Maddie

I'd just say keep at it for a while and eventually you'll feel it. Our McDonald's culture of today is very different from how it was back in the day when they would train lol. It's taking me some time to shift out of the McDonald's "everything has to be instant" mentality as well.

No doubt, the existence of monasteries becomes more obvious to me daily haha, well that and the infamous Taoist hermit in the cave lol. As I was reading your last post it caused me to piece together today's chain of events. So before school I had a wonderful two hour meditation which seemed to go by very fast, I was so blissed out. It was half Samatha and half Vipassana with a nice qigong organ session at the end to tidy it all up. So I head off to class feeling lovely. So I sit down at one of the tables before class starts and one of those girls who I mentioned talk to me a lot at the clinic comes in and puts her hand on my back and then sits down next to me. At this point I'm thinking nothing about it. Then class starts and she keeps constantly looking at my notes and asking me about something she missed that the professor said. Gradually I notice myself tensing up lol. By the end of class I'm so tense it hurts but I can't relax lol. But yea that stuff you posted about the hormones was very interesting cause it did feel like I was in that fight or flight mode but there was absolutely no obvious reason to be so. It wasn't until I got home and did that liver meditation that I mentioned that I began to feel myself start to relax again. Also an interesting insight about the liver wanting to deconvert the heart energy, like a reverse generating cycle. So I think doing the liver meditation helped get the generating cycle going in the right direction again. One other thing I did that seemed to help was I did a few of the "cold draws" that Chia talks about drawing the jing from the testes up the back of the MCO to the crown. It seemed to help me to relax a little too. Oh one last thing (I reread your post) and you talked about stressed people around us drawing our energy down. Well that girl that sat next to me after class as we were walking out was telling me how stressed out she had been lately haha. So good call!

Yea heart is what I'd been working on the past couple days before liver. I was doing heart to help me balance out desire and craving but what I noticed was as the heart craving and grasping began to lessen that is when I noticed the tension first begin. Then after some tension while doing heart meditation it would progress to anger cause as I was too see liver seemed to get first very angry and then depressed as I was letting heart desire go. I mean it was intense. At one point it got so bad that I closed my eyes and I had this mental image of an angry ape in a cage screaming and thrashing about haha. Another funny thing that I noticed while working on liver is that it took me two hours to decide what to have for dinner haha, and its the wood element that is responsible for decision making and planning. I also found myself thinking "I should really get back into jujitsu" haha as if something in me wanted to fight. So it seems that all these archetypal liver attributes are really raising their head as I work on this. Thinking back to that discussion a few days ago about the liver/hun/ethereal soul being the subconscious and the heart/shen being the conscious, I'm wondering if my subconscious is protesting me removing one of its favorite attachments (being the heart desire)?

Interesting. It seems that one of the places I felt the most tension was in my diaphragm area, and it was like while I was in class it was impossible to relax, even though I was aware of it being tense. The funny thing is about these memories and feelings coming up is that most of them are some how conflict related which I guess makes sense as it was a liver meditation I did. I suppose that this also explains some of the tension that I'm feeling as well. Though I'm assuming the goal from a Taoist perspective the big (why do this in the first place) would be to let this stuff go so that I can get closer to the stillness that is the Tao?

Hmmm well what ever the reason this led to something else interesting. So to help myself relax a bit I did an hours long liver meditation. It felt like bliss while I was doing it. Odd thing is, is that afterwards I've been super reminiscent and remembering old memories and feeling old feelings. I'd had this happen in the past when I'd do an organ meditation for a good length of time. I'm assuming its old stuck qi coming out.

Yea its on the news here as well. very sad, very messed up

The mentioning of the parasympathetic nervous system and muscles got me to wondering about something. So a couple weeks ago I was mentioning how I'd go out to school and feel drained. This week I've been noticing that I don't feel drained when I go out, but what I do notice is that the entire time I'm out in public my whole body feels tense even though I can't think of anything that's bothering me. I'm back home now and I can already feel my body loosening up. Is this some kind of subconscious reaction to constrict my channels to make it harder to loose my qi to people while at school?

To find truth first one must be in a state of mind to be able to look at it. I don't usually make statements like this publicly but from just reading what you write I can feel the unsettled mania that you are experiencing, and its very uncomfortable and unpleasant. There is a good herbal formula in TCM called Suan Zao Ren http://www.activeherb.com/chineseherbs/suanzaoren.shtml. I highly recommend you get this and take it. This will help to settle your heart shen/mind/spirit so first of all you don't feel so crummy, and second once that is settled pondering who you are will be way easier. Hope that helps.

I'll get you started then. You are not a tree nor a kangaroo

Perhaps since you admittedly don't know who you are, then perhaps it would be easier to begin with something you do know; who are you NOT? And as Sherlock Holmes would say once you have determined everything that you are not then only thing remaining no matter how improbable is who you are.

I've found that Samatha seems to cause all the dust to settle and then I get to see another layer of crap that I didn't know existed lol.

Yea I can see how. Though I did the inner smile and healing sound meditation this morning which helped me to relax to a great deal. Granted I realize its a Taoist practice but it just further convinces me how wonderful Buddhism and Taoism go together

Hey Ant I'm a TCM student at the moment, and yes Kidney yin def is definitely related to adrenal fatigue, so its good to hear your taking herbs for that! As you said Chia seeds are not a traditionally Chinese thing so you have to apply the principles as you seem to have done to sort of figure it out. You are correct in stating that since they are black this does relate to the kidney. Also the fact that they are seeds tends to suggest a kidney relation as well. You seem to have a good insight into this.

