...

I have chronic running injuries. I dont want to attract that much attention to myself, running barefoot... so I'll be sure to get some of those racing flats you suggested, yoda...

breathwork... I have been doing alot of that lately... deep breathing into dan tien. but I have not got into pranayama. I trhink I will try your excercise, and begin some neigung. you are right and you give an excellent suggestion, thank you

oh, emotional garbage.. I dont think I have much... since the last time I opened up my heart, I havent had anything in the way of problems. basic training and medic school was a big drag, but Idont imagine any of that was more than temporary eh you know brother? hmmm I think I have got it, actually... I refuse to strive for emotion... if it comes I will let it take its course... but I will not go looking for it....in fact I will be cautious of it, probably.. but I was looking through the net.. and that "loving something external to the self" thing was pretty popular theme regarding 4th chakra. what I am doing is just feeling my chest expand out to fill all space around me. this way I am connecting my chest to all the external world... so while I am not connecting to it with a feeling of love and joy, I am still connecting to it. it is a feeling alot like the 7th chakra, but the 7th is a much more subtle feeling. I really dig this chakra shit.

oh brother I have faith in ye, man. I dont believe compassion is the way to enlightenment. it might serve to open the heart... maybe, I dont know enough to say for sure anything, but I think it would open the heart... but at the expense of other things, you know? I will go through your blog.... I remember you tlked about being on a battlefield and shit... was that all like a psychedlic event or was it like a dream... i.e. thoughts can become pretty vivid in deep states of meditation, and I bet that might be just such a consequence. but you might know best.... maybe the answer lies in your blog and I missed it...

"how do you refine your intuition to distinguish between mental garbage and genuine messages from the shen." Id kind of like to repeat this terrific question to emphasize... its terrific-ness. if you ever get an answer, I hope you will share it. my experience with shen... I wasnt adept enough to distinguish between types of zen... what I experienced I called hun and p'o. ( forget which is which, now...) anyways, one of them (I think) correlates with shen, at least imho. and this shen... it was to to be communicated with... becuase it is.... tao? I guess you could say? uh well anyways thats probably worthless rabble but I post mainly to re-ask that question...

I did ecstasy once...... and when you mention it that might actually work out well, from what I remember..... unfortunately I dont think thats going to happen, thanks for the suggestion....

haha... well *I* prefer hard liqour... i.e. whiskey.. becuase drinking beer makes it so I have to piss all the time. ....but anyways, about the question... I remember a poem by ... what, the seven sages of the bamboo grove... (I think thats it...) one of whom was an alcholic, (or so he gave that impression).... he wrote about drinking wine all day, about drinking, ... and about how great wine was.... well, anyways... they called him a sage... maybe he was just a poet... but... this is what I thought of when I read your post... may it have no alchemical significance...

yeah... redfox has hit it.... I have sacrificed nearly all of my spiritual gains... I have sacrificed any pracitical hope at a serious spiritual livelihood when I joined the army.... ..but if I were serious about enlightenment then I could have made no better a choice! I just turned 19... I will be working a cushy job in a little health clinic in germany... I graduate training this wednesday... ...it is not so much graduating from training but this bullshit way of life of the army trainee... it really has been a miserable fucking 6 months... but it is about to pay off !! hahaha I am so excited to share this news with you guys... get back into the 'community'......... perhaps I have kundalini arousal waiting for me in germany... I bet I do.... especially since I have the money to throw away on teachers... yes so I am a medic in the army....

I just read a few posts into the thread.. read aboutt aking oxygen supplements... I have heard that it is actually OXYGEN that breaks down your body. that it is oxygen that ages you. maybe a good reason to master the art of breathing... ??

yeah I'll be in germany in a couple months or less or so... I havent really been keeping up with practice.. only to the smallest degree... I will never reach immortality at this pace... but hopefully now that I am completing military training I can start back up on the practice.... is there anybody enlightened in western europe?

