Rocky Lionmouth

That, is very cool. You’ve mentioned this before on here? It’s familiar somehow, had forgotten! War Chief and Peace Chief, their jobs incredibly complex as the current state of things and their ongoing succession and recurrence intrinsical to life i guess? Lucky to learn from an inheritor, feel my benign envy

Starman, thanks, i hear you and can appreciate what you point towards. Sounds like your Warrior is close to my idea of a True Person. I believe right and wrong to be not so much in the eye of the beholder but dependent on the agent and what their purpose and sets of specifics require with respect to their environment and it’s inhabitants. However i do not believe a warrior in a garden is preferrable to a gardener in a war. Their merit is equal and their virtue and honesty is the true divider, but i think we’re basically saying the same thing anyway, now i’m just enjoying the look of my own letters Thanks for elucidating, my hunger is sated.

Dawei my friend thank you! First link seems to be broken or something? I read the wiki article before posting here, the sources referred to weren’t retirevable, sadly. onward upward.

Ah, me like. Balancing and adjustment and liberation in the practical sense! I had totally forgot about epicureans!

Double post. As apology i offer this:

Pleasure seems to need inspection. Parttaking of subjective pleasure could just as well mean deriving pleasure from keeping oneself strictly balanced or denying oneself indulgences. Dominating gives sense of pleasure in the moment, wether self or others or somethings. I think a dedicated hedonist would have to work very hard to maximize pleasure, no matter what that hedonist finds in fact pleasurable right? A dedicated Taoist might be called a true hedonist even, if their pleasure and satisfaction are maximized by employing their skills and understanding for the increased alignment of everything towards the Tao. I’m not arguing semantics i think, i’m just mulling over what pleasure means to me and what connotations the word and concept has, the first thing flashing through my mind was Hedonism-bot from Futurama, lots of icecream and naked people engaged in all sorts of excesses for the sake of excess. But thats a popularized image, external and i’m not even sure it’s accurate, i have spent too little time studying Hedonism to be confident, but it always seemed to hide a deep meaning under the hyperbolic surface. A little like ”Do what thou willt shall be the whole of the law.” seems VERY practical and lassiez-faire egotistic entitlement at first glance but when observed it starts to expand to cover a lot of responsibility and awarness of ones relation to everything... at least to me* But on a more personal level and on a more distanced level pleasure strikes me as an umbrella that covers emotion and sensation and thought, broad as it is. A stern and selfpunitive ascetic could be a hedonist, as much as a decadent indulger of debauchery. Or am i missing the point? *any attempts to dress me in perennialism based on this will be vehemently ignored

Strength sounds a lot like resilience and courage combined. Perhaps integrity or honesty relate, hard to say. Power is the ”je ne sais qui” to achieve a certain result from what is available and applicable in a given context, never mind if the desired outcome is realized. Power is also the ”JNSQ” to adapt and change/persevere if result isn’t realized. I wanna say Virtue (De?) could be described with such a word as Power. Force is technical and quantifiable. Its origin is Power and it’s product is effect, like in Watts if you will. Force is what is necessary or maybe a proposition, that can or cannot be refused. Strenght relates to Force by honesty and resilience, if not outright integrity. Reaching out with strenght has a certain force, which is primarily (in my mind at least) a gift of power towards somebody and ideally does not constitute any loss or expense. Even if that reaching out with strenght is the force of an actual agression it is still a sharing of the power to change a situation in either way. ”Proper” (sage-level) use of Power (De?) however would be done as such that it is not necessarily a loss of initiative or relational status. Maybe. Idk...

Power is tricky. Clarity is decietful. Fear ever more so. Reminds me of the stages of conscious vs conscious in/competence, but that model seems to be cyclic, which is the core thing about learning right? I have issues with the idea of the warrior in my mind, warrior-stuff has been ruminated and reproposed to me by a lot of different and dubious sources. What is a warrior? Is being one desirable? Funnily enough i’ve been pondering that more and more while reading this neverending moder sci-fi epos (/social commentary/ridicule and grotesque interpretation of Plato, fascism, heroism etc) that is the Horus Heresy, based off a strategy figurines wargame called Warhammer 40 000 set in a grimdark future, the epic details a set of crossroads 18 different superhuman generals and their soldiers etc etc etc one of the books regarding one of these generals returns often to the point and vision that these incredible warriors will one day see war end, thus becoming obsolete if not outright undesirable because of their intrinsic warrior-ness and so the general encourages his warriors to cultivate their talents and superhuman abilities to non-warring, causing all sorts of hubbub in the ranks but the thought sticks. A warriors philosophy is the awareness of both war and not-war, that each has their context and both present issues and opportunities to deal with while they are and aren’t a reality. Plus theres all that jazz about warriors in contemporary martial arts culture that most often is, well at least to me, a pretty worn gimmick in both marketing and establishing a kind of cult-cultureor elitism. Not saying thats whats going on here Starjumper and i really appreciate this thread, i’m just curious in what this warrior means to you or others. Is the warrior desirable? What am i missing?

