Maddie

I was reluctant to chime in as the Chia/Semen retention topic gets discussed A LOT on here, but with that being said and having tried Chia's system in the past all it did for me was to turn me into a sex craved maniac. I read the books, and tried it for years. Once I got into Acupuncture school I learned it was a really bad idea. Personally I think its because the stimulation builds up testosterone but with out the usual loss that ejaculation results in. So it just builds up to very high levels, i.e. extreme Yang excess in relation to Yin.

That's true, but not usually only directly over one's head and no where else, and usually not only for the duration for which it was intended, and not usually is this repeatable more than once in order to rule out mere coincidence.

Interesting that you say that because previously he had been a Zen priest for 10 years.

You can imagine my disappointment the first time I went to my local Buddhist monastery to do a meditation retreat and the main monk that I spoke to was a western Monk with a PhD in science and technology from a major university he flat out told me there was an absolutely no such thing as magic and that the Asian monks belief in such things was just superstition. I wasn't even sure if he believed in enlightenment and Nirvana or even reincarnation so I began to wonder why he was even a monk in the first place. Though he was very big on insisting that I bow to him frequently.

While I realize that my examples technically don't count as evidence to me the fact that there were witnesses that saw the clouds part and then come back together based on the timing of my intention is at least objective as far as observation goes and can be observed by more than one person is probably as close to evidence as one can get for these types of things. And people have shared some stories that again while not evidence are very interesting and compelling. So for me this thread has been worth it.

Actually that's a bit of a straw man argument in and of itself because nowhere did I state in any of this that I did not believe that the supernatural exists nor did I state I was trying to disprove it. What I did state was that I was interested in evidence for it.

I'd still like to hear about it anyway if you don't mind sharing

Thanks for sharing. Makes a lot of sense.

May I ask what the diagnosis was please? If you don't mind sharing something like? If not please feel no pressure.

As a medical practitioner myself my first question to anyone making such a statement would be have you been evaluated by a medical professional or mental health professional for any sort of mental health issue?

This just strengthens my point about seeking true knowledge. It's the only way to dispel delusion.

It can be proven that the world is round and that it orbits the sun even though in the past it was thought otherwise and the people who questioned those things received a lot of annoyance for doing so. This is the way of progress, and to not do so is to stay in the dark ages forever.

So far during the entirety of this post I've not been given any evidence for the supernatural but I have observed something else interesting and that is what the Buddha calls attachment to views. I honestly didn't expect the large amount of emotion that this post generated. Definitely the the most emotional feedback that I've ever gotten on a post since I've been on the Dao Bums. The Buddha said that when we identify the self with the views then to reject a view is seen as a rejection of the self and since we attach to the self so strongly as being permanent and real any threat to that results in a very strong emotional reaction in direct proportion to the amount of attachment we have to the self and to the views that we associate with the self. So I can't say it's not been educational nevertheless. I've also seen a lot of polarization of views. That is if you question this view then you obviously hold the extreme opposite view and I'm going to assume that you hold that view because you question this view, and if you question my view you're my enemy. This is basically the foundation of all the religious and political intolerance that we have seen on the earth throughout history. Again it stems from identification of the views with the self and the self feeling threatened. When there is strong identification with views and thus the self when that idea of self is threatened and there is strong attachment to this idea of self this leads to fear of loss of the self and fear leads to anger as a means to fight for the preservation of the self and anger leads to accusation and quarrel.

That's probably the case

I should have been wiser and learned my lesson from the Inquisition and not have been so foolish as to question anything ever. Thank you for your wisdom

It doesn't bother him because he doesn't have any emotions he said so himself 😉

I asked if there was any evidence. You have very strong emotions about this topic. Why is that?

It took the human race 200,000 years to get to this point so yeah I'm fine with 10 years, 20 years, 100 years. what do you base this judgment upon?

how has searching for evidence of anything been beneficial? It leads to knowledge. If humanity had not had this attitude we'd still be hunter-gatherers.

I know much is said about this mantra working on the heart chakra and I agree it does but I've also found it to work a lot on the upper chakras as well. Has anyone else noticed this?

I would be happy for you to continue :-)

What ever ones that you found most interesting since you were there.

Would love to hear your experiences. in regards to your theory that I was unintentionally doing whether magic I suppose that's a possibility which would make sense considering I don't believe that the god I was praying to at the time even exists LOL.

True, I've considered that possibility as well. The problem with this stuff is it's so difficult to quantify.

3. A few years later I'm married to the previously mentioned girlfriend at the river. We are both at this point still of a rather fundamentalist Christian mindset and our relationship is not doing well. She was constantly claiming in arguments that God was on her side, that God knew she was right, ect. So one day I got fed up with this and said "If I"m right God will make it snow tomorrow and only tomorrow". For background it was July. We lived in the interior of Alaska at this point, but even though it was Alaska in the interior in July it can easily get into the '90s and sometimes even hit 100 degrees Fahrenheit. So what happens the very next day? It snows of course. I have never seen this happen before or since, even in Alaska. Of course, she just huffed and ignored it, but still, it snowed in July the very next day after I had prayed that it would snow the next day. 4. Back when I was in high school I became interested in the Ouiji board and me a few friends were spending time using it over the summer break. Also at this time my sister had become very religious and did not like the fact that we used the Ouiji board. When we would try to use it in the living room she would be so disruptive that we decided to take it to my room so that we could continue to use it undisturbed. So now we are in my room and we continue to use the board. We had locked my door so that my sister could not come in and disturb us. After a couple of minutes of using the board, the pointer suddenly flies out from under our fingertips and hits the door. From the way our hands had been on the pointer it did not seem like there was any way any of us could have done that. We go to the door and open it and my sister is crouched on the other side praying. We each ask each other if anyone had thrown the pointer somehow but no one said they had. Additionally, with everyone's fingertips lightly touching the top of the pointer it did not seem like anyone could have thrown the pointer at the door, especially with the force at which it hit the door. A lot of weird and creepy things happened in that house.