SFJane

Perhaps some of you have wondered why I seem so down on cultivation for siddhi, empty force demos, psi and the like. I thought I'd offer an explanation and see what you folks think. This is a long post but I beg of you read it carefully. Please. I spent a lot of time in isolation as a kid with nothing to do but use my own mind to entertain myself. Solitude and seclusion make for an ideal set up to work on one's mental ability. Practicing psi was something I have done a great deal of. My fascination and attraction to 'powers' started very early in life. I was a member of the Third Order of Franciscans and I have personally witnessed the Laying On of Hands as well as Speaking in Tongues. I fell in love with devotional practices. My parents did not need to motivate me to pray. I used to do devotionals (long repetitions of prayers on one's knees) to the 12 stages of the cross all by myself. This was the beginning of my concentration training. The first thing I ever told my mom that I wanted to do when I grew up was be a nun. A life devoted to religious contemplation seemed to me to be what I was born for. Like a lot of teens I went through my heretic phase and deconverted while pursuing occult practices. One of the most inspiring stories in the bible that actually led me to get into the occult was Moses vs the Egyptian Pharaoh. At one point Moses throws down his staff which becomes a serpent. But the Pharaoh's magi were also able to turn staves to snakes. In the story Moses's snake eats the others. (Thereby proving George Carlin's thesis that it's all about 'My God has a bigger dick than your god'.) What I learned was that the magi also had powers. Even if God's power was stronger it validated for me that there was more than one path to attaining magic power. There were other portions of the bible which have to do with not allowing witches to live and distrusting clairvoyance as the work of Satan. To me it spoke of a deep seated fear of other forms of magic besides what faith in God could grant you so I became interested in what those paths might be. To that end I have fed like a starving animal on as much magical knowledge as I could possibly consume. Some of the traditions I have either studied, practiced or been initiated in, include: Satanism, Kabbalah, Order of Thelema, Wicca, Lightbody, Shamanism (totems and spirits) Shamanism (elemental forces) Chaos Magic and Santeria. That is just a sample of the stuff I have partaken of in the magic(k) department. The whole Neo-pagan revival thing. I was in on it since the late 80s. In the psi department, the first ever book I bought was called 'You are psychic: the Free Soul Method' by Peter Sanders which comes with instructions on how to open up energy gates in your brain to achieve psychic sensing, hearing, vision and knowledge. That book, combined with The Astral Projection workbook and the Psychic Energy Workbook were some of my first purchases in the realm of how-to and theory. I bought them using my allowance I made from doing chores at a foster home as a teenager. As some of you know from my earlier posts I was trained in what I thought to be real meditation when I was thirteen by older teens who shared my interest in occult matters. From my Catholic devotions I already possessed the ability to sit still in one place and do repetitive mental tasking like prayer for long periods of time. When I started meditating and practicing all those psychic and astral energy methods, certain things began to happen. The first real symptom was de-ja vu. I began having deja vu on a weekly basis as though the time stream was acting up a little in my vicinity somehow. Then came the first transmission that I plucked out of thin air. It was the end of last period class in junior high and I knew, I just knew, with total certainty, who was going to be called down to the office during the afternoon announcements. Sure enough within a minute or two of my perception, the announcements began and the first two people called were the names that had popped into my head. My whole body began to shake because I thought I was a mutant. I thought this was the beginning of me becoming Carrie or Firestarter. I discussed this experience with my older friends and it was their idea that meditation had accentuated my natural psi ability, jump starting it or amplifying it and I had received a true precognition. Their theory was that I was becoming a psychic antenna. This deja vu and these small precog events continued to increase. I knew what outfit the math teacher was going to wear before I got to school. The vision popped into my mind completely unbidden. I knew what the next song on the radio was going to be before it came on. Little things like that were happening and I began to wonder how powerful I could become. I had my first full out of body experience when I was fifteen. My new foster parents had just grounded me for a week for some misdeed or other. Coincidentally I had just