So i was recently introduced to a form o psychomancy that is the MBTI testing and the various classifications that it predicts and advocates. I know there is a five element person/physiology analysis method and i’ve come to understand that the basic fives can also have intermingling between them, bringing a total of (my speculation here so salts aplenty) 10 permutations of person analysis. As far as astrology is concerned it gives a four(?) variable chart counting the year, it’s element, the hour of birth and so on. But what caught me was the surprising accuracy of the statements about the group the test told me i was in, found there were even words and concepts for stuff i have done since time innumerable that others have incredible difficulty understanding. I’m still ready to dismiss it in a healthy and salty way but it’s gotten my attention. anybody see a connection Myers-Briggs and other taoist person analysis practices/systems? I’m just curious about you guyses thoughts if you’ve had any about it and if nobody bites we can trash this presto, never mind. I’m just fermenting something in my skull (haha) and idk what it is yet.

At first i was like HAHAHA LMAO and then i start thinking about it and but then it hit me that some poor Utah analyst gets paid to read the highs and lows we’ve seen or had on here and i’m back where i started but with a dash of jealousy since i do this pro bono 😂

I'm quite sure all substances that can provide or prepare the soil for insight and development are useful in moderation, provided the use is deliberate and directed towards a specific function or goal. I've personally experienced both positive and negative effects on spirituality, health and development alongside social and productive factors, all of the depending on what i thought i was trying to achieve and wether it was for exploration, self-medication or prescribed medication. Context, care, dosage and purpose are vital. I'm personally trying as hard as i can to stay away from using alcohol too much or too often because whatever beneficial effect i experience i usually overreach and then pay a disproportionate price for doing so. I think moderation and purpose is important and that its not necessarily bad nor good per se to use substances for spiritual purposes, but as with everything that has effects on us as human beings and our states of awareness and health there are risks that should not be underestimated. Especially if we speak about psychotropic effects as they can have effects on parts of us that we are unaware of and that we might have to deal with later on, to make an example: say you have great and liberating spiritual experiences while using cannabis to enhance your meditation or cultivation, but that at the same time as you unfetter your emotional energies and a little of your subconscious there could be a part of you that reinforces a pattern of negative self image without you really being in a position to notice that until later on when a bout of depressive states become especially difficult to dissolve or work through. If your problems became in part unlocked while under the influences and then awarness of that dissipated as the high passed, those problems will be hard to access without resorting to get high again. But since it's not a normalized state where we are fully in control, revisiting that could become not therapeutic but actually another round of reinforcement. I speak of this from personal experience. I used cannabis as self medication and creative agumentation and ended up feeling like shit for a long time and weed only helped making it worse in the long run. That said, i'm on a pretty multifaceted regimen of different medicinals, some of which have an effect on awareness, psychological and emotional patterns, it is beneficial still and actually vital at some points so i'm not sure if it is relevant to this thread or not... 2 cents at least?

EDIT in light of calming down a little i feel that whatever it is that you are trying to convey to me @allinone i'm hindered by a language barrier. Just reading your post straight up and down it comes off as an ad-hominem, condescending and offensive. I'm well open to having misinterpreted or critically misunderstood what you were trying to convey, but i would like to add that your delivery feels casual and disciplinary in a way i do not see any need for. but i do not care for trying to sort this out as i'm pretty convinced the effort is going to be pretty much all on my tab and nothing on yours, i cannot afford that atm nor do i wish to. Take that as you want, i'm quite done with this now. So i bow out and will stay clear of this thread and your future posts for the time being and appreciate it if you @allinone do the same.

I haven't the faintest idea what you mean. Would you mind terribly to elaborate?

