i am

I don't know if its this way with you, but i find that if I think I want something to change in my life, for long enough, it eventually just kind of "happens". Coffee was a hard one for a while. I didn't get headaches if I didn't drink it, I just wanted it. Would get to work having not had coffee, feel fine...then around 9 or so...be sitting there and decide screw it I'm getting some coffee. Then one morning...the craving was almost non-existent. Still there, but not bad at all. I figured "well, do it while its easy!" and that's what I did. I might have coffee once every couple months now, but otherwise I'm strictly green tea. The same has happened with my diet and alcohol consumption. I've "tried" before to eat how I know I should...it kind of works. But I've found that at some point I'm just doing it. And if I take advantage of those times when it feels "easy" to make the change, that starts some kind of momentum. I have a couple squares of dark chocolate after dinner. That's about it for me, for sugar, other than some incidental sugar when I end up eating chips or something processed that always has sugar these days. And I feel it! I have ice cream probably a dozen times a year. If I'm out at dinner with friends we usually order one or two desserts, and 6 forks a couple bites each. And I don't stress or worry about that stuff. Because there's no addiction there for me. I feel the effects, but I think that having sugar a couple times a month isn't going to hurt my spiritual progress much.

I've always had a small problem with people respecting and praising and admiring "natural talent". I mean yes, it's impressive, and i do it too, but aren't those who had to work really hard and overcome odds more worthy of that admiration and respect..? Rather than those who everything comes to easily? So yeah. Thanks for the post.

Where I live, the bars are a very social scene. Not in a meat market way, but in a way to catch up with friends you normally don't see otherwise, and have a good time. Sure, there are the troubled people, but for the most part they're pretty positive, healthy places, at least until midnight or so. And even after that they aren't too bad. I would have a hard time in the service industry in general, and wouldn't want to tend bar, but around here anyway, it would be a positive, happy experience 90% of the time.

Yeah it's like a lot of things with this stuff...for the people who do it, it's natural. So how to describe how to do it? I have a competitive streak, but a small one. Very small. I'm only competitive in a fun, "we're all in this together" sense. So my power trips are pretty pathetically small. I love when I'm feeling great, powerful, energetic, happy and willing to help anyone who needs it. Basically, wanting to infect everyone with the power I'm feeling. Some of this came with adolescence wearing off.

Yeah, it's an unfortunate world that first guy has talked himself into living in...

Yeah I'd say if you are already experienced at seeing energy, you'll be able to tell the real thing from something doctored, or simply poor video with distortions. But as I am not experienced, I can't trust a video claiming to show energy.

Well I'll tell you...I DO buy this "we can see energy" stuff. I DON'T buy anything somebody is showing me in a video. Not that you're selling anything. But I absolutely won't be oohed and ahhed by camera work. Otherwise a hundred other movies I've seen would have made me a true believer in all sorts of stuff... If I were sitting there with a heat detecting camera, or energy detecting camera, whatever that is, and saw this for myself, it would be one thing. But I have no idea how that stuff was filmed, edited, or doctored. Everything I see, especially with Stonehenge and the skull, just make me want to ask what he did to the photo, and what's up with the camera work. I'll take a line from the x files....I WANT to believe, but that video isn't doing it for me. If we're going to show people how they can see energy, technological mediums aren't the place. Real life, in person, is the place. Otherwise there's too much room for completely legitimate doubt.

I understand what you're saying. What I'm saying is that if we're talking about seeing energy and auras, a video is not the place to do it. It could be doctored, it could be effects caused by poor video quality. If we're going to actually try to see energy, a recorded image, from someone who may or may not have altered the video or used effects, is not the place to start and form conclusions. Thanks for the writing, spotless. I have heard a lot about ego traps along the way, how they get more tricky and sticky the further you go and trap a lot of people who were/are "on their way", and how the over analyzation and too much knowledge of the path and too much talking about the path can set even more traps for yourself along the way.

Hard to say in a video. Any kind of cheap camera or conditions could cause a little blur around him, but I see what you're talking about.

Yeah...I think highly skilled people are often masters dispite their drug use, not because of it. I still agree that certain substances can help put you in the "right" frame of mind, but in the end they're a crutch, or at best, simply one tool, though a tool with the possibilities of a lot of pitfalls.

