Daeluin

Oh and yeah, learning has always been a little difficult. I love things like math and chemistry, but it always seems to take me a lot more effort to hold the space for calculating equations. I can do math in my head, but it's like I do it on paper, and takes a lot of energy to hold each number stable long enough to work my way through something simple like adding 2 3digit numbers together. I do also remember one quite lovely brief glimpse of meditative bliss. My mind was so clear that when I went to remember a number, I just thought of it, let it go, and it stayed right there in my mind without any effort.

Hmmm, what an interesting thread. I suspect I am one of those affected by this, to some degree. As a child I recall having vivid dreams, sometimes of places I still remember. Although when I attempt to visualize them, it is more the feel of how the looked and a very specific spatial/mechanical awareness of what they were. In some cases, I attached so strongly to one part of how I think something looked that that is all I have. I can imagine a red ball, but I have to create it with some effort. I can imagine anything visually like this, but it requires construction, if that makes sense - unless I've seen it recently, and then I can connect to the feeling of the memory of what I've seen. Perhaps this is also related to how I construct things, by reaching until I have the necessary information. I am left-handed, but still fairly close to ambidextrous. I went to college for music performance, but mostly because this is what I did in grade school - I quickly learned that while I had good technical ability, I needed work on creating the soul of the music. My art-work is also very math/pattern based. I work a lot with reasoning things out, and have a good sense of directional awareness and intuitive understanding of how machines work. Mostly, with dreams, I think I do visualize things, but it is extremely difficult to consciously recall what things look like in any detail at all, even when in that hazy state before waking up, while my barely active mind is still connected to the deeper layers. Absolutely never remember faces. If someone was familiar to me in a dream I have to work this out with intuition, how the relationship of the person felt to me. I recall reading once that we can't read writing in dreams, and I guess I don't know if this is true or not, because it's always been impossible for me to read anything in dreams. The one dream I had one night as a senior in high school that I woke up and still remember, was of a room. It had a tall ceiling, elaborate theater style curtains, and I was seeing it from a certain place within. Curious, I accepted that I had a clear memory of this room. I proceed to audition for all-state band for the first time a couple weeks later (never thought I'd actually make it, wasn't even nervous during it because of this), and proceeded to place. 5 months later I show up to the practice room - in a city I'd never been to before, the room was situated deep inside a big performing arts center, not open to the public, no windows. I take a seat and look up. Exactly same tall ceiling and thick curtains, from the same perspective. Uncanny... I had not thought much about my dream, but as soon as I looked up I remembered it as an exact match. I used to escape into novels, and I would get to a point where the novel came alive inside of me, but it was like I was feeling everything that happened from the character's perspective. Visual descriptions were felt, as in how I might feel looking over a vast mountain vista - I would feel the sharp drop of before me, sense the vast distance spreading way out into some clouds and kinda see imaginary mountain peaks off in the distance, but the image of them would be indistinct and changing to different types of mountains whenever I revisit them, as though I am cycling through pictures of mountains I've seen before rather than creating them with my shen. Now, having done energy work for some years, I've played with various different things, including the third eye. For me it has been a portal for working with energy, but I always seem to use too much effort when pulling on it. Also, for a long time I had more of a sense of yin energy than yang energy - it was only this past year that I began to feel yang energy or perhaps shen, and start to understand the principles to inviting it into deeper integration within. Along with this sensing of a new type of energy, some of my work has changed. For example, now when I do some types of qigong, my shen will crystallize and clarify somewhat, which I also associate with sitting more in stillness more regularly. When I sleep I seem to have dreams with a sharper quality to them. A couple weeks ago I accidentally had some coffee for the first time in a while, couldn't sleep, and decided drinking some beer was the antidote... I had to much and regretted it, but also had an interesting experience... something about the beer helped to crystallize the energy to a greater extent, and I became more aware of a more "visual" sense of seeing the edges of various crystalline energy shapes all around my field. I associated this with the 3rd eye / pineal gland, but also with wood/liver type of energy from the alcohol. Wood energy is something I don't have very much of, based on my BaZi chart, which seems to correspond with my life experience. Although I do have large, healthy, shiny, moist nails, and I used to have 20/20 vision, my eyesight has suffered over the years, though not bad enough to require glasses... perhaps it is a difference between having a healthy enough liver and weaker gall bladder, not sure. This describes my past somewhat well. It takes a lot to make me angry, while people with excess wood qi frequently have major issues with managing their excess energies. I've always been the patient, quiet, someone timid and sort, after my initial burst of early childhood energy - supposedly if the 3rd chakra isn't developed in those early years, the 4th opens wide without regulation - I remember burning like a sun, but then after some time I burnt out. After that I was often bullied and pushed around, wasn't able to make decisions for myself. But nice side effect of NEVER getting headaches, which presumably is related to not having those excesses of pent up qi - any of my excesses related to hun were explored in my imagination, outside of my body. I've experienced hangovers, but this seems a bit different. When in high school sometimes my mother and I would have a disagreement (she never gave in) and I could get pushed into something like anger, so I would just walk off and around the block, and then I'd be fine and was ready to move on. Wood energy is also associated with the hun, which is also associated with dreaming and vision. All in all it seems something related to the hun spirit is the issue with aphantasia. Oh and @Jeff, feel free to do whatever / share whatever. My sense is that I am able to work in these energy centers related to vision more and more, but need a lot more refining and gaining experience on how they operate rather than trying to push the energy I am used to through them. I think I need a lot more work with inviting the various shen back into the body now that I am taking back over the 3rd chakra regulation of energy and creating a home/field for the higher vibration energies again. I've started to connect this to the energy gate between the shoulder blades called "spirit gate" - when the shen is able to reside here, I am able to act and react from a more stabilized perspective without feeling the need to move out of the way of things coming to me. Shen/spirit likes stillness and all that. Once the shen is relaxed and in place here, I'm getting that it is more centered and one is less easily pushed around.