I keep thinking this whole immortality thing is a shibbolet... if someone comes to you asking for the secret of immortality, this tells you something about them and what kind of motivations and issues they carry. Almost a diagnostic tool if you will This is a great thread btw, i'm really enjoying reading it and i'm particularly happy to see we're talking about the natural process of aging in terms of the treasures and the reversal of that in the same terms. Personally i felt Damos books were keen in connecting a lot of symbolisms but i keep feeling like its not saying much because of a semiotic issue: if you dont have the key of understanding the symbols and "codes" (semiotics call matters of endemic knowledge and context codes) it's either going to sound like someone talking GREAT MAGICS or perhaps logorreah. Idk, i was dissappointed because of the hype i think, it wasn't moving me. Regaining youth and reversing age seems like a matter of context. What do youths do? They grow, learn, discover, develop, investigate, exercise their flexibility and vitality in many different ways, hungry, horny, stubborn and yet easygoing, playful and bright eyed. what do the aging do? They've seen it all, they know enough, they get stiff and have issues of circulation, spent their lives in toil and hardship and desperately want to rest, perhaps they're fed up and dissappointed or contented. Eyes cloudy, play is tedious, body is not what it once was, sickness, pain etc. So here's a very joking lesson in qigong of the ultimate kind: be rich, quit worrying, go do something fun, eat well, be healthy and enjoy whats there, sharpen your ears and dont believe it when someone tells you you need to nearly kill yourself to survive and be fit and healthy. Btw my hair and beard is turning grey a little more for each year thats passing. I feel younger now though, i notice differences in myself every day and notice changes. I never did before. I like it better now. PS I keep thinking about that story of the two guys walking a tightrope across a chasm. A nudge here, a little counderbalance there and a few adjustments when needed and presto, the bottomless pit is no longer a danger. Everything MUST change. Everything has a way, if it no longer changes it has lost all of its life and retains only death... or am i just missing the point? Happy friday, have a relaxing cool beverage and enjoy something everyday-special. peace out, 5k

If it's the ones i think they are then they are very pretty. If not then i need to go get me a luopan. Thanks a million TM, i'm as always stuffed full and considering a wafer-thin mint Hitherto i've only tried to use the nine in a very short cycle, regarding footwork and positioning (to name a few) in combat, the first always relating to earth as a balanced returning point and safeguard and the second is more of a bagua superposition of it as a paired exercise, earth remains a possibility but it needs to be timed correctly and it would end the exercise rather abruptly and possibly be quite painful on the recieving end.

So regarding the two invisible of the nine, i get the impression they're still visible if employing a wide perspective and a compass, but this i cannot confirm as more than a hunch. Is it just me or is the dace also fourfold before its cycle is completed?

Hey lemme check what happened in the daoist forum while i was gone...

Hi! I hope ir's cool to name and discuss a running tv-show like this hut i wanted to get the opinion of my fellow Bums on this so here goes. New superhero show, magic kung fu and qi gong content, secret societies with skillful warriors, all good and nice. I havent read the comic, just saw the show because i had hopes for some martial arts storytelling in a modern day setting. I've since read quite a few articles on the obvious issues regarding representation and all sorts of stuff which are of course valid. I've read people are dissapointed with the characters but i've found them complex enough to enjoy for my kung fu show standards: secrets are motivated, main characters have human flaws and they're portrayed as dealing with them in good and bad ways and yada yada yada. I've enjoyed worse written and performed oldschool kung fu movies more than this. But the kung fu and qi gong is abysmal and inconsistent. There's a lot of talent in the show and it completely amazes me that the main character is a mythological level inheritor of a martial tradition since 15 years and it just looks like crap on screen. Martial talent is abundant in the show as well, they're all coreographed to look bad and everyone is adapting their skill to match the main actors lack thereof. I'm not barking on actor performance, i'm just dissapointed that whoever writes and organizes the show has put nowhere near enough effort to make the martial arts look good. If it's a huge part of the show then invest in the necessary hours to prep your crew. I read the main actor Jones had about 15 minutes to learn a full coreography befor they shot a fight scene and it really shows. I cant let it go, since it's a bloody martial arts experts themed story! Posture is horrible, limbs are all over the place in forms and fighting, the timing and portrayal of whatever it is supposed to be a blend of (there's some drunken monkey, some classic shaolin long fist, some hung kuen and tai chi in the mix) but it all a soup lacking definition and chracter. It looks what a bogus yoga instructor would pass off as homebrewed tai chi karate kung fu fighting in a watered down wannabe jeet kun do fashion. They get it credible enough in one scene out of 20. Maybe this is just my own dissapointment talking but it really bugs me because it would improve the overall quality of the show if the martial arts stuff was at least at half the level of the interpersonal acting...

