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I've also heard that the practice of washing the tea leaves before the first infusion cuts down on a bit of the caffeine. Pour the hot water on them in whatever you're brewing them in, and pour it right back out. Then do your first infusion. But if you're avoiding caffeine, then yeah, there are plenty of other teas out there with no caffeine at all.

I understand. Or let's just say, I understand that I don't know you and can't pass judgement. I hold to the principles of my posts, though. It's never healthy when someone is talking about ending their life, except maybe when they have an imminently lethal, painful medical condition. I wish the best for you, and I hope you find what you're looking for!

Yes. I found a cool tea shop when I was in Durango this spring, and that's where I picked up those first two I mentioned. They had a lot of other good blends but I could only justify spending so much money on tea, since I was freshly unemployed and had already stocked up on a ton of green and wulong tea. Had never heard of adaptogens before then. Vanilla...interesting. I'll give it a try. I'm less into sweets, but who knows, I may like it! The same tea shop had a blend called "spiritual purification" or something like that...but rightly or wrongly, I kind of have alarm bells that go off in my head when things are marketed that way.

I've been drinking some gynostemma as a no caffeine, change-things-up tea in the afternoon. I also have a mix with mate, alfalfa, ginseng, gingko, holy basil, licorice and ginger. Not caffeine free though, obviously. Last winter I actually really liked having Sleepytime tea at night...

I may try some other types of mate at some point... Long before I got into tea, I drank mate. Whatever the most common commercial company is. Can't remember the name. I remembered liking it. So after a few years of drinking green tea, I remembered mate, and figured I'd buy some, to have some variety. I hadn't had any in probably 7 years. Now, mate tastes to me like it's been dried with cigarette butts. Gross. I really don't like it anymore. Not sure if it's just the one company, or all mate, but I think I don't like it anymore. But then if I only tried green tea from store bought tea bags, I wouldn't like it, either.

Sorry for the barrage of posts...but you really have me worried. I think that the essence of what I'm saying, and what some other people are saying, is that first you need to be right with yourself. Then you can find someone and begin a healthy relationship. When you're right with yourself, things fall into place. Your attitude towards your future is not healthy. If you bring that attitude into the dating scene, you may luck out, but there's a better chance you won't do well. Learn to be happy with yourself. After that, you'll be able to be happy with someone else. If not finding a mate is a reason to end your life, then something is out balance within you. You should address that before you start dating. I honestly believe that, based on what you've posted here, you should talk to someone trained in some form of psychiatry. Then go out and find someone to share your life with.

Not that I'm any expert, but I think you should continue to study the Tao. There are many ideas in it which are seemingly contradictory to being a human living on earth. The more you learn, act, and experience - the more you start to understand that they are not contradictory. They're instead the essence to living a spiritual life on earth. Alternatively, I might suggest reading things from Paulo Coehlo for a while, maybe, instead of the strictly eastern-based philosophies. If you can handle that he has outgrown Christianity, yet doesn't renounce or bad mouth it, you might get more out of it than some of the other paths on this forum. He's a guy who, rather than renouncing his faith, transcended it. And his ideas are much more obviously worldly in their spirituality. Sometimes the Tao can feel pretty abstract, until you start understanding it.

Am I the only one seriously concerned about this post? In all honesty, I think you should see someone like a psychiatrist, before you enter the dating scene. I can't imagine any healthy relationship beginning with someone who feels this way. I can't imagine anyone who feels this way being emotionally healthy. I can understand the desire to share your life with someone, even a very very strong desire. But I absolutely don't think it's healthy to have a thought in your mind like the last one in the quoted post. And please god don't ever mention this to the person you're dating, if you still feel this way when you do start dating. That's equivalent to telling someone "I'll kill myself if you leave me". That's a lot of pressure, don't you think? It's very difficult to have a healthy relationship with someone who would rather be dead than alone.