The "widget" added to the bottom there only has permission options for who can view it, no settings. Many things are extensible by addons/plugins, however plugins tend to have inferior code security, frequently call resources in non efficient manners, require extra work for upgrading, may not always be maintained beyond a year or two, and can introduce bugs when the main software upgrades. Alexa still going strong with 550+ hits in the past 30 minutes. That seems to be when the Online Users age out.

So it appears that we can't really do anything about the multiple users-per-ip thing, although we can hide the number of guests from displaying. Also, it appears that whenever there are "hundreds of guests" it means we are getting scanned by a bot. These bots may be friendly or not - lots of spiders out there crawling the entire internets. Tonight I've seen the baidu.com search engine crawling us and over the past 4 hours amazon's alexa has been crawling us. Couldn't sleep, so good time to work on more server optimizations. Last time I focused on how code is run in the web-server and php-engine. This time I focused on database optimizations, switching the remaining tables from myisam to innodb, which lives more in ram, runs better on more recent mysql software versions, and is faster when writing to tables often (like we do with our posts/likes/edits/etc). Still getting crawled by alexa, but speeds seem slightly improved now that more of the database is loading from RAM/cache. In general, these optimizations aren't strictly speed-geared. Speed on a server without much traffic has a lot to deal with how well the code itself is designed. These optimizations are designed for more "industrial-stability," to let the server run under higher volumes of traffic more efficiently, without increasing risk of the server crashing and causing as little slow-down as possible. I'll continue to monitor the RAM usage and ensure we are in a good place, but that's about all I have planned server-wise.

Certainly, the techinique I am speaking of relies not just on the mind, but on use of the body. This practice I have been taught is used here in standing meditation, but is also integrated into spiritual martial arts, the emphasis on a combination of movement within stillness to cultivate formless by use of form. First the body is emptied, then used as catalyst to empty the mind. Yes, it is not entirely clear to me yet. However what I speak of in my last post is only related to the principle of fire and emptiness. The hidden pre-heavenly yang is more related to the principle of water. Using principles of both water and fire together appears to be important. Some traditions may only work with emptiness - in Buddhism I sense that at least those practices of Tummo are also working with the principle of the hidden yang found within water. In his commentary to the Qiaoyao ge, Liu Yiming writes: "Even if you bring the cultivation of your ancestral Xing to achievement, if it does not go through refinement in the great fire of the furnace, it is Yin and it is not Yang." (Translation by Fabrizio Pregadio in note 2 to chapter 5 of his Cultivating the Tao.) While it seems clear that the yang within the yin, as well as refining yin ling, are two aspects specifically focused upon in daoist neidan that may be neglected in practices solely focused upon emptiness, it is not entirely clear to me that these are related to the same principle as I portray them here.