I am not actively practicing sleep effieciency... I just dont get to sleep. :cry: it wont be for another 6 weeks until I enter back into a lifestyle where meditation is even plausible. what is with the fascination with concentration red kooga?

mbanu you are the shit. a real fucking taoist man... I average about 4-6 hours of sleep. the best thing... if you meditate all the fucking time. keep an empty miind. times when I spend a few days in decent meditation... keepng my mind silent... then your mind is empty when you sleep... and so that sleep you get is outstanding. I would wake up SO refreshed and rejuvenated after 4-6 hours ... when the drill sergeant or fireguard turns on the lights, I'd immediately hop out of bed with no grogginess whatsoever and continuemy day. when I am NOT meditating for most of the day... I dont sleep as well.. I wake up totally groggy. so there you go. probably not the answer you're looking for...

I'll be in class... and I'llbe falling asleep... but since i cant sleep... well I am mastering the art of sleeping with my eyes open.. I'll start to dream... that line between wakefullness and sleep dissappears.. I'll be dreaming, but since my eyes are open... maybe it's like hallicunating... but whatever thoughts I have in my head when I go into this state become vivid and superimposed on reality... ie I'll be reading something on the board, and when the guy next to me hits me to wake me,I'll suddenly see something else totall different on that board... pretty trippy shit....

I did 4 gams of mushrooms saturday. my body ceased to exist and there was just a sea of energy. it was pretty intense. eventually a came back into my body. I was enlightened there for a while. the energy was so cool. pretty cool shit.

man that guy was a wealth of knowledge. I was always interested in the things he had to say or point out.

last night I took a smoke break and went out into the cold and looked up at the night sky. I have always been fond of a certain hua hu ching quote, (though I dont remember it word for word), something about 'is tao troubled? [worried, etc] look up at the night sky, does it look troubled?' sommmmething along those lines. but thats unimportant, what's important is that I look up at the sky for inspiration into calmness. and I had that sungazing BS in my mind... I emptied my mind, felt my 'presence' or my 'energy' or my 'soul' or whatever, and it was like I could grasp the fullmoon with my energy. not very well... it was very vague and fleeting... I am no spiritual adept at the moment... but it is a beautiful thing. I felt a little connected with the great, big, empty sky. I just loooove the yin. and then I realized... this is what I need to do. this weak connection with the sky I feel right now, this is what I need to work on. for a moment size seemed irrelevant. I thought, an immortal being is connected to all of this. and.. not just the sky... [heaven]... but to earth too. not only should I work and feel on this connection with heaven, but I should do it with earth too, and that should be complete connectivity. I could almost feel what it would be like to be connected to all of that.. a very STRONG connection.. what that might be like... that being connected to all of this.. what the implications would be on my body. the physical consequences of developing this connection. it would be a physical transformation. the meridians would open... they would have to, for all the 'connecting' to take place.. it would just happen on its own... all the heaven flowing down and out, all the earth flowing up and out, of my body. this could be inerpreted as being the ultimate fire/water practice. it is complete empty-mindedness... open-mindedness.. I dont see how this involves the five elements at all, but man FUCK the five elements, I never used them before. :roll: this is kind of breakthrough for me... becuase now I know how I opened my heart center before.. (I opened it a long time ago, it was ecstasy, and somehow I let it close. I got preoccupied with other practices.. [man FUCK embracing the tree, and all that stupid qigong bullshit :roll: )] ... I tried to open it back up later b ut I was nowhere near as successful.. becuase I was trying to open it from the inside out... when before, and as I will try now, open the heart from the outside IN.) anways, this is a breakthrough for me becuase know I know what to practice for. like I know what to do. it is so much better to practice when you have a goal to reach... than practicing without... becuase so often I am just taking wild stabs in the dark when it comes ot my practice... but man, you keep meditating, and you keep experimenting, you keep studying... you're going to stab that mother fucker smirking back at you from inside the dark, you know? anways, lets hope I'm not full of shit. :roll:

hey I really appreiate it... this forum is really very decent and I'm pleased to have knowledge and access... people and discussion is great-- and the format is so much better than HT.com

I dont undertand your reply. I feel you might be sarcastic, becuase I respect quite a few of the people on the list, you included, and I doubt I am the least full of shit. so if you are being sarcastic I would like to know why. and if you're not sarcastic, I hardly feel I am worthy of such a compliment, especially when in contrast to everyone else. again, I just dont understand...

