LCH

still enjoying... :-)

I have much enjoyed the back and forth of this conversation :-) Thank you both for sharing.

Ahhh yes :-) I lived north of Pittsburgh my teens. The easy answer is that every action is some form of "energy work", to me at least. Every thought and intention being the expressive/manifested aspect of "qi". You are correct in the specific practice of "energy work" in that if the cause of the imbalances are not addressed, the results will be short-lived. I have had a wonderful opportunity to to qi-gong "healing" on other people. Call it whatever you want though. It mostly has consisted of grounding the person, and getting them in touch with their own "spark" of infinity. Nothing special, as I feel we can all do this, but I will say these experiences have allowed me to connect with people on the closest of levels. Such an honor to have the opportunity. This is the energy work with a purpose, since there is a desire to understand the imbalance, instead of just fixing it. I don't perceive attainment of the "Tao" as being some sort of destination, though it can be seen as such in a life based in linear time. It can be a consistent intended goal to align oneself, but it seems to me to be a bit more like remembering what is "primordial" and forgetting what has been learned. Is it possible to be a functional human in the fast-paced world and still fall into alignment? I feel it is, but as you said, it is not easy sometimes. The illusion of separation is very real to me. I am reminded of HHC #80 saying that "enlightenment is not the end, but the means". The question my mind always asks is "how will we know we are ever there?" haha :-) Thank you for sharing your thoughts and giving me an opportunity to share mine.

I was reading through the HHC today and noted I would be curious to pose the question to the "Bums" about this.... Any thoughts on the "8 energy rays"? When I read 8 I think the 7 chakras and the first closest to the head. In a sense, as with the grains of sand observation, this seems to be "fracturing" the "One". Energy work sets to balance energies, but simply in aligning with the feeling of the "Tao" it seems the energies align themselves. Any thoughts/feelings about that part. I did enjoy reading your back and forth on the matter. Thank you.

How can anyone know who is "diving in" or not? An online forum is inherently intellectual in its means of expression. I know what you are saying, and I have asked the same question, but becoming fixated on an answer to that question tends to limit the "diving in" potential to me. Just from my own experience. Most of my genuine "Taoist" responses to posts on the forum, are never expressed :-)

Outside linear time, the concept of re-incarnating doesn't completely jive as things can be perceived as happening simultaneously in "parallel" existences, until perhaps one aspect of "shen" pulls enough experience together in a single life time to move beyond a karmic condition, perhaps thus freeing all other aspects of the karmic condition as well. Perhaps some of these parallel existences are not even of the Earthly system. Robert Monroe speaks of this in his accounts. It is all pure speculation for me, so I won't spend much more energy thinking about it. :-)

Thank you for your elaboration. Which MCO are you speaking of? There are multiple. I think your concerns are valid, and I am interested to see others who have consistently practiced the MCO to chime in about their own personal experiences with it. I will add if someone isn't very grounded, and generally is carrying around a lot of unprocessed emotional energy, this sort of stuff CAN be dangerous. Qi deviation syndrome is a very legitimate "ailment" in my experience. I practice the bringing up in the back and letting it fall in the front. I find that this feels very natural to me and it by no means forced. There are others I have learned, but I do not feel compelled to pursue them at this point as they tend to run against my normal qi flow.

Are you of the opinion that it will make an appearance into the collective reality? I hesitate to put a time frame on it.

Do you feel it is inhabited?

Ahh yes, Nibiru... I have spent enough time slogging through many a rabbit hole to get to the point where I probably won't poop myself if it ever makes an appearance in our skies. Though there are many different interpretations of it. Care to share yours, SOTG?

As a former "intellectual predator" I can attest to vampiring qi in order to literally feel better. Only when I discovered my own ability to create enough energetics to be happy and functional did the desire to intellectually intimidate and dominate others go away.

I agree, and perhaps Huxley was aware of it, though he definitely takes the position of an esteemed "intellectual" in this passage. I feel he is lamenting his abundance of knowledge which has not been transformed into a means of "living the way". Whether he got it or not, is immaterial to me as he is writing about something that often plagues the human mind. Nature/nurture, predisposition etc...