Thank you, I think this is well said, and is very worthy of deeper exploration. For me, there are times when what I follow is the separation of hun and po that leads away from spiritual integration. This is the following of desires and is a dynamic carried well by hexagram 54, seeking the real within the false. And then there are other times when what I follow is that which leads toward humility, peace, and harmony. These moments do not arise from desire, but from natural glimpses into deeper balance. They will arise when I am in a crowd waiting for something and I have nothing better to, and I reach to impulsively massage a sore muscle. have done physical labor or exercise with sincerity and whole-hearted-ness to the point where my ego is dissolved. have managed to eat not too much, not too little. when I walk through the woods, let go of my thoughts and come into resonance with the trees. have any occasion to explore humility. And so on. This is the principle of hexagram 17, following: a path of summoning and absorbing the true yang. This is the principle of using lead to control mercury. This is also the principle of cleanliness. When we only follow desire, the hun listens with the senses and engages in external activities, which create dirt the po absorbs, growing heavier. The hun continues to be stimulated by the senses and the po continues to do it's best to hold onto things. They separate, each growing more distant and less interested in or able to participate with the other. In our every day lives, this is like eating food on plates, which become dirty. Then we leave and come back. Then we shed our dirty clothes and go to sleep, and repeat. If we take no time to clean these things, it is not long at all before our home is quite a mess and we don't want to be there. The hun dislikes dealing with responsibility, dislikes the unclean, wants to fly away to the next thing. However, I assume that we all have some relationship with the importance of cleanliness. We know what it feels like to feel good after taking a shower or bath. We know the difference in feeling between wearing clean clothes and dirty clothes. We know the difference in feeling between spending time in a messy, dirty bedroom with dirty sheets, clothes scattered all over the floor with dirty dishes, etc, and a clean room with clean sheets on the bed and nothing on the floor. It is when we make things dirty that we cause an increase in separation between hun and po. It is when we make things cleaner that we cause an increase in the integration between hun and po. This increase in integration is like a summoning. When everything is clean and in its place, and we have shed what we do not need, we are creating and openness to things that like cleanliness. Earlier in my life, I started noticing a pattern, where before I would do my homework, I would want to clean myself and clean my bedroom first. Then I started noticing that lots of other people had the same pattern. Now I recognize that, when we finally turn back toward responsibility, we have a barrier to doing it until we first clean our space and take care of other responsibilities we've been neglecting - take care of things that push us away from doing integration work in our space. It is difficult to focus on sitting still and doing homework when the hun is being pushed away by our body odor and the disarray of our space. When we keep moving forward from distraction to distraction, it is easy to ignore what we leave in our wake. When we finally turn back, what needs to be done is clear. It is the same with spiritual integration work - before the true work can begin, time needs to be spent "cleaning and preparing the internal space." Perhaps it should be said, that some will cultivate spiritual "bliss", but rather than facing the shadows within and cleaning them up, they will simply dump their bliss by the wayside and continue the forward momentum. This may lead to experience in cultivating some types of spirituality, but it also neglects integration. These are basic principles that many people understand. They are not "neidan," yet they do follow the same principles, if only on more surface layers. And yet there is the well known saying cleanliness is next to godliness. The principle of cleanliness can indeed take one spiritually far, and yet we must not forget that an OCD person who is always searching for excuses to clean things is also not allowing the principle of openness to operate. Just like most people have a balanced understanding of how to launder their clothing at the appropriate times, such that they are not always focusing their efforts at cleaning, but also not running out of clean clothes to wear, this principle of balance can be applied spiritually as well. There is time for the inner cleansing work, and there is the time to reap the benefits of the inner cleansing work. This can be in the direction of creation/separation, as many currently operate, but this can also be in the direction of internal cultivation - whereby after we work on cleansing, we maintain inwardly focused, let our mind rest and allow deeper spiritual integration to arise. No, this is not neidan. This is merely stating that yes we do understand how to grasp the principle of doing integration work in our modern daily lives, that yes we do understand the importance of it and many of us feel good when we do it. By connecting this principle into the common person's budding awakening to things of a spiritual nature, we can begin to nudge the human collective more toward working on the operation of spiritual integration. This is the operation of hexagram 53, gradual progress: restoring the precelestial while in the postcelestial. If we sincerely practice the operation of gradual progress, and embrace this as an integral facet of modern society, I believe some may indeed naturally be drawn to touch upon the operations of neidan. The operation of gradual progress hinges upon the middle two lines, where one first is able to resist the brigands (the urge to use up one's energy/resources), and second one is able to settle, even in an inappropriate place (the willingness to return inwardly and cultivate emptiness, even though one may not have the ideal conditions for doing so). What is more important, our reputation or our shen? What is more valuable, body or wealth? Which is most worrying, gain or loss? Excess frugality leads to squandering waste. Hoarding leads to paranoia and theft. To be content with what you have and what you are Guards against confusion. To cease with sufficiency avoids exhaustion. Those who practice "contentment and sufficiency" long endure. dao de jing 44, tl Liu Ming

