~9~

I do believe that a bullet type injury could occur naturally - stones flung at high velocity due to natural explosions (lightning strike nearby, hot spring eruption, being nearby [few KM] from an erupting volcano etc).

An idea can to me just now - stesses upon the system (the biological system which is an organism) may "decrease protein function even as they increase protein cooperation" and continue to do so until the stress begin to subside. This would move random variations or trial & error efforts from an iteration with in generations to a much quicker cycle (like days or weeks).... things that make you go hum!

Hum.... if you have no self, then how would self improvement to be achieved? How is that a "claim"? What about a claim in which the result is attributed to a system when in Reality "a virtually infinite amount of factors are influencing each other all the time"... the center of that influence for sentience is always occurring at the "self", thus all that is needed is the self, any system is simply the context and motivation to reach out to these factors. Once once this occurs awareness naturally expands to that focus. Once the factors are now in focus then awareness is naturally accumulated. What we pay attention to we learn about, so awareness continues to expand. Be careful of the kool-aid.

One thing that I've had a hard time getting my head around evolution is... well it seems to me anyway. There must be some form of feedback from the environment (or stress upon a creature) which aids in evolution. I have a hard time with the "randomness" of it. It seems there is some influence from the environment which has some input into what the variations will be... but I've never heard of a mechanism of any sort which drives this. Any ideas?

To improve a muscle you need to work the muscle. With the willingness to improve the self, anything can be used as the path to wisdom; postures, breath, dishes. To improve the "self" all that is needed is yourself...

Chopping wood, carrying water (and washing the occasional dish - mental hygiene is important too!)

Epileptics experience a mild high after seizures as well (another form of spontaneous movement). Holding the breath (starvation of oxygen) leads to aschema and damaged (hyper sensitivity) in neurons (hypo-ventilation does the same). Both does mild damage to the the cerebral cortex, where the boundary of self is located. IMHO when prolonged exposure to this can lead to an experience of the "self" dissolving away, thus no boundary between self and world (or any other activity in the brain as well); an "eternal oneness", "merging with everything" sort of experience. After almost a couple decades of this pursuit I don't see these sensations as credibility of a practice. IMO it provides motivation to push along in pursuit where we may have normally lost interest, but really no different than taking drugs. The pushing on is what confronts the "self". Not giving up, not accepting our normal excuses is the mechanism which drives this. The result, like anything else we put our attention too, is growth. Now after so long I don't really see any mechanics of these fancy practices to provide anything more advantageous than any other "ordinary" activity. The same results can be found in washing the dishes if the same dedication and heartfelt passion was applied to that as an endeavor of growth. But of course there are no Master Dishwashers to lead us down that path of nonsense (thank goodness).

Maybe "waste" is necessary for there to be a "gain" in leaning? (empty the cup to be filled). I like Mizu's insight - I don't like it being re-framed into anything but what the insight was for them. Think of the reverse "Kunlun did it all" - others - "Kunlun did nothing it was all you"... besides I think the insight was the non-doing of the practice... but I have found with task which are inherently frivolous, with no substantial result.... I dedicated seeker, facing a lack of result in their seemingly important task, is left to confront the only element in the endeavor which is of any import (or existing in reality at all) - namely the self. And in confronting the self head way is gained. But I think it is "false cause" to believe the frivolous endeavor as the cause of the result - after all it could be replaced with any other frivolous endeavor and have the same end. At the end of the day it was the dedication and applied effort which brought the result. Replace kunlun with standing on your head - and if you really really believe standing on your head is really really important; standing on your head is something you really really want to get "right", and you are really really willing to change yourself; then eventually you will confront your "self" and make head way. The more frivolous the activity - the more obvious the insight.(the louder you laugh at yourself when you think back on how worked up you got over such a frivolous act). JMHO.

"Synthesis: You are causing kunlun to work against you. Anything you use, even something that does nothing, you somehow cause to work against you. " bit of a reach... or Synthesis: It is all you. you caused losses in the name of kunlun; you caused this most recent insight in the name of kunlun. You played the cosmic joke. Any activity, when pursued with unrelenting dedication can be a path to wisdom/self mastery because eventually the self is the limitation and must be confronted... perhaps the more ridiculous the pursuit, the more profound the wisdom seems when it floats above the nonsense...

IMO, ego is a vessel for awareness, a vehicle of experience and is nessesary. I believe when most refer to ego, they are refering more to self-importance than the actual "ego". IMO the refereces in spiritual speak about the ego is not the removal, disintegration, dismantling of ego but rather moving beyond or transcending the ego as the sole means of awareness. The ego is not gone, or for that matter altered or somehow healed etc... but rather awareness which is retained as expereince is not limited to the container of ego. Awareness develops beyond the ego, and the ego is a nessesary step for this transcendance to occur. It occurs with the ego, not inpsite of it.

IMO detaching identitfication with our intention to act leads to action which is empty of "doing" ("I am doing this...") and empty of personalized concern with the outcome of the action ("I am doing this because...."). The action then taken is "non-doing", action for the sake of the action itself, a pure response to what is calling us to act and is thus wu wei. Wu-wei is "not doing" not nessesarily inaction. It can be a action taken without "doing" the action.

Hi all- have a thought or two on this myself. The Michelson–Morley experiment, which i believe is where the eather was decidely kicked-out. wiki - Mikey and Morley Apparently a few folks have revisited this and have come to a few insubstantial conclusions. 1) the Eather is not of substance if matter is a structure of a wave in aether 2) reletivity is explained as the doppler effect applied to the wave structure of matter 3) That nothing changes rom what we currently know about the world.... teh wave structure of matter and an aether brings nothing new the the table - just a different way of explaining it all (in theory and mathematics - all newtonian physics by the way... so maybe there is an aether after all - maybe the aether is this chi or tao stuff??? Ugly site with alot of confusing stuff on the subject I, myself, wish I could get my head around it a bit more. Seems to be a much more digestable universe than branes and large loopy stringy thingys.

All fresh and new. Thought I'd join in the fray.