neimad

hi there, am back in sydney now after about 2 months of traipsing around northern new south whales. i had planned to go for a lot longer but several things came up that caused me to decide to come back home. i am happy and not regretful at all about the decision to cut my trip shorter than i had planned. i didn't get a chance to learn what i most wanted to learn about, gardening, but i did learn a lot more about myself and my priorities in life. i have had some interesting experiences arise from my spiritual work and my meditations. no experiences actually while meditating, but ones that occur just during the general day. overall i have noticed my sensitivity to the environment increase and on several occassions have become aware of energy beings (or 'ghosts') in the surrounding areas. very interesting. i recently bought myself an aneros (yet to try it out... probably today, not that you want to know about it haha). my friend also got one at the same time but has since receiving it decided that no way is he putting that thing in his bum! me.... i'm game. him... he's just a squemish pansy hahaha. so anyone want to buy an unused, still in the package mgx aneros? we can work something out....

there is some new dancing thing here at the yoga centre i used to visit. i forget the name of it.... ummmmmm..... nup, can't get it. anyways i went to one class, and it was really fun. there is nothing more freeing of your inhibitions than dancing like a madman in front of a bunch of strangers in a room... or even better in front of people you know. if you can let go of yourself enough to just move, then you can release from yourself all those silly ego things like self-image and stuff. i also did an osho type class with someone that involved 15 minutes of shaking, 15 minutes of dancing, 15 minutes of sitting meditation, and 15 minutes of lying down resting. really good stuff.

wow scott. i am literally speechless. thank you and i apologise sincerely again. i have been travelling around australia living in communities and stuff where people don't own things, and stuff is freely shared..... that kind of mentality has just grown on me. i'm just kind of an idealist, dreaming of a place where we remember that it is impossible to own anything.... it's all just temporarily borrowed from the earth, and it all goes back to it. we can hold on to nothing when we die. i'll be saving hard and ordering intu-flow as soon as i can. thank you again and apolpogies again.

im real sorry about that. i have been purchasing a lot of scotts stuff, and im broke for christmas. i have the body flow book but i find doing exercises with scott on the screen a lot easier than reading it out of a book. ive been saving up for the intu-flow/extension package, but its pretty damn expensive with shipping to australia. im also trying to save up to go to france. i just didn't think about what i was writing.... kind of tired from travelling so much. sorry again.

the sit ups sound similar to sonnon's be breathed sit ups.... which are awesome for core strength. after only a couple of weeks of dedicated practiced, can direct breath to any part of my entire trunk (chest or abdomen). tao yin actually sounds very similar to feldenkrais. it's also done mostly lying down and rest after each series of movements is vitally important for letting the body learn new muscular coordinations and for building new neurons. on my trip i was practicing a somatic system with some guy, one that he'd come up with, and i learnt to really appreciate the value of rest after exercise..... this really helps you to learn and to relax and to release. very important. have also learnt the virtues of napping!!!! naps are great. actually i might go have one now. (also good is sighing, yawning, stomping, jiggling, rocking, skipping (not jumping rope but skipping along - this is fantastic!!!), and all the other little things kids do).

hey all, im bailing later this week to do some travelling up the north coast of australia (and onwards as far as i make it...) working on permaculture and organic properties trading work for experience, food and accomodation. i have no set time frame of travel. i have no girlfriend. i have no job. i have nothing tying me down. but i do have room for plenty of adventure. i am looking forward to a lot of free time, in nature and without urban living distractions. i have loaded my bag up with us much education material (in the form of a few books and many 'manuals' i made from tearing the relevant info from existing books) as possible, aswell as a multimedia player full of video clips (yoga, rmax stuff, hikuta stuff, breakdancing stuff... hopefully get some feldenkreis from a friend too) and audio spiritual classes (as well as a shitload of music). i have a lot to work on and already have a regular daily practice that can easily be expanded upon. i doubt i'll have much internet access along the way so will probably not post again for some time. just thought i'd write this up when i'm doing not much else. i'll be heading off on friday.... p.s. grandtrinity.... keep working on cheng hsin and go see peter ralston if you get a chance. i am loving this work so much and really beginning to understand a lot about relaxation and effortless power already. it feels magnificent to walk down a road relaxed....... after walking for some time (can only walk slow but i am getting quicker) all your joints begin to warm up and it feels lovely. i am learning more about my body and the universe every day and feel that all the practices i have drawn to me can only enhance this ever expanding awareness. it will be interesting to see what happens when i really practice with some dedication and diligence (i am pretty slack here in this lazy environment).

