AsheSkyler

To a fellow artist, just keep practicing. You were drawing off of a strong emotion before, perhaps you can draw off other strong emotions like happiness or silliness. Arists are reknowned for their moodiness. Try a new mood and see what happens. =) Like cat said too, experiment around with music. I know from experience that sometimes a good song is all you need for a proper creative kick. And one more old art tip that'll likely never die: ne'er give up no matter how disappointed ya are with the results!

I took karate for about a year. Two nights a week, two hours each. The focus was primarily on scoring in point-sparring, and not much on self defense or full contact sparring. We only did the formal bow in once. I have a feeling the grand master would have been very angry if he'd ever seen one of our classes. My body felt great afterward and I was able to vent anger issues on the bag, but I always felt like I was missing something. I would love to get back into some kind of martial art, but only if I can find something more serious.

I don't think banning guns is the solution any more than arming the population to the teeth. Neither extreme can be healthy. I don't think this problem of unnecessary violence happened overnight, and I don't think it'll be cured overnight. A start could be to stop glamorizing murder so much. It only seems to encourage the next nutter to try to top it, like some kind of sick video game where everybody wants the high score. ( )Although the odds of either politicians or the media handling any problem properly is slim to none. Mostly none. On a different note, I had to read the topic a few times to figure out what an "obomber" is before exploring the thread. I was thinking a reference to the old Super Nintendo game Bomberman.

"Vegetarians eat vegetables. Beware of humanitarians!" "Star Trekking across the universe. Boldly going forward, for we cannot find the reverse!" "Your attitude decides whether you are happy or not. You can change your attitude. Choose happiness, concentrate on happiness, and you will find it everywhere." - Remez Sasson Had to put a serious one in. Although I usually prefer silly quotes.

A few years ago I had heard of one other person doing this. She still ate and drank, and I think it was more of a lifestyle choice rather than a spiritual quest. She would begin her day by staring at the sun for an hour. She was pure vegan and didn't like for any of her food to be cooked. (Although after reading your final link, perhaps she was on a spiritual quest and just a step away from quitting food altogether.)

And sadly it seems there are none down here in the south-eastern USA. But according to MeetUp.com there are plenty of people that get together to practice Taoism anyway.

Hi! Call me "Ashe" if ya want. I'm here because of lots of curiosity in other cultures and religions. I hope you guys really do have as many different religions here as the front page indicated. Wikipedia never really answers all the questions and it's a little difficult to hold conversations with articles. I was raised Christian (Southern Baptist, but don't let that scare you), and from what I've read on Taosim, it looks more like what I think philosophically than Christianity does. So I really want to look more into it. =)

I kind of always saw nature as true neutral and, as was mentioned, is impartial. I won't say there is no emotion in nature, because I've seen some very loving and very hateful acts between different creatures.