dogson

Our relationship to wealth, abundance, and giving is karma, too. I would encourage everyone to check out Gregg Brayden's "The Divine Matrix" lecture series on youtube and at least skim through Michael Talbot's "The Holographic Universe." The media supresses our power through one trick, and one trick alone: cultivating this "us vs. them" mentality. Corrupt governments, greedy corporations, whatever - as long as the problem is "out there" somewhere, we start thinking we're powerless. It's the simplest magic trick in the book, MISDIRECTION. As long as we're looking for something to blame, or something that's wrong "out there" we are totally ignoring the inner qualities that we're all here to work with. Tony Robbins is a hack, but he makes a really good point: the entire foundation of our lives is based on our "MUSTS" versus our "SHOULDS." Whatever is a MUST for us, we get. We earn what we MUST earn. We do what we believe we MUST do. And we all have plenty of "SHOULD" stuff, but that's nebulous. If you study billionaires and their psychology, invariably they have a psychological need to achieve and be recognized. That's an inner quality. Say what you want about conspiracy theories, and all this crap - at the root level, they are hugely wealthy because of an inner quality. And all of us are on this forum because of an inner quality which is calling us to recognize something. I would urge everyone to scale back this focus on what's wrong out there and just look inside at what we feel we should actually be doing, and make it a MUST. When we activate that, that is true wealth, and everyone who comes in contact with us is given riches by our presence alone. Imagine a world of people doing that.

Thanks for your thoughts, everyone. This instructor invited me to his san shou class right away when I met him, so it seems like he's just a lot younger maybe, and he's much more into MMA / tournament stuff than tai chi. I feel this way about yoga classes too, that ultimately it's my responsibility to inspire myself, as I'm the one living in here. It's just an odd trend I've seen a lot of. I don't know if it's just a Chinese cultural thing or if it's a tai chi thing overall - I'm just so much more lively and passionate than these people, and it seems weird that tai chi philosophy would want to repress that vibrance. So I feel like I "don't get it" sometimes. I believe that we're meant to be immensely vibrant, playful and energetic beings, and so many of these tai chi masters seem like kids that have been told not to play while hanging out with their parents at a department store or something

Do you guys remember the X-Files? The episode where we go into the backstory of the smoking man. There's a scene where Smoking Man is sitting on his bunk as a new Army recruit, reading a novel. His fellow bunkmates are teasing him, suggesting he go see a movie. "I would rather read the worst novel ever written, than watch the best movie ever made." Why did Smoking Man say this? The writers for the X-Files must be very illuminated indeed. Watching stuff erodes our ability to visualize, where reading is literally transforming abstract symbols into images in our mind. Al Gore talks about this a bit in his book "The Assault On Reason." All of the most powerful people visualized and had total control over their thoughts. Napoleon was known to just think on a single subject for hours at a time, and would image his battles months in advance, down to specific events happening on specific terrain. He would see it all happening in advance and then literally Project that reality outward; and this has been spoken of as the secret to his power. Of course, he was also an emotional basket case and manifested some pretty horrendous stuff for himself. But if you study powerful people you will find this visualization ability in common. Damo's Cave is *amazing* I learned about it from a book called Secrets of an American Ninja Master, where he has an entire chapter called "Meditations for becoming Enlightened." He talks about the Secret Smile, Da Mo's Cave and several others.

Also, alternative mode I forgot to mention: take freezing cold showers! I learned from a Russian special forces manual that cold water activates an immune response - your body temperature spikes to compensate, which has the effect of totally nuking any bad bacteria or infections going on internally. (Your body does the same thing, but for much longer, when you get a fever). Russia did a 100+ year study to research longevity among the Russian people. Guess who were the longest lived out of everyone? 1. Beekeepers (bee products have tons of enzymes and life force) 2. People who jumped into freezing cold water

4B - first of all, props to having the balls to post this! I apologize on behalf of all the dudes giving you flak about this. As a child I was STRONGLY resistent to showering. Look, if you're in America, our entire water supply is cut with tons of fluoride, chlorine, radioactive tridium, and tons of antibiotics and weird shit. I just intuitively did.not.want to get in that water. Everyone has different balance points with elemental energy. I am much more toward the "yin" side of the spectrum, so I get a LOT out of being around fire, or even burning incense or holding a smoldering ember in my hands. I love being in the sun. It balances me out hugely. So I've always been preternaturally averse to water. I like high mountain areas that are dry. I shower - I believe in Leonard Orr's work that bathing does actually cleanse and open the chakras - but I'm aware of what my own personal balance point is. I sit with candles and burn things as much as I can. My showers are quick and I spend extra on shower filters and good products, because I just accept that I'm sensitive. And I don't want fluoride calcifying my pineal gland. Trust your intuition, man. You can go cave man and that might really build up jing for you. There's a reason why you are or aren't drawn to something, just go with it. We're all here because we're getting activated at a higher level than what society calibrates at, and we're here to support each other in that mission. Go for it.

