Maddie

Yes St. Nicolas was a saint known for generosity.

I suppose that is a good topic to consider.

Obviously can't say for sure, but the very first thing I thought of when I read this was it was from a past life.

I've always assumed that part was just a legend. Kind of like how after the Buddha was born he walked around and spoke. I think things like this are just literary devices to make a mythological point.

I don't know enough about that to say one way or the other. I do think how ever that a lot things considered "Taoist" are actually just Chinese like yin and yang, there was a whole school of yin and yang that was not Taoist. I-Ching pre-dates Taoism as well. Same with five elements.

I don't think Feng Shui is strictly Taoist, I think its just more of a Chinese thing.

So basically what I noticed is in the West generally seems to mean doing Qigong, reading the DDJ, and things like this. In Asia its more about going to a temple and doing rituals that involve gods and chanting. Again I realize this is general and there are exceptions, but on a broad scale this has been my observation.

So would you say the thing the separates Qigong from calisthenics or just swinging one's limbs around is intention?

Has anyone found that some of the simple arms swinging movements that are meant to only be a warm-up before Qigong seem to be a nice Qigong routine in and of themselves?

Well being pragmatic about these issues I would say start with the heart sutra simply because it's shorter and therefore it would be easier to memorize.

Yes I think if someone is going to make a claim then they have to give a logical reason to support that claim. This kind of stuff reminds me of the people I went to Acupuncture school with which is a very interesting crowd but we would have parties on the weekends around campfires and they would just say stuff like I am you and you are me and I am everything and nothing in the cosmic consciousness of the cosmos moves through me and I threw it, and afterwards everyone would say how cool that was while I be sitting there thinking okay what did they actually just say? LOL

So to revive this thread what I wonder is is doing Qigong and reading the Tao te Ching what Taoism is as thought in the West. Because I've noticed in Asia they have a very different view of what Taoism is.

Yes just like water can be ice, liquid, and gas. Jing is the most dense. It is not sexual energy, but it is where sexual energy mainly comes from. Jing is where everything substantive comes from. Sexual fluids, blood, other body fluids, marrow, ect. There are many ways to deplete Jing. Excessive drug uses, excessive lack of sleep, excessive stress, and yes excessive sexual activity. The key common word is excessive. Jing also relates to DNA, but of course in the past in ancient China they didn't know what DNA was per-se but they knew the underlying function and principle of genetics. It's also for this reason that jing relates to producing the cells that pass on our DNA.

I can't think of any logical basis.

This might sound like a dumb question since everyone has emotions, but what are they really? As an acupuncturist, I get people all day every day asking me to help them with this or that emotion like stress, anger, anxiety, depression, so on and so on. Yet when you ask various people how they experience these various emotions the descriptions vary greatly. Actually, when I ask a lot of people how they experience their various emotions they don't even know how to answer the question as though they have never thought about it before. For some people, they describe it as unwanted thoughts or a busy mind. Other people describe it as physical tension or discomfort in a part of the body. I've noticed not infrequently someone comes in for back pain or something like that and after I needle them they start crying or getting very emotional as the acupuncture dislodges somatized emotional energy that was stuck in the body. But what are emotions really? I'm sure there will be as many opinions on this as there are people that respond.

I apologize in advance if this is something that you have already thought about and/or tried, but if you can not observe thoughts without getting entangled in them then what about backing up to what you can do and perhaps try observing your frustration with your perceived lack of success observing the thoughts themselves? What I'm trying to say is don't observe the thoughts, observe the feelings of failing to observe your thoughts.

Isn't it though! 😉

There are several. Probably the easiest is herbs. Lui Wei Do Huang Pian is the most basic, widely used and probably easiest to find. Also limiting the frequency of ejaculation appropriate to ones age, health, and constitution are important as well. Reserve abdominal breathing into the LDT is useful also.

It tends to be due to the judgment a lot of people receive about it during the course of their life. It can make speaking about it objectively difficult.

Ok now that I have a little more time I thought I would go into a little more detail. As an acupuncturist, the five elements can explain so much. Also in the clinic, I come across hundreds and hundreds of various people. One common thing I noticed in younger males is that through pulse diagnosis and interview it becomes easy to diagnose which ones are spilling too much of the vital essence. Additionally, these same males tend to be very defensive and combative. In TCM school I focused on emotions and their relation to the five-element cycle process. That being said I am not just pulling theories out of thin air, but are basing this on both graduate-level education and thousands of hours of clinical experience. This is NOT saying that everyone that self stimulates turns into a troll. What I am saying is that overdoing it can cause Kidney essence deficiency and a lack of the water element in the Kidneys. The Kidneys house the Zhi or the will. This is why stopping excessive masturbation can be so difficult since those that engage are depleting the very thing that would help them to have the self-restraint to stop. This is not a moral judgment, but simply an energetic observation. Ok so now at this point the Kidney/Zhi (will)/water element/jing are depleted and weak. Next in the five element cycle is the Liver/Hun (ethereal soul)/wood element. Ideally, this is fed by a healthy and plentiful Kidney, and the virtues of the Liver such as kindness, compassion, and generosity are nourished and strengthened, but when the Kidney is deficient then the Liver will be as well. When the Liver is deficient these wood element virtues will be lacking and instead, the individual will be angry and defensive, but out of a sense of weakness and lack. It is at this point without even realizing why that individuals will unconsciously seek to make up for this lack by attracting the Liver/wood/anger energy through vampirism by provoking others. Interestingly enough, due to the defensive nature of individuals like this and the weakened sense of self in the weakened Hun (ethereal soul), they tend to become very defensive when what they are doing is pointed out. This is why there has been so much defensive reaction to the masturbation aspect of this post and the actually energetics of the inner workings of the energetic system have been ignored. I can guarantee that even after re-writing my post and even after making this prediction that the vast majority of my points will still be ignored and all the attention will again be directed at the self-stimulation aspect of this which is actually a very small part of it.

It was really meant to be an opener into the energetics of trolling but it totally got off topic almost immediately.

I've been doing this a lot lately and it's really good!

Ah someone understands. Buddha held up the lotus and Mahakasyapa smiled.

All or most trolls might be wankers, but not all wankers are trolls It's actually not about the wanking, but about the Kidney jing deficiency not nourishing the Liver, which is what I think everyone is loosing sight of.