been to the mall and bought 'Opening the Energy Gates of Your Body' and the 'Astral Projection Workbook'. It so happened that I set aside OTEGOYB first and got to work with astral projection. For twelve hours I tried to rise up or fall backwards out of my body. Hour after hour I tried. Finally, I was so tired that I literally collapsed forward onto my face, all tension and effort left me as I crashed into the mattress and then I was staring down at my body from the ceiling. When it came to ways to use my mind my imagination was the limit. One parlor trick I developed around that time involved controlling my blood flow. I had gained the ability to cause my blood to slow down when I got cut. I discovered this quite accidentally. I slipped with a kitchen knife and suddenly blood was running freely from my hand or finger or whatever I cut at the time. I mentally willed my blood to slow. I visualized my mind as a giant construction boss at the cellular level. I would visualize my cells as tiny laborers or bots that would quickly divide and seal the wound. I would visualize my finger cut as the size of the grand canyon and would literally command my cells to start drawing the canyon edges closer together. This had the net effect of noticeably slowing down blood coming out of a wound. It became a parlor trick for me. I would show off for my friends. I would take a Swiss knife, make an incision in my finger and then try to hold back the bleeding through sheer will. (I was a pretty strange high schooler as you can imagine.) I convinced several friends on more than one occasion that I could control the wind and the rain. We were doing a midnight march to a 24-7 convenience store to get Pepsi and smokes and we were getting soaked. I began to create an elemental binding spell on the fly and as I chanted aloud the rain began to ease up and up and then it stopped. I demonstrated that I could increase the ambient temperature of a room by a couple of degrees by visualizing the air as vibrating faster and faster. Another phenomena that occurred in front of witnesses was my presence seemed to turn off street lights when we walked by. I used to try to influence the roll of dice and had enough wins vs my losses to make my friends believe that I had some micro-psychokinetic ability. After awhile I had quite the little following going on. I was a coven leader. People my own age did not dispute my abilities. The more people who heard about the little psychic witch who had once been forcibly treated for schizophrenia and psychosis the more people came to see my 'abilities' for themselves. I would meet people who had already heard about me and were biased to believe that I had real powers. I found myself with the natural ability to hypnotize people with my voice and eyes especially people who already believed I had magical and or psychic ability. The more I flexed my powers the more power I wanted. I made a bet with a friend that I could seduce someone into intimate relations within twenty fours of encountering me and I won the bet. It was really something to have my own believers. People who were interested in and believed in me because of the things I could do. At the age of nineteen I had a very very tiny but nonetheless real cult following among some local people my own age. In spite of my tricks with hypnotism and regeneration and weather control the one power I wanted the most above all was telekinesis. I would spend literally hours at time trying to make a cigarette lighter, penny or marble move. In class I would ignore the teacher and the lesson plan and just concentrate on making the papers on other student's desk fall off or blow away. I used to choose seats in the back because it made it easier to practice aura reading discreetly. I can't even being to approach an accurate estimate of how many hours of my life I have sunk into the practice of mind over matter from a distance under the belief that if I tried hard enough, long enough, my brain would grow the appropriate circuitry. As time went on I became more and more interested in ways I could supercharge my mind, body or spirit in search of more and more power. That was how I initially got involved with aikido, kundulini yoga, tai chi and chi kung. If there was an energy system in Western or Eastern cornucopia that would lead me to becoming a full blown TK I was going to find it. As part of this quest I began to seek out other people who had supposedly attained higher levels of psi or magic. I began testing people. The more I tested people the more I began to believe that Eastern energy practices that lead to psi were a more potent road than ceremonial magic. Nobody seemed to be able to do magic(k) on-the-fly. I'd ask for a demonstration of power, right now, but witches and warlocks seem to need the stars to be in alignment, fasting and purification, special foods and or herbs, drugs, crystals, an athame, staves and an equinox to be able to strut their stuff. A