I have not had any issues using Firefox (on OSX). Please be sure to completely clear your cache, as cached data from before the upgrade may still be stored in your browser and cause confusing seeming problems. CTRL+SHIFT+DELETE is the common command to open the clear cache dialogue.

Found it in the block settings. Should be there for everyone (except guests and unapproved members) now I think.

When one sees from all perspectives, what spoken truth is not simultaneously a lie? From zhuangzi, tl Brook Ziporyn:

One of my favorite. Once, hiking with a group down an experimental path somewhere south of little switzerland, we came out upon a narrow ridge covered with blooming mountain laurels. There was a steep drop to either side with beautiful views, and the entire stretch was covered in white. It felt like walking through a cloud. Since then this has become one of my favorite friends. Just love the delicate and refined flowers, compassionate leaves and hardy, flakey stems and branches.

I've rolled out a bunch of performance tweaks, figured out what went wrong last time. Hopefully things are a little smoother and faster load-wise now, than they were since we switched. I think the old version may have been a little faster, though we are also all-ssl now too, which is nice. Also system reserves the right to believe that 100 page views by a guest on a single IP address could possibly be 100 individual users , so our "Online Users" page is likely off by ~500 (right now it says 600+). I've got a support ticket open about this.

I was once employed as a wilderness therapy instructor. "Wilderness therapy" was explained as a "bootcamp alternative" for mostly adolescents who had parents who could afford to intervene using force and money to send their children away before they got into trouble with the law. Many of them were there for drugs and beligerant behavior, but there was a wide range of emotions. Now, as a wandering daoist, I think the model might be one of action without action, interference without engaging - responding to the invitation to "face-off" without ever looking the situation directly in the eyes. Sorta like dodging a blow by bending over to tie a loose shoe lace. However, when we are in a role directly responsible (by social or legal contract) for responding to instigation directly, there are still cards to play. And even when the instigation is direct, misdirection may still be utilized carefully. With these youth, many of them would try to start fights, try to engage in power struggles with the figures of authority. As a model directly compared to boot camps, I was first in love with how the setting deep in the woods, without any personal belongings or distractions of modern society so cleanly prevented many coping mechanisms from being engaged in. Naturally this led to built-up pressures, and the staff took the brunt of them. We were taught to essentially lead to emptiness, by describing the situation we were in not in authoritative terms, but in natural terms. Our role as staff was not as "prison guards," but as shepherds - we were there to protect the safety of the entire group. This primary role was not something easily argued against. The rest was natural consequences. So we would have a student face off against a staff member, and the staff would respectfully listen to the student's concerns, and explain simply and calmly, that, certainly the student was welcome to throw their pack down and refuse to hike, but there was no water source nearby, so we were going to have some trouble with being thirsty and would not be able to cook our dinner. Furthermore we might be on a ridge and could get struck by lightning, and it would get cold as night fell and the winds picked up. There were many "consequences" in our arsenal, but the key was more in how we used them. The key was in how we held space with the escalation. It is remarkably easy to become defensive and reactionary when someone engages in a fight with you, and very difficult to hold yourself open and calm. But when you do, that open, solid, grounded field helps to stabilize and ground their own field, deflating their attempt at escalation energetically. There are other keys, like avoiding facing off directly opposite the person, but turning at different angles, ideally coming to face the same direction as them and holding a similar posture, increasing the energetic resonance and making it more difficult to be perceived as an enemy. They want something to attack, but if you take away the edges they can grasp at, what is left to justify spending so much energy on something so futile? I was not very good at any of this, but some instructors were quite adept, easily de-escalating students in situations that were incredibly chaotic. I developed so much respect for them - but it was largely in their great courage to be calm and accepting, a pillar of equanimity, never betraying a change from a peaceful state, never deviating from confident calm replies, never becoming emotionally engaged. Yes, I think empathy is a good description. For my own experience, I recall getting into screaming matches and chasing a young woman down a mountain to watch her smash the groups expensive water filter with rocks, only to realize by the end of the week I had actually reached a deeper place in her than anyone else, because she knew I cared and connected to her struggle. The struggle wasn't with the group, it was internal, and likely related to her family situation... but by holding space with her I broke through... not enough to do anything as by the next shift she was gone, but for me an important lesson remains. The path is ever right before us, and sometimes we engage and exchange ourselves with others. Sometimes we slip past untouched even as we change everything invisibly. How can we ever know how much we engage in, every moment, well enough to make choices about it all? We can only set the intention to be sincere, to hold our integrity, to follow our inner heart. Beyond what any teacher says, I feel something deep inside that calls me onward. There is no right or wrong, I just struggle again, yet again, to follow that way.