I thought it was funny. I don understand max's reply. lezlie, is that your pic? you're hot. and just my type. werent you concerned about what kind of response you would get putting your pic up on a forum like this? you know you're goodlooking, you dontmind. I was struck for a minute when I first saw the number... at 50k... was just sort of amazed as news reported higher numbers... what is it, like 125k ? last I checked... I must be twisted, photo didnt move me at all. I wonder if an enlightened taoist would be cold and unmoved? certainly, if you actually believe in any of the philosophy. especially hindu's, possibly buddhists. I am so curious to see how people react to such a thing... personally Im rather unmoved... If I wasnt in training I would volunteer to go over. not that I am compassionate.. becuase I'm not. I feel like an asshole. I should delete this and not post, but I am curious how anyone would respond to it. I am just in a really weird mood.

about taoism.. and what is taoist practice... there is a chapter in the tao te ching.. I forget which.. but it says, mainly, (what sticks in my mindoften) 'there may be gold and jade to fill the hall, but there are none who can keep them'. I forget the rest, and I dont bother to look. you guys should either know or have a tao te ching handy if you are interested... but to me, I've decided that one of the coolest things about the tao te ching is it teaches basic, simple alchemical lessons (ancient, Secret of the golden flower sort, not modern pop alchemy)... anyways, that said, I personally think that they're not so much making a simple aphorism.. it's deeper than that, and is pointing out a alchenical secret... or opinion, rather... 'gold and jade' being qi.. jing... sort of thing you develope with nei gung. the 'hall' being he body, of course. I am not sure, but I think it comes after-- 'to be overbearing is to bring calamity upon oneself...(or to go against the way)' or something like that. of course, old taoism leans towards the passive, yin, techniques. supporting my opinion (at least to me)... not to mention the other passages saying things like, 'to control the breath is to be violent', and the basic wu-wei and te teachings. that is all secret of the golden flower stuff. I dont know I just felt like saying something. whenever I think about great, or at least half-decent, qigong teachers all this comes to mind.

you are only physically addicted to the nicotine for a few days, until it is out of your system. then it is all mental. my only problem I have ever had with smokes, is when I first started. I was 17, I picked up the habit at work. it was when I really wanted a smoke but had no means of getting them that got at me. becuase you dont ststop thinking about how good one would be at that moment.. so I kept searching... try an pass off my ID (that said I was 17) and that worked only rarely. at worse I would actually drive to work and try to bum one off a coworker.. they were usually generous. and when I 'quit'... it is like peter says, not all of me wanted to quit. so I would quit for months at a time until I decided I WANTED to smoke again, because I thuroughly enjoy it, and buy another pack. I smoked my brains out before basic training... went cold turkey.. it was no problem... I am going to have to quit for 14 weeks again in a couple days, so I am going to smoke my brains out.. Im not worried about it.. this is all irrelevent... Iwant to say that not all of you honestly WANTS to quit, like peter says. if you fail, it is just you being weak minded. of all sorts of people out there, those of us at taobums.com should have the easiest time overcoming these minor life ordeals.

hey max what are the levels that your signature is refering to?

this forum is really cool. ...couple weeks time when drill sergeants allow us to use electronics I will buy internet device... if only to visit the board. yeah I just got out of basic training and am in EMT and combat medic training... needless to say I'm no longer the spiritual adept I once was! you know it really sucks.. is really frustrating.. like a body-builder who has lost all his muscle and wants to beef up again, huh. .....man, but SO hard in my new enviroment, (!). BUT on otherhand I am supporting myself and can now buy all that cool shit. I can build a substantial library... I can experiment. maybe I'll start visitin all the guru's... chia, winn, cohen, glenn morris... Want I want is for somebody who has taken that monoatomic gold powder that supposedly arouses kundalini to tell me their experience. It sounds too good to be true !!! that experiences board, daily practice log thing, that is a REALLY cool thing to have. when I get regular access and I am afforded the opportunity to get in solid practice again I will take advantage. If I get this gold powder I will chronicle my experience.

hey mbanu have you ever tried any of that kind of sorcery? that sounds a hell of alot like voodoo.. maybe when I am older and if I am desperate I will turn to uh... sorcery... if by some intense curse I am denied awakenment, I would rather be pulling some crazy blood-ritual shit than not doing anything.. I'd like to know more about that kind of sorcery.... wouldnt it be cool to get in touch with some god or diety?

that was a cool fucking post, man. :shock: I wondered if Smile replied to my poll....................