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How can we tell whether or not we are using post-heaven chi or pre-heaven chi? This is starting to sound like an impossible dream. How many people here can actually feel these 2 types of chi's, tell the difference and circulate both?

Sigh, I am feeling a bit off balanced here. It turns out my last night dream was telling me that I would experience certain emotional affliction because I would be meeting people of who "unloaded their bad karma" onto me. In this dream, I was in a school with a broken main pipe causing the bathroom sewer pipe to get backed up. All the craps were spilled onto my camera equipment. And this morning I met someone of who was precisely doing this to me. It was my fault too since I was expecting something which it wasn't about to happen. And the next part of the dream I was being interrogated by my old boss concerning questions about my past life. I was like...I couldn't answer him because I really don't know too much about my past life other than some bits and pieces. Well, this morning, I had a nice conversation with someone I knew and he was asking questions that I couldn't answer him. These questions that I couldn't even answer myself. How could I even answer him? I felt kind of embarrassed. This morning I wasn't feeling well. I could have avoided all these by not being in this place this morning or reducing my expectations. Oh well, it is best to forget what happened this morning.

This is not what is meant in the original text. To be blessed with a land flowing with milk and honey is to be blessed with abundance - like the Tao which is inexhaustible. It’s never enough when the Tao is with you, when you are on the roll with all cylinders firing. You throw caution to the winds and shoot for that low score. You go for the American dream.

When one wakes up from his "dream", what the "reality" look like? Have you been there or seen it? Thanks. If you read what DB has written, you seemed to describe something in different stage. "There is this Chinese nursery rhyme that nearly every Chinese can recite it backwards. ‘Once upon a time, there is a mountain. In the mountain, there is a temple. In the temple, there are an old monk and a young monk. The old monk starts to tell a story to the young monk: once upon a time there is a mountain… (repeating endless the same thing)’. [my translation]I used to believe our parents played this trick for the quickly ran out bedside fairytale storage. But now, I think it’s a masterpiece of Buddhism folks- applying the easiest way to define the most profound word." So far, my personal experience confirmed this nursery rhyme actually describes "reality". A couple of times, I actually woke up from the "dream", i found myself sitll inside another "dream", which is exactly like the "dream" I just woke up from.

I been through similar experience brought on by cannabis, lsd and shrooms... was diagnosed as schizophrenic then changed to just pure paranoia once they realised i still think logically etc... I used to get the most intense heat in lower abdomen when stoned and openings of the heart that felt like i connected with the whole universe. Then I went into a more serious phase where i'd get pressure on the lower spine like someone was pressing down on it while i was trying to sleep. The big change was forming false memory's that were much like a powerful lucid dream except i was awake at the time. A shamanic practitioner told me in the past year that i was journeying involuntarily. Other things occured when off medication such as light appearing at heart centre and spreading up and down my spine.. That was after making a massive effort to right my wrongs and try and make a life for myself. But then something happened that resulted in involuntary loss of a HUGE amount of essence/jing that made things spiritual come to a halt.. i dare say i may have lost all potential at that time for the kundalini to be present... although i'm working with a tcm doc to get healthy again. So, i agree about schizophrenia being kundalini and entity related for sure... if one can get enough insight into oneself and stay grounded and do what needs to be done in this world then it can be overcome. Put it this way, Buddha, Christ, Lao Tzu etc attained something great, but they sure as heck could manage this world if they wanted to/needed to, like hold down a job, keep house/home in order, have healthy relationships....if one can't handle that, then they are not fit for true spiritual attainment.. i'm not trying to preach, because at the moment i'm having great difficulty with the normal things of life... but it is something i learned along the way with this 'illness' that i feel is quite important. Really glad you are feeling better, spring forest is good stuff... Peace

My apologies, I meant to ask is the mysterious female synonymous with the mysterious pass, but I think everybody got my meaning. To be honest, I was pretty sure what your answer would be, and more than anything was too attached to this post to see it languish without a single response. Deci Belle speaks very truthfully when she says, "please realize to even bring up this subject matter is not a casual affair." This is true. In some circles, this topic is not elaborated to the non-initiated; even in the monastic Quanzhen tradition no monks and nuns are guaranteed oral transmission on this subject and it might even be true nowadays that the majority do not get it, though I cannot say for sure. Believe it or not--I suspect that many or most won't--what Deci Belle is speaking of here is as august an affair as can be found in the Daoist tradition. I feel only just barely, barely, barely qualified to venture such a statement, and as such do not do so lightly. I realize that TTB has long been home to all manner of individuals claiming to various levels of enlightenment, and that consensus as to which have something real to offer and which have arrived to spout nonsense is unreachable. However, we can put questions of Deci Belle's accomplishment or lack thereof utterly to the side, and the fact remains that the content of this post is indispensible to the cultivator who is intent on seeing reality. And we should be grateful to even know that the topic exists, as I have seen people leave countries, learn languages, don funny hats, and spend years seeking the Dao without even knowing that this topic exists. In China, one finds many who hang a few pieces of calligraphy on the wall, stick a dashing Bodhidharma figurine on the mantle, and, the months quickly turning into years, wax daily poetic about where the raw materials for the incense were sourced from, or how this or that bygone cultivator achieved this or that supernatural feat, or the fact that so and so knows so and so master who can open your small heavenly circle in just three easy days. With breaks only to pee (green tea'll do that to you), the jabbering goes on for an eternity. The Tao Bums in the flesh, if you will. Such is certainly a fine and comfortable way to spend one's days, but only so long as one realizes that the irony of redecorating one's body, one's home, and one's mind with empty caricatures of realized saints and vacuous reiterations of their teachings is perhaps the most tragic irony available to sentient beings, and we certainly have plenty of ironies to choose from. A starving man who melts down the key to the grain store so that he might cast a stainless steel sandwich for his charm bracelet is an even lesser fool. And yet most of what one finds here is charm bracelets and cooing over charm bracelets--very little grain for the belly. I cannot speak for her, but my suspicious is that Deci Belle, in a display of a compassion not many will understand, would find no greater joy than in seeing a few of us finally see the games we play for what they are. And yes, were we so lucky that it would actually wake one of us up, she might even be so kind as to deliver a physical blow, but be clear, you who would titter cleverly over this matter, that this blow, as with those of the Chan and Zen masters who employed such methods, has nothing to do with the work of a dominatrix. After all, the dominatrix's employer thrills at the sting of every strike, but there are few here, especially amongst the tongue-wagging core of enthusiastic mega-posters, who have even the remotest desire to be smacked out of his dream. Anyway, that is enough talking for me.

