Kali Yuga

A few questions to clarify the matter.. How "private" are these intensives? How long? How many people are limited to the workshop? Will Wang Liping be there or is it just the students teaching the other students? How much in particular do these intensives cost to someone who will join?

The problem with civilization is not that it is the problem in itself; but rather it demarcates exactly the problems that lie within ourselves. Solitude does not solve the main root of the problem, its more like push the snooze button on the alarm. you have to be with people some times. there are really screwed up people out there but hey, what else is new? most suffering is internally created due to neediness and not knowing your own identity. If you don't understand and have a clear definition of your own values and personality. The truly happy person does not need external circumstances to be happy because happiness emanates from his full being; it is who he is. The screwed up thing is that advertising, the media, the radio, and a bucketload of other influences convince us that we do need external things to be happy. Get yourself a better house, a new car. You have a hole there inside that the commercial capitalist world exploits by convincing you that things like a new car or a new dress is what you need to feel happy. Self esteem is bought with cash. Our culture nowadays is fucked up you have four year olds tearing themselves up emotionally because they have acquired the belief that they have to look like what they see on tv. no screwing with you; its on Oprah. The point is that true self esteem is something that comes from within because of a strong core identity. If you have that then you are gold wherever you go. If you do so choose to be in solitude then the true mark of this whole thing is that you should not suffer if you move back into civilization. if you need that solitude then maybe there is work that needs to be done inside. Personally i find that living in civilation is a test and path in itself because you interact with so many people everyday; by watching how you interact with others detachedly you can learn a great deal; there are many proclaimed "spiritual masters" who are screwed up inside but don't know it because they haven't developed good social characterstics because of lack of being in the real world.

I have to laugh but this sounds exactly like how I want to become. Consciousness is an adventure in itself.. and those who take deep journeys into it are the most hard core adventurers. You can take no one with you. And when you come back all words fall flat of the true experience. Most people think that it is impossible to find adventure going full lotus and just emptying out the mind.. it is a lonely sojourn. I really dont exactly like "enlightenment" per-se because there is an enormous amount of clingingness to it wherever you go in spiritual especially new-agey circles etc. Its like, "we HAVE to become enlightened! we absolutely HAVE TO!!".. "what WRONG with you don't you feel the need to be enlightened?!?". For me its not something worth chasing after. Its like whenever I hear talk of enlightenment people have bleeding hearts and an unnatural amount of clingingness and desire that fruitions into pain. Most people have that unhealthy clinging to something they havent experienced. talk of spiritual people when they havent even mastered a core concept of spirituality; needyness and clingingness create suffering. To me its always been about being present, practicing what i practice, and just forgetting about the rest.

In response to some people's comments.. Babaji= incredibly high. he will light a fire up your ass if you are playing around with him. dont fuck around with him unless you are ready and even then, he will be the one to choose those who he wants to play around with. It was babaji who I had unwittingly invoked when I finished practicing my Kalimasada practice. I was thinking of "when will i ever be something? when will i ever get there?" and unwittingly stumbled onto this very strange webpage someone made of babaji. So I decided, "what the hell?" and did a silent invocation. It's like, "what the hell, i wont lose anything". So I lie on my bed in silent mind. And the next things are incredible. I hear this "thought" which isn't exactly a thought tell me: the next step in your training is to REALIZE THAT YOU ARE A BODY OF LIGHT. And somehow I intuitively realized how to do this and then all of a sudden... BAM! My body stops responding to me trying to move it.. and I "explode" out into all directions as pure fiery light so ineffably strong and powerful. I was no longer in body.. just pure fiery light flooding out 10 feet out in all directions.. Extremely scary; i didn't know what to think. I prayed for it to stop; it was just too much. There was a sensation at the root chakra of two incredible forces twisting around each other.. like two torrents of unconcievably strong power. I thought I was going to die. After a minute of this pure madness it all subsided; and I was left on the bed heart beating and mind fucked. I was glad to still be alive. Then I realized that I had unwittingly killed my own most mystical experience. I couldn't swallow the pill I asked for. I could have rode it out completely.. and who knows then. Then I was like... fuck. I could have gotten incredible knowledge out of that but instead just ended up being a bitch. On top of that; I'll never know if I have this experience again. Don't screw around with babaji. because when you least expect it; that is when the magic happens.

