Lozen

That doesn't sound very enlightened.

And Mike Jaco's Hell Week. I hear alpha can be accessed through sleep deprivation...

You all are cheating, you are writing more than three!! Other "top 3" excercises: writing blowing bubbles reading poetry outloud listening to bluegrass music singing badly and loudly climbing swimming plant spirit medicine getting acupuncture reading harry potter drinking tea fingerpainting hanging out with children playing with training knives etc etc etc

Ah, okay. That is just what my instructors told me, as well as the advanced students I talked to.

I hated Vipassana. I hated how they said that you have to choose between it and every other practice. I thought the videos were cheesy. I thought the teachers were more like video librarians and didn't know very much. I didn't think the little beds with the see-through curtains were very conducive to meditation. I stayed the whole time to prove that I could but was very glad to leave. Just another perspective. Oh, and I found the segregation of the sexes EXTREMELY distracting. And of course the no-meat thing... You know they will eventually make you choose between Vipassana and taiji if you go deeper.

1. wide angle vision (maybe throw seeing auras in there too) 2. stretching 3. spending time in nature pretty simple, isn't it? deep breathing might be in there somewhere too

I, for one, am eagerly awaiting the Paraclesian elixer recipe...

My shen doesn't talk back to me. Only the plants talk back to me. And the lizards.

This guy I know is writing a book about this... I will let you know when it gets published...

I wanna see a picture of Michael.

I've made these!!

It confuses me too because everywhere else I was always taught to detox liver with bitters in the spring...

But isn't liver sour in TCM? Everywhere else liver is bitter. Or I mean, assoc. with the bitter flavor.

for spring detox i usually use plain old nettles and maybe add some red clover. milk thistle tincture, burdock root, all the liver herbs. mmm!! then again, liver isn't spring in tcm is it? never mind. interesting with the brandy and vinegar!! i have a recipe for herbal mulled wine somewhere. but that's for winter...

check out this article, i love her. she is the reason i am in az, i tried to move to nm after reading her beautiful prose on taos... http://www.thesunmagazine.org/Sun335_Goldberg.pdf

Have you been reading Natalie Goldberg? Or Julia Cameron? I thought it was 3 pages a day.

What is in your spring tea?

What's in it? And what are you trying to tonify?

Never tried it but I take other digestive bitters. Dandelion is a good one, five to fifteen drops of tincture before a meal. What are you looking for?

Found an old journal entry from 6/03: "shit, i went to meditation yesterday to try to get my reality together and they were talking about striking a bell, and then said they didn't use that word cos "striking" sounds so violent. but that's what they were doing! striking the bell! they can call it "inviting the bell" but they're still fucking striking it!"

Again I say that anybody who thinks that money is not important, or can be indifferent towards it, has never had to live without it.

BUT one more thing, CHOD is NOT full of shit and I have no idea how, but it works really amazingly well somehow. http://www.dharmafellowship.org/library/essays/chod.htm http://www.vajrayanahawaii.org/teachings/chod.html

It is the fake nicey nice Buddhists that really get to me. They are yin excess and underneath that is just this irate yang they are desperately trying to supress. So they are really really sweet and pleasant until you diss their guru, and then they just explode. I guess I like some of the ideas in Buddhism but could do without most of them. I got a LOT from Chod yesterday, even while not believing in the karma etc. etc. Bowing at the TV, etc. made me uncomfortable when I signed up for a ten-day class they said would not be ritualistic or religious. I am Jewish so I don't even bow to people, let alone televisions. When I was taking classes at Diamond Mtn. I would stand when Geshe Michael entered the room, but I would not bow. I don't think people are conscious of the intent of respect when they bow at televisions, I think they just fall into the habit. And same with the weird chanting they do. Nobody could even understand the shit cos it was in Sanskrit or something. I think people can use rituals to strengthen their spiritual practices but when you tell people there aren't going to be any, and then there are, it is problematic. Also I thought it was funny when Goenke said that anybody who disagreed with him was like a child who thought that the raisins in his pudding were rocks, and they should just take out the raisins and eat the pudding, those poor disillusioned children. I think a series of qigong rituals can be considered a ritual. It depends on your INTENT and FOCUS. Why is it that I took marial arts for years and yet my boxing teacher tells me I don't know how to punch? How is it that people memorize katas and don't know what the moves are actually meant to do? >Also, what evidence do you seek to satisfy yourself that any way is the way? The way for what? I just do what works.

We all have dreams, don't we?

I don't have a penis. That makes two of us!! Yar har har!!