My bad... stuck my head under the hood and worked on improving the performance... only the new engine had some fuel injection issues and took a moment to sort it out. I'll do the rest of this work later. Just want to make things a little snappier, cause they can be. Sorry for not being able to test these things separately first.

Often in class, our teacher will speak a few words, here and there. Having attended class for some years, from time to time we learn that he has things he wishes to say, but is prevented from saying. It is as though he is blocked from speaking, unless that which is spoken allows leading to the right place. When it is not, my sense is that speaking anyway would break apart that individual's whole-ness / integrity. Thus, I think of it as comprehension, more than justification. When he thought to speak, it opened an ocean of doubt. This ocean occurred naturally, energetically, to create the pause, the barrier of going beyond. In examining this barrier, he discovered he could not go past it, and the reason why. In our class, sometimes speaking truth to those who are not ready, will create greater polarities in those minds, causing greater ripples. Yet the intention is to lead to emptiness. Thus, when the truth conflicts with the intention, with the integrity, a barrier is naturally created. Without seeing the future or needing to comprehend what exactly is taking place, one is prevented from acting in a way that would violate the truth. This goes beyond mere words of truth.

I know dawei made some editor changes yesterday. This is something that may have been cached and did not update until now.

My sense is that it ignites one's fire. When this fire is lit, it feels good to some, not so good to others, all based on how one's "fuel" is situated when the fire is lit. I'd guess what is burned is what is available, but this also works in the precelestial side of things, which is why it effects the mingmen. At first, you might have a lot of shen available for burning, and may get an experience full of insights and very psychic seeming. But if this shen is not cultivated and replenished, then next time one smokes, it will work on burning up denser energies. At first one may not be hungry at all, may not even be able to fathom eating, may not even be able to speak or communicate, because one is overwhelmed with the effects of massively igniting the shen and/or the purest available forms of qi one has. But as these types of qi are not available, we may begin to start burning up our other types of qi, like food qi wei qi, etc.... this isn't an exact depiction, but a general idea of what may be happening. This can explain why people will get munchies and can eat like bottomless pits, because as soon as sources of qi enter the body in the form of food, they are combusted and used as fuel. Each of our organs have their own particular manifestation of shen, and collectively will have established certain patterns of balance and imbalance. Very similar to how we all have different levels of emotional stability, confidence, fear, empathy, insecurity, happiness, righteousness, and so on. When these pre-existing shaping of energies ignite, they will directly impact the flavor of one's "high." This is why some people get anxiety attacks, while others have the confidence to work or study. It is related to the ignition of the patterns of energy we are already holding. But as the resources available for burning dwindle, we are left with burning coarser and coarser types of qi. The food qi we intake and burn up will carry patterns related to what we're eating. If it is snack food full of processed toxins and refined sugars, this will begin to influence the flavor our our "high," as will the types of energies of people in our surroundings. What we are burning may not necessarily be "ours" so much any more. This can lead to the inability of our small-intestine to manage its energetic responsibility to regulate the purity of the fire. The small intestine's role in managing the purity of the fire is to help the heart fire be protected and reach a greater sense of peace rather than oscillating between extremes of bliss and not-bliss. So when the more pure types of qi available are burned up and we are relying on coarser types of qi as fuel to keep the fire blazing strong, our ability to keep this fire pure becomes lacking, and poison fire is allowed to enter the heart. This leads to deviant practices, perversion, selfishness, insensitivity, erratic behavior, and so on. This should be somewhat evident to any who have not just attempted to smoke a little every day, but who have explored trying to get stoned every day or multiple times a day, for months at a time, beyond the days of their youth. In youth, there are many great reserves of energy available, so it may not seem evident that one is burning away one's stores of longevity. However, that is not to say that this cannot be used to great healing effect. One issue is that a foreign substance is in charge of regulating the fire. We don't have an easy time of putting it out until the substance(s) triggering it have been metabolized. So the more we intake, the more we become locked into the ride - it is not uncommon for someone to get tired of maintaining the mental alertness necessary to stay conscious or focused, and to fall asleep. This is why many also have trouble doing activities that require precise mental focus, like math. These things require clear thinking, and it is difficult to