You really have to admire his dedication, and also have a lot of compassion for the dude. He takes a huge risk traveling all the way around the world, not knowing how to find his teacher or if he even ever will find him, and by a stroke of luck succeeds. He gets accepted into a tradition that no westerner has ever been trained in before -the reason being that the whole thing could die out, due to the teacher's lazy local students. He then trains ridiculously hard for two decades and succeeds in displacing almost all of them in terms of development -shaming the local students. The "high level demonstration" of JC's level 2b students back in 1999 showed evidence that none of them could do what was expected of them. For whatever reason, spirit or not, it is obvious that JC doesn't want Jim to succeed to the union of yin and yang before the other student who left. Funny thing is he may never succeed in fusing yin and yang. What kind of crap teacher is that? Where was his brain when he decided to accept Jim? And then tell him to stop training after all those years? A teacher who can't even man up and talk to another man face to face, but instead hides behind flimsy excuses and subterfuge? "I have to go the bank" and voila jumps ship on him? Spirit or not, it is obvious that the mopai have a very serious leadership problem. Jim is the only hope for those in a non-asian world who want to train in that form of neigong. Consider that if Jim doesn't succeed to the fusing of yin and yang or even learn the technique, then how we he teach it to others? He can't. And all the training he has done for all those years will be for nothing.

I am doing a very basic meditation which is very common to pretty much any tradition: meditation on the dantien. I have been doing this for awhile. After doing this meditation incessantly with the breath slowing down, I have awakened a "heat". It started out as a fuzzy feeling down there that wasn't much. But with each breath and proper focus it increased in size and heat. I thought this was a very good sign. So I kept on at it and kept on, and kept on, and kept on.. It is now very, very hot, like burning in intensity almost. It flipped onto the tailbone and now is stuck there. It has been like this for a few days but it is sooo hot man. I don't know if this is related, but the skin on my fingers started chapping up and peeling off. This is something I only had once during grade school, and I drink a lot of water always, so it seems to be a rare occurence. Everyone I know who knows about chi tells me that I have to learn to move it.. Problem is that it seems harder done than said. I can't seem to move it around back towards the dantien or up along the spine. I can't crank down the heat and it is getting a bit annoying. I know this is a celebrated sign in development that usually takes a long time, sometimes years to achieve, but I just don't know how to exactly handle it now that I have it. Every breath I take seems to stoke it a little bit, as I feel it change in quality and temperature with each breath. It's always there, burning and burning. When I wake up, its there. When I take a test, its there. When I don't even meditate, still there. It seems I can crank up the heat (and probably burn myself up in complete human immolation) but I can't crank it down. Water won't help, jacking off doesn't turn it down (amazingly going against what I am brought to believe regarding Daoist practice), and I'll be damned if I do more meditation and crank it up even more. I literally have a fire there under my ass, or to be correct, inside my ass, burning 24/7. Anyone been through this before? This is not kundalini right? Once again I am eating my own words, when I said before that development can be a two edged sword. Talk to me people.. and show me I'm not exactly alone here. This is getting crazy here.

Okay bro. You can crank it down the same way you cranked it up. Use your intent. I love this. This is a very strong way of doing things. "distance yourself from the fruits of your meditation, and all the more will the tree blossom", to quote someone, i don't remember who. I guess it's normal to just be happy that you have "gotten" something. but in the same breath, the true purist will never rely on such things..

All over my fingers including the palms. Its interesting to hear that taoists when practicing very fire techniques would only eat veggies so to not burn up. I hear Gopi Krishna on the other hand when describing a kundalini problem he had, how it went away when he switched from a vegetarian diet (as he was hindu), to one including meat. I will continue my practice and keep everyone posted.