Here as well, to avoid rush hour traffic. Transit is far faster in the mornings. Well that and some folks here even choose transit for environmental reasons. We even get bicycle lanes through the center of downtown, pretty neat. The whole discussion of being poor as compared to being rich though made me wonder, how poor are we talking here, and at what point is someone considered rich in a monetary sense? I'd consider poor minimum wage or lower as it really sucks to try to live on that! Rich I'm not so sure how to define that... I know some folks who own a few properties but are far from rich... our landlord eats rice for all meals, someone I know who brags about being rich and all the money he has waited 10 years to go on his dream vacation (wth? lol). I was having lunch at one of those most fancy restaurant in town places once. We were all out on the deck, and the folks at the table beside us were saying what they couldn't stand was "middle class people". I guess their yacht was parked out front . Fortunately far from all folks don't have this attitude. I know people who make more money in a week than I do in a year, who donate to various wildlife and educational causes, and who have a very rich spiritual life, and are extremely nice people. I have also been riding the bus and heard folks that definitely looked like they could use a wage increase putting down others on the bus because they were "rich" ROFL. Go figure. So my conclusion is that we as humans will try to find anything we can that we feel is superior about ourselves, then use it to put down others who we don't feel have this quality, so we can feel better about ourselves. With some it's money, with others it is intellect, fashion sense... whatever. Edit: adding the whole "I'm more enlightened than you" bit to the list, which is also far more prevalent than we would expect!

@kaazuo "– alone" so sad this is what being rich has gained you,,,,,, "That explains it. You are not meant to be rich. And that is your karma. You should have no trouble finding your dream in life." if one is a Taoist, see my above post, about the revision ideal and if anyone happens to be in america, then it is a common theme that one can go from rags to riches or from riches to rags with a quickness "I feel I am meant to be rich and to have everything my heart desires' i dont mean to go lacan or the rolling stones on ya, but , ya aint never gone get your desire you, if you try, can get what you need desire is either a bob dylan album or a u2 song i do always find great entertainment in your postings kaaazuo when if you do tumble one day and find yourself amongst the poor, if you need a guide just hollar here is a preview to how the poor travel

i forgot to add one thing never try to seek the truth with the intention of gaining control over anything quite the irony thats why enlightened people dont have any interest in controlling anything because there is nothing to control its like what do you get by controlling your dream ? nothing really , just some fun but thats the case when you know its a dream, when you are lucid dreaming when you dont know that its a dream, you wanna control everything

"If you want to live, then have a dream." -Myself

ever wondered why you can control everything in your dream, when you are lucid dreaming ? its because you know that its not the truth, its not real, you know that when you will wake up that will be the real reality, this is just illusion in other words you are anchored in this reality as being true, thats why you can control anything which is not true compare to this reality this is your anchor the time you realize you are dreaming, you become lucid, you become aware that its illusion and whoa you can fly, you can create, destroy universes, you are the creator , the destroyer of your dream if you want such control over this very reality you are living right now, than you have to anchor yourself to the real truth a truth which is real compare to this reality you have to realize the truth when you will realize it, you will see that this reality is also dreamlike compare to that truth than and at that time you will gain complete control over this reality, you can do whatever you want i think thats why enlightened saints can do such miraculous things because they are anchored in the real truth that truth has many names some call it para brahma, some call it the Tao, some call it GOD seek it

That explains it. You are not meant to be rich. And that is your karma. You should have no trouble finding your dream in life. I feel I am meant to be rich and to have everything my heart desires. The rich live in a reality very much different than that the poor faces even though all live on the same planet. Take travel for example. The poor wait for the bus at street corners where thugs loiter. The poor rides in the bus or train with other poor people and run the risk of being in the midst of a punch-up or food fight. I took a ride into the city on a train once. I didn’t sit even though there were unoccupied seats, and I didn’t look at anyone for fear of looking at anyone the wrong way. Back home, I felt compelled to take a shower. I stripped off my clothes and dumped them in the washing machine, and sent my shoes and jacket to the cleaners. The rich don’t wait. Life is precious and the sole of expensive shoes rarely touch public pavements. You step off the driveway, sink into soft leather upholstery and get driven to your destination – alone, as you work on the onboard computer writing posts to tao bums; or with other rich people you like, but never with the poor.

addon <David Wong aka Jason Pargin's articles and there many gems, are at http://www.cracked.com/members/David+Wong/ > 6 Harsh Truths That Will Make You a Better Person By David Wong December 17, 2012 2013, motherfuckers. Yeah! LET'S DO THIS. "Do what?" you ask. I DON'T KNOW. LET'S FIGURE THAT OUT TOGETHER, MOTHERFUCKERS. Feel free to stop reading this if your career is going great, you're thrilled with your life and you're happy with your relationships. Enjoy the rest of your day, friend, this article is not for you. You're doing a great job, we're all proud of you. So you don't feel like you wasted your click, here's a picture of Lenny Kravitz wearing a gigantic scarf. For the rest of you, I want you to try something: Name five impressive things about yourself. Write them down or just shout them out loud to the room. But here's the catch -- you're not allowed to list anything you are (i.e., I'm a nice guy, I'm honest), but instead can only list things that you do (i.e., I just won a national chess tournament, I make the best chili in Massachusetts). If you found that difficult, well, this is for you, and you are going to fucking hate hearing it. My only defense is that this is what I wish somebody had said to me around 1995 or so. #6. The World Only Cares About What It Can Get from You Let's say that the person you love the most has just been shot. He or she is lying in the street, bleeding and screaming. A guy rushes up and says, "Step aside." He looks over your loved one's bullet wound and pulls out a pocket knife -- he's going to operate right there in the street. You ask, "Are you a doctor?" The guy says, "No." You say, "But you know what you're doing, right? You're an old Army medic, or ..." At this point the guy becomes annoyed. He tells you that he is a nice guy, he is honest, he is always on time. He tells you that he is a great son to his mother and has a rich life full of fulfilling hobbies, and he boasts that he never uses foul language. Confused, you say, "How does any of that fucking matter when my (wife/husband/best friend/parent) is lying here bleeding! I need somebody who knows how to operate on bullet wounds! Can you do that or not?!?" Now the man becomes agitated -- why are you being shallow and selfish? Do you not care about any of his other good qualities? Didn't you just hear him say that he always remembers his girlfriend's birthday? In light of all of the good things he does, does it really matter if he knows how to perform surgery? In that panicked moment, you will take your bloody hands and shake him by the shoulders, screaming, "Yes, I'm saying that none of that other shit matters, because in this specific situation, I