Encephalon

The feedback I have received from this thread has renewed my faith in TTB forum. There is so much friggn' silliness in here that I was preparing to bail entirely. Thank you all for being so sensible, mindful, helpful. I was able to glean a great deal from the following link. I may or may not have this syndrome, but my lifestyle of the last three months could have easily accounted for my situation. I went from working full time at the gym and working out 4 days a week to energy work exclusively, and hours spent sitting in front of the screen finishing my thesis and gulping black tea. http://www.mybodywisdom.net/pdf/Liver_Qi_Stagnation.pdf Last night I replaced my 20 minute Embrace Tree with hands on the tan tien and woke up with a clean face and no back pain, no shoulder pain. This was the advice Dr. Li gave me months ago, but I maintained Embrace Tree. I like Embrace Tree! My limbs positively hum in Embrace Tree! For you in Los Angeles, I want to put out this guy's contact info. He's an absolute wizard. $60 per visit, cash only! Dr. Li 4712 North Peck Rd. El Monte, CA 1.626.307.5399

I understand the spirit of your feedback. If I were to reveal the extent of my life as a doormat, all the solar plexus chakra work would make sense. It was actually an attempt to heal a deficiency in that area. I have clearly overcompensated, but I am not at risk of becoming belligerent; indeed, I have turned most of my wrath on my own good self.

I'm copping to the truth of what you say. This was an era of over-compensation for me. An underdeveloped solar plexus also brings with it a host of problems as well.

Good morning. This is not a rhetorical question. What characterized the "good stuff?" I've learned a few things in here as a newcomer, but it can be depressingly banal. Was there more intellectual integrity then, or was it less infantile? I am so ready to bail on the whole thing, but I still get helpful advice on the somatic side of Taoism.

Please elaborate. There is all kinds of cathartic, heart-related material going on in my life right now.

Bi-curious? Sorry. Male attempt at humor. No. Lame attempt at humor. Wait...

From Frantzis I own The Chi Revolution and Opening the Energy Gates of Your Body. He's big into the dissolving method, imagining water flowing down through your crown, dissolving blockages throughout the descent. I'd put on my noise-canc. headphones with white noise w/waterfall trac and just "chill out." BTW, I cooked yesterday, really bad, and guess what? My girlfriend made coffee. I can do green tea all day long, but coffee burns the hell out of me. "What are you trying to burn with it?" Cuz I'ma guy, and I wanted to generate as much heat in my solar plexus as I could, because that is the chakra of will, personal power, efficacy...cajones. And an underdeveloped solar plexus presents a risk of total weeniness...

No kidding! My experience in here has been a little different. I've been summarily slapped when I even clarify my intention to utilize a Buddhist concept, and when I do, there is a good deal of scorn thrown in. So, I've tried to abstain. Of course, this is a big forum and I know I haven't participated in every thread. I have seen instances where Buddhism answers a question that remains mired in a nebulous phase of manic definition. For westerners, I find that Buddhist concepts, particularly Buddhist psychology (Kornfield, Watts, Hanh, Batchelor, Loy) are essential introductions to Chinese thought, especially Taoism. If you did some cut and paste, I wouldn't be surprised if my references showed up. Please note my intention to abide by the spirit and letter of post in the future. Regards, Blasto

Jeremy, RU my neighbor on Topanga and Nord? The one with the really cute sister?

Thank you, Stigweard, for your very thoughtful and lucid reply. I am grateful for the intellectual level you introduce to this forum. There are a handful of other voices in here who are sincere, educated, accomplished, and literate, and I've had the good fortune to "meet" many of them. This forum has been a remarkable tool for me. It offered a wonderful opportunity to compose some thoughts that remained plugged up for quite some time as I struggled to finish grad school projects. I also needed to experience the sociological dynamic of chat rooms. My fiance and I both participated in them only recently, and it does reveal a different dimension of human behavior that deserves to be understood. I'm writing in past tense because I feel it's time to move on. All the best. Blasto (Scott)

Blasto, you are a monster. Well, at least make me Godzilla.

Are we at risk of deluding ourselves when we get so speculative? I'm not suggesting that higher planes of existence are not there to be explored - "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" - but when it comes to internal experience, doesn't language ultimately fail well before the inner experience begins to manifest in some sort of recognizable pattern? I feel I have a tremendous amount to learn in here, but is there not a proper balance between speculation and good old fashioned intellectual humility and skepticism? Or is philosophical Taoism simply not connectable with rationalist inquiry? I respectfully request that someone clarify this for me. If I get told to stick to my somatics and keep an open mind, I will happily do that.

"Fimbo may be rude but he is sincere in his dedication to seek the truth." I think the above quote is a debatable point. I might get slapped here but I'm going to appeal to Buddhist psychology. The Three Poisons - delusion, hatred, and greed - sit in the middle of the wheel of life for a reason; they symbolize the nature of the unawakened mind. Delusion facilitates the other two. Caught in a delusional state, there is no limit to mental illness. I am no psychologist, but like many others in here, I had my bouts with drugs and alcohol thirty years ago and I can spot delusional behavior when I see it. Dare I say, Taoism is not what this young man needs. Perhaps Taoist exercises, chi king, some kind of somatic therapy is certainly necessary for chemically-dependent people, but Taoist metaphysical speculation has no purpose on this plane. Healing a wounded self is in order here, and Buddhist psychology does wonders because it is consistent with modern psychology regarding the nature of the self, and it is also consistent with the post-modern realization that there is no "self;" we are each a society of selves as contingent and fluid as oceans and air masses. Having said that, I still insist that the above point is a debatable one, but I am convinced that life seeks life, and that most living things remain on a evolutionary trajectory, unless something poisonous seeps in. It would be nice to see us all find what we're looking for.