Could you explain? I don't think I'm actually studying a "system", and haven't cultivated specifically towards seeing energy. I like what Ya Mu and others have said. I just know that in the last few months I've been seeing more and more blue light where I never did before. Granted, now that I'm tuned into it, I'm probably just noticing more of what was already there, like thinking of a color, and then that color stands out in a room, but still...

I would say your post here is more passive aggresive than what you quoted. Rather than just dealing strictly with whoever you've got an issue with, you're posting in other threads continually bringing up this beef you have with someone. With all due respect. No idea what you've got going on and I'll admit I'm not interested.

You're (obviously, as has been pointed out) talking about different horse stances. The horse stance I do is like what Eugene is talking about, and is not cardio. The horse stance Protector is talking about is a whole different deal, and though he likes to be funny (and is!) and drag you along and provoke you, his style horse stance very much is on topic for this thread, even if he is having fun not explaining why, and talking philosophy instead.

I can't imagine that it's all not harmful and counter-productive in the long run. With weed, it always brings me back to that place..."oh yeah...I remember how this feels. In touch with my body and self...why am I not always like this?" But it's up to me to get to the place, or one like it, or one beyond it, on my own. Too much weed and I get dull, and that doesn't help me any. In the last year (ever since I got back from China), I've cut way back on drinking, which I only did socially, but I do social things a lot...and cut back on weed. I definitely know that it's all leading towards if not completely stopping weed, at least making it a very very rare thing, and as far as alcohol...It's not a problem for me, other than being around people who drink too often. Any time I'm with people, it means drinking. I don't need to be the guy not drinking at all, but I need it to be one drink, two at most. I have very good friends. So it's not so much a matter of being drawn to the kind of people that I'm used to, based on a youth of lots of social drinking. But it would be nice to have more friends who do things without drinking. Seems like where I live, people just drink a lot. Everything involves it at some point. I guess a lot of that is just typical American culture, but I'm finding that I avoid more and more social situations, because I don't want to drink even one or two drinks that night, but I'm not ready to have answer all the "why aren't you drinking?" questions. People would be totally fine with me not drinking, it's just awkward for a while until they get used to it. And of course as I'm writing this I'm realizing how silly it all is. I can do what I want, and I know my friends are good friends, and true friends, and they'll give me a lot of shit, but not be any less my friends if I didn't drink. But I like a good beer a couple times a week, and I don't see any problem with it. It's one or two at the brewery, then one or two more with dinner, then one or two more before everyone calls it a night that wears on me. I'd call that pretty normal, adult, responsible drinking. But not if you're into cultivation, rather than just all around enjoying life. My "problem", if you can call it that, is being surrounded by so many good friends who aren't interested in cultivation, only in enjoying life, and if they ever think of cutting back on alcohol it's for weight or general health reasons, never spiritual reasons. So I'm just always surrounded by it. Anyway..! That's my personal journal for the day, sorry if you had to read all that!

Indeed.

The only issue I've found with weed, other than the fact that it dulls my mind over time, is that it makes me SO in the moment and connected to my body and myself, that it could become habit forming. I wish I could keep that connection all the time. I believe that I can, with work. But weed just hands it to me. It's not an artificial experience. It allows me to quiet down all the external stimulus and thoughts and static and confusion in my head, and focus on what's going on with my body and mind. AKA, a shortcut to what many beginners are going for with the early stages of their cultivation. I'm very careful to not feel that I need it to get to this state, but it is a very easy way to get there. It can also, though, have the opposite effect, depending on where my head is at, or if I overdo it. It can cause an inability to focus, and send me on more of a "head trip" instead of being grounded and tied to myself. Like when you lay down at night and everything is going through your head, rather that being able to shut down and focus. It can have either effect, depending. The "under the influence" stuff annoys me. This isn't alcohol, which I believe is the only recreational drug that allows you lose control and do things your conscience would normally not allow you to do. I'm not talking about opening yourself up, allowing experiences you're normally too uptight or narrow minded to experience, like a lot of other drugs do. I'm talking doing stupid, harmful shit. That's alcohol, when it's abused.

That's a funny clip. Was it supposed to prove anything other than the fact that people involved in the war on drugs have been making things up and using ridiculous scare tactics for decades? Until society gets a hold of themselves and stops treating drug users (other than alcohol and prescription drug users, which is apparently fine..) like they're murderers and rapists (actually worse in some situations), using drugs may actually ruin your life. Only because of narrow minds and misguided laws, though.