I definitely believe that loving kindness is a must for any person on a spiritual path, and especially so to any people who choose to develop some sort of extreme power on their path. Think of John Chang for example, who said that "you must have control of your emotions" when referring to his Mo Pai lineage teaching. There are certain people in that lineage of his that weren't exactly good people, but nevertheless neigong masters who wielded terrible power. Pak Eddy of the Kalimasada lineage says the same thing. He especially admonishes parents not to slap or smack around their children when they have already been practicing for years, and have a strong level of condensed energy within the body, because this could easily result in unintended injuries and disablilities for the children. Condensed energy is not selective as to where it goes, thoughts and emotions channel it wherever it is directed to go to. And if that place is into a fellow human being or even a loved one In short if you are on a path of any sort that develops powerful amounts of energy that could translate into very real physical effects, such as being able to break bars of set things on fire, then compassion training should be mandatory. Emotion is a very powerful conductor for energy. And many practitioners who have reached high levels of energy cultivation, have stories about how emotion got the best of them and they ended up hurting others in ways they didnt think possible and regretted it. Energy can kill as well as heal. Look back to the story of Jesus and the fig tree. He berated the fig tree. And the fig tree withered almost immediately. This is the power of energy, and imagine what it could do to others if you can't control it. I say once again that this all is compared to the Jedi/Sith analogy. A Jedi has an open perspective, sees the greater scale of things, and works towards peace, healing and harmony. A Sith has selfish motives. He does not control his emotions, and more often than not in the process of gratifying these motives, hurts people along the way.

posted by Creation For some it feels like a burning hot fire. For others (like JJ and Seth Ananda) it is felt as a fluid moving up the spine. But JJ said the fluid was like an egg cracked at the base of his spine, and Seth said it was like his tailbone was drinking his ejaculate. This is slightly different, and is probably related to the fact that one was explicitly connected to sex and the other was not, and one was henceforth "on" all the time and the other was not. end. I find this very interesting. In my own recent experience after repeated hours of solid meditation on my dantien, I awakened a sensation akin to "fire" down there. I started out small and tingling and then with each breath coupled with focus this would get "stoked" and burn harder and harder. It suddenly flipped from my dantien to my tailbone, and I could not return the heat back to the dantien, nor could I get the heat to go up the spine. It went to almost unbelievable proportions of heat that was distracting from time to time, the heat was incredible yet, it wasn't exactly heat per say. I found that it was linked to every breath that I took for when I inhaled it would kindle by itself and upon exhale it would burn harder. After cultivating this heat for awhile I found that the heat remained there regardless of whether I meditated or not or the time of day. This is all very recent and started last week. come to mention now that I feel it there is that unsettling feeling of something being split or inserted there at the tailbone. the heat is a bit pleasurable when it isn't crazy hot, but the tailbone feeling is not so much pleasurable. thread is right here JohnC says that his kundalini felt like a sexual turn-on going up his spine. Scotty said that a book he read said that this heat would flip to the tailbone to awaken kundalini. I am not sure if mine could be identified as kundalini. I'm curious to all the kundalini talk especially because I've read Glen Morris's book Pathnotes. He claims in his KAP newsletter that kundalini is the driving force behind all human genius and superhuman feat. I don't know about that, but if you're talking about something burning crazy hot at the tail bone, then yeah I have that one.

