三江源

The flip side of being able to Stand Your Ground. Women often get called stubborn when in fact they are just not conforming to compliancy stereotype. Just sayin'.

Heh. I thought I was a Stoic until I found out about taoism. I havent read about it for many many years. So I only have a hunch here, and say that possibly the difference bewteen stoicism and taoism on the level you may be thinking about, is the genesis of the stance. What is the genesis of the stoic stance, essentially? The motivating seed and the ultimate goal?

How can you heal your pain, from having inflicted pain? Or How can you heal their pain? Or both! You can apologise to them either verbally and /or energetically and send love and intend to act differently from thenceforward. You can apologise to yourself for being less than your best self and give yourself love. Apologise with your intent, whilst focused on the person internally. In other words, apologise on the subtle level. What is an apology, actually? it is an acknowledgment, a validation, a gift of seeing the other and their value, it's respect and generosity and at the same time it is a acknowledgment of your own action being seen by you and taken full responsibility for you, it is a statement of intent to retract the negative energy you threw at someone else, so that they dont have to carry it. Take the pain and negativity out of the situation and vent it into nature with intent to set it free. It's an energetic clearing. All this can be done effectively and quickly. In short, be creative around negative energy, dont let it linger. It's a great question. What is difficult is when we are negative and hurtful and cant get out of the mindset or break the pattern. It sounds as though you are not in that place, which is great. BTW I think it helpful to look at what we are doing when we insult people. From my point of view I am trying to create space for myself when I do it, it comes from feeling unseen/unheard and yet not let alone, and crowded into that corner. Its a repudiating move. Maybe you want to look at preemptively making sure you have space for yourself, and that you are communicating in a productive way that keeps you from needing to use insult. Good Luck with it.

Good point. The phrase "your greatest strength is your greatest weakness" is a useful way of thinking about this.

One of the things about the shadow that is so tricky to deal with, is that it is unconscious. It truly is. When parts of it come to light it is a great opportunity to have a good look. (Or, if you are not on a path of consciousness, to flip into denial and compensation.) Meditation should throw the shadow into light pretty quickly. And ongoingly. It can be very arduous indeed to face the emotional impact of ones less than desirable aspects, seen with clarity. I have been catapulted into severe anguish by seeing myself as unthinking, unfeeling, callous, generally unaware. The remorse I have felt for what I have done whilst unaware was agonising, no understatement. As I perceive it, the process is an energetic release and a karmic clearing. For me, thinking about my less than desirable aspects has been helpful only up to a point. Owning them is crucial, of course. But the real work, for me, has been done energetically be clearing the blockages created by said unconsciousness. Not that the work is finished! I dont mean to imply that. I dont think it is ever 'finished'. I think one gets deeper and deeper glimpses into ones nature - the parts that flow and create, and the other parts, that obstruct or destroy. Yes we inevitably have creation and destruction cycles, but the times when we destroy flow with shadow is what am speaking of and what I think your thread is about. So from reading what I have written I see what I am saying is that dealing with the process energetically has been more productive for me than just dealing with it mentally. The psyche is too clever at making up excuses for preserving the status quo. This is why art therapy, dream work, body work etc are so powerful. Because they bypass the conscious mind whilst including it as a guest rather than the monarch. Discerning what is projection and what is instinctive recoil due to the formation of an Other is an interesting excercise. It may be helpful to find where in the body does ones recoil come from, and go deeper into the recoil and get a sense of it as a colour, shape, name, time, etc, and dialogue with the recoil to find out the seed of it. It isnt so much that I 'dislike' things about myself as that I want to iron out blockages to flow.

This is from Caroline Myss on archetypes Of course innocence nowadays is often equated with naievete, and abused as such.

Spot on Exactamundo YesSiree

Good bones you got. Good. Happy New Year.

Heh. When I was 19 I was going to work at the 'wrong' time of day one day.. ie I worked odd hours. I'd slept in, had a bath, read a lot, put on my 'weird' assortment of clothes and washed my 'weird' dual coloured hair and was strolling off to the bus while everyone was at work or school and I thought "I hope I bum around always" because I appreciated not having to be doing the same time frame and clothing rules as very often one does, the streets were more spacious, the traffic lighter, and having found a little space for myself with air to breathe and room to think at my own pace, and to dress however I chose and have changeable hair. a little space to choose how you want to be, at any given time, and to create something thoughtful bum around: it's not just diarrhoea.

Oh drew, that's so funny you articulating that. Thanks for the intelligence. I have to turn my boiler on manually and I thought I was being kind of nutty about the boiler! It feels weird. But I havent noticed it with other electrical things. I try to keep barely any electricity in my bedroom, but anyway there is no escaping wifi signals now. We live in a funny energy field. So different when away from it, in rural areas. So much nicer. Happy New Year, Drew, Welcome back.