just need somebody who can stop the bleeding, you crazy fucking asshole." So here is my terrible truth about the adult world: You are in that very situation every single day. Only you are the confused guy with the pocket knife. All of society is the bleeding gunshot victim. If you want to know why society seems to shun you, or why you seem to get no respect, it's because society is full of people who need things. They need houses built, they need food to eat, they need entertainment, they need fulfilling sexual relationships. You arrived at the scene of that emergency, holding your pocket knife, by virtue of your birth -- the moment you came into the world, you became part of a system designed purely to see to people's needs. Either you will go about the task of seeing to those needs by learning a unique set of skills, or the world will reject you, no matter how kind, giving and polite you are. You will be poor, you will be alone, you will be left out in the cold. Does that seem mean, or crass, or materialistic? What about love and kindness -- don't those things matter? Of course. As long as they result in you doing things for people that they can't get elsewhere. For you see ... #5. The Hippies Were Wrong Here is the greatest scene in the history of movies (WARNING: EXTREME NSFW LANGUAGE): For those of you who can't watch videos, it's the famous speech Alec Baldwin gives in the cinematic masterpiece Glengarry Glenn Ross. Baldwin's character -- whom you assume is the villain -- addresses a room full of dudes and tears them a new asshole, telling them that they're all about to be fired unless they "close" the sales they've been assigned: "Nice guy? I don't give a shit. Good father? Fuck you! Go home and play with your kids. If you want to work here, close." It's brutal, rude and borderline sociopathic, and also it is an honest and accurate expression of what the world is going to expect from you. The difference is that, in the real world, people consider it so wrong to talk to you that way that they've decided it's better to simply let you keep failing. That scene changed my life. I'd program my alarm clock to play it for me every morning if I knew how. Alec Baldwin was nominated for an Oscar for that movie and that's the only scene he's in. As smarter people have pointed out, the genius of that speech is that half of the people who watch it think that the point of the scene is "Wow, what must it be like to have such an asshole boss?" and the other half think, "Fuck yes, let's go out and sell some goddamned real estate!" Or, as the Last Psychiatrist blog put it: "If you were in that room, some of you would understand this as a work, but feed off the energy of the message anyway, welcome the coach's cursing at you, 'this guy is awesome!'; while some of you would take it personally, this guy is a jerk, you have no right to talk to me like that, or -- the standard maneuver when narcissism is confronted with a greater power -- quietly seethe and fantasize about finding information that will out him as a hypocrite. So satisfying." That excerpt is from an insightful critique of "hipsters" and why they seem to have so much trouble getting jobs (that doesn't begin to do it justice, go read the whole thing), and the point is that the difference in those two attitudes -- bitter vs. motivated -- largely determines whether or not you'll succeed in the world. For instance, some people want to respond to that speech with Tyler Durden's line from Fight Club: "You are not your job." But, well, actually, you totally are. Granted, your "job" and your means of employment might not be the same thing, but in both cases you are nothing more than the sum total of your useful skills. For instance, being a good mother is a job that requires a skill. It's something a person can do that is useful to other members of society. But make no mistake: Your "job" -- the useful thing you do for other people -- is all you are. There is a reason why surgeons get more respect than comedy writers. There is a reason mechanics get more respect than unemployed hipsters. There is a reason your job will become your label if your death makes the news ("NFL Linebacker Dies in Murder/Suicide"). Tyler said, "You are not your job," but he also founded and ran a successful soap company and became the head of an international social and political movement. He was totally his job. Or think of it this way: Remember when Chick-fil-A came out against gay marriage? And how despite the protests, the company continues to sell millions of sandwiches every day? It's not because the country agrees with them; it's because they do their job of making delicious sandwiches well. And that's all that matters. You don't have to like it. I don't like it when it rains on my birthday. It rains anyway. Clouds form and precipitation happens. People have needs and thus assign value to the people who meet them. These are simple mechanisms of the universe and they do not respond to our wishes. If you protest that you're not a shallow capitalist materialist and that you disagree that money is everything, I can only say: Who said anything about money? You're missing the larger point. #4. What You Produce Does Not Have to Make Money, But It Does Have to Benefit People Let's try a non-money example so you don't get hung up on that. The demographic that Cracked writes for is heavy on 20-something males. So on our message boards and in my many inboxes I read several dozen stories a year from miserable, lonely guys who insist that women won't come near them despite the fact that they are just the nicest guys in the world. I can explain what is wrong with this mindset, but it would probably be better if I let Alec Baldwin explain it: In this case, Baldwin is playing the part of the attractive women in your life. They won't put it as bluntly as he does -- society has trained us not to be this honest with people -- but the equation is the same. "Nice guy? Who gives a shit? If you want to work here, close." So, what do you bring to the table? Because the Zooey Deschanel lookalike in the bookstore that you've been daydreaming about moisturizes her face for an hour every night and feels guilty when she eats anything other than salad for lunch. She's going to be a surgeon in 10 years. What do you do? "What, so you're saying that I can't get girls like that unless I have a nice job and make lots of money?" No, your brain jumps to that conclusion so you have an excuse to write off everyone who rejects you by thinking that they're just being shallow and selfish. I'm asking what do you offer? Are you smart? Funny? Interesting? Talented? Ambitious? Creative? OK, now what do you do to demonstrate those attributes to the world? Don't say that you're a nice guy -- that's the bare minimum. Pretty girls have guys being nice to them 36 times a day. The patient is bleeding in the street. Do you know how to operate or not? "Well, I'm not sexist or racist or greedy or shallow or abusive! Not like those other douchebags!" I'm sorry, I know that this is hard to hear, but if all you can do is list a bunch of faults you don't have, then back the fuck away from the patient. There's a witty, handsome guy with a promising career ready to step in and operate. Does that break your heart? OK, so now what? Are you going to mope about it, or are you going to learn how to do surgery? It's up to you, but don't complain about how girls fall for jerks; they fall for those jerks because those jerks have other things they can offer. "But I'm a great listener!" Are you? Because you're willing to sit quietly in exchange for the chance to be in the proximity of a pretty girl (and spend every second imagining how soft her skin must be)? Well guess what, there's another guy in her life who also knows how to do that, and he can play the guitar. Saying that you're a nice guy is like a restaurant whose only selling point is that the food doesn't make you sick. You're like a new movie whose title is This Movie Is in English, and its tagline is "The actors are clearly visible." I think this is why you can be a "nice guy" and still feel terrible about yourself. Specifically ... #3. You Hate Yourself Because You Don't Do Anything "So, what, you're saying that I should pick up a book on how to get girls?" Only