I sit in full lotus on concrete poured over the ground outside.. that should still qualify for having yin. During the meditation I find that I sweat pretty hard even if its really darn cold outside. I've found that sending the energy down to the feet (which I'm surprised will actually work considering how it's hard for me to get it back to the dantien) works. I still feel a sizeable amount of heat but slightly less. and knowing that a fire doesn't erupt all of a sudden unless something is at brink temperature means that building back up the flame will be a piece of cake. But I really want to move it back to dantien, I guess I'll take the bitter pill and meditate and try something new in order to see if I can move it there. I can actually feel the tingling heat at my soles right now. Seth your idea actually worked. At least now I have something that will slightly alleviate this. However I can only wonder how full my body can get with this heat. Scotty, that is very interesting. I thought that the skin chapping could be part of it but I had no clue how. So your saying that the heat flips to the spine to awaken kundalini? unfortunately where I live it is very hard to grab a hold of anything really.. I can't get a copy of that book.. so if you have anything else I would definitely like to hear it. I know exactly what you mean when you say its bad to focus on the tailbone -hold on to your ass if you do! Is it supposed to be this intense? Even just a little breath and attention and the fire gets stoked and burns harder. But it is very hard focusing on dantien considering the sensation I feel there, it draws attention to itself. I gather that maybe this is a test of focus and will because it goes against what you feel.

I consider myself lucky to be taught a certain taoist method of cultivation. However there is a problem: I if can't keep it in my pants I have to stop training for a period. It is the rule to this method of training. Nothing much, just a few days and thats it. Don't debate about how good or bad retention is, because in my method this rule is matter of fact and not philosophical conjecture. Problem being that I find myself so sexual that I find myself drowning in the period where I am to not practice. I go out to have fun, because I am bored, and there just happens to be a girl so pretty that I just have to talk to her and one thing leads to another. Bam another period stopping. I wake up and find myself longing for some company cuz I'm missing a certain someone, find myself checking out porn on the laptop.. and you fellas get the rest. Chalk up another week. I have to laugh at myself, really, i find this funny. I want to do my method at the same time I have this animal drive inside of me that I have to deal with.. And it gets in the way, seriously! I have found myself in the damned if you do, damned if you don't scenario. If I cultivate, I can focus hard-core on the meditation but then again have to supress the beast in me and avoid hot women and orgasms. The animal energy gets pent up. On the other hand, if I let "junior" have it his way, I will have orgasms (and boy those are fun lol) but have to stop training and stop development! Its getting to the point where it really starting to slow me down. Why are women so attractive and sexy? Damnit! This is frustrating! Hahaha. Anyone have any tips on dealing with this? I am not planning on pursuing another form of cultivation so going to something else is out of the question.. tips anyone? advice and suggestions on dealing with this, especially those who have tread this particular kind of problem before..

So far all your replies have been pretty darn mind-blowing after me reviewing this thread once again.. You guys are great. However I don't think that I will be pursuing any of the taoist sexual practice techniques. Lately I have gotten over this problem actually. Meditating several times during a day has given me strong awareness of my lower dan tien and everything that goes down there. I actually notice when I have lustful thoughts and emotions my dan tien gets disturbed and feels bad.. Have any of you ever felt this? And even after sex and especially masturbation I seem to go through a period of tiredness and even depression. Tao Semko said something very interesting during one of his free lectures on kundalini which automatically made me give him huge respect -he put it into simple words that anyone could understand. Basically what he said is this. "If you lose your seed the body obviously has to replenish it. It is rich in substance. Thus if your body is spending its energy and nutrients on replacing this semen, it is very possible your glands and hormones could suffer, being as that instead of making high quality hormones your body is busy making sperm. Which translates that you could very well feel a drop in emotional state." Paraphrasing of course. but that was really gold for me. I find this incredibly stupid -that my male urge is to have sex, have more sex and have more and more until you can't even stand anymore. The basic urge is to lose and not gain energy at every opportunity. To bang anything that looks "hot". The body is tired even thought the mind is still willing. Screw until you drop. Not only this but if you examine popular culture anywhere all of it is sex packaged and sold, anywhere you look. On TV's, magazines movies, novels, the internet, our fashion of today, all of it is gearing toward sex. The dude who doesn't get laid is a loser and "the man" is the person who gets laid the most with as many partners as possible. I don't really know anymore regards to my standing with women because I haven't found someone compatibly with me on my personal level yet.. Not that I'm "higher" or they're "lower". It's just I never actually found any of my relationships fulfilling. It's not an insult to my partners before but I wish I had a relationship that where I've had compatibility with someone on something other than sex. cuz then you just feel like a piece of meat. Now I don't have problems regarding keeping it in my pants unlike the prior period. I have found my willpower and focus now. I am just curious however on how my standing with the opposite sex will affect me down the road though. I definitely have things to resolve inside. I have recently awakened a kind of fiery heat in my dan tien. It used to come in about 10 minutes into my session but now I feel it all the time. It started small and then built up in both size and intensity.. It was a pretty cool feeling to get. I was dismayed when it started moving around because I thought I could contain it. I'm still pretty new to all of this. Its stuck at the first chakra still. I found this so silly that I had been doing all this useless MCO stuff without this sensation before.. and just found out that it wasn't the real thing, because the heat moves regardlessly of practicing the mco technique.

