SFJane

Mal-- I am glad you received your copy and I hope you enjoy it. It's a nice testament to POD publishing that you were able to order that from Amazon, who then sent a print order to a press who then uploaded the data of my book and printed it (probably the same day the received the order). Then it was mailed and came over on a plane to Australia within just a couple weeks. Pretty neat. Prince-- Thank you very much for both for your interest and your recommendation. I hope you like the book. Once I am back in shape I will make a way better IMA video than the one from 08. That one was just too clumsy. I couldn't stand to look at it after awhile. Otis-- Thank you kindly for your thoughts. Re: Clumsiness and freeing up stuff. There are easier and less painful ways to spend your time then trying to heal your spiritual injuries and imbalances—for sure. I am and will continue to be very grateful to you all for your interest and support. I look forward to hearing your thoughts about it.

This is all well and good but how many of you know how to fix yourself after the fact? What happens if you can't afford to study with your favorite chi gung teacher as much you'd like and so have to practice on your own. Then side effects crop up and because of the same financial limitation, you can't go to that teacher to get help for what you did yourself? You'd be pretty much screwed. You'd have to stop. Or would you? What if you didn't want to stop, and, having taking responsibility for learning enough chi gung to mess yourself up with in the first place, you decide to take it all the way and figure out on your own how to fix what you did? There is something to be said for trial and error.

I am pretty happy with how things eventually turned out for myself. I've seen the movie Butterfly Effect too many times to think I could try to right some wrong that happened to me in my youth and hope I could change my present for the better. If I had not been oppressed as much, I might not have grown as strong or sought as much as I did and not have any of the knowledge that I won during my desperate seeking years. On a fun note, if we are just playing around. I think I would have Karl Marx quietly die of a heart attack at a young age. Marxist ideology set the stage for utopian-eyed dictators to long for collectivism which led to the senseless famines in the Ukraine and China as well as the Killing Fields of Cambodia. The body count in China, USSR and Cambodia, I don't have the figures but, millions upon millions died for an idea that did not work out so well when applied to the real world. What people did to each other during the 1900s in the name of Marxism and Communism will forever stain our human race and would be a shameful chapter of our cultural and societal evolution to have a hypothetical alien race read about.

Kentucky Fried Wild Goose (original, not crispy). Mmmm.

It's all good Strawdog. I think people argue because they like it. When I pwn someone, I like to turn to the stands and shout, "Are you not entertained!"

You are very welcome.

It's hard to say because to me the Buddhist terms get hopelessly confusing, samatha jnanas whatevas. It's just too cerebral for me. I didn't have to empty out anything except my projective thinking to find it. In the Taoist framework that I learned, and in my own experience, the mindstream is just another layer of your reality. It's the water upon which everything else floats. It's much easier said then felt, but when you notice it, it will be a clear and distinct emergence along with an attending increase in awareness. Re: Kunlun. I had never heard of it until I came to TTB so I would not know.

You are missing some context. Disagreement is about who is right and who is wrong. Taken to the max, it means violence. Violence solves pretty much everything. If no one is around you can't ever be told you are wrong, and that's good for the ego. The main thing is to remember that whenever you attack someone in a discussion your invisible cool meter goes up. You get +1 pwnage whenever you tell someone "Wrong!" The more pwnage points you get, the wiser you are and the more people have to listen to you.

I totally agree with this. For me it's a matter of self-respect. I won't allow myself to get abused psychically or emotionally by someone else's mental malfunctions. Didn't Mark Twain say something like, "You can pick your friends but not your family?" He was wrong. You can pick your family too. You pick and choose whether or not you want to be part of their drama. It is not weakness to know your limits, and it is okay if family interactions are one of those limits.

I very much sympathize with you. It's a difficult situation. Have you considered the possibility of maybe not going back to see them? I am just thinking that, when your stability is a newly acquired thing, it's okay to be selfish and say to yourself, "I don't need this disruption in my life. It's not a good thing for me." Sometimes you have to set boundaries to secure your own sanity or until you are stronger and have more resources to deal with a specific kind of theater like that.

I read the article. As someone who has spent considerable time doing both psychedelic drugs and meditation, I have to say that I agree with most everything put forth in the article. Drugs can initially put you on the road to spiritual discovery and meditation. I know this from experience and because I wanted to have my cake and eat it too. When I first got into meditation in my twenties, I was going to do it my way, experts and gurus be damned. But ultimately what I discovered is this. Psychotropic drugs impose biochemical distortions on your consciousness. There is just no way around it. Sooner or later, you will run into those distortions in your mind. Maybe it takes awhile because you have a great concentration, before you reach the place where it matters. But when you do you will have a choice. Remain satisfied with your drug-altered experiences and forget about going deeper down the rabbit hole. Or, do what your heart was probably telling you to do deep down. Purify yourself as best you can and see and feel the difference. There is whole other Universe waiting for you inside to find and drugs, especially mind-altering ones, are going to prevent you from apprehending its more subtle realms. Drugs have an effect on your mind and if your consciousness gets to the level of being able to compensate for or nullify those drug distortions (which is what happened to me) then what the heck is the point of dropping and sitting, if all you are going to do is waste the first hour of practice burning out the distortions, before you can get to work?