if step one in the book is "Start making yourself into the type of person girls want to be around." Because that's the step that gets skipped -- it's always "How can I get a job?" and not "How can I become the type of person employers want?" It's "How can I get pretty girls to like me?" instead of "How can I become the type of person that pretty girls like?" See, because that second one could very well require giving up many of your favorite hobbies and paying more attention to your appearance, and God knows what else. You might even have to change your personality. "But why can't I find someone who just likes me for me?" you ask. The answer is because humans need things. The victim is bleeding, and all you can do is look down and complain that there aren't more gunshot wounds that just fix themselves? Everyone who watched that video instantly became a little happier, although not all for the same reasons. Can you do that for people? Why not? What's stopping you from strapping on your proverbial thong and cape and taking to your proverbial stage and flapping your proverbial penis at people? That guy knows the secret to winning at human life: that doing ... whatever you call that ... was better than not doing it. "But I'm not good at anything!" Well, I have good news -- throw enough hours of repetition at it and you can get sort of good at anything. I was the world's shittiest writer when I was an infant. I was only slightly better at 25. But while I was failing miserably at my career, I wrote in my spare time for eight straight years, an article a week, before I ever made real money off it. It took 13 years for me to get good enough to make the New York Times best-seller list. It took me probably 20,000 hours of practice to sand the edges off my sucking. Don't like the prospect of pouring all of that time into a skill? Well, I have good news and bad news. The good news is that the sheer act of practicing will help you come out of your shell -- I got through years of tedious office work because I knew that I was learning a unique skill on the side. People quit because it takes too long to see results, because they can't figure out that the process is the result. The bad news is that you have no other choice. If you want to work here, close. Because in my non-expert opinion, you don't hate yourself because you have low self-esteem, or because other people were mean to you. You hate yourself because you don't do anything. Not even you can just "love you for you" -- that's why you're miserable and sending me private messages asking me what I think you should do with your life. Do the math: How much of your time is spent consuming things other people made (TV, music, video games, websites) versus making your own? Only one of those adds to your value as a human being. And if you hate hearing this and are responding with something you heard as a kid that sounds like "It's what's on the inside that matters!" then I can only say ... #2. What You Are Inside Only Matters Because of What It Makes You Do Being in the business I'm in, I know dozens of aspiring writers. They think of themselves as writers, they introduce themselves as writers at parties, they know that deep inside, they have the heart of a writer. The only thing they're missing is that minor final step, where they actually fucking write things. But really, does that matter? Is "writing things" all that important when deciding who is and who is not truly a "writer"? For the love of God, yes. See, there's a common defense to everything I've said so far, and to every critical voice in your life. It's the thing your ego is saying to you in order to prevent you from having to do the hard work of improving: "I know I'm a good person on the inside." It may also be phrased as "I know who I am" or "I just have to be me." Don't get me wrong; who you are inside is everything -- the guy who built a house for his family from scratch did it because of who he was inside. Every bad thing you've ever done has started with a bad impulse, some thought ricocheting around inside your skull until you had to act on it. And every good thing you've done is the same -- "who you are inside" is the metaphorical dirt from which your fruit grows. But here's what everyone needs to know, and what many of you can't accept: "You" are nothing but the fruit. Nobody cares about your dirt. "Who you are inside" is meaningless aside from what it produces for other people. Inside, you have great compassion for poor people. Great. Does that result in you doing anything about it? Do you hear about some terrible tragedy in your community and say, "Oh, those poor children. Let them know that they are in my thoughts"? Because fuck you if so -- find out what they need and help provide it. A hundred million people watched that Kony video, virtually all of whom kept those poor African children "in their thoughts." What did the collective power of those good thoughts provide? Jack fucking shit. Children die every day because millions of us tell ourselves that caring is just as good as doing. It's an internal mechanism controlled by the lazy part of your brain to keep you from actually doing work. How many of you are walking around right now saying, "She/he would love me if she/he only knew what an interesting person I am!" Really? How do all of your interesting thoughts and ideas manifest themselves in the world? What do they cause you to do? If your dream girl or guy had a hidden camera that followed you around for a month, would they be impressed with what they saw? Remember, they can't read your mind -- they can only observe. Would they want to be a part of that life? Because all I'm asking you to do is apply the same standard to yourself that you apply to everyone else. Don't you have that annoying Christian friend whose only offer to help anyone ever is to "pray for them"? Doesn't it drive you nuts? I'm not even commenting on whether or not prayer works; it doesn't change the fact that they chose the one type of help that doesn't require them to get off the sofa. They abstain from every vice, they think clean thoughts, their internal dirt is as pure as can be, but what fruit grows from it? And they should know this better than anybody -- I stole the fruit metaphor from the Bible. Jesus said something to the effect of "a tree is judged by its fruit" over and over and over. Granted, Jesus never said, "If you want to work here, close." No, he said, "Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire." The people didn't react well to being told that, just as the salesmen didn't react well to Alec Baldwin telling them that they needed to grow some balls or resign themselves to shining his shoes. Which brings us to the final point ... #1. Everything Inside You Will Fight Improvement The human mind is a miracle, and you will never see it spring more beautifully into action than when it is fighting against evidence that it needs to change. Your psyche is equipped with layer after layer of defense mechanisms designed to shoot down anything that might keep things from staying exactly where they are -- ask any addict. So even now, some of you reading this are feeling your brain bombard you with knee-jerk reasons to reject it. From experience, I can say that these seem to come in the form of ... *Intentionally Interpreting Any Criticism as an Insult "Who is he to call me lazy and worthless! A good person would never talk to me like this! He wrote this whole thing just to feel superior to me and to make me feel bad about my life! I'm going to think up my own insult to even the score!" *Focusing on the Messenger to Avoid Hearing the Message "Who is THIS guy to tell ME how to live? Oh, like he's so high and mighty! It's just some dumb writer on the Internet! I'm going to go dig up something on him that reassures me that he's stupid, and that everything he's saying is stupid! This guy is so pretentious, it makes me puke! I watched his old rap video on YouTube and thought his rhymes sucked!" *Focusing on the Tone to Avoid Hearing the Content "I'm going to dig through here until I find a joke that is offensive when taken out of context, and then talk and think only about that! I've heard that a single offensive word can render an entire book invisible!" *Revising Your Own