What was that first video? Setting something on fire from a distance? The second hitting someone from a distance? So has john chang met his match? BTW i feel however that maybe that what they do is not reproducible all the time. are we just fooling ourselves here? edit: video inserted.

Each path is a blend of those things, and each path has its own particularities that allow you to blend it with another. But it really depends because some are not. Some lineages are after specific things and thus require you to train in certain ways that forbid you training in other ways. In short, when you crack an egg and make an omelet with it you are gonna get screwed up if you try and make that egg into something else when you have already started making the omelet. Some are about realizing the nature of reality and your own self. Hence, a wisdom path. These are usually of buddhist-orientation, with theravada buddhism being most notable. Meditations for paths like these are all about your mind and examining self-perception, the relation between one thing and another. This tends to change the practitioner's own perception of self versus other things. You go far beyond your own mind.. Some are about healing yourself and others. These usually are the paths that are most open to blending with other forms of meditation and paths because these usually have the least training restrictions.. Some are more about blending and flowing with what is. This has a bit more of taoist and zen flavor and generally require you to learn to stop trying to be anything at all. The awesome thing about this kind of path is that wherever you are, whatever you are, you find comfort, stability and tranquility. Home is where you are, all the time. You become one with the "way". Some are about the development and acquisition and usage of powers and psychic phenomena. These path are usually hermit-type systems because of the sheer discipline and training one must undergo. An adept of this path is usually not found out in the open because our life today prevents this kind of training from happening. These are usually closed to the public and hidden because of the fact that few are ready and mature enough to handle that kind of power, and those that do have these can change the world for good or bad. They have special power to help or harm other people, and have seen a part of the world that most do not. One could be like a jedi or a sith. This is a dying breed however because people would rather have the easier pop culture buddhism, and simply are not willing to train 8 hours a day. This is a path for only a few who are found ready. There are other paths but are rather extreme.. and require you to dabble with spirits and loosen the screws on your own sanity. you will get very special things from this, but almost no one goes unscathed. a lot of shamanic paths are this, there are many in africa. For example, a priesthood there requires you to have had a psychotic break before you even have a chance of being admitted. of course there are a myriad of paths... each a blend of these. not merely one or another.