think clearly when there is a spiritual fire raging inside. However, we must also remember that spirit likes stillness and emptiness. The more calm and pure we can make our fire, through stilling our body and emptying the noise of our minds, the more easy it will be to maintain a sense of calm alertness, where we may also begin to navigate working with this energy rather than burning it away. Because the fire tends to be shaped based upon how we have prepared the fuel, we can prepare the fuel in advance by cleansing ourselves, eating clean foods, meditating, doing qigong, and the fire will be more pure when it ignites, and we may even be able to integrate it within the body and do work with it - it all depends on how much our mind gets in the way. We must remember that the average person's thinking mind is like a big clumsy oaf when it comes to the navigation of spiritual energy. This is again why many people have very different experiences. I would say that yes, this substance might be very useful to help one feel energies, especially the more spiritual and mysterious energies. And yet it only takes a tiny amount. If one takes this into meditation and stillness, one may find that just a little is in fact more than enough, as once the fire is going, when one nurtures it with care it will grow, yet also be more easily guided. Further, I would advise that this is the type of thing one needs to accomplish on one's own, through diligent practice where one cultivates, purifies, refines one's qi until it naturally ignites. Just like starting a real fire. If we do not use artificial tools, this can be very difficult. Flint and steel is one method, where if one has a material that is incredibly dry and able to smoulder from getting a spark to land upon it, and then this materiel is placed upon some very dry wood fiber or paper, with careful coaxing the smouldering can spread to actually igniting into a tiny flame, which can then be carefully coaxed into igniting a small twig, which burns long enough to ignite a small stick, and so on. Yet we still start here with a spark. Following other principles, we can achieve ignition by using heat and purity. With bow drilling, we spin a pointy stick against a flat stick - the friction between them produces little fibers, that build up into a pile in the notch cut out of the flat stick. As this pile grows, it becomes hotter and hotter - when the heat reaches the right temperature and there is enough of the pure small fibers built up, the top of this little pile will ignite and turn into an ember, which may then be very carefully taken to nurture some small sticks or wood chips as above. Yet it is very difficult to create the circumstances where the pile gets big and hot enough to ignite - often one gets tired and needs a break, which causes the heat to dissipate - it requires continues work, continuous focus. Yet this work and focus must be relaxed and refined and properly managed - if it is too stiff and rigid, too forcefully controlled, bad things can happen as well. These are all parallels to energy work. The difficulty and care that must be taken in cultivating one's fire is entirely missed when one ignites it using external means. We should remember here the principle of the fire trigram from the bagua. One yin line inside of two yang lines. This yin line represents the true yin, true emptiness, while the yang lines represent how this fuel of emptiness becomes burned away by the expression of consciousness through the thinking mind. When something reaches ignition and begins to burn (naturally or artificially), we should turn around so that it cannot simply burn, emptying ourselves and perhaps plasmifying this fire so that it turns to spiritual light instead. Continuing to look within using emptiness and stillness, completely surrendered, we hold the space for this light to stabilize and become clear - to become absolute clarity. This is one way of utilizing this medicine for spiritual progress rather than spiritual abuse. As with all things, proper balance is required and extremes should be avoided. Anything that takes us away from where we naturally reside is a type of extreme - the goal is to be able to naturally and effortlessly be able to reach these places permanently, without dependency on external devices. These are just my own personal experiences. Personally I do not think this ally is good for what I need right now and I find stability in working with the fire I create on my own, as I am more easily able to respect how difficult it is to cultivate, and am able to work with it better without going to extremes. Please realize, this fire connects the manifest with the mysterious. It has the potential to either lead from one extreme of manifestation back into the mysterious, but this is a difficult path, requiring stillness, openness, and ego-less-ness. This is why some have said that getting "high" like this mimics something that happens naturally at advanced levels of neigong. For many it seems nice for it to cause relaxation and to burn away things that were causing trouble, but if the fire is not contained through emptiness, it is consuming important energies that are difficult to replenish. These are my opinions that have arrived through observation and study. I am sure they have much room for refinement, as likely seen by any with more experience in understanding classical chinese medicinal theory than myself. But I hope these understandings may be of use and help to some here. Blessings.