History "Things aren't so bad! I know that I was threatening suicide last month, but I'm feeling better now! It's entirely possible that if I just keep doing exactly what I'm doing, eventually things will work out! I'll get my big break, and if I keep doing favors for that pretty girl, eventually she'll come around!" *Pretending That Any Self-Improvement Would Somehow Be Selling Out Your True Self "Oh, so I guess I'm supposed to get rid of all of my manga and instead go to the gym for six hours a day and get a spray tan like those Jersey Shore douchebags? Because THAT IS THE ONLY OTHER OPTION." And so on. Remember, misery is comfortable. It's why so many people prefer it. Happiness takes effort. Also, courage. It's incredibly comforting to know that as long as you don't create anything in your life, then nobody can attack the thing you created. It's so much easier to just sit back and criticize other people's creations. This movie is stupid. That couple's kids are brats. That other couple's relationship is a mess. That rich guy is shallow. This restaurant sucks. This Internet writer is an asshole. I'd better leave a mean comment demanding that the website fire him. See, I created something. Oh, wait, did I forget to mention that part? Yeah, whatever you try to build or create -- be it a poem, or a new skill, or a new relationship -- you will find yourself immediately surrounded by non-creators who trash it. Maybe not to your face, but they'll do it. Your drunk friends do not want you to get sober. Your fat friends do not want you to start a fitness regimen. Your jobless friends do not want to see you embark on a career. Just remember, they're only expressing their own fear, since trashing other people's work is another excuse to do nothing. "Why should I create anything when the things other people create suck? I would totally have written a novel by now, but I'm going to wait for something good, I don't want to write the next Twilight!" As long as they never produce anything, it will forever be perfect and beyond reproach. Or if they do produce something, they'll make sure they do it with detached irony. They'll make it intentionally bad to make it clear to everyone else that this isn't their real effort. Their real effort would have been amazing. Not like the shit you made. Read our article comments -- when they get nasty, it's always from the same angle: Cracked needs to fire this columnist. This asshole needs to stop writing. Don't make any more videos. It always boils down to "Stop creating. This is different from what I would have made, and the attention you're getting is making me feel bad about myself." Don't be that person. If you are that person, don't be that person any more. This is what's making people hate you. This is what's making you hate yourself. So how about this: one year. The end of 2013, that's our deadline. Or a year from whenever you read this. While other people are telling you "Let's make a New Year's resolution to lose 15 pounds this year!" I'm going to say let's pledge to do fucking anything -- add any skill, any improvement to your human tool set, and get good enough at it to impress people. Don't ask me what -- hell, pick something at random if you don't know. Take a class in karate, or ballroom dancing, or pottery. Learn to bake. Build a birdhouse. Learn massage. Learn a programming language. Film a porno. Adopt a superhero persona and fight crime. Start a YouTube vlog. Write for Cracked. But the key is, I don't want you to focus on something great that you're going to make happen to you ("I'm going to find a girlfriend, I'm going to make lots of money ..."). I want you to purely focus on giving yourself a skill that would make you ever so slightly more interesting and valuable to other people. "I don't have the money to take a cooking class." Then fucking Google "how to cook." They've even filtered out the porn now, it's easier than ever. Damn it, you have to kill those excuses. Or they will kill you. The 10 Most Important Things They Didn't Teach You In School By David Wong June 21, 2010  By the time you're 30, you'll be hit with the crushing truth of just how much the grownups didn't teach you when you were in school. And, while liberals and conservatives haggle over whether public schools need more funding or more lessons on the Ten Commandments, we think all can agree there are some very basic, useful things that our children really, really should know. Therefore when Cracked starts its line of private schools, know that your kids won't graduate without having passed... #10. Sex Ed (for Girls): How to Spot a Douchebag  Young ladies, you're in your teens now and already you have no doubt run into some guys who are being suspiciously nice to you. Likely you have figured out that in many cases, this has nothing to do with them being nice guys and everything to do with them desperately wanting you to touch their boner. What you may not realize is that over the next few years, a string of rejections will cause many of these men to start hating you. Some of them hate you already, because they grew up hating their mothers and it kind of carries over. Boys are like that. Now, some of these men will then become members of the Pick Up Artist Community, also known as the Seduction Community. This is a loose club of guys who see females as a collection of walking masturbation aids. They have websites and seminars and chat rooms where they trade tips on how to manipulate you into having sex with them. They believe the male/female relationship is adversarial in nature, and that sex is a way of conquering you. Thus many of their techniques work by playing on your insecurities, like "the Neg," where they first engage you in conversation, then drop subtle criticisms that will undermine your self-esteem and subconsciously make you want to gain their approval (by letting them touch your boobs). Believe it or not, it works--if you're not ready for it. This is just one type of douchebag; this class will cover several varieties. And, while we're not telling you not to sleep with these men, the lesson you will learn from this course is that they will put the same effort into making you happy as they do the semen-encrusted sock under their bed. Chapters Include: I. Types of Douchebag;
II. How to Tell When He's Lying;
III. Why Your Male Friends Almost Certainly Want to Have Sex With You;
IV. Why There is Nothing to be Gained by Showing Your Boobs to a Camera. #9. Sex Ed (for Boys): Why Porn is Not a Good Way to Learn About Sex  Young men, you're in your teens now and that means already you've seen several thousand hours of Internet porn. Many of you will soon engage in your first sexual encounter, having no practical instruction to guide you beyond those videos. Unfortunately, what you see on PornTube represents only what certain men wish sex was like. We're not saying that you'll never meet a woman who enjoys, say, having semen squirted into her eyes, or having sex on camera with five strangers in the back of a decorated van. What we're saying is that just about everything you see in those videos--including the ones that claim to be hidden camera or "reality" porn--is there specifically because real women are not like that. These videos fill a gap between fantasy and reality. So how do you figure out what to do when you're finally alone with a lady? Well, we can give you the basics, but the rest will be up to you. Chapters Include: I. It's a Vagina, Not a Slab of Meat You're Trying to Tenderize;
II. Your Penis Size is Probably Perfectly Fine;
III. Why Your First Time is Going to be a Humiliating Disaster, No Matter What You Do;
IV. Most Women Are Not Sexually Stimulated by Spanking;
V. Every Woman is Different and You Will Only Learn What She Likes Via Practice;
VI. That's OK, Because the Practice is Awesome. #8. Phys. Ed: Practical Self-Defense  We're calling this course "Practical Self-Defense" but a more accurate title would be, "How To Get Away From Somebody Who is Trying to Mug or Rape You." Yes, "Get Away." Some of you guys who grew up on The Matrix still fantasize about beating the shit out of a street full of thugs in a fight that looks like a choreographed dance. This class will not teach you how to do that. No class will teach you how to do that.