This is an amazing discussion. My research indicates that at the highest level, eating *anything* is the result of the fall of mankind. See for reference: "Man's Higher Consciousness" by Hilton Hotema, "Living on Light" by Jasmuheen, "Eat The Sun" (documentary on sungazing), "In the beginning was light" (another very good documentary on inedia/breatharianism, including some interviews with taoist masters on the state of Bi Gu, where your chi is so strong you don't need to eat. I have been researching this for a long time, and while I don't advocate anyone doing this flat-out, I know that it's real. On a lower level, lots of raw food people have the perspective that, it's been proven that eating cooked food triggers a white blood cell reaction, as though the body were fighting off a foreign invasion. If we are experiencing war at the cellular level, it makes sense our planet would be embroiled in war at a macro level. "As Above, So Below." As for myself, experiments with fasting prove that the less I eat, the higher my energy level is and the clearer my consciousness is...you can take this out to the logical endpoint, but the bottom line is, consciousness creates reality. If you think you're going to starve to death, you will.

In an ideal world I go to bed arond 7 or 8PM and get up at 1AM, and train for 10 hours. This isn't always possible. I've been living in Brooklyn for a year and my circadian rhythm is completely whacked out due to a total lack of anything natural. So if I'm up at midnight, yeah! I love meditating. 11pm-1am is said to be a great time for meditation, the psychic "dust" begins to settle. I also really like 4AM. If you talk to any famous writers they almost always either stay up very late, or get up very early, for the same reason. It's easier to think at this time of day. There isn't as much interference. It's very logical that the "airwaves" are more open; when I wake up very early I lock in a much higher consciousness that I take with me the whole day.

You can get cordyceps powder as well from longevitywarehouse, rawfoodworld and jing herbs websites. Best I've found is Dragon Herb's wild bhutanese cordyceps extract. CRAZY powerful. (Also crazy expensive)

I'm really sensitive to people's energy and their "stuff" they have like a cloud around them, so living alone for me is crucial. I live in an apartment building and I can feel how out of it people are just when someone walks down the hallway. Sometimes I'm tempted to burst out into the hall and surprise them just to shock them out of their stupor; it's almost like my energy wants to be explosive to protect itself from that dull haze. I think there's a reason why we have this archetype of the hermit. At a certain level of sensitivity, you really do need to protect yourself. Having said that, when my chi is really strong I can walk down the streets of new york at rush hour and I'm fine; in fact, it's beautiful. But do I want to hang out with people who get trashed on weekends and stuff like that? No way.

i'm gunna come right out and say this - as a guy, if you're fapping, that kind of loneliness and existential angst is almost guarenteed. Because you're literally looking out there for energy, trying to draw it in from somewhere, and the strongest energy of course is what we get from other people. When I started hanging out in R/NoFap on reddit and doing streaks of 7, 10, 15 days that just went away for me. I'm new to this community but I'm sure the idea of conserving fluids and building up jing is discussed a lot. For me, it makes an immense difference. There's also a factor of neuro-pathways when using a computer - I find the more I meditate, I can differentiate really subtle degrees of this, like I can drop into a habitual mode where I feel the need to "look for" something - it's a conditioned pleasure response in my brain from getting emails from loved ones, etc. I feel it now just as a shimmer, and I can center myself again, but for years I would get dragged into hours of zombie-mode internet addiction from that need for energy. Secret smile is awesome. Reading books is awesome. Taking walks, listening to music, anything to give yourself a separator state. The trick is knowing if you're in an internet hole in the first place. . .

Greetings fellow Tao Bums! I just moved to Seattle to set up a little hermitage in downtown seattle, where I can focus on my training and creative pursuits. Curious if any other taoist bums are in the area. -Dogson