simply puzzled

Thanks for the youtube video - the chanting was absolutely beautiful. I love to go to temples to Guan Yin, and there are always people (mostly women) chanting to her like that, often while holding incense in their hands. If you want to be extra authentic, you can give boxes of asparagus juice to your statue.

I've been living in Taiwan for the past year, teaching English and working on my Taijiquan, and at the end of this teaching year, I'm going to (hopefully) be heading back to the states. If everything works out, I'm going to be blessed with about a month between when I need to leave and when I need to arrive, and I'd like to go to China for a month to study at a kung fu academy. I found a few on Wudang Mountain, just because I think it would be fun to say I've studied kung fu on Wudang Mountain, but I don't really have a good way to judge them via the internet. So, is anyone familiar with any good schools in China that teach Taiji, Qi Gong, and/or Kung Fu, and where would you go if you had a month?

Thanks for the advice guys. I think I'll take the advice and just stay in Taiwan. I just thought it would be fun to check China off of my list of countries to see and spend some time learning the Tao. It's sad to see it's in such a bad state there. And yeah, exorcist, I'll keep working on my Mandarin. xD

One of the things I have found interesting about studying shamanism around the world is that there are remarkable commonalities between them. There is one or more underworlds below us where most people go when they die, and there are one or more heavens above us where specially revered elders or gods or anthropomorphic being representing natural forces live. There is some sort of pole or tree connecting them, and it's the job of the shaman to move between them. But there are also important differences. Very important ones. And these are not the sort of theological disputes between Lutherans and Episcopalians on the nature of the priesthood. Shamans, quite literally, live and work in these realms and move between them every day. They are very, very real. So, in one sense, you could say that the number of heaven realms is completely arbitrary, because some shamans work in one and others have seven and other have more or fewer. And, in another sense, they really aren't arbitrary, because for each shaman, working in that world, it's exactly how many heavenly planes exist. If you were to ask a ceremonial magician to map out the body, he'd probably draw a figure with energy points corresponding to a Jewish mystical diagram called "The Tree of Life." This system isn't new. It was developed over thousands of years, and it doesn't align well with the chakras. And, having worked in that system, I can say that it functions very, very well. So, I get what the person you are responding to was saying: in one sense it's arbitrary because different systems seem to each work. In another sense though, simply deciding tomorrow that my energy center was in my left eye would probably yield poor results. Systems like Qigong and Ceremonial Magic seem to wear a groove in the Universe. Someone finds a path, and they get disciples to follow them, and that whole gang tramples through the universe, breaking down the plants and eroding the soil until pretty soon, it creates a groove that you can slip into and follow. And once you're in that groove, all sorts of things start to happen that are really real for the people there in that place. What you discover is no longer arbitrary. Just my two cents.

Peace? What have the warriors brought of us peace? Armies create a cycle of violence. There were factions waging war for centuries in Europe until they finally took sides in an epic conflict known as WWI. The victors took the spoils of war and forced Germany into a humiliating position until nationalism took hold and gave rise to WWII. The victors again squared off to take the spoils of war, and we ended up in the cold war. We funded insurgencies in Afghanistan against the Russians that gave us modern-day Al Qaeda. We sponsored the Iranian Shah, and then the Iraqis against the new Islamic Republic of Iran when the dictator we propped up failed, and the "oops" maybe we should have done that so lets invade Iraq. We know how that worked out. Of course, the violence seeps out like an infection that spreads. Now that we've invaded Iraq, there are people in Yemen angry so lets go bomb them. This provides Al Qaeda with great recruitment opportunities, and they have more popular support than ever. We're now seeing in the bombs on the UPS planes the fruits of our actions in Yemen. Of course, sometimes there are people powerful enough to break the cycles. If you had told someone a hundred years ago that India would be in the state that it is today, they would have laughed at you. They would have told you that India could never succeed the way it has without the colonial armies unifying it. And then along came Gandhi. He said there was a better way than bloody revolution to build a state, that it could be done peacefully. Today, India is not perfect, but it is a model for what can be accomplished without guns or bombs. If you want to join the military, it's your decision, but there is no peace to be had at the barrel of a gun. Our actions are killing civilians, radicalizing the Muslim world against us, and creating more cycles of violence that will repeat over and over and over.