Thanks for the invite Lucky As the original post was stated, I was not going to barge in and start dispensing my opinion without one. I've made it clear that I am not a Buddhist, never have been. I do not pretend to be knowledgeable about Buddhist practices and ideas. Most folks here know me as someone who talks about Water Method Taoism for the most part. I was not going to post something --here-- and then have someone jump in and censor me for typing about Taoism in a thread specifically about Buddhism. But now that that's not a concern, I feel better about saying a few things. Because I was head-over-heels involved with Bruce Frantzis material in my twenties, I think that the first time I read about the mindstream within a meditation framework was on pages 117 to 118 of the 1st edition printing of 'Relaxing Into Your Being' by BKF. I read the definition again and again and again. Then I put the book down and forgot about it. When I ran into the mindstream during practice, I knew, after a little bit, what it was I was dealing with. I am going to post a few nugget from his book and then talk a little bit about how I realized the mindstream on my own. (Some paraphrasing and skipping about) So listening to the play of thoughts, watching them come and go, is preparatory for noticing the mindstream, as is inner dissolving. Frankly, I've done a ton of Witnessing of the Mind and it was not witnessing thoughts that led me to contact the mindstream. Not at all saying it can't be done, but there is a trick to it, for real. What allowed me to contact the mindstream was inner dissolving. This is a technique where your intent and awareness are coalescing and imploding deeper and deeper into inner space. This was not a first or second year realization, Lucky, Kate, everyone. This took almost five years for me. The ability for my mind to recognize the mindstream occurred because of three things coming into play together in synergy. The first was the strength of my mind to focus for long periods and not get fatigued or distracted. The second was time. Total patience for whatever might happen, Not expecting, but just waiting to notice or be imprinted on, like a seismograph or photo plate. For as long as it takes. The third was listening quality. That is, the accuracy of my inner radar, seismograph, whatever you want to call it. To be accurate, I had to overcome a lot of artificial stuff my own mind threw up for me to look at and get distracted with (in the earlier days anyway). Being accurate is a skill that really only improves by proving to yourself that you are right over and over again. It means instant-intuition and reliably knowing what is going on and why, and that only comes from a lot of practice at listening to, and making changes to, your internal states. If you asked me which of the three, concentration, listening acuity and patience was more important, I'd be hard pressed to choose. All the patience in the world won't help if your mind's detection and recognition software isn't attuned to subtle states. Likewise, you can have laser concentration but if you are not patient, you can miss it time and time again. Eventually all three factors line up perfectly one day—and you just see it. Everything inside you is sort of suspended within, and is part of, the mindstream. It's always there, twenty four-seven, as they say. It never takes a break, and can be observed at anytime by anyone, provided that they can: detect it accurately, stay present within it, be patient long enough to pass the veil (so-to-speak) and just see/sense/feel it. The effects of contacting the mindstream and dissolving in it and making myself consciously part of it ramped up the meditation work I was doing phenomenally, and was one of the factors that directly contributed to me finding myself. It can not be pointed at, even though it's everywhere. There are no special goggles for it. The only thing you can do in terms of trying to dial someone else in, is be there and try to dissolve someone else while you are there and hope for the best. Hope that helps Lucky.

Too bad you didn't ask for the Taoist usage. I might have been able to help you there.

I am sorry about bookdepository. The book just got up on Amazon and it does take some time for the title to propagate to different sellers and the like. I will at some point look into that site and see if something can be done. I did see a Mal listed thanks to the LookInside of 2012: TA, neat! Speaking of the LookInside, I am glad you like the bonus preview! There wasn't actually supposed to be so much of it showing. They didn't check with me first when they started populating the LookInside feature and they put up way, way too much, including at the time certain spoilers. Woops. They tell me that the LI feature will fluctuate for weeks in terms of how much is showing. At any rate, I hope you enjoy the book when you receive it, and that it does end up helping people. That would be a nice reward for the time and effort invested I hope also that you will feel free to post here or email me your thoughts about it when you've had some time to mull it over. I will check back on this thread from time to time to answer questions or reply to comments about it. Take care for now!

It's possible. I could try to set up something locally on the fly. The only issue is notice. These things usually get set up in advance with a store manager. In this case, I am sure I could discreetly meet you somewhere and do an impromptu signing. You are lucky you are coming now. I didn't have any signings or events planned this week or the next. The projected date for receiving some stock was December 14. It just so happens that we got them on Tuesday. I have these enormous boxes in the living room with the first fifty books and I have yet to find the perfect place to put them all, lol. But yeah, let me see what can be done and I can send you a PM or post here. To everyone else, I wanted to give you my heartfelt thanks and gratitude for your interest and your supportive comments. I hope you enjoy the book.