This Rabbit Hole and That Rabbit Hole are two different rabbit holes. You think Rabbits are content with only one hole?

https://www.thedaobums.com/profile/1892-gendao/?do=content&type=forums_topic_post&change_section=1 Edit: So it seem the search feature has changed. I don't know how to use it any better than the rest of you, so please don't direct any complaints at me (at least not if you'd like my help figuring stuff out). Looks like member searches now need to use the member search feature, which direct to the member's profile page, where it is very simple to locate their content. Click find content. And I arrived at the link I posted at the beginning of this post by clicking "posts" here.

Not sure why it would be different for you. What do you mean by "a multiple choice of 3"? If you don't explain what is happening, I can't help. I hear you saying the extra precautions are unnecessary. I do not see any settings about toggling those off.

We found they were disabled by default, but are enabled now. Do you not see them? I see yours.

Hmmm... I just tried to test this by ignoring Marblehead: And then un-ignoring him: Which only prompted to make sure I really wanted to stop ignoring him: And that was it.... so I think maybe we were trying to do this from different places. Interesting that we can choose to only ignore a user's signature. That seems useful.

OK, well I realized I can create a custom activity stream and add it to the menu, so now it is easier for those who don't want to mess with the settings on their own: This new Topics menu item can also be set as default to show up in the prominent location. Hope this is helpful to those accustomed to the old behavior.

I played around with the "My Activity Streams" and "Create New Stream" like so: Setting: Content Types to "Topics", which may be further refined to specific forums if desired. Default View to "Condensed", which will not include posts, only titles and most recent poster. Which now looks like this: And this can be set as one's "Default Stream," which I'm not sure exactly what it does, but it "also" puts a link to the stream in a prominent position that is clickable from any page on the site: Edit: I've also now added this "Topic" stream to the main menu for all users, see my next post below.

Really? Hmm.... I had this happen a couple of times and thought it was because we had enabled CloudFlare caching to help speed things up. I disabled it and haven't had this happen to me since. Please make sure to flush your browser caches and restart them, as it is possible there is still something trying to load from CloudFlare... and please let me know if that still continues to happen. @Brian You too. I will not be as available over the next few days but will try to check in a couple times a day.

Hi @Spotless - this was not a choice we had to change things. We in the staff are discovering how to navigate the new changes just as much as everyone else. This is the after-effect of migrating our 2-year-old software that was no longer supported, into the new, completely rewritten software. The developers who write this software decided to make this rewrite, and many things have changed. We waited a long time before migrating/upgrading, but did so because the old software was beginning to have issues, and would randomly go down without reason. In terms of the All Activity feed, it is possible you are able to use the Custom Activity feed to tailor this to your needs, I'm not sure as I haven't played with this much. Brian left a post explaining that more here and here.