This isn't Daoist, but in western magic we do something called "shielding". Basically, you're creating a barrier between you and other people so that they cannot steal your energy. We do this in addition to, not in place of, grounding and centering. There are a lot of methods; here is mine: Ground and center. Now, imagine a ball of energy in your center. Now imagine this ball slowly expanding. You are *not* imagining your center expanding, you are imagining a ball of energy *from* your center. Allow that ball to slowly expand until it surrounds you like a forcefield. Take a moment and know that this field will expand and contract around you as you. Swing out your arm, and the field stretches like latex. Then, take a moment and visualize this field acting as a gate. Positive, loving energy flows in and out, and negative, draining energy is repelled. Do this for a few moments at the end of your meditations until it builds it up in your mind and you'll only have to think about it occasionally. This won't repel someone with greater energy ability than you. I've had people do this weird thing where they find the vibration of my shield and then just flow through it. It also has to be up before someone starts draining you. Once you feel it, it's too late to throw up the shield, rather like trying to close the barn doors while the horses are leaving. But, if you keep it "up", it's good for blocking out the day to day draining of energy.

I'm sad that soon it will be too cold to practice my Taiji outdoors barefoot. There is nothing like feeling the ground beneath your feet as your practice.

I own his material on Chin Na too, and it's well worth the price. For others that aren't familiar, he uses a lot of White Crane Chin Na to reconstruct what we've lost in Taiji. Very good stuff.

I got my 5-pack in the mail today after working off of the Vol I from Netflix for a bit. It's really a great qigong.

I have a friend that used to be a nutritionist for Olympic marathon runners. While I know you're not running at that level, one of the things she said she gave them prior to runs were flax seeds. They have a lot of calories, a high percentage of fat (oil), and they are very light and easy to digest so they don't make you feel full when you're running. Maybe try a handful of flax seeds before you go out?

I, for one, had a lot of fun learning to turn transparent. = )

I would like to make a formal apology. I have devoted myself to the art of kunlun and now realize the truth of being able to make oneself transparent. As evidence, I have a photograph of myself as proof.

I have a DSLR and tripod checked out from work for a project I was working on. I think I can recreate them. If I do, if I post photos that look the same as the ones posted here, will you admit that these are forgeries?

Hey Terry, After reading this thread, I got Vol. I a little bit ago, and I've been performing the exercises. I really, really enjoy FP compared to some of the other forms of Qigong I've experimented with. I injured my neck in an auto accident years ago. Though my Taiji helps, FP brings that mixture of pain and release that you get from an incredibly good massage, and once I'm done, it feels 100% better. Tonight, I even made my roommate do the exercises with me since her lower back has been killing her for days, and afterwards, she was almost completely better. Thanks so much not only for the videos but for spending so much time on this thread. It is truly appreciated.

I see what you mean. I still believe they were retouched to clean them up, add in a bit of an aura effect, etc, but moving at a high speed with a slow shutter makes more sense than the multiple shots combined with gradients. Thank you for the explanation.

I wrote to the website that the original poster linked to: Primordial Alchemist.

The response to my request for originals: I am sorry that you are spending your time trying to de-bunk photos. If you want the original you need to ask Kan. For those who do their practice and have meet Kan they know that they are real. We do not have to justify anything for you or for the tao bums who have nothing better to do but create drama for people, talk bad about people and what they teach. Believe what you will and please do not contact us any further on this subject. We are not here to make people believe in something or not, nor to make people accept or not accept, these things are normal effects of spiritual practices and many people throughout the world have these same things happening to themselves or others they know. If your seeking truths then do your own practices and look within, after opening yourself you may find your own answers then you will see some form of outer manifestation occur. Good luck on your journey, and one day meet kan, CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: Unless expressly stated otherwise, this message is confidential and may be privileged. It is intended for the addressee(s) only. Access to this E-mail by anyone else is unauthorized. If you are not an addressee, any disclosure or copying of the contents of this E-mail or any action taken (Or not taken) in reliance on it is unauthorized and may be unlawful. Unless otherwise indicated, it contains information that is confidential, privileged or exempt from disclosure under applicable law. If you have received it in error, please notify the sender of the error and delete the message.