Will not happen. Oh, there are guys out there capable of kicking ass. They're called criminals. They're good at fighting because they have poor impulse control and anger management, and thus are constantly getting into fights. If you, on the other hand, are going to be civilized and successful parents and homeowners and taxpayers, the odds are overwhelming you will not ever be good at fighting. This fact is thus reflected in our curriculum. Chapters Include: I. Why Your Wallet is Not Worth Dying For;
II. Why Guns and Knives Are Not Awesome (Includes Visual Aids Depicting Wounds of Gnarled Strips of Exposed Fat, Tendons and Skin, Plus Graphic Descriptions of Life in a Wheelchair);
III. How to Break Off an Argument With a Hobo Before He Stabs You;
IV. Why You Can't Reason With a Screaming Drunk;
V. Why Believing Action Movies Are Real Will Get You Killed;
VI. How to Tell When That Guy Walking Toward You is Concealing a Weapon.
 #7. Industrial Arts: Emergency Repairs  This does not require a great deal of elaboration. Quite simply, there are certain things a person who is about to be living on their own needs to know how to do. Building a goddamned birdhouse is not one of them. Chapters Include: I. How to Patch and Paint a Wall So You Can Get Your Deposit Back From Your Landlord;
II. Identifying Which Wires in Your House Will Kill You if You Touch Them;
III. What to do When You Wake Up to Find Your Toilet/Refrigerator/Hot Water Heater/Air Conditioner/Sink is Puking Water Onto Your Floor;
IV. When to Call the Repair Guy;
V. How to Figure Out if the Repair Guy is Screwing You;
VI. Foreign Objects You're Going to Try to Put in the Microwave at Some Point so Let's Just Get it Out of Your System Now. #6. Business: Success = Meeting the Right People  All of those successful people you see around town, with their convertibles and huge televisions? Approximately 100 percent of them got where they are because they had three things. All three are absolutely essential, but one of them is almost never mentioned. They are: * Talent
* Hard Work
* Randomly Meeting the Right People and Not Pissing Them Off The autobiographies of famous people will do everything they can to downplay that third part, because it has the element of sheer luck. People get offended when you mention it, because they think it somehow undermines the first two. But remember, we said you need all three. For instance, let's take maybe the most successful movie actor of all time, Harrison Ford. He farted around Hollywood for nine years, taking bit parts without anything major ever coming his way. Clearly talented, very hard-working. Yet not once did anybody look at him and say, "This guy will sell several billion dollars' worth of tickets and action figures some day!" He was just another ambitious, pretty face, in a city full of them. He got so fed up, he quit acting and became a carpenter.
 There's a parallel world without this man as Han Solo, and we don't want to live there. Then one day he got hired to install cabinets in the home of a guy named George Lucas. They became friends. That got him the role of Han Solo a few years later. Click the link; that's a true story. Decades earlier another Ford, Henry, was just one of many engineers screwing around with early car engine designs until he became friends with a wealthy businessman named Alexander Malcomson who forked over the money to get Ford Motor Company started. This also works for guys not named Ford; Justin Bieber was one of several hundred thousand teenagers singing on YouTube videos before a former record exec named Scooter Braun clicked on one of his videos by accident and got him a record deal.
But everyone already knew he was an accident. On the other end of the spectrum, you have guys like Edgar Allan Poe, whose legendary poem "The Raven" earned him... nine dollars. He burned so many bridges he wound up basically begging the public for money before dying at 40. At some point Poe probably met his George Lucas, but made such a horrible impression on him the guy wouldn't return his calls.
"Oh, shit, honey, he's at the door! Pretend we're not home! Did he see me?" Chapters include: I. First Impressions are Really Important;
II. Subsequent Impressions Are Also Important;
III. No, You're Not Terrell Owens (aka Why Acting Like a Douchebag is a Bad Investment). #5. Health: How to Stop Throwing Your Money Away on Snake Oil  Go to the drug aisle in your grocery store. In between the pills and the vitamins will be a huge shelf full of herbal supplements that promise to do everything from helping you lose weight to easing joint pain to making your brain work better. And it's all bullshit. All of it. Worse, it's bullshit that we spend $34 billion a year on, almost a third as much as we spend on prescription drugs that actually do something. Just to be clear: Scientists have spent billions in government money carefully testing the effectiveness of this stuff. Their results? No, echinacea can't cure your cold. Gingko doesn't do anything for your brain, glucosamine and chondroitin won't fix your arthritis. Hoodia gordonii won't help you lose weight.
If it were good for you, it probably wouldn't be covered in horrible spikes. Don't get us wrong; we completely realize that lots of the drugs we have now were once naturally occurring in plants and that it is therefore possible that out there, somewhere, is a leaf yet undiscovered by science that will cure your diabetes. But if so, these jerkoffs in the grocery aisle aren't going to be the ones who find it. They're scam artists. They're so sure their supplements don't do anything they don't do any actual quality control to track how much of the supplement is in each pill. They just throw a little bit in there and shrug. Aren't they worried about people accidentally overdosing? No, they're not. They know you can't overdose on a placebo. All they're doing is "curing" ailments that either naturally go away on their own (colds, joint pain) so you wind up falsely attributing the relief to the supplement, or they're claiming to cure conditions that are hard to quantify (see supplements for "alertness" or "stress relief"). Snake oil salesmen have been getting away with that technique for thousands of generations. Students, we're counting on you to make sure that ours is the last. Chapters Include: I. Pharmaceutical Companies Are Dicks, But at Least They Use Scientists;
II. Why Hippies Have Never Discovered a Single Disease Cure;
III. "Homeopathic" is Another Word for Voodoo Bullshit;
IV. Just Go See a Doctor You Big Baby. NOTE: Weight Loss supplements will be explored in-depth in... #4. Health: Why Losing Weight Requires Some Amount of Suffering  First of all, know that some people are naturally thin. They often skip meals just because they forgot to eat, and/or enjoy hobbies that involve burning calories as a byproduct--basketball, cycling, whatever. They'll never be fat and they'll never have to think about it. They're excused from this class.