Plus he's wasting tons of resources and makes crazy expensive flicks and they still couldnt figure out how to make the people look like they have feet that touch the ground. I mean come oon!

Was Spielberg even involved with the nest of complicated boredom that is SW ep 1-3? Idk, it makes me sad because i used to love the old movies when i was a kid and now i expect every part of the franchise to be crap :/ Regarding the Jew-thing in the Star Wars, oh boy have i got some thoughts on that Rants away! Those movies had a few pretty nasty caricatures, the quickest that comes to mind is the cringeworthy Fagin-stereotype mess with wings that keeps lil Anakin as his slave. It's like a 30's "satire" drawing on the greedy, shady, unreliable and filthy Jew. Plus there's only one of him, he's completely ad-hoc like that, i think George rubbed his temples real hard to come up with an embodyment of sleazy and greasy child-abuser and lo and behold, it somehow turned out like he was trying to pen the Elder Protocols. On purpose? I dont think so. He's too naive. Jar Jar Binks and his whole species is basically a Rasta blackface character, their english dialect a true mockery of creole and patois, the whole affair is a colonial mess. Purposefully? Nope, he just wanted a relateable quirky character to win the children over and create a little moralist comic relief and came up with a down to earth simpleton. Plus he had to fix the gap in the story with some strange but gentle allies, trans-planet-core travel and provide someway to show that even the most weird and funny talking primitives can send a fool as an ambassador and be welcomed into the loving arms of refined civilization... not on purpose, but he made a Rootsman borrowing a lot of jamaican around-independence humorism and post-slavery trauma storytelling and managed to flip off one of the earliest and most influential african heritage selfmade, indigenous independence and identity movements of the last century (who played a role in defining black popular culture and influences it to this day), just like that. Oh Goerge, you're such a klutz. The trade federation characters all speak nasty "engrish" and are masters of two-faced cowardly machiavellisms. What kinda makes me sad is that it seems too spot on to be a conscious statement which just turns it into the laziest and most childish of Lucases ideas and that he needs to hire some people to reign him in and have him take a lateral step. By force if necessary. ok, end rant

and the rest of your post Thunder, love it. That there part stood out in a special way and for my own personal thing i'd like to add that they pretty decent advisors or example-makers. Been thinking a lot about this topic, the "Real" Human or Authentic Person, whereby that one resides and i really like Scotts take on it as a person in charge of their dynamic, transformation and all that. Beautiful stuff. Ego though, and the ego-less ideal that many of us encounter in the spiritual talk, literature, tradition etc seems at odds with not just Thunder and my own (hard won) idea. In the last five years i've gotten to know my Sifu on a close level he always chose the english formulation "I am not egoist, this is for the people." And it's true, he acts without egoism and gives freely of his treasures, spends sleepless night building tools and aids for our practice so that we might share it with our coming generations. He speaks often about what i call certain methods (not glong to divjlge those until i gain a wider/deeper realization and understading, sorry) that we discuss and get quizzed on with practical or hypothetical examples, all of these things are from two categories "how to take care of your life" and "how to help build a man, a true man". Basics are: honesty and respect, the loving kindness, loving generosity and loving persistance. All of which can be very different in expression depending on the world, situation and context. Who decides the variables and result? The true person who tries to follow their Way. Simple as that. "Simple" right? Hard work if nothing else... Its nothing special per se, some are obvious when they show up but all are seeds and many of them have found good soil with my brother and now me. i think this is his teaching of Zhen Ren, or a preparatory stage of it. Take care of your life according to certain measures of pragmatic and systemic templates to help analyze or simplify a concept, build yourself through a set of ideals and illustrations that lead to an increased power AND virtue. As i said, the methods and milestones are very straightforward but attaining a skill not so much because they are aligned and designed to foster exactly what Crescent showed Scott had summarized so well. Zhenrhen isn't necessarily a Ordained Priest and transmitter of a lineage and ritual, not a Fa Shi, not some person in an identity crisis who has lost a sense of self, but a person who studies awareness of how their ego (among other things) affects their surrounding and then uses that to proceed with the cycles of prepping and planting, caring, harvesting, resting/prepping to speak in terms of argiculture, if you want astrology could fit by equinoxes and such, daily yimyang cycle or something else like that... Loving this thread though, sorry for barging in late and blabbing like this, missed you guys and as always, it's a pleasure to read you Thunder my dear.