likewise. i know too well how you feel as my care about the actions of others, or anything in particular is dissapearing rapidly. this is not in a negative way..... actually it's quite freeing to have little care left.... now to eliminate self-importance. anyways preperations are almost complete and i am just about ready to depart. managed to get some feldenkrais cd's off my friend the other day... 24, 45 minute long guided feldenkrais sessions. my friend, the cheng hsin facilitator, would begin every class with a few feldenkrais activities and they are awesome for relaxation and body awareness so this is a valuable addition to my large amount of educational material. will pop in when i get the chance and see how everyone is going, etc.

nice dodging...

haha i like to refer to myself as a bum... i don't consider it degrading at all. to be a bum to me is to have little cares or worries about externalities. anyways in your essay you speak about god. you speak about god as if it is something seperate from you.... someone/thing to be worshipped, feared, whatever. what is god to you? god to me is the giant superbeing of which we are all a part of. just like our bodies are made up of trillions of self-functioning and conscious (although not conscious perhaps in quite the same way we think) cells and organisms collected together to make up a one... such are we the cells and organisms within the body of god. we make it up. we are a part of it. at night we go to sleep and we have dreams. we have dreams that exist as another level in our own reality, that exist within our own minds and are personal to us. i believe that the reality we share is actually just the dream of god. perhaps there is more than one god even yet we would never know just like a cell living within our body would never know that another body existed..... ------ just like you i feel the desire to seek love. to love and be loved, yet they are both the same are they not? can you be loved without loving? can you love without being loved? love is really all that exists... there is nothing else but divine, unconditional, unending love. i have been thinking more and more about love. i was in a relationship with a girl for 3 years and i believed i loved and still love her. but when i think about it, the feeling i thought of as love was just a lie. it was not real. i do not believe love can exist exclusively between just two people, that is only biochemical, hormonal. its not real. sure love can be shared by two people, but to be real love both people will love all as equals. for everything is equal. nothing is seperate from or more important than anything else and to love everything as an equal is the truth. i go to search for that love.... i'm not sure how to approach it other than by experimenting with love. letting myself feel love for as many people as i can. letting that love be the same, and not different, for every person.... whether the relationship is friends, sexual, or otherwise. (i leave on friday so i am around till then...)

perhaps do a few in bed baby full body stretches before getting up. i love those. i like the charging of the environment too... i have done charging of objects sometimes, but often ones i want to give to people. good idea to charge your food etc... i'll try that. i ordered the book come to your sense ages ago from a bookstore but they haven't said its in yett. sounds very interesting.

hello, im not a regular sungazer but whenever i am outside at times when the sun aint too strong i will have a nice look, first with eyes closed then i will open them. the colour i get is always a beautiful violet colour. often i see some kind of shape outlined against the sun and this change pretty much every time i look at it. yesterday i had a gaze at the sun while it was approaching, but not quite at, sunset. the shape i got was..... a love heart!!! so nice haha. anyone else see shapes when sungazing? colours? etc?

it's funny how we all enjoy the more esoteric of practices, even though they can be quite complex. the more funny esoteric terminology, weird visualisations, chanting, etc is included the more us westerners feel drawn to it. the thing is they were designed for cultures that had more of a mysterious or esoteric view of the universe.... and perhaps were made quite complex to keep the knowledge slightly closed. the reality of it is that most of the practices we do can be massively simplified and still totally as effective. perhaps not so exciting because we are not playing around with something so 'magical' anymore.... but the magic begins to return when you start to really get the science of what is around you. when you start to see auras and so forth..... even though it's all remarkably simple. an example is what i said above to purify a room. salt is a very easy way to do it.... chanting can be included if you like or whatever, but really all the chanting, visualisations, etc are are just ways to get your mind in the right frame. sage is also another good one...