power that takes hours or days to charge up for that only works best on a full moon after a six hour ritual was not useful to me. I wanted defensive and offensive power I could conjure in an instant and magical healing was much slower than directed energy healing. Gradually I began to focus less on the occult and more on chi based systems for my goals. I had been able to feel chi in my palms years before I learned actual chi kung because of two books. Scott Cunningham's 'Wicca for the Solitary Practitioner' has a chi sensing exercise in it and the Psychic Energy Workbook has many of them. One of my practices was to simply extend my hand towards an object and then practice sending chi at it to move it. I would set a pack of cigarettes or a Pepsi can on a table and walk five or more feet away from it and try to move it. The following is just a sample of different ways that I used to practice manipulating chi to influence objects to move. Pushing techniques Project chi from my hand like a wind and push objects away. Spiral chi from my hand to push like an energy spring. Pulse chi from my hand in bursts as a kind of 'chain punch' made of chi. Cause force to build on an object until it reaches a critical mass and moves the item. Change the gravitational constant of the object by Will to make it movable by chi. Pulling techniques reach out with my chi, magnetize the chi of the object and pull back my chi continual wave pullback (tractor beam or roll back) spiraling vacuum suck (black hole gravity) increasing my density to cause the object to fall towards me. (neutron star gravity) I've tried brute force pushing and pulling where I gathered chi in my mind and body and hurled it like one would a projectile into objects to get them to move. I've gone the opposite way and tried to cause one atom to began to slide towards me very gently as though I wanted to move a spider web without breaking strands. Thinking if I could get one atom to move in my direction by sheer will or chi flow that the other atoms of the structure would have to come along for the ride. In terms of modulation I have tried using various emotional energy frequencies to see if it had any effect. Would practicing telekinesis while angry, happy or emotionally neutral have an effect? If I pursued celibacy would that help? Telekinesis was one of the reasons I got into stillness meditation and fasting. If my thoughts were quiet and my body wasn't wasting energy in digestion maybe I would have more chi at my disposal. To me it was all a puzzle box. Some combination of energy circulations, asceticism and concentration would have to unlock the full power sooner or later. That hope is what drove me to practice psi as much as I did. I practiced on everything. It was not enough to find some gimmick like those psi wheels on youtube. I wanted something more impressive. The power to move a is not going take the gun out of an assailants hand. It's not going to move a car that is about to collide with an oblivious old lady. I would try to open and close doors and turn on or off light switches with my mind before doing it manually just for practice. I would recall the scene in Empire Strikes Back when Luke gave up moving his Xwing out of the swamp because it was 'just too big' and Yoda then pulls it out. I'd get bored at a bus stop or traffic light and try to move cars just to keep flexing my psi muscles. There probably isn't too many psi abilities that I haven't tried. I've tried to control earth, wind, fire, water, metal, crystals and chi. I've tried to phase myself through solid objects. I've tried to dislocate myself through space time in order to teleport or blink through walls. I've tried to fly using psi. A lot of those experiments did not yield the kind of results that make your spine shiver. But there was a few things that I've done involving the mind that have more seeming success than not. One trick I used to practice in school was to stare as someone until they turned and looked at me. Just practicing that I have tried different methods from visualizing beams from my eyes making contact with my target's head, to causing their nervous system and muscles to force their head to turn and whispering the suggestion that they turn and look at me telepathically. I've practiced the opposite of that which is cloaking your thoughts and becoming invisible in a crowded area. One aikido instructor I had liked to have us students come up and tap him from behind and he would try to sense the person coming and dodge them. I would imagine my psychic presence phasing out like a Klingon Bird of Prey cloaking, then I would run up and tap him on the shoulder every time. I made it a point to show him that I could sneak up on him by preventing my chi or intent from projecting in advance of me so he couldn't detect me. It was hardly the first time for me though. I had been through a painful break up with someone I did not want to let go of. Consequently I used to stalk