Take a walk. This course is for the rest of you, who will spend your life fatter than what our society considers ideal, and who will forever be uncomfortable in your own skin as a result. You'll spend many dollars on bullshit exercise equipment that promises to make working out "easy." You'll jump on diet fads, eating a bunless hamburger with a knife and fork one week, eating nothing but cabbage soup the next. Each and every one of these will fail (the success rate for dieters over the long term is close to 0 percent) because they're all based on the utterly false premise that you can lose weight without ever feeling sore or hungry or some other negative sensation. It is not possible. Students, imagine that in front of you is a castle. That's where you want to be. But surrounding that castle is a moat, full of piranha. The only way to get into Sexy Abs Castle is to swim across the moat and let the little fish painfully chew off hunks of fat. The real situation is exactly like that, only the swim will take years.
Sexy Abs Castle is also heavily guarded. Your body will get really mad at you when you try to lose weight, because it thinks you're starving to death. You have to go into any weight loss plan knowing that you will suffer, and just have to man up in preparation for it. Otherwise, just live with it. Being fat isn't the end of the goddamned world. Chapters Include: I. Hunger is Fat Leaving the Body;
II. Eating Three Square Meals a Day Will Absolutely Make You Fat if You Sit in a Chair All Day;
III. Have You Considered Walking Instead of Driving;
IV. How to Dress in Ways That De-Emphasize Your Fatness. NOTE: The above class is a prerequisite for... #3. Home Economics: How to Cook Cheap Food That Won't Kill You  Most of you will gain weight in college. You'll be poor, and cheap food makes you fat, as adding salt and fat is the easiest way to make poor quality food taste good. Ramen noodles, Taco Bell burritos, six-dollar pizzas from Papa John's... all of it is dirt cheap, and all contains way more calories than you're going to burn while sleeping through classes and playing Guitar Hero. Fortunately, there are ways around this if you're willing to put in a little time. As it turns out, spices are also cheap, as are some meats, and dried pasta, and vegetables. You just have to combine them the right way. But no matter what you come up with, it would be extremely difficult to cook something as unhealthy as a Quarter-Pounder Value Meal.
 Chapters Include: I. Pay Attention to Serving Sizes on the Label, They're Laughably Small;
II. Fat Free Versions of Fat Foods Are Terrible, Don't Bother;
III. Seriously, Fat Free Cheese Doesn't Melt;
IV. It's Hard to Screw Up Spaghetti;
V. Why if You Eat Fruity Pebbles for Dinner, You'll be Hungry Again 30 Minutes Later;
VI. If You Make a Pot of Chili and Freeze Bowls of It You'll Totally Have Like Two Months' Worth of Meals There. #2. Political Science: Why Talk Radio is a Terrible Source of Information  Politics are boring, and for the 20 percent or so of you who will spend a lot of time following politics, many of you will do so via entertaining political talk shows on radio or cable. Now, we don't have time to go into the mind-boggling list of idiotic things Glenn Beck has said, and will not laboriously debunk the rantings of the hundreds of other political talk show hosts like him. What you need to understand is that with talk radio and TV, the format itself makes accuracy utterly impossible. It's fairly simple, really. If a political talk show is going to get ratings, it has to have two things in every episode: A. A clear, simple thesis (ie, Liberals Are Destroying America, Corporations Are Destroying America) that continues through every single segment;
B. Up to the minute commentary on current events.
"Things are happening in the world. But more importantly, look at me." You see the problem: These two things are going to sometimes conflict. Even if the thesis of a show is Pie is Awesome, the host is still going to wake up one day and see headlines about a pie recall because some tainted filling killed 173 people. Guess what: he still has to do a show that day about why Pie is Awesome. He will manipulate B to make it fit A, even if he has to lie. He doesn't draw a paycheck otherwise. Likewise, if the big headline tomorrow is that Barack Obama single-handedly fought and slew Lucifer, Glenn Beck still has to do a show about how Obama is an Anti-Christian Communist out to destroy America. That's what his show is about; that's what the listeners tune in for, that's what his advertisers paid for. If he doesn't follow through, his audience will simply turn the dial until they find someone who's willing to tell them what they want to hear. So, because a talk show has to, by necessity, sometimes skew or outright lie about current events in order to maintain the entertainment value of their show, trying to learn about current events by listening to a talk show is like learning physics by watching cartoons. Chapters Include: I. If the Host Compares His Opponents to Communists or Nazis, He is Crazy; II. Why Politics Cannot be Simplified; III. If the Host Uses Derisive Nicknames for His Opponents, He Has Nothing to Teach You. #1. Social Studies: Life is Hard and You Will Die, Get Over It  We're not foolish enough to think one semester of this course can deprogram years of Hollywood bullshit. That's why we make this a daily class, that continues from K through 12. Many of you will get very depressed in your 20s, and some of you will stay that way the rest of your lives. Over the years your garage band will break up, you career dream will fall through, a girl will break your heart, you'll be unhappy with your body, you'll lose your parents, your favorite pet will die, you will endure at least one very terrible injury that requires hospitalization and breaks new boundaries for what kind of pain you thought was possible.
And your childhood memories will be exploited to buy vast amounts of cocaine. Deal with it. The reason why this will lead to depression, where it may not have done so for an equivalent person 200 years ago, is because you were raised on illogical stories where things always work out for the main character for utterly arbitrary reasons. Han Solo can shoot straight, but none of the bad guys can--even though they train more. John McClane beats the terrorists because he has toughness and perseverance--something the bad guys lack, even though they should be equally desperate. If a guy and a girl are right for each other, they always wind up together, careers and geography and personal hang-ups be damned. Here's the problem: these fantasies were created by adults, as a means of escape from the real world. You, however, have been watching them since you were five--for most of us these were our first impressions of how the adult world works, even if on a subconscious level. You had no context to realize they were bullshit. It sounds frivolous, but that doesn't change the fact that some of you reading this will not survive the long process of learning how different the real world is. If it helps, try to remember that you're still one of the one percent of humanity that was born in a time and place where there is such a thing as anesthesia. Chapters Include: I. You Can Die at Any Moment, Get Over It;
II. Required Reading: The Road, by Cormac McCarthy;
III. Roleplay Exercise: Various Scenes from The Road, by Cormac McCarthy;
IV. Yes, It Takes 10,000 Hours to Get Really Good at Something, But At Least You're Not Scavenging Through a Post-Apocalyptic Wasteland. 5 Things You Think Will Make You Happy (But Won't)By Jane Jones, David Wong February 17, 2009 If 80s movies taught us anything, it's that at some point you're going to run into a mysterious relic that lets you switch bodies with other people. Would you use it? Would you choose to switch lives with, say, Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie or Dale DeBone? Most people would. But let's say the artifact doesn't let you choose, but will instead switch you randomly with one of the other six billion people on the planet. Virtually nobody will take that deal, for fear they'd switch with some poor villager in Nigeria. So what does that say about us? Well, according to experts, it says almost everything we think about what would make us happy is dead wrong. Let's look at the five things we're most wrong about, with some pictures of adorable animals for good measure. #5. Fame  Go to the little girls' aisle at the department store, if you're not there already. On the shelves you'll see the dominant little girl fantasy isn't Cinderella or even Dora the Explorer. It's Hannah Montana. Playsets come complete with a camera, makeup and a mirror for Hannah to admire herself in. The girls play with that when they're eight, and by 16 they're on MySpace, pouting at the camera in their underwear and watching the friend requests pour in. In a recent survey of high school kids, 51 percent said their ultimate goal was to become famous. This is brand new to humanity; for thousands of years, material goods and security dominated. Now, fame is at the top. Obviously part of the reason is the perception that anybody can get famous these days--reality TV and YouTube have proven that you can become a celebrity for doing not a goddamned thing. But there's another, less obvious factor. And it explains why so many famous people are miserable. So What's the Problem? Experts say where you find kids who desperately want to be famous, you find a history of neglect at home. Parents were either absent completely or, at best, emotionally distant dicks. It turns out the whole surge in aspirations for fame came right along with the explosion of single parents and "broken" homes. Only half of today's children live with their original two parents. You can see how this sad mechanism works in the attention-starved mind. The kid is programmed by biology to love a parent, but the parent doesn't return the love. Fame lets them turn the tables on that arrangement. When you're famous, millions love you, but you don't even know their names. It's purely one-sided. They wait for hours in the cold for your autograph, you barely glance at them on the way to your limo. You get to take their love and wipe your ass with it, the same as your parents did to you. 