you wont regret ordering scotts stuff. warrior wellness is 10 thumbs up. i have been doing it for about 3-4 months now, and am in the intermediate program. i have to say i never thought my body would be able to begin to move the way it is now. my shoulders and upper back are so supple now and my hips are moving in ways that makes me think i should go learn some latin dancing be breathed has fantastic core strength exercises... that also teach you to BE BREATHED haha. i bought the body-flow book as well but have not yet gotten into that. taking it with me on my trip though so plan on doing some in all the free time i will be having good luck!

that makes sense.... i like that.

in thailand they eat a lot of pork. and i didn't say eating pork made you look piggish... just eating a lot of it. like twice a day, every day... as some people do. and people who eat like that... look piggish to me! haha. i definately agree with you, peter, that we do also lack the stomachs etc to have a diet like ungulates... but you forget something here for this argument. ungulates feed primarly on grasses. we do not include grasses in our diet in any way except for their seeds (and those people who like to drink wheatgrass juice!). for us vegetables means something else entirely.... more like what monkeys eat with their dexterous hands, our closest animal relatives. that is a diet of roots and tubers, various soft-walled leafs (not acacias like giraffes or other african ungulates eat), fruit, nuts and seeds. our physiology is perfectly suited to this kind of eating..... there is no comparison between us and ungulates (even physically they aren't even close to us) just like there is no comparison between us and carnivores... we just aren't the same! i was not talking about a diet of only plant matter.... of course this aint good for us and you can see quickly when looking at those sickly raw foodists and strict vegans. we need a balanced diet, and perhaps for some this balance may include quantities of meat.... for others it may not. but the key is variety. a wide range of food stuffs. if you look at our cousins physiology... some of them are omnivores. they eat meat as well as other things... but if you look at them, very quickly you see differences between them and us! first to be noted is their massive canines for tearing flesh... if you look at their intestines you will find they have a higher secretion of stomach acids than us... etc. anyone can argue all they like about eating meat etc. but they are just justifying a habit to themselves. but the simple truth is we are not designed to eat it. we can eat it, and some people cope quite well with it.... just like we can live a life of sitting on our asses in front of square boxes... but its not what we are designed for! and too much of it leads to a detrimental quality of life!!! just because something doesn't kill you in 2 days, or doesn't make you instantly ill... does not mean it is ideal or optimal for your body. im not a vegetarian activist, i'm not even a true vegetarian, i dont really care what other people do, thats their own business not mine. but if you like semantics and like to play around with facts... its very simple, meat is not a designed part of our diet.

if you are into cleansing the energy of your home environment then it can be a very simple process. as perhaps you are aware, all objects have an aura (has a little question... how many people can see auras? when i can be bothered i can see auras around people and objects, trees in particular have a lovely aura... but i don't see colours... yet). all objects have an energy field. 'non-living' (im not sure if anything can really be defined as non-living, but you know what i'm talking about) begin as a neutral energy. they can be charged by an active/living person with whatever energy that person feels. i.e. a friend comes over to your house in a pissed off mood. picks up one of your pillows and holds it, punchs it, etc as he relates to you why he is so angry. after he is done... he gets up and leaves. that pillow has now been charged with his negative energy and anyone who is not psychically strong will be affected by that energy when coming into contact with the pillow. if not remedied... over time that pillow will leak its energy into the couch, the walls, the carpet, the cabinet, etc. over time the whole room may be charged with that negative energy. to remedy... tidy up the room, get rid of any piles of stuff lying around as this tends to accumulate energy easily. rearrange the room as this will collapse the energy structure built up. its that easy. but if you want a bit more in depth energy purification.... get some salt (i reckon sea salt would be best) and sprinkle this all around the room, on the floor and furniture if you like too. leave it for a day or two then vacuum up. salt is very neutral and has kind of a 'reset' function in that it resets all the energy in the room to a more neutral state. you can also go around and individually 'charge' objects in the room by holding them, clearing your mind and just letting whatever 'program' you want to put in them, such as happiness or freedom or abundance or whatever... let that feeling wash over you and then just project it into the object. it works!