Taiwan oolongs really are great...I do 99% of my tea shopping from a Chinese tea store, but I buy from one other shop, here and there, just to get an oolong from Taiwan. Much smoother and sweeter. The Chinese oolongs are their own thing, and really good in their own right. But there's just something about the ones from Taiwan... I've been drinking black teas lately, which I had never done before. I don't like them as much as green or oolong...but they're still pretty good. Tea is dangerous for me...I can easily drain my bank account shopping around. I used to just put the leaves in a glass, pour water over them, and keep pouring more water whenever the level got down to about 1/4. But lately I've been using a gaiwan much more. The yixing pot comes out usually in the fall with the oolongs.

Yeah I was really disappointed with Ip Man III. What happened there? I'm sure there's some story behind it. Not even in the same league as the first two.

I don't know if it necessarily is... One thing I've noticed, as I've started going to bed earlier and earlier, is that I think I might actually be in danger of oversleeping. I'm usually asleep by 10pm these days, which means in bed usually no later than 9:30. I think sometimes I wake up around 4 or 5, feeling pretty good and awake, but see that it's still dark or look at the clock and think "that's too early" and go back to sleep. Then I wake up at 6 feeling sleepy and not ready to get up... Probably it would be better to get up when I wake up early feeling good, and just take a nap later if I need it. The body has its own rhythms... I've been regularly waking up at pretty much exactly 12:50am lately, every night.

I got up very early, very happy when I was a kid. Then when I hit teenage years, I started sleeping in. It was a habit I didn't fully kick until I got into my thirties. A few years with jobs that started a 7am helped. Then if I slept until 7am on the weekends, it felt like sleeping in. Now I don't sleep past 7 no matter what the circumstances. If I was up really late the night before, I'll just take a nap later on. It's important for me to get up early and be awake during the early hours, no matter what. 6am and 7am don't seem early to me anymore...I'm shooting for being up no later than 5:30. Most people get up earlier as they get older. But...as you can see from some of the posts above, not everyone. My Mom will sleep until 8am on days she doesn't work. That's just when she feels like it's time to get up. But she's not actively working toward enlightenment, so far as I know My Dad, on the other hand, was always up around 4:30. He was a teacher and had a 30 minute drive to work. So he'd be up, work out, go for a run, then sit at the kitchen table, right next to the window that looked out at the field behind his house, and drink coffee and smoke cigarettes in silence for 30-40 minutes every morning before work. Luckily that window opened. Not sure if he's still up that early now that he's retired.

Still older than I would have guessed!

I like your black hills, if they're the same ones I've spent just a very little time in. Yep, I agree. I remember a long time ago, when I was only marginally into all this "stuff", how the idea of some old taoist dude in China with a long white beard, eating very little and very simply, his only exercise long, slow walks in the mountains, was really appealing to me. So he kept active, but did no strenuous work. And therefore could be healthy with the simple, light diet. In the west we think you need to run, bike, basically get strenuous exercise to be healthy. Is that true? I don't know, personally...I'd like to think not. But I'd like to think a lot of things...

I saw a photo of myth maker at some point when he posted a link to his website, I think? So I have a pretty good idea, and I'm just going to enjoy the guessing

Perfect. The problem with 6 or 6:30 is that I'm a lazy cultivator and I get sucked into using the early morning NPR to get my news kick in the butt! So I need to get up early enough to get my practice in and listen to radio. Need to do my thing before 6:30 or 7, then I can listen to the news. Getting better every day. I have a time change to blame, though...I moved time zones in the last couple weeks and lost an hour, so I'm making it back up, by about ten minutes every morning.

4:30 is pretty darn good.