this person mentally and physically. I would spend time using every trick at my disposal, from astral projection and remote viewing to the heart-to-heart spiritual connection to visit my ex. I would stalk my ex in the flesh for hours undetected by keeping my thoughts cloaked. I racked up many hours of practice in the field of psychic stalking and invisibility as a result of my obsession and inability to move on. This all came to a screeching halt as a consequence of a brief talk I had with Master Frantzis at the first retreat I went to. I asked him if he knew anyone who had developed their chi enough to move objects with it. I could make my chi extend out of my hand, surely it was only a matter of hitting the right energy shape to cause objects to move. In Bruce's own books he talks about magnetizing chi during pushhands and how his teacher Liu moved him like an industrial magnet. Perhaps it's an issue of more practice to magnetize objects that you are not directly touching? I told him I had been practicing telekinesis for years and that at this point it seemed like moving chi was going to be the path I was looking for. He asked me to show him and I did. I reached out my hand to a salt shaker on a picnic table and tried to use the energy of Ji and Lu to either push or pull the salt shaker. My entire palm vibrated with the amount of chi I surged into it but no matter what the salt shaker would not leap the four feet of distance that separated it from me. I told Bruce “Not today, apparently, but sooner or later I'll get it.” He says to me, “And if you do get it? What then?” “I will know I am on the right track and will continue my efforts working with larger and larger objects. I want to find out how strong I can get” I replied. “Ok, to what end? How much power is going to be enough for you? It seems to me like you are trying to become an 800 lb psychic gorilla,” He says. Busted, I shrugged and smiled and said, “Yea, I guess I am.” Then he says to me “You had better be careful what you wish for. If you are not ready when it comes you could destroy yourself. If you've never read the story 'The Monkey's Paw' I suggest you do.” And that was the end of the conversation. His warning was not enough for me at the time to stop my wanting it. I felt validated and relieved actually as though he had taken my sincerity as genuine. If you talk like that to a psychiatrist you get a Dx of schizophrenia and an Rx for zyprexa or seroquel or haldol. It was not until I read his book 'Relaxing into Your Being', specifically the segment on the addiction to psychic energy and the cultivation of psi as a dead end that I finally realized the error of my ways. I felt like Bruce had written that section just for me. I was self conscious when I read it that I was probably more addicted to psychic power than anyone I had ever met. His words resonated with me. I did some meditation to find out why I was so hopelessly obsessed with acquiring powers. Insecurity and fear. I am sure most of you saw Star Wars prequels 2 and 3. You saw how the combination of former slavery mixed with fear and a desire to become stronger led Anakin straight into the Dark Side. “I will become more powerful than any Jedi” That was kind of my motto. I would be more a powerful psi or witch than anyone before me even dreamed of. In my case I was inspired by watching Stephen King's 'Carrie'. Because I had been picked on at school and wanted to fight back with my mind. I was inspired by SK's 'Firestarter' for similar reasons. In fact the movie Firestarter inspired me to drop upwards of a half sheet of acid stretched out over a couple years in my late teens and early twenties in an attempt to open up my psychic abilities more. I would drop acid then start to open my chakras and energy meridians and then sit for hours trying to move objects in my room. Then I got real honest with myself about what I would do if I really succeeded. I knew that I would keep training until I could move buildings with my mind or separate people's atoms through sheer will. I came to face to face with the certainty that if I did indeed trigger real telekinesis I would become like Jean Grey in X-men 3. People would piss me off and I would disintegrate them. I would stalk my rivals and snuff them. I would find the John Chang's of the world and toy with them for a good long while before breaking them. I would be a telekinetic and telepathic bully. So bit by bit I gave it up. While I was giving it up I encountered an idea that changed me forever. Two simple words rocked my entire universe. 