Anybody read Be Here Now? Ram Dass has a good take on it, albeit his own which may or may not (and doesn't need to) jive with your experience. He is absolutely a spiritual teacher who got his start with heavy psychedelic drug use. Anyway, his was that yeah, these drugs are expanding your consciousness and are perhaps helpful to an extent, but at some point, they are a hindrance and you should be "getting high" without the use of drugs. That's my interpretation of his take on things. Like when his guru takes a couple pills of high grade LSD and nothing happens to him. Basically saying "I'm already there, this drug shows me nothing, you don't need it". Whether he just palmed the acid or whether he really ate it isn't something we'll ever know. My take, if it matters to anyone but me, is that these drugs absolutely open things up and show you things. Doing qigong stoned has allowed me to realize deeper states, grasp things my mind was too uptight to realize otherwise. Hallucinogenics have opened up new and more free ways of thinking. BUT...these realizations would have also come from disciplined meditation, I believe. So drugs are a shortcut. Shortcuts are dangerous things when it comes to playing around with your mind and energy. If you aren't grounded enough to handle, experienced and wise enough to interpret things that happen, you could quickly go down the wrong path. But lumping people who use drugs with cultivation in mind into some category of acid heads following Phish and saying non conformist drug users are as conformist as everyone else is kinda silly. Lets not over generalize based on biases and judgemental tendencies. It's a discussion and nobody "controls" the topic. But the idea with the thread wasn't to debate if its ok to use drugs, as I understand it. It was more of a "yeah, we know not everyone agrees, we've been over that. For those who do use drugs in their practice, let's talk".

Anything, really. Martial arts, hiking, backpacking, rafting, running, biking, any sports. I don't see how they conflict with a meditative lifestyle in any way. I do Bagua, hike, backpack, some biking, lots of walking. Often any number of other things...

I just sort of naturally view everything through the lense of dependancy. I have a very non-addictive personality. Either dispite that or because of it, I'm pretty much ok with anything I ingest, so long as I don't have a dependancy on it. If, when I come home from work and am tired, I feel that I need a beer to unwind...no beer. If I need to get high to relax at night...time to stop the weed. When things are a tool, I'm pretty ok with them. When they're a habit, or crutch, not so much. I do realize that if I ever become "very serious" about my practice, I'll need to do away with all that stuff. Beer would be hard for me socially. It's just something every one of my friends do. Not impossible, just difficult and awkward for a while. Weed would be harder, as I like it socially and solo. I've stared keeping it to weekends, just to make sure it's not happening all the time. While I have great moments of clarity while I'm high, if I'm doing it more than a few times every couple weeks, I can tell my mind is cloudier when I'm not high. Not really ok with me.

Huh...that didn't help. What are subtle/deceased people? Deceased to me means dead. I don't know enough to know what "subtle" means in this case. I'm a subtle person, but I'm assuming not in the way you mean. I guess this post is for people who are already educated in whatever you're talking about, because I'm completely clueless. I guess I'll just stay out of it if you can't drop it down to my level!

Same thing as I'm getting at..."I don't understand a word you just said"... Are you reading a short story to us, or is this some conspiracy theory, or sci-fi plot, or what? No offense meant...I just feel like I walked into the middle of a conversation and have no idea what's going on...

It is interesting. I'm very rarely lonely, and when I am, it's when I'm away from people, never when I'm surrounded by them. And even that rarely happens. I don't know if its me personally, or if its due to how I live my life. I crave human interaction more as I get older, but I crave solo time just as much. Would be intersting to talk to someone my age, who gets lonely a lot, and really explore what's going on. With teens especially, loneliness, isolation and general moodiness just come with the territory...Not sure trying to relate to that again would be of much use to me. Once you're in your late 20s, into your thirties, you get a lot more confidence and kind of figure yourself out. That causes less of a need to be accepted by others...which often leads to more meaningful relationships. But it sounds like a lot of seniors suffer from loneliness, so something must start happening again as you get really old. That's why, long before I really took Taoism all that seriously, I was attracted to it. The whole "figure yourself out first, then go out into the world". If you know yourself, you know which people are good for you and which aren't, and you have much higher quality relationships. Which matters way more than quantity, obviously.

I was a fire lookout for a summer and loved it...but wasn't much into spiritual practices back then so I can't say what it did for my qi/aura.

Music IS a great example of letting go and going with the flow. Dancing or playing. Good call. It's also a great example of how we can be too cerebral about things and take away what's great about it, like you pointed out.