Maddie

wow why isn't more being done about this?!?!

Yea Buddhists don't believe in a soul as in a permanent self. As far as physical immortality I've heard various claims from Taoists. Some say immortality is not physical, some say it is. Personally though I'd think if physical immortality was real then we would have heard of some actual examples.

Hmmm well I can't say with 100% certainty as I'm less familiar with Taoist theory than Buddhist but if I understand correctly then I think becoming an Immortal in Taoism is similar to becoming a Buddha in Buddhism; meaning that you eliminate desires and escape the cycle of birth and rebirth. Both I believe understand the consciousness to be "immortal" as in it continues to exist after death like the west does, but becoming an Immortal or a Buddha means that you escape the cycle or Samsara.

I'm not sure what the question is?

So did the government just round people up and make them work?

guess "willing to Listen" is no longer applicable.

Why are Buddhists so upset with Muslims in Burma?

I was just wondering why it is that women tend to be the majority in yoga and men tend to be the majority in qigong?

If then Nazi's were all that good at mind control why did everyone else fight them?

From a TCM point of view I see several things going on. Lung: yes unhealthy lungs do cause sadness as the emotion of the lung is sorrow and grief. Kidney: they house the will and the jing. If your jing is low then the kidney's governing action on the head hair is lost and it falls out. Also if the kidneys are weak the will, will also be weak. Heart: its emotion is joy so if your heart qi is low then you won't have a lot of joy. The heart also houses the mind/shen/spirit, so if your mind is dull that is also a heart issue. This also does relate to the pineal gland as Drew was mentioning as in internal branch of the heart meridian goes up to the brain where the pineal gland / upper dan tien is. This helps explain why you hear that the shen is located in the heart and the upper dan tien. That is the connection. Liver: if liver qi becomes stagnant then one will often feel depressed.

Ah the human realm of Samsara.... nuff said

Sounds like your heart qi is low. By your own words you feel like the "fire" has gone out of your life, and the fire element is in the heart. Also the heart houses the shen/mind so if your mental process is dull it would be explained by that as well. Might want to give these herbs a try. http://agelessherbs.com/blood-mansion-formula/

That's pretty cool. Yea I used to be in the military, joined right out of high school, all gung-ho and patriotic n such, even considered making it a career. Then at my first unit I became friends with some nation of Islam guys who were all cynical and skeptical. At first they didn't like having "whitey" in their squad, but I guess cause I would actually listen to them and ask questions with an open mind they warmed up to me lol. Anyways some of them had been veterans of the first gulf war and really opened my eyes to the agendas of the government and made me really feel like a pawn in a large cooperate game. So at the end of my contract I did not re-enlist but rather went to a seminary after I decided to go all spiritual and screw the world lol. So I went through the seminary program but at the end wound up not agreeing with that particular church so did not go into the ministry. Then I wound up in Alaska and went to the University up there and eventually majored in history. Well really studying history (not the version of history the church taught me) just finally wound up ruining Christianity for me all together lol. And now here I am studying TCM.

I'm not sure how but some day I think I'd want to interview and do a biography on you lol. What was your activist group for/about? What became of your Buddhist monastery adventure? Is yin chi "dirty"?

Yea I just finished a nice long Kidney meditation. It actually took me a good long while to get my kidney glowing a nice blue. Its a rather depleted organ lol, but at the end kidney seemed happy.

what is it that you do?

I'll agree with you that Air=Metal. My take on wood is that its a combination of earth and water, thus the extra element of Taoism. You water the earth and a tree sprouts out. Wood is the generative life force. Or another way to put it water (sperm) and earth (womb) make new life (wood).

There are some issuess like this where I think both sides make valid points. Yea I'm sure it sucks for an animal to be killed so that it can be eaten. On the other hand using Eskimos again for an example (hey I lived and did my undergrad in Alaska lol) though not called this they pretty much had what in my opinion was one of the most closely Taoistic societies on the planet before white guys showed up. They had very few laws, or social structure and organization. Laozi says many times that the more laws and rules the further a society is from the Tao. They were all about living in harmony with nature. The shaman would spirit travel to find the whales and once he found them the hunters could purify themselves spiritually before the hunt and not talk to or see the women before the hunt (it was considered bad luck to do so, not some sort of misogynistic attitude). If they went through all that trouble to raise their shen before the hunt to help them find the whales then they didn't want to think of women and such before hand and have their shen re-convert to jing. They were very generous and non-greedy with each other. Once they brought the whale back all the village would share it. I found it ironic that when the missionaries showed up to teach them about the love of Jesus, the missionaries had to teach the Eskimos to not share so much lol, but to understand the value of money... sheesh. So the point is, the Eskimos were a very heavily carnivorous society and yet were one of the most closely Taoist societies.

Hmm nice, makes sense. I had just mentioned in another post how my kidneys seemed very empty in meditation, so yea good way to connect the dots

Excellent answer

oh yea no arguement there haha

The main reason I try to do breakfast is because my TCM professor said its the most important meal of the day because between 7-11 the energy is predominate in your stomach/spleen meridians and therefore you get the most energy from eating at this time of day.

yes well that part I gathered, but I'm not sure what caused it.

Well I did go and meditate upon this doing insight meditation and did get an interesting insight into this. So as I'd said I'd been having issues with people sucking off my energy. So yesterday in school I tried to be mindful of this and flex my wei chi in class and did the gyan mudra (index finger and thumb touching) and that seemed to help somewhat. I still got sucked off but it was not as total as before. Of course I think this caused the girls to up the ante cause they were touching me more than usual. So anyways I get home and am sort of tired from class but still got some energy left over. I notice that the tiredness really kicked in at about 3pm which is when the bladder/kidney meridian time starts and lasts till 7pm. So I'm like ah my water element is low, which is not surprising as in TCM they say the Kidney is always deficient. Now I had been working on the other organs no sweat but when ever I thought about my kidneys it was like something told me "no not yet". Well you know how human nature is, if one shoe drops you just got to have the other one drop. So my roommate is over at her bf's place puppy sitting the puppy but he is out of town on business. So she messages me and asks what I'm up to and if I am hungry. I tell her that I can't afford to go out so she says she'll come and get me and buy me dinner lol. So once I know shes on her way I have this inner dialogue and am like "oh no you don't, you don't get my energy this time muhuhahaha" So I do the kidney meditation. Now unlike all the other organs I work on the kidney seems like this black hole and it seems like I can meditate upon it for a while and its still hard to make it glow bright. So I figure I'd rather give my energy to my kidneys than to my roommate so I do the kidney meditation while she is on her way. About 20 min later she shows up and my kidneys still feel not "full", but now I'm pretty tired after how much qi my kidney's soaked up. So we go to the pub and we are eating and I notice that this time she looks bored and is yawning. So I consider the skeptics on this thread so decide to do an experiment. With what little energy I still have left I decide to send some of it her way. She immediately perks up and looks happy and gets chatty and starts joking. Then I stop sending her energy and she gets dull and looks bored again. I did this a few more times and got the same result each time. But since I didn't have a lot of energy left I stopped the experiment and then shes like "I'm ready to go" which is unusual for her cause she likes to usually have several beers and linger for a while. So yea I was tired again but as opposed to the energy going outward (mostly) this time it was my kidney that soaked up an enormous amount of it. Though they do say the Kidney is the store house of our energy so that is interesting. That and the fact that it lies with in the area of the lower dan tien which also stores our energy, so yea pretty cool.

I began with natural then transitioned to reverse and then when I started to feel funny I went back to natural before I stopped.