certainly count myself as one who fell prey to the excesses of the Fire Method, the one that Frantzis warns about. I did not have much luck with Frantzis' Water Method, or the dissolving process, but I did not stick with it long enough, even though I was standing in Embrace Horse for 30-45 minutes. But having overheated with breath work and nei kung, I can now appreciate how important it is to have a cool yin current coming down from Heaven. Serene, you definitely don't need to cool off, and with fall/winter on the way, a Fire Method may be a wise choice.

I suppose my most uninformed and intuitive assessment of a genuine Kundalini experience would register on me if I noticed a psychological shift after feeling a particular chakra open up a bit. I am not actively working on my MCO and am focusing instead on the Little Orbit, just keeping a nice turbine-like movement in the lower dantien. I am unschooled in the subtle differences between a kundalini vibe and a chi flow along a meridian, but when energy does ascend up the front channel, it invariably stops, localizes and pulsates at my heart chakra for a good length of time. I have come to associate this physical sensation with a corresponding increase in compassion. Something tells me I have a good amount of blockage clearing before my MCO is ready to flow again (in the opposite direction of course), but the brow, throat and heart chakras still need a little more clearing out. I would love to believe that it is kundalini that is ascending, but I cannot rule out the psychological effect of expectation on subjective experience.

Any Thomas Merton in your studies? His outreach to the East was remarkable.

Yes. Good points. There are many subtleties to this practice that can't be overlooked. I prefer to think of the entire inbreath/outbreath as an infinity symbol, where you are completely relaxed throughout the entire cycle, especially at the moments in between inhalations and exhalations. This does not include the abdominal contractions of the exhale and the sphincter tug on the inhale. Isn't it mindblowing that the most powerful technique known to humankind for increasing chi is about breathing and tightening your exit valve? The Tao has a sense of humor.

I think what Stig is saying is that qigong is a subset of Tao Yin. Deng Ming-Dao's Scholar/Warrior defines taoyin as "the bridge from exercise to meditation." Great reference tool also. Qigong is where it's at, man! You're doing everything right! seriously, if you're still young and in good physical condition or work out you can turn mind/muscle connection data from weightlifting and exploit that for a quicker grasp of your internal, bio-electrical pathways (meridians). that's my working hypothesis, anyway.

Definitely pick up a copy of "Scholar/Warrior" by Deng Ming-Dao as well. Beware of creating a spiritual soup in the beginning, that being the New Age trap that has snared many a seeker.

Thanks for reviewing. I came in here looking to see if anyone was familiar with Fritjof Capra but this does seem more up to date.

I believe it doesn't at this time. Taoism and empiricism share so much common ground that the divergences probably only exist in those states of consciousness created by the fusion of body and mind, and hence, below the radar of conventional observability. It is the best of both worlds; a dependable foundation in support of limitless internal experience that doesn't necessarily represent a rejection of physical laws but the transcendence of them. I love the way Fritjof Capra put it: "Logical reasoning was considered by the Taoists as part of the artificial world of man, together with social etiquette and moral standards. They were not interested in this world at all, but concentrated their attention fully on the observation of nature in order to discern the characteristics of the Tao. Thus they developed an attitude which was essentially scientific and only their deep mistrust in the analytic method prevented them from constructing proper scientific theories. Nevertheless, the careful observation of nature, combined with a strong mystical intuition, led the Taoist sages to profound insights which are confirmed by modern scientific theories." Cool, eh?

- trying (still;-)) to be kinder towards myself The absence of kindness directed at oneself seems to be a sign of the times, and it seems to be getting more prevalent. It certainly explains a great deal of cultural behavior. It's a pernicious little bastard, too; I just turned 49 and am still trying to ease up on myself and others. But chi kung as done more for me in two years than 30 years spent wallowing as a self-improvement junkie. I am still mystified why this practice has yet to spill over the face of the earth.

Do you know any brass or woodwind players? They are a great resource for learning how to breathe heat into your system. I tread carefully here, so as not to possibly give out info that could be used inappropriately, but Master Co of Pranic Healing has a few cool tips on how to get the heat flowing with breath, very similar to what we learned as kids in band and drum corps. You want to be able to breath in such a way that your body is like a giant spunge and vacuum, absorbing vast amounts of energy from the breath. Actually, going into fall/winter might not be the worst time to try this.

Okay. So, it's settled then. Psychic powers are "awesome." In retropsect, the last paragraph about supernormal powers wasn't necessary for the task. In fact, it caused an unnecessary detour, but it only points out the lack of precision in my own writing, and there's a worthy learning curve there. I appreciate the civility. Indeed, it surpasses my own. Thanks for setting excellent examples for the rest of us. It sounds like we need to proceed with caution if we delve into energy arts unsupervised. The risk that these practices represent to those who would go it alone, without supervision, needs to be evaluated. (Can somebody do that?) But I am all for the 'maps.' It has taken me very little time to realize how much time and resources are being wasted by keeping chi kung so unaccessible to so many. They used to teach transcendental meditiation in the prisons for free. Chi kung can be taught anywhere. But there are reasons that it isn't, and I don't understand them all. I'm grateful for the information I've acquired, even though I did have that notorious bout of excessive heat for a few months. But the information to treat it successfully I found in this forum and in an acupuncture/herb clinic less than two miles from my house. I guess the Boy Scout motto still makes sense. How could you possibly separate the two?