yeah i totally agree. i also think it has a lot to do with body type too. i have been realising lately that my stomach is actually quite weak. when seeing an ayurvedic doctor or a chinese acupuncturist i have been told this.... but i am actually beginning to be able to feel for myself that it is weak. the problem with meat is that it requires a very high concentration of strong stomach acid to be able to digest it. the teeth cannot properly tear it apart. most people do not produce the kind of acid needed to digest meat properly... as a result it goes down into the intestines in sticky clumps. however if your diet is very rich in fresh vegetables, particularly green-leafy ones and also sprouts, then enzyme content will be much higher and the digestive system will be much stronger and it will be possible to digest meat properly. a person who wants to eat meat would probably find it very beneficial to eat meat on its own (avoid the bread, rice, pasta whatever that normally goes with it - save that for a seperate meat-free meal) with only vegetables, raw preferably, and salads. most peoples diets however are not healthy enough to be able to eat meat as freely as they do. physiologically speaking we are not designed in any way whatsoever to eat meat. however there are those people who through their family line have developed a stronger stomach and the ability to digest meat properly. this is not all and probably not even half of people out there. the differences between humans and carnivores are so numerous. the difference between humans and true omnivores is also numerous. there isn't a single part of our anatomy that we could point to and say "look... right there, that bit is for meat!" none of it is. not our teeth. not our stomach. not our intestines. nevertheless im not a person to preach that we should all start being vegetarians to each their own and im not strict myself, although if we did the world would transform radically and be a hell of a lot more sustainable too. the amount of land in australia that has been totally ruined by cattle grazing is ridiculous. the amount of forests in africa and south america logged for cattle grazing is also ridiculous too. but you tofu-loving vegetarians out there aren't any better off! cos the parts of the forest not cleared for cattle is cleared for soybean production anyway. soy is another of the falsities that is totally misunderstood. but i'll leave that for another time.

bliss is passive? fun is active? could they be complementary opposites? i would consider bliss to be a state of being... i.e. i feel very blissful today. whereas fun is an action... i.e. i am having fun. you could most definately experience bliss whilst having fun.... can you have fun while experiencing bliss? if you aren't... what's missing? why isn't it fun? ultimately i believe a major part of our purpose for existing as we do, particularly in this dimension, is to have an experience and then return that experience through the chains of increasing consciousness until it is finally reunited with 'god' or 'the force' or whatever. why not make it a fun experience huh? but in addition to that... i also believe the purpose of spiritual practices such as the ones we are all doing on this board, is to bypass the chain and reunite our own experience directly with god.... moving through higher and higher dimensions consciously and actively. again... if it's not fun, whats the point of it?

i dont subscribe to any kind of 'ism' (not even taoISM) cos i am trying to limit and reduce the number of labels attached to me. so i am not a strict vegetarian but i prefer to eat vegetarian food if possible. meat makes me feel heavy and stuck. i actually feel the meat get stuck in my intestines when i eat it and if i eat much of it i will get constipated. i don't like the way meat makes me feel when i eat it, especially red meat and pork. i try to avoid pig as much as possible now..... on a side note, something i have noticed in people is that those people who eat a lot of pig actually begin to look piggish! i have noticed this with many people and sometimes i see people who may look a little piggish in some way and i'll ask them if they eat a lot of pig and 10 times out of 10 they will say yes. hahaha. you are what you eat, right? anyways chicken is ok, better if it's organic and free-range, can really taste and feel the different. and i enjoy eating fish, i don't really classify it the same way as other meat because it is so far removed from us evolutionary wise. but when eating vegetarian i find it important to get some kind of protein source otherwise i will feel too floaty as saun said. it feels good for a while but i know where it heads if i keep that up. so some kind of legume, e.g. dahl (lentils or mung beans) or nuts or something else along those lines finds regularity in my diet. doesn't need to be much though because if the intestines are functioning well we actually produce most of our protein from gut bacteria eating vegetables. also our body recycles protein so unless you are doing some strenuous muscle building activities, a heavy protein meal is only really need every couple of days. if i go for a couple of weeks without meat (and also very important to me is going without wheat too) i begin to feel really really good, smooth from the inside.