Does anyone else get what I'll call "spiritual stress"? As in your not stressed about your career or the stuff most people in the world stress about so you don't even know who to talk to about it that would understand. But rather do you stress about wanting to attain enlightenment and not be reborn and you worry that if you are reborn the next time around you might be born some moron and loose all the progress you've made this time around?

It's in both.

All these things you say are interesting to ponder but as a good history student I'd always remember when I made a statement in a paper "where are your sources" lol. So yea I do realize that after WW2 that many German scientists were taken by both the US and the Soviets to advance their space programs due to the Nazi's advanced V-2 missile technology. But all I'm asking for is if one is going to make a statement such as "NASA" is run by Nazi's fine, but what are your sources that back it up?

I'd recommend seeing an acupuncturist, as acupuncture and herbs are a great way to treat energetic imbalances that can cause insomnia.

Once upon a time I had been a seminary student. Well fast forward a few years and when my mom found out that I was no longer a Christian aside from having a panic induced cow, she asked me to tell her what was wrong with the bible. Since I didn't want to give a week long exhortation I used as an example that far from condemning slavery that the bible actually regulated it. When my mom tried to tell me that no "real" Christians ever thought slavery was ok I mentioned that in the pre-civil war south as the issue was heating up ministers would make entire sermons to proclaim how and why slavery was biblical. They didn't just pull opinions our of their arse, they used scriptural arguments from the bible, and they had loads of them. Oh I don't want to "religion bash" but man I want my spiritual guide book to be more enlightened than me, not less lol.

I can't really contemplate any topic of banking and corporations with out wondering who's really running the world lol.

My minor at the University of Alaska was geography and I was fortunate in that with Alaska being in the arctic a LOT of climate change research was going on up there. The data is overwhelming that the climate change we are currently experiencing is due to human beings. Yes there have been cycles in the past BUT this current trend does not fit with any of the past cycles. On the other hand this is the first time that several hundred million years of stored carbon dioxide has been released in huge quantities in just the matter of a couple centuries.

I like Bach flower remedies

Yea I think what you said is just brilliant lol. You know I was meditating and thought about this more. I still use the five element approach a lot when it comes to helping patients, but have noticed this general inclination towards Vipassana and Samatha practice lately, as opposed to the five element practice that I used to do so often when I started. What I also found interesting was the common thread between what you said about narrowing things down in Taoist cosmology and a common denominator between Buddhist and Taoist thought and practice. So working with the five elements is a bit more form based, as you focus on that element/organ in your body. I guess this would be more equivalent to some of the form based Tantra practices of Tibetan or esoteric Buddhism. This practice seemed to be quite effective at the time with helping me to deal with thoughts and feelings as they arose, at least for a while. The thing I would notice though while doing this practice was at a point I felt like I plateaued and felt like I had dealt with most of the long term stuff on this level and that now I wasn't getting very far like I used to. The results started to seem short lived and temporary. So looking for an explanation I began to gravitate towards Vipassana and Samatha practice. Now to me the Buddhist Vipassana and Samatha practice seem to me like Taoist yin and yang. Samatha being more still would be yin, while Vipassana being more active would be yang. So now instead of a five element level things seem to have gone to a level of dualism. This also seems to reflect my experience during practice as well. In the past with a more five element based practice I would deal with the various emotions that arose from the five elements such as anger, fear, worry, sadness, and excitement. Now doing a more yin/yang practice my experience is more like an awareness of craving vs aversion or to put it another way craving vs anti-craving (another term for aversion). A polarity of opposites, yin and yang. Also insightful is the realization that the various emotions that the five elements give rise to are simply various manifestations of yin and yang, craving and aversion. Thus in the cosmological sense its an insight into how yin and yang gave rise to the five elements. It also seems to go to a way deeper level than the five element practice formerly did, and I suppose this is due to the fact that since yin and yang give rise to the five elements they would be on a deeper level. For example formerly if I felt anger the way I would go about dealing with it would be to meditate on the liver/wood element. Now if I feel anger and I do Vipassana I see that "anger" comes about because either a desire I have is not being fulfilled or an aversion that I have is being fulfilled. So that's the dualistic explanation. Of course then if you wanted to see how that further progressed to play out at the next level of the five elements then you could see how if you have a particular desire for example your liver/wood element would make a plan to meet that desire as that is the function of the wood element. Then if something comes along and interferes with your plan now you feel anger or frustration which is the emotion of the wood element. But if you can go to the level of yin and yang first before it manifests at the five element level and lessen desire in the first place then it never gets to the five element level. Now this part is conjecture since I have not gotten there yet, but I suppose that beyond yin and yang the level of wuji or as the Buddhists would say emptiness/stillness is the next step. If you are at wuji or emptiness then there is not even a duality of aversion and desire. Then further after wuji is Tao and I guess at that point your a Buddha or Taoist immortal. Ok but one step at a time haha.

Soy is also a very yin food, though my professor cautions women against eating too much soy or specifically tofu because the high amounts of estrogen (yin) will increase a woman's chances of breast cancer. (over abundance of yin=imbalance leads to disease?)

you can take her motivational class to be excited about showering :-)