'Confirmation Bias.' I began to research how to evaluate scientific evidence of phenomena and I exposed myself to several concepts that I had previously never heard of. There is always a first for everything right? We are not born knowing this stuff. Confirmation bias led me to more and similar terms like selective thinking, magical thinking, Forer effect, cold reading, self deception, Occam's Razor and communal reinforcement. I took inventory of each of my apparent 'powers' and honestly tried to reproduce them on command. I tried to control the wind and the rain and fire and be honest with myself about the results. Sure enough, much of my 'psychic' ability to divine people's thoughts was natural cold reading aptitude. No one ever paid for me to go to cold reading school but I did have plenty of experience with Tarot and trying to interpret meaning from readings which involves the Forer effect. Something that also explains astrology and personality tests. I came up with other tests for my abilities. What I found was that I had very little in the way of real psychic power that I could prove. My blood slowing trick did not seem to work with extremely deep lacerations. I could not in fact, influence the roll of dice. I had simply made a big deal about a cluster of attempts which seemed to prove that I was micropsychokinetic. I weighed some criteria as higher than others and rejected other possibilities which is what 99% of people do when ascertaining a miracle or a power. They default to their expectations. There was one power that I did find that I really had. That was the power to convince people who were already predisposed into believing, that I had demonstrated real power. When other people Oooh and Aaah you feel more confident about your ability. People gave up their free thinking in my vicinity and agreed after a minimal amount of parlor tricks, that I was special. Some of kind of mutant or witch reborn into this life. An Indigo Child or Atlantean or whatever. You'd be amazed at the reasons I've heard people come up with for my having 'mastered' magic and psi so early in my life. Then one day I heard about the James Randi challenge and how no one ever took his million dollar prize. I tried even harder to find just one of my tricks that would withstand the test of a controlled experiment. I didn't have anything. Just a few people who would swear on a bible that I was the real thing and that they had seen me call ravens to me or cause people to call me on the phone by thinking about them intensely. All that stuff, from turning off streetlights and causing the rain to stop was magical thinking fused with confirmation bias mixed with reinforcement from unskeptical witnesses. And for all my effort I could not demonstrate anything but the ability to bullshit people. That was it. I let go of the quest for powers once and for all. All that was left in terms of 'power' was fa jin really. Subtle and gross projection of chi. I once tested the range of how far people could feel the chi extending from my hand. A girlfriend of mine who was a yoga student placed her palm a few inches away from mine and started walking backwards. She could still feel my chi at fourteen feet away in the cold and wind. But I would never do a Kong Jin video because it proves absolutely nothing. It's why I laugh at every Kong Jin or energy transmission video I've ever seen since. It only works on people who can sense chi. Other than subtly moving another person's chi there is not a lot you can do with it in practical terms. You are not going to win the Randi challenge with kong jin. It's a waste of time to practice it much because you are not going to be able to chi pulse your enemies away from you. If you want to use chi for fighting you are better off learning how to gaze people and sink your chi. As some of you know I went on to focus on the Water Method of dissolving and gradually dissolved my physical, chi, emotional, mental and spiritual bodies. I cured myself of depression. I turned off the voices and visions in my head. I dissolved this mass of energy blocks that stemmed from years of abuse I endured as a child. I learned how to love myself and be happy in this life. If you think about it there are millions of people who are depressed in this world. Mental illness afflicts people of every walk of life. Stress ruins people's minds and bodies. I was able to destress myself and gain happiness and spiritual contentedness. I didn't need to have children or God or a PHD or win the lotto to get that happiness and feel complete. I realized years after the fact, that the ability to heal your own spirit is a kind of power too. Trying to become Carrie or Firestarter or the Phoenix didn't make me happy. It really only made me obsessed and attached to something that was not doing me any spiritual good. It was a distraction. I learned a lot about myself in the process of trying to become psychic and during the process of debunking myself. When I finally did get a 'power' (of sorts) it was like nothing I ever imagined or aspired to. People don't think of the ability to be content and happy or still your thoughts as a 'power'. And I finally lost my fear that someone was going to win the psychic arms race and beat me to becoming the Phoenix. Most people will never put in the amount of time I invested on that ultimately futile endeavor.