Hey Vortex. I went ahead and used GIMP (probably the program used to doctor this photo) to crop and resize one of my photos, analyzed it, and post the results here. You can see the difference in the results returned - namely, you see evidence of compression but *not of doctoring*. No, it's really not. To someone like myself who has both 'shopped and looked at other people's 'shops literally hundreds of times, there is a lot of evidence. Moreover, you can resize it down, but that can't fool the algorithms used by detection software. Yes. Now explain to me how a 3" high zafu can cast a shadow that goes 2' up a wall without a light at the base of it, and we'll be all set, except for the brushed in details, algorithms, hard-edged details of multiple people that look exactly like photos of multiple shots put together with gradients added and opacities reduced, and other little things that look "off" to my eye but I don't know how to put into words. I mean, I don't want to be rude, but please believe me when I say that I really know what I'm doing. If we want to be serious about mystical claims, we need to be skeptics. I'm not a materialist. I do believe in deities, qi, astral travel, and many other things that science, not just the science we have today but science as a discipline, is unequipped to handle. But, if we go down that road, we need to be intensely skeptical about the claims made. And looking at these photos, I see absolutely no reason to think they are genuine. Even though I think I've showed that these are fake, I think the burden of proof is really on the people taking the photos to show they aren't. For example, even a $100 camera can take quite good video, and video is much harder to fake. It takes more powerful computers, more powerful software, much more education, and much more time than 'shopping a still. If these are real, why not post videos? They're already using flash which would support it. Why not have The Amazing Randi come and take pictures and get $1 million for the trouble? Why not at least post .raw files for the world to see? And I think the answer is obvious: because these are fakes. Because this is just one more carni looking to lead the credulous from the path of true Dao.

I also ran the photo through a program that detects editing mathematically. It came to the same conclusion I did. You can see the results here: Results

It could. That still doesn't explain why the aura looks exactly like an Adobe Photoshop paintbrush. I've examined more photos than I can count, and I've never seen an area that looks like that on a non-shopped photograph. If he's willing to send me all of the photos, uncompressed for facebook, I can look at them and do a more thorough analysis. If these really are real, I'll apologize, but I've spend some time looking at the ones on facebook blown-up, and I firmly believe these are fake.

These pictures are, without a doubt, 'shopped. I can tell from some of the pixels and having seen quite a few shops in my time. I got this one off of his facebook: The shopper was good, but he messed up on this one. Check the guy's shadow to the bottom left where the floor meets the wall. There is a shadow that was put in which hits the wall and slightly overlaps with his clothes. If you zoom in, it's a perfect 3 pixel feather created by using a brush set with a low opacity. I'd guess 40%. The whole area is very suspicious. If you look at the shadow he casts, it's completely obscured by this aura. If the photograph were real, a semi-opaque aura should show what's behind it, not obscure it. Also, looking at the different geometries of the body, it looks like they probably combined several pictures of him to create this effect. The area the aura occupies probably originally had a body in it, and they did sloppy clean-up work to 'shop it out. This guy is a liar and a fraud.

I've been doing Yang-style Taijiquan for a few years (following a decade or so of karate and a couple years of JKD). Recently, I've become interested in trying Zhan Zhuang. I've been studying under a teacher, but recently I've moved away, and I'm looking for something to push the boundaries of my practice while I am no longer being literally pushed. Does anyone have any advice - good postures to start out with, training schedules, etc? It would be greatly appreciated.

Quoted for Truth

Does anyone but me remember back in the 1990s when "Master" Li was going on about aliens who wanted to harm us and gave us computers and modern machinery to enslave us? Here's an old time interview: Interview. The guy is just off his rocker, and unfortunately, a lot of it is getting sanitized now so to make his marketing scheme more attractive to a larger audience.

Each separate being in the universe returns to the common source. Returning to the source is serenity. - Laozi I'm very sorry for the loss of your son. My deepest condolences.