"Dorks! They look like dorks!"

I had my own "faith-based" lifestyle for the first 35 years of my life. My upbringing, which was not conspicuously religious, or even spiritual, made room for a personal relationship with God, and this did imbue my universe with some undefinable benevolence. I signed up with Transcendental Meditation in my late twenties, and by my mid-thirties, was living at Maharishi Internatiional University, in Iowa, which turned out to be the most dysfunctional community I had ever been a part of. I only lasted six months there, and promptly returned to N. California to start my academic career at the tender age of 35. I attended my first annual Critical Thinking Conference at Sonoma State University that year and volunteered for three more as an undergrad. By the first one, I was definitely within the CT tractor beam and wouldn't be leaving for quite some time. It is quite a chore to "re-enchant" one's life after a person loses his faith. I dropped the word "spiritual" from my vocabulary until I could come up with a definition that didn't violate my newfound agnostic and CT sensibilities. With Taoism and Buddhism, I have reacquired a working definition of "spiritual" to simply mean that mystery and awe and daily, unquenched curiosity fuels my sense of connection and inspiration. In CT we speak of the realm of verifiability and falsifiability; beyond that realm is the land of the metaphysical, and until I have exhausted every doctoral program in every academic subject, there really is no need for me to go there, because the empirical world is so inexhaustible. (There is a joke that says that metaphysics is for people too lazy to study physics.) Buddhism and Taoism are for me extraordinary portals into larger worlds that are still accessible with an agnostic base (agnostic as "I don't know and can't know," not the popular mis-definition of "I don't care.") I tell my 13 year-old that the chi I cultivate every morning with my exercises is the same stuff that ignited the Big Bang. She's as smart as a whip; her BS detector is finely tuned for such a young person and I am very proud of that. But she can buy virtually anything I say about chi, nei kung, martial arts, and the very palpable sense of chi-flow. Internal physiological states, healing with chi or knocking someone's lights out with four ounces of pressure represents subject matter that critical thinking cannot adequately connect with. But maintaining a conscious awareness of the dividing line between what one can know and what one cannot know is the ultimate test. That pedantic introduction being said, I was about to concur with previous posts that nature is my most inspiring medium. In fact, my master's thesis was a Buddhist deconstruction of consumerism in Los Angeles and the threat that global consumerism represents to nature itself, certainly sentient nature. So yeah fine, throw me in with the deep ecologists. But my real sense of inspiration comes from people now. Allen Ginsburg said this back in the seventies; It's all fine and good to figure out the universe. But eventually, what becomes more important is how connected you are to other people. I am consistently blown away by how my connections with others are revealed when I simply shut up, turn of the ego, and listen to how much I have in common with others whom I've never met. American culture is tearing itself to pieces, and it is almost a certainty that it will get ugly when global competition for dwindling resources erupts into resource wars (THE oldest story of humankind). But beneath all the environmental conditioning and Fox News and all the rest are people who are vastly more connected than disconnected. Music probably ranks second on my list of sources of inspiration. I played in bands in college and am learning to play guitar these days. Anyone in here ever catch Billy Childs? My muscial babyfood was the jazz-rock fusion era of the early seventies. Meeting someone whospeaks the language of riffs and licks is about as satisfying as a successful chi wave over the scalp in the MO! "That's about all I got to say about that!" Forrest Gump

Yes, indeed. There appears to be married folk in here. I would be grateful for any links or book titles that others may have utilized in their wedding plans. ANY advice would be welcome.

I believe the most noble thing we can do is acknowlege the reality of suffering and render as much compassion as possible. A part of me would have been delighted to unleash my scorn on this individual but I have to step up at some point and choose more refined conduct. "Fake it 'til ya make it," right? That being said, he needs to be cut loose. I'm surprised this kind of behavior was tolerated for so long.

I think this thread deserves a proper burial.

My apologies! I was immersing myself in silliness in a lame attempt to transmute previously rendered animosity. You guys probably know what im talking about.

Ginger is the root of evil, for which I am indebted. I am in a genuine search for enlightenment of the ego of the devil in my search for respect. The ego is the path to ginger. Lime is the translucency of matters of Tao by which the ego absolves one of all responsibility to be intelligent. Therefore, I say "fuck you!" and "I'm sorry!" and sqwueeze my sphincters of lime. I will quote the I Ching, smoke my revelations, and become one with marijuana. Those who question my path are fools. Those who cannot plummet the depths of my revelations still wear nametags.

Well, no one won the Mega Millions lottery yesterday, so its up to $325 million for Friday's draw. If we win we will be giving you a call. the following link is a sea level rise map of Canada. Any prospective property buyers who want property for their children and grandchildren might want to take a peek. Parts of BC, especially Vancouver, don't fair well in the years ahead. http://atlas.nrcan.gc.ca/site/english/maps...itysealevelrise

As a certifiable "Doomer" (post-oil, post-industrial, post-civilization) I am in complete agreement with many voices that predict a world population of 500 million by the 22nd century. I've written in here and elsewhere that the Canadian Taoist population may be very well represented by the surviving human family. The same qualities that made their ancient villages so robust are the same qualities that will enable Taoists to endure in the tough times ahead. I wouldn't be surprised to see Taoist villages in the Canadian Rockies, teaching their skills to likeminded folk. My needs are very modest now. A loving wife, simple food, a couple of musical instruments and a place to practice my chi kung and meditation are all I really want (well, my books too). It is my hope that we find an intentional community where this can become a reality. www.ic.org We've started looking here.