Good morning Tao Bums! I am pleased to announce the official release and publication of my book, Possessing Me: a memoir of healing. The book is the story of my life—from age six, to age twenty six. It chronicles my struggle and seventeen year battle with mental illness and my eventual spiritual healing. Fair warning, it's not easy or light reading. Mental illness caused me a lot of problems as a young adult, including homelessness and joblessness and drug dependency. The issues I discuss range from repeated trauma and abuse at home, to being violated and dehumanized when I tried to get help and treatment for my problems, as well as suicide attempts and a near-death experience I had during my last OD back in '95. How I recovered from all that confusion and suffering might be of interest to some of you. Namely, that in '96 I started studying chi/nei gung, nei jia and Water Method meditation from lineage holder and Taoist master Bruce Frantzis. In my early twenties I diligently practiced the material he teaches, in solitude mostly. During that time, I resolved pretty much everything that was bothering me at a physical, mental, emotional and energetic level. Five years later, I had a wonderful meditation experience which opened my heart and infused me with something I had been missing all my life: self-love, and I have been free of sadness and spiritual pain ever since. This is my story of how I cured myself of suicidal depression, the mania of bipolar disorder, the voices and delusions of schizophrenia, and the flashbacks, triggers and nightmares of post traumatic stress disorder. In all seriousness and humility, some of the readers of the earliest incarnation of my manuscript and those familiar with the details of my journey of healing, have, at times, compared my work to Byron Katie, Cheri Huber and Eckhart Tolle, (none of whom I had ever heard of before I wrote my book). As to whether or not I actually deserve or warrant that comparison, I leave to my readers judgment. As an aside, if you are in the Bay Area I will happily sign a copy of your book. I don't know if there is going to be a book tour. I did not get a juicy book advance from Big Publishing in order to promote my book. I created my own publishing company: Wise Boar Media, to distribute this and future works, so all my promotional efforts are being done on something of a budget. Thanks to certain of you Nameless Bums who offered to read and review my ms in its earlier incarnation—and gave me useful feedback about it as it was developing. Thanks also to all you here who encouraged me to write my recovery story. And an extra-special thank you to Sean, the owner of TTB, for his gracious permission to post an announcement of my book's release on the forums. Possessing Me: A Memoir of Healing by Jane Alexander 369 pages Wise Boar Media ISBN13: 978-0983070900

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.

Just some thoughts after reading this thread. First, thanks for the vids. I loved the Roy Jones one most. As another mentioned, Bruce is in his 60s and I don't expect that he is going throw down in vale tudo at this point. Bruce once told me along with some other attendees at a retreat once that by the time he was in mid-20s he had severely hurt some people with IMA in serious two men enter one man leaves type fighting in Asia. I happen to enjoy martial arts and what little teeny tiny bit of Bruce's martial art stuff that I have been lucky to learn revolutionized my sparring and self defense game. I went from being afraid of closing with people and moving in and out of point blank range to preferring to close with people and staying there for the duration. Re: Gerard's judgments. Frankly I think it's nice if you can arrange to live in an ideal world and never have to worry about your safety. Not all of us have that luxury. Myself, when I was living in Sac I went a few years without exchanging harsh words with anyone. But I practiced martially anyway, just in case. And it was nice to be able to practice in the American River Park and never or rarely be disturbed. I moved to San Francisco almost seven years ago and almost immediately ran into situations where I had to defend myself. And you better believe that in that kind of situation, as Sloppy said: chance favors the prepared mind. Although I was not looking for trouble, because of my economic situation, I lived in places in this city where trouble had no problem finding me. Unlike Jess, I am not very big, and with my long hair and glasses I do not exactly look scary or threatening. There is a lot of mental illness in this city and I've been in situations where people have gotten right up in my face without provocation. I do practice martial arts because time has proven again and again that the investment has paid off in keeping me alive and intact. I have it personally from a dispatcher that the police response time in SF can be upwards of twenty minutes. If you get into an altercation it will be probably be over before it occurs to someone to call 911. During that time, your training is what will get you out of that situation in one piece. While I am no expert at fighting I have successfully defended myself on multiple occasions using Bruce's material. How are you ever going to get to wuji if you are unconscious, flat on your back in intensive care because you couldn't defend yourself because your 'vibes' made sure such a thing could never happen to you? (Also known as famous last words.)