You will forgive me if my experience is not of "juices" but of fiery light. It is my belief to this day that I had unwittingly opened up kundalini after seriously practicing a powerful form of tenaga dalam in addition to several things going on for me at that time. I had an energetic manipulation of my own inner energy through the help of our grandmaster. at the time of the energy "connection" i felt nothing. I practicing my energy building and breathing forms nightly.. and I was soaked in sweat but completely energized by the practice. I was on TTB and browsing the net but I had this deep longing in my heart for something more.. I wanted an advancement but had no idea or clue. I stumbled onto the long webpage about the mahavatar Babaji - an indian saint. It said there at the bottom that babaji does not deny those who call on him and make a heartfelt request. Important thing here is that I did not expect anything to happen whatsoever. I told myself , "what the hell its not like is gonna hurt you or anything" despite not being hindu. But I was willing to try anything so I made a simple invocation to him.. I turned off my computer and lied down on my bed, just thinking about things, with the thought of "how do I progress" still fixed in my mind. I had this weird feeling like there was something like a thought which was not exactly my own thought but it came to me from somewhere deep. the message was "your next step in your training is to realize that you are a body of light..." I thought about that and was like "how in the world do I do that?" Then it just hit me and what followed defied all categorization and logic.. I did it. I found that i could no longer move my body.. in addition to this the light in me came forth and I exploded out violently as exceedingly bright light. I was exploding out as golden light out into the space all around me and beyond. The light was not different or curious because I was the light. And there was this incredibly thrashing sensation at the bottom of my spine; two forces exceedingly powerful and violent revolved together around there at the base. Do not get me wrong here because this was not bliss. I was holding on for dear life. This was literally the most scariest thing that had ever happened to me in my entire life. I was scared shitless and having read too many kundalini horror stories I was praying for it to be turned off because I still wanted to live and functional like a normal person.. I was scared of the things which were happening and the things which could follow which I was unaware of. Much to my happiness it closed itself down after a few minutes and I returned to normal awareness. It was at that moment I realized that I had unwittingly had the most amazing mystical experience of my life and I didnt take advantage of it and ride it and become something so much more.. I felt like a total bitch. I could have achieved something with it or at least learned so much more.. I was scared and afraid instead of being ready for things like this and riding it. And now I don't know if I'll ever get there again. so much my luck.

I love meditation that allows one to just relax and give up. Surrender. For purposes of the thread I will call this formless meditation. It is like giving up all your worries, you problems, your thoughts and concerns, everything. I heard somewhere that it is the highest kind of meditation that one can engage in. I believe in Taoism this is called "sitting in forgetfulness"? The feeling of surrender and an empty mind is very, very blissful. The form that I use was taken from the words of Father Bede Griffiths, O.S.B when he says "surrender to the mother." He describes an experience where he had a stroke and felt his mind empty.. where he was laid out for days and was expected to die. These words came into his mind. He himself expected that he would die, and finally instead of fighting it, surrendered to it. Accompanying this was an incredible feeling of bliss. And instead of dying, he recovered and lived to tell about it. Basically, what it is is to empty the mind of all thoughts, conceptions, activities and perceptions. Letting go of all concerns the past, present and future and just experiencing the nothing which is something. For some people this is impossible to do but with enough training in meditation it comes fast enough. It is surrendering and letting false conceptions of self drop away. I am a man, my wife is angry, i have to go to class tomorrow etc. You let go and surrender it. all. and go into emptiness. There is nothing more stress-relieving. However on the other hand, active meditation has it part too. I am sure in the traditions that involve the cultivation of certain abilities, an active form of meditation is utilized. Meaning, a form of meditation that has a certain purpose that uses a certain kind of imagery or focus. Like imagining colours in the chakras, focusing on or making an invocation to buddha or maitreya, that sort of thing. Instead of surrendering you make a conscious effort to hold onto one thing and that, only that. Like building the dantien. Or feeling your energetic body. Of course to get somewhere you have to make an effort in walking, and perhaps becoming an immortal or such will be hard work. Siddhi and "supernatural" phenomena do not come without a price. Taking energy and storing it is a real earnest effort, not something you pick up at 7-11. In our own practice if you want to make a lightbulb crush a tile you have to focus energy into it and believe that it is heavy and hard. I have heard people say its easy to be a master of the tao, you have to be as effortless as possible but then again they themselves don't seem to be what they preach so goodluck to them with that. And there are an infinite number of mixes between to two that make different states of mind accessible. Perhaps they both are the yin and yang of meditation, two wonderful sides of the same coin. experiences? feel free to comment.

I'm sorry for your losses scotty. Perhaps that it goes deeper than that though? Alcohol destroyed them? Or they found a way to destroy themselves from alcohol? Numerous debates could go on but the main points for it would usually be the following: It was the man's fault and not the alcohol because if he didnt have enough self control in the first place then why blame the alcohol? vs. It was the alcohol's fault, it makes people do strange things and the people lose proper judgment while under it. There are so many things to take into account. I myself know my limit and where I prefer to be. I know my limitations when I drink. I have tolerance. Not everyone is the same though. I also find that the strength of one's focus is very important. Willpower is an amazing thing. Maybe it all boils down to why and how u drink.