The Dalai Lama does something similar. Up super super early in the morning. Meditation and prayers. Eats a light porridge breakfast. Eats something for lunch, then is done eating for the day. I think in general that's what Buddhist monks do. I was really good at getting up early when the sun was up early...but now that the sun isn't up until almost 8am, it's getting harder. I'm up around 6:30 now instead of 5:30, but I'm getting it back to earlier and earlier every day. 5:30 is what I'm shooting for again for now. Hopefully earlier as I go on. If I went to sleep and got up with the sun during this season, I'd be sleeping 14 hours a day! But I agree that following nature's patterns is best I think in general you can follow a formula. But what works for a typical healthy westerner is not going to work for someone working towards enlightenment. I don't think a person in the west (or east) who works 8-5, hits the gym after work, and does some kind of strenuous sport or hobby on the weekends is going to be ok getting up at 3:30am, eating really light, then eating a still light but slightly heavier lunch, and not eating again. Just like a monk isn't going to do well sleeping from 11pm to 7am, eating 3 good sized meals a day. I mean that's "healthy", but it's not what people working towards more than just physical health are going for.

I'll chalk up people thinking I'm older to my infinite wisdom...or something I'm 37

I'm going with mid-40s for Soaring Crane. Just a wild guess... Edit: and just checked his profile...Not too far off.

There's a difference between living longer and an older "average life expectancy". From what I remember, the oldest age at which people are dying is no older than it has ever been. Some people lived to 110 way back then, and some do now. What has changed is the amount of people living past, say...their first birthday. Then their first couple years. Then their teenage years. Advances is medicine, understanding, and insulating ourselves from predators has allowed more people to reach an older age. So that bumps up the average. If the one guy/gal living to 110 in a village gets his age averaged with a bunch of infant mortality ages, and other people who died of disease, the average life expectancy is pretty low. Now that the 110's are getting averaged with more and more 40's, 50's, 60's 70's 80's, the average is going up. So in one sense everyone is right. People are living longer. But it's not like the oldest anyone lived 1,000 years ago or more was 30, and now it's over 100. The oldest people are living the same length as they ever have. I think the same goes for height. The people who were living in Chaco canyon and Mesa Verde were short. Really short. Their descendants are much taller now. But there were really tall people way back when, in some cultures. But in general, everyone is living longer, and is taller than in the past. Especially in the last few decades.

Yeah I think if you just decide to be celibate, you might suffer. The important thing is the sublimation of the sexual desires and using the sexual energy for spiritual progress. If all you're doing in daily life and with your girlfriend is trying your hardest to ignore a terrible case of blue-balls, I wouldn't call that spiritual progress. More likely you'll have a bad case of energy stagnation. I second the call for a good teacher, though I think the majority of us know how difficult that can be to find.

But just in case this thread goes too far towards the negative and ugly side of TTBs, I'd just like to say before that happens that I like the topic, and thanks Protector for bringing it up. I don't agree with everything you're saying, but I agree with a lot, and there are a lot of valid points, and it does take some courage to post this topic on this board and welcome the criticism that's sure to follow.

I read a good quote and I'll have to look up who said it, but it was something like "the bulk of the world's knowledge is an imaginary construct". Science is also working under a limited framework, stuck within the confines of humanity's ability to reason, and come up with descriptions of the known world. If we can't experience it or measure it, science has a hard time touching it. Which leaves a lot of stuff outside the realm of science's ability to explain. But I think physicists especially are getting more and more comfortable with the idea that there are things we just can't explain and don't know, and the fact that at an atomic level, things don't behave according the laws of physics we deal with in every day life. There's a whole different set of "rules".

Not sure yet whether this "force" is a conscious being with intent, as Edward alludes to, or just our own inner pitfalls and weaknesses, which of course people like to externalize and anthropomorphize. I'll let you know when I think I'm far enough along to make that call. But in the end it probably doesn't matter. Our own personal - demons/hurdles/walls we erect without even knowing - are things we should try to overcome. Whether they're our creation or some actual external force doesn't much matter in the end. Though dealing with yourself seems to make the solution much easier, and makes it easier to take the responsibility yourself. The thought of some actual demon messing with you is much more intimidating, and puts the solution outside of your abilities, often. Is the issue that I need to work on myself, or that I need some qigong master's help ridding me of negative "entities"? A lot of a person's attitude toward life hinges on which interpretation they take...