My first impression of your comment was that A: chi gung (and nei gung) is more about what's going on that you can't see than what you can. And B: I don't think I've ever heard someone dismiss Bruce's material so quickly and totally before. Maybe I am mistaken but if you've never actually put your hands on Bruce or one of his students how can you be sure that there is not something subtle going on there that you don't yet know and might want to? If you can write off God's Playing in the Clouds by watching one video...you must be really good. Please let us all know when you start teaching. If you set up shop in the Bay Area, I may just drop by.

Funny thing about that. I later learned that I was naturally more adept at inner than outer dissolving. I do them both fine but I found that my tendency when I practiced outer dissolving (when I first got started), was to go to inner dissolving. Needless to say, inner and outer dissolving are mutually related, not exclusive, can be done simultaneously and in any position you want at any speed you think you can keep it all together internally. Sitting just makes it much easier and lets you put a lot of focus on the act of dissolving itself and not your movements and changing alignments and all that jazz.

Wonderful, insightful response. Props to you for taking the time to answer him. When someone writes or speaks of 'the gay lifestyle' as though it were fundamentally and intrinsically a different thing from 'the straight lifestyle' I tend to roll my eyes and tune them out. It invalidates just about everything that comes after. Usually what follows the gay 'lifestyle' sentiment tends to be conjecture, supposition, stereotypes, cultural, biological and social ignorance, appeal to tradition or bunk science, and a parade of other logical flaws, not to mention a host of gut response 'opinion' about something(s) to which they are an outsider to. Excellent rebuttal.

A very well considered response Marblehead. I agree.

You should have added the video!

That is a very good and profound question! It's one I asked myself constantly since I was very little. I really needed an answer to that question and so I turned to meditation. I would like to echo what others have asked. First, what King K asked you: Second, what exorcist_1699 asked you: So who is generating the voice in your head that whispers constantly: "there are people starving in the world." And why? If you can find out who is asking and why you are asking and why it matters to you then you may (or may not) find the answer to King K's question, "Why should there be?" Is happiness better than or preferable to any other state of mind and heart? Why or why not? Who says? If you get right down to it, there is all kinds of suffering to fixate on. Economical suffering right here in this country. Right in the great city I live in. Talk a walk to mission street or through the Tenderloin and smell the bums that reek of urine and booze. They sleep on the sidewalk. How come there isn't an inner voice whispering "There are poor people living outside in the United States. Tonight you are going to sleep in a bed on warm sheets under a fluffy comforter and there are people sleeping on a cold, concrete sidewalk." Why the focus on starvation and not on housing, jobs, or comprehensive medical care? Life is not and never has been an egalitarian or balanced equation. Since the beginning of time for us humans there have been the haves and the have nots. Some people had better caves, better nearby sources of water, better hunting and gathering opportunities than others. It's always been that way. Who says it should be any other way? Why worry about it if you can not immediately and directly effect the situation? Who is doing this worrying? When I was in my twenties I tended to be more worried about my life than other peoples' lives. I went without a lot of things other people have, including happiness. I used to ask, "Is life just supposed to be about suffering?" It didn't occur to me that I could be one of the happy people until much later. I don't have a pat answer for you or a quick soundbite in answer to your primary question. But I can say that the answer is waiting for you to find it and integrate it. When that happens, you will know internally and existentially (so-to-speak), the answer to your inquiry. I hope that helps Manitou!

My suggestion would be to experiment on yourself and find out. I never take people's word for it. I am ornery like that. I prefer to find out conclusively, one way or another. I was never much of a drinker, but I do drink now and then. In fact, I am drinking Mike's Hard Lemonade right now. Not a very burly drink but I just had an urge for one after working outside all day. Mmm. Tasty. Good. But on a serious note, I never drink to get drunk. I like the little tingle in your groin and stomach. If I get that, I'm good. Alcohol effects your liver and kidneys. Like many other substances, it distorts your awareness inside and out. If you are doing long meditation sits or alchemy, I'd avoid it. But having a drink now and then is not going to deny you the tenth heaven and if it did, you wouldn't want to go there anyway.