Wow. Hardcore pose man. I myself prefer more mind oriented yoga over complicated postural yoga. Spine straight up is enough for me. Since vipassana style meditation was my original formal practice it stuck. Wonderful things you can do with vipassana. Cure a cold in 30 minutes instead of 3 days. Cure a hangover quickly too. Learn many things about your heart mind and body. ..But then again this could be taken to a very deep level too. Have to try it and see what my body tells me about it. I hear that there are miraculous things attributed to bound lotus though.

What is the difference between the Taoist Immortals and the Buddhist concepts of a Bodhisattva or Arahat? Whats is the difference between the framework between the the two concepts? Is it that Taoism and Buddhism are not truly compatible (even though both give quite heavy emphasis on mysticism and being "present")? Also, where Buddhism says one should transcend does not happen too much in Taoism to some extent from what I can see. I also find the concept of the Eight Immortals to be very interesting, as they are all not "perfect" or exactly "clean" but all have their own quirks and particularities that I am sure would be quite the antithesis of what Buddhism would aspire to.. hence the humorous and amusing part. How really different is one "achieved" being from another? Should one unite with reality or transcend? Discard it or be in the moment? Is it all "nothing" is it the "all"? Please discuss and have fun. But please if you post don't bash one or the other if you happen to prefer one over the other. Keep it clean and no personal attacking.

You don't find a practice. The practice finds you. You will find yourself inexorably drawn to a series of coincidents, find certain people charismatic, and find that it all is explainable only in retrospect. What is really yours will stick and the rest will fall through. This is how it happened to me. May I also mention that it is not so much about which practice as opposed to how deep is your practice. In kalimasada we do by training the breath under stressful circumstance. There are innumerable aspects to any given practice, all of which will deepen it. You don't have to look far, it's right under your very nose. Ask yourself what you can do to deepen it. Don't say you don't know because you really do, you just have to dig deep. For example. You mention you don't have longevity of meditation or stability of mind. I myself used to have this. I am also born in the year of the horse and have a strong vata constitution. Before I couldn't sit to save my life. But it is all in how much you want it. Have an alarm clock going on. If you sit, make a firm resolve that you will not get up until that timer rings. Even if your mind is uneasy, even if your skin itches, even if you don't think you can do it. Just don't quit. Take baby steps, once you can get up to an hour consistently, push it even more. I swear to you you will never regret it. Your soul will feel as fresh and clean as a summer breeze. Do you want the most deepest, awesome, most profound practice? Defeat yourself, your own weaknesses and tendencies, every moment of the day, all the time. The warrior's path. Nothing is gained without work -its the only difference between you and a true master. Think of yourself as an enemy to be defeated. Play this game with yourself and you'll be amazed how far you can get and how what was only a dream to you becomes reality. It's all about developing inner strength, once you have this anything goes.

Well, really not to argue against your point, but the Tao is not the Tao if you only include one part and not the other. With creation comes dissolution and there is no means by which life can be made valuable if there was no death. Death and life are equal and opposite parts, the yin and the yang and without one there is no other. A teacher of mine once said that unless you learn to die everyday you will never know what a true life is. Of course I completely agree with you when you talk about wars being mass manipulation and evil etc.. but we are humans. was there ever a time when we didn't do this? some of the greatest strategist and generals of all time were Taoists and they had no qualms about crushing their enemy. perhaps the verse in the TTC will shed meaning? "man is likened to a straw etc.." too lazy to look up the whole verse.

I love this! lmao. i call this "bursting a bubble kung-fu". Ntw have to feel sorry for that Primack guy. Well, almost. In situations like these the more you try to defend yourself the more the ship sinks.. It takes a master of PR kung-fu to know the ways of fending off something like this.

haha where the "like" button? oh wait its not facebook i like that "cut all the zen bullcrap" attitude, this is not the generation to mince words..