HAPPY 2012 EVERYONE. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

lot of reasons. keeping the alchemical vessel sealed is very important, otherwise no alchemy is happening, or it is very diluted. avoiding ego attachment ie 'story telling' : distancing the process by translating it into a comprehensible- to -others, finite, sound bites. Learning to 'hold' your truth is a power which, along with the practice itself, ideally brings humility. No 'specialness' can accrue, unless your practice itself is not working and you are gradually gaining ego inflation from what is happening in practice. the analytical mind can adversely affect the development of deeper mind if it is given free reign over all territories. one does not want to develop a sense of self made up of practice - as - presented- to - others, which can never be the actual reality of practice. one does not want to 'trade' consciously or not, ones practice details, for attention. One might want to learn to speak allusively and metaphorically and to transmit without words. this will develop other aspects than the usual everyday mind. At some point you will know when there is no charge left in something and it is available to be talked about.

Hey Drew. I always had the many synchronicities thing and precog dreams and awarenesses. But since I started doing qigong stuff I always know when someone has died or is going to get in touch, and people get in touch with me out of the blue when I have a need for what they constitute. I think of it now as alignment with the dao. Like how now if I arrive at a bus stop the bus always comes immediately or if I am in a big hurry the traffic suddenly quite miraculously thins down to nothing which is really mind blowing as i live in a traffic clogged city. But of course it isnt 'alignment with the dao', because other people are unaligned with the tao and are very psychic... interesting. PS.. one of the things that amuses me is that when I have a partcularly energetic thought, the wooden furniture around me, one or two pieces usually, make loud cracks. Does this happen to you? Or anyone else here?

.

It's a really good question. I take the interpretation of it from literature showing the old paradigm of the town mouse and the country mouse: the provincial will always attempt to teach the urbane, because he simply is unable to recognise what constitutes urbanity. ie the small minded cannot perceive what others know. The subset cannot perceive the chief structure. I try to excercise tolerance and humility in the face of it, but instead I am brought face to face with my own impatience yet again, and endlessly sigh over the tendency toward bluff, crass, patronage. That tendency to talk rather than to listen that defines the one who doesnt learn much... and then I monitor it in myself..

warming thermal nature, sweet and sour flavour, strengthening for entire body, tonifies kidney yang and pericardium. highest protein content of all grains, more calcium than milk, highest in fat of any grain. a nutrient concentrated food. tonifies yin. antidote to cold pattern. reduces excess of liver. bitter flavour therefore appropriate for winter, promotes a sinking, centering quality, brings body heat deeper and lower. eliminates excess.

I think this fits in perfectly here:

Wondering where you get this idea from? How does a tattoo become merely 'inserting ink into the body'? That sort of reductionism doesnt serve actual truth seeing. Isnt it staining the body with an ego chosen image that endures? non - judgmental? How do immortals know who they want to visit and communicate with?

Okay. Venting is an easy basic practice though for releasing build up. try it, see how it goes. Use your intent, trust the process.

Hey humbleone. The best thing you can do is start a dream journal. Write down what is going on and take a look at it after a week, two weeks, etc, in order to ascertain themes and patterns and look at your associations with any recurring images and themes. Read your dreams like poetry and listen to them as you would to a close friend. What is your unconscious busily communicating to you? Once you begin listening, the message can evolve. We all need to be heard in order to shift. Your unconscious is talking to you avidly at he moment, sounds like you have freed up something that wants to be integrated. Good Luck with it.

Chi headache! Not nice. Sorry you are suffering this. Get rid of it by getting the energy out of your head, with your intention. Various ways you can choose to do this. Vent it by putting your head against the wall/a tree/the ground/ and intend for the excess chi to move out of you and into the thing, like a mist. Or vent direct from your head, let the headache stuckness leave as you breathe out. If you are familiar with the microcosmic orbit, you can pull the energy to your crown and let it fall down the front channel, and loop it round until your headache is gone, then store what you are working with in your lower dantien. If you are outside, on the earth, or around trees, the elements will help you, draw in cool earth energy from your feet upwards and wash it through your sytstem and out the crown, taking headache with it. Or pull sky energy down through crown and wash through your body and out through feet. Good Luck. I have wondered abut a tattoo too. I have a strawberry birth mark on my lower back and I wondered about turning it into something else, but I am ambivalent being drawn on permanently, it feels disloyal to what I have already here. I agree that the image would meld with me and not be a superficial image but a new part of me.. I guess it would have to be a ritual of some import and the image would have to be arrived at shamanically. I think though that it would become irrelevant to act it out in the physical world, if one went into it that deeply, it would be 'done' in the subtle realms, anyhow.

Wittgenstein said "There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical." and, of course, "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent." Language is what we have and we benefit from communicating. The thing we need to do is have a sense of humour about it's limitations and a light touch which always holds the awareness that the map is not the territory. We can hold unknowingness alongside optimal articulacy ~ it's discipline in itself, as well as a game.

.