Becomethepath mentioned a Huxley quote above. Huxley was an interesting character, who, I feel had a bit more of an agenda. I have included an excerpt from his book "Point Counterpoint" (1928). He describes rather eloquently the pitfalls of becoming too intellectual about life and not being able to integrate into society. I can relate to this excerpt because I have a penchant for intellectualism, and I used it to withdraw from society. I added the bold to parts I found a particular connection to. [...] The chief difference between us, alas, is that his opinions are lived and mine, in the main, only thought. Like him, I mistrust intellectualism, but intellectually, I disbelieve in the adequacy of any scientific or philosophical theory, any abstract moral principal, but on the scientific, philosophical, and abstract-moral grounds. The problem for me is to transform a detached intellectual scepticism into a way of harmonious all-around living. The course of every intellectual, if he pursues his journey long and unflinchinly enough, ends in the obvious, from which the non-intellectuals have never stirred. [...] Many intellectuals, of course, don’t get far enough to reach the obvious again. They remain stuck in a pathetic belief in rationalism and the absolute supremacy of mental values and the entirely conscious will. You’ve got to go further than the Nineteenth Century fellows, for example; as far at least as Protagoras and Pyrrho, before you get back to the obvious in which the non-intellectuals have always remained. And one must hasten to make it clear that these non-intellectuals aren’t the modern canaille who read the picture papers and listen-in and jazz and are preocupied with making money and having the awful modern “good time”. No, no; one isn’t paying a compliment to the hard-headed business man or the low-brow. For, in spite of their stupidity and tastelessness and vulgarity and infantility (or rather because of all these defects), they aren’t the non-intellectuals I’m talking about. They take the main intellectualist axiom for granted-that there’s an intrinsic superiority in mental, conscious, voluntary life over physical, intuitive, instinctive, emotional life. The whole of modern civilization is based on the idea that the specialized function which gives a man his place in society is more important than the whole man, or rather is the whole man, all the rest being irrelevant or even (since the physical, intuitive, instinctive and emotional part of man doesn’t contribute appreciably to making money or getting on in an industrialized world) positively harmful and detestable. The low-brow of our modern industrialized society has all the defects of the intellectual and none of his redeeming qualities. The non-intellectuals I’m thinking of are very different beings. One might still find a few of them in Italy (though Fascism has probably turned them all into bad imitations of Americans and Prussians by this time); a few perhaps in Spain, in Greece, in Provence. Not elsewhere in modern Europe. There were probably quite a lot of them three thousand years ago. But the combined efforts of Plato and Aristotle, Jesus, Newton, and big business have turned their descendants into the modern bourgeoisie and proletariat. The obvious that the intellectual gets back to, if he goes far enough, isn’t, of course, the same as the obvious of the non-intellectuals. For their obvious is life itself and his recovered obvious is only the idea of that life. Not many can put flesh and blood on the idea and turn it into reality. [...] I perceive now that the real charm of the intellectual life – the life devoted to erudition, to scientific research, to philosophy, to aesthetics, to criticism – is its easiness. It´s the substitution of simple intellectual schemata for the complexities of reality; of still and formal death for the bewildering movements of life. It’s incomparably easier to know a lot, say, about the history of art and to have profound ideas about metaphysics and sociology than to know personally and intuitively a lot about one’s fellows and to have satisfactory relations with one’s friends and lovers, one’s wife and children. Living’s much more difficult than Sanskrit or chemistry or economics. The intellectual life is child’s play; which is why intellectuals tend to become children – and then imbeciles and finally, as the political and industrial history of the last few centuries clearly demonstrates, homicidal lunatics and wild beasts. The repressed functions don’t die; they deteriorate, they fester, they revert to primitiveness. But meanwhile it’s much easier to be an intellectual child or lunatic or beast than a harmonious adult man. That’s why (among other reasons) there’s such a demand for higher education. The rush to books and universities is like the rush to the public house. People want to drown their realization of the difficulties of living properly in this grotesque contemporary world, they want to forget their own deplorable inefficiency as artists in life. Some drown their sorrows in alcohol, but still more drown them in books and artistic dilettantism; some try to forget themselves in fornication, dancing, movies, listening-in, others in lectures and scientific hobbies. The books and lectures are better sorrow-drowners than drink and fornication; they leave no headache, none of that despairing post coitum triste feeling. Till quite recently, I must confess, I too took learning and philosophy and science – all the activities that are magniloquently lumped under the title of “The Search for Truth” – very seriously. I regarded the Search for Truth as the highest of human tasks and the Searchers as the noblest of men. But in the last year or so I have begun to see that this famous Search for Truth is just an amusement, a distraction like any other, a rather refined and elaborate substitute for genuine living; and that Truth-Searchers become just as silly, infantile, and corrupt in their way as the boozers, the pure aesthetes, the business men, the Good-Timers in theirs. I also perceived that the pursuit of Truth is just a polite name for the intellectual’s favourite pastime of substituting simple and therefore false abstractions for the living complexities of reality. But seeking Truth is much easier than learning the art of integral living (in which, of course, Truth-Seeking will take its due and proportionate place along with the other amusements, like skittles and mountain climbing). Which explains, though it doesn’t justify, my continued and excessive indulgence in the vices of informative reading and abstract generalization. Shall I ever have the strength of mind to break myself of these indolent habits of intellectualism and devote my energies to the more serious and difficult task of living integrally? And even if I did try to break these habits, shouldn’t I find that heredity was at the bottom of them and that I was congenitally incapable of living wholly and harmoniously?

There seems to be times for solitude in the sense of being physically alone, and times to learn from interaction with other humans. Personally, the "Tao" is easy to see on a hilltop in autumn when no other human souls are around, but can that recognition and feeling be taken into the mall on a Friday night? Oh, how I have bemoaned the existence and lives of others who just didn't "get it". Of course, it was I who had yet to "get it" as I had yet to fully realize, remember and embody my primordial "beginning". There are still times where I do not embody this awareness, and the disharmony is instantaneous. Not acting on it has become my challenge.

"Karma" is one of those words often utilized in the spiritual vernacular... I am curious to hear the various interpretations of "Karma" and how you apply this understanding in your life. If you wish to share, that is... Thank you.