Hello, late to the party is my unofficial thing but, i would ALSO like a PPD thread. All other forms of journaling fail because of physical method boredom...

That there detachment thing has helped me out tremendously. Hard to achieve and maintain sometimes but what that in itself tells you is most often "Yo self, you should have slowed down last tuesday, so please: slow down." The gap between stimuli and reaction should always be cultivated, but at times you cant even fit a razors edge in there, no matter how much you've cultivated it. I used to have completely sleepless nights and just push through to try to sleep the next evening at it was a horror. I kept thinking: "Not yet! Soon i'll sleep! Not yet! Soon..." With detachment came a different attitude: I cant sleep and if i do pass out now i'll be a zombie for at least a whole day and repeat that crappy process all over. I'll go fire up the computer and make some music or get a pen and draw a little instead. I'll put some coffee on, get my headphones and do my thing. Some of my best work this last year was concieved and/or finished on nights i just couldnt sleep. I just gave up and decided to enjoy my waking hours instead, used to be i laid in bed and just hated it. The energy is obviously there and fighting it wasnt helping. Surely it's not optimal but how many days are? Twice a week is already dripping gravy and dunked in sauce. Remaining five days are so-so but thats no reason to get angry or worry. No sleep? I'll already feel like a wet bag of hammers, why not try to use the time for something stimulating? Of course, this presumes and requires a permissive environment. After all, loosing sleep and it's aggregated stress on daily life is a major stress factor and puts your health at risk, but many jobs (i.e. managers) can probably understand and let you work at your own pace provided right understanding of the sitch. Insomnia has a pretty bad reputation so those that know will understand and those that dont usually just need to hear some of your experiences and what practical impacts it has on your performance. You're not asking permission, you're communicating your current ability to perform. (Insert other practical boss-speak here ) I had some pretty good results with an exercise i got from a site about shamanistic practices, suppsoedly it's a preparation for deeper/further journeys but it resonated really well with what my dear Sifu has told me about sleep: You're done with the day and tomorrow isn't here yet. Forget all that and just rest. The exercise is to have an undisturbed zone, lay down and with breath awareness. When that has stabilized you start by feeling your toes and work your way very slowly up your legs, torso and arms. When you're feeling your body you start over by sensing your temperature, toe to head. By now you're in a deeply relaxed state. In the beginning it might take you half an hour but i suspect any cultivator who's been at it for a couple of years will get a "under five minute hang" of this pretty quickly. It's a familiar and intimate state of relaxed awareness and detachment. In that state i say to myself: Today is done, i finished all i could and now i'm done, i did good. Tomorrow will contain the following: XYZ and i'll solve that tomorrow, not now, i know what to do tomorrow. Now it is time for rest. Soon i will start to fall asleep. It'll feel good and when the alarm rings at X:X tomorrow, i will have rested and i will wake up fresh. I will sleep soon and it will be a relaxing and restorative sleep. I will not worry now about the things i already know. What i dont know i cant worry about now, but i'll deal with it when it comes. Now i will relax and soon i will sleep. Tomorrow i will wake up with the alarm and feel well rested. .... and so on. The trick here is to come back out of this state gradually and do your bed-time stuff as usual while retaining that ease and comfort you just gave yourself. THEN you go to bed, do your thing for a while and turn the lights off. Bam. Sleep. Then alarm. Presto! You're up, feeling pretty ok AND you got a few hours of shuteye! Funny thing is you can tell yourself to wake up five minutes before your alarm sounds. It'll work eventually. Once you get this exercise down to a dot you can forgo the alarm even. Just tell yourself to wake up at 7 and you most probably will. Maybe dont bank on it at first yeah? It's worked for me even when i only had three hours to sleep. I didnt feel great but the rest and sleep was decent. It doesnt matter, i'll sleep better next time.

Omnomnom delicious!

Agreed Luke and again thank you for your post. Yeah, one of the oldest and most common principles, to maintain ones rung-position it is important to remember how long the plunge is and the directions to kick, lick and block... Few ever seem to realize that if you try to beat "them" at their own game you've lost. As Busta Rhymes so concisely put forth his strategy for achieving greatness and coining a name for the overall tactic: "Switch it on them. Flipmode. Flipmode is the greatest."