i wouldn't know of any real benefits for humans other than time awake when things are a bit quieter. you miss out on your hormone synthesis time.... melatonin or something or other. especially if you are entirely nocturnal and thus sleep all day, thus getting no sunshine at all..... i doubt anything good could come from that. our circadian clocks are programmed for daylight, it is the way we have 'evolved' to function. all around mess i think to become nocturanl. however i always wanted to be able to sleep a lot less. say like 2-3 hours of real deep sleep a night. i mean thats about the maximum amount of time of deep sleep you actually even get even if you sleep 11 hours! the rest of the time is spent in shallow sleep areas which provide little deep healing benefits, i think, and also spent descending down into the deepest sleep cycle. if you could go instantly to the deepest cycle.... think about all the time you could save! or instead can learn about dreaming and use the dream time to exist in your virtual world which is as real as this world is anyway.

if it's not fun, whats the point??? or if it doesn't enhance your feelings of fun.... i understand the connotations attached to the words, but perhaps my mind works differently. to me bliss = some kind of pleasurable experience = almost an indulgence.... sure who doesn't like bliss? but to me it is almost superficial even. or maybe not... just chucking an idea out there. whereas fun = something that occurs in the moment, in the now. when you are having fun, real fun, time stops.... future and past cease to exist... worries dissapear. there is just you and fun and whoever is sharing that fun with you. fun is also a choice too i believe. you could make the conscious choice to have fun with every single thing you do in your life.... i would consider someone who is truly able to act like this, as pretty spiritually advanced.

i do my meditation in half lotus on a cushion. i find this position comfortable, yet occassionally my feet go to sleep. this is easily rectified by just switching the leg on top when one begins to tingle..... it serves me well and i actually find it a lot more comfortable than sitting on a chair. sitting on a chair i have been realising actually puts strain on my knees.... i am a long-legged fellow and not many chairs are tall enough for me so what happens is that my knees begin to bear weight, and the knees are NOT a weight bearing joint, used only for weight transference.

Surrender is a new type of practice I have been beginning to incorporate into my mornings. I spend about 10-15 minutes doing this. I try to make it ritualised with bowing... perhaps will add some clapping, candles, whatever into it. The ritual is not the important part, it is the feeling of making it something sacred to me that is important. Essentially that's all ritual really is, I think. Anyways I spend some time thinking about anything negative I have done to myself, to others or had done to me. I forgive myself for all of it. For any negative intentions I have had. I forgive myself for being upset or angry or jealous by others actions. I forgive myself for my past, my present and also my future (for future intentions). After this I spend a few minutes concentrating on the positive. Giving myself positive affirmations about myself. Always using present and not future tense. I find this a very effective practice to do as it relieves my consciousness of things that may be weighing me down and then I leave it being very positive about myself, becoming the person I wish to be. Do any others practice any form of surrender or forgiveness? I call it surrender because I am surrendering to the universe and to myself. I am letting it all go. Dropping those sandbags on my hot air balloon so I can continue to rise higher...

perhaps this does occur with emptiness meditation but i would imagine it to be very gradual. do you not think actively surrendering would help to speed up the process of emptiness or other meditations by lightening the load of garbage you have to wade through to get where you want to go to? i mean ultimately until that garbage is released, you cannot achieve what it is you want to... call it immortality, enlightenment, whatever you want. i know if i surrender in the morning i feel great all day.... it's so simple yet so powerful. follow that with meditation and kabam!

warrior wellness has really been helping with relaxation, especially in the shoulder area. yoga has been helping release knots, particularly in the hip area. cheng hsin is an awesome martial arts/body awareness arts that has been helping with all things relaxed. particularly the feet!!! until i did this i never knew how much tension i had in the feet. this art has also, in a short period of time, help me begin to get real feelings of being rooted into the earth... also i am beginning to get the 'relaxed walk' down, but i can't walk very fast if i do haha. this is basically when you realise you have two hips. one leg is grounded and the other swings free, relaxed, like a door hinge. you move your hip and the floppy leg falls forwards... momentum carries you on. fantastic.