"I love you!" "Your deaths would mean nothing to me." But it turns out that kind of massive, paper-thin adoration is a poor substitute. Famous people are four times as likely to commit suicide as the rest of us (Hell, you'd think it'd be higher--everybody reading this has seen more than one of their favorite performers self-destruct). Wait, it Gets Worse... If you're saying that your parents were awesome and that fame still looks pretty freaking cool, well, we're not done. Studies show nothing is more stressful for a human than when their goals are tied to the approval of others. Particularly when those "others" are an enormous crowd of fickle strangers holding you up to a laughably unrealistic ideal built by publicists, thick makeup and heavily Photoshopped magazine covers. You could seek comfort from your circle of friends, only now your friends have been replaced Invasion of the Body Snatcher's-style with hangers-on, vultures, unscrupulous characters and plain dumbasses who only want a piece of the spotlight. . . even if it means selling you out later. For example, have you ever lit up a bong at a party? Were you worried that one of your friends would snap a photo of you, sell it to a tabloid for thousands of dollars and ruin your career? Well become famous, and then try it. #4. Wealth  Let's not bullshit each other. You see those ads on the side of the screen? And at the top? And at the bottom? Go look at one of them. We just made $800, baby. Seriously, they're set up to detect the position of your eyeballs. If you actually click on one, we make enough to fill our SnoCone machine with Cristal. Most of us get out of bed everyday purely because it edges us one step closer to some kind of financial future we want. If we won the lottery, most of us would show up to the office the next day wearing an ankle-length fur coat and enough bling to make Mr. T look Amish, and only stay just long enough to take a dump in our boss's inbox. So What's the Problem? Hey, remember when we said earlier that most people wouldn't do the body-switching thing for fear they'd wake up in Nigeria? Well according to surveys, Nigerians are happier with their lives than the people of any other country. The USA came in 16th. Hey, did we mention that the average Nigerian makes $300 a year? That's less than a hundredth of what the average American makes. America being the country that hands out 120 million prescriptions for anti-depressants every year. China is turning into a great object lesson in this, as their economy explodes and incomes skyrocket, but levels of happiness and personal satisfaction are dropping at the same rapid rate. There's a couple of reasons for it. First, your brain adjusts feelings of happiness downward after you've reached some goal or other. It regulates the good feelings, presumably so that you have motivation to reach the next goal instead of just lounging by the pool for the rest of your days. The second one is that as social creatures, we compare ourselves to our neighbors. This is why executives can cry about the $500,000 salary cap that comes with taking government bailout money. Their friends are making $3 million a year and live in igloo made out of cocaine. We can laugh at their complaints, but of course then you're giving the Nigerian permission to laugh at yours. That guy made 100 times more than you, you make 100 times more than the Nigerian. Once you start hanging around the other high earners, you'll want all the stuff they have. No, that's not right--you'll want the stuff that's so much better than their stuff that they'll vomit with envy. As one magazine for Wall Street bigshots put it, you want the stuff that will be "a huge middle finger to everyone who enters your home." 
"Yeah, same model as yours. Only covered in solid fucking gold." But what about sudden wealth, like if you won the lottery, or sold your novel for $10 million? That'd be cool, right, because you'd still remember your former life and appreciate your new riches! Well, just ask William "Bud" Post, who wound up broken and bankrupt after he won $16 million in the lottery. It turns out that while he knew how to handle the stress of being poor thanks to a lifetime of experience, he had no concept of how to handle the new and alien stresses of wealth. Wait, it Gets Worse... Remember the whole Invasion of the Body Snatchers phenomenon we talked about with famous people, where suddenly all of your friends turn into leeches? Same here, only worse. With your newfound riches, suddenly "friends" pop up from all over. Cousins who you've never met, forgotten classmates from school, women who'd never even look your way before, all suddenly in your orbit, complimenting you, doing you favors. Then they casually slip it into conversation that they're going to have to default on their mortgage unless somebody helps out.
Your very own entourage! Suddenly every relationship is in doubt. Do they actually care about you? Or do they just want a seat on the Bling Train? Would they sell you out to get to your cash? That lottery winner we mentioned above . . . somebody hired a hitman to take him out, to get to his money. That somebody was his own fucking brother. #3. Beauty  We know all about this one first-hand. That old stereotype about how comedy writers and heavy Internet users tend to have bodies chiseled out of solid sex? It's true. One visitor remarked that the Cracked office "Looked like a Manowar album cover came to life." 
Yes, being physically attractive has concrete advantages. Attractive people earn more, get better grades, have better jobs and find more successful partners than average or ugly people. Strangers are more likely to help them in a crisis. They have wider social circles. So What's the Problem? Remember, we're talking about happiness here, not success. For one, attractive people have the same self-esteem problems the ugly people do. Like money, attractiveness is relative and if you're hotter than your friends, at that stage you start comparing yourself to people in the media. You know, like the magazine covers we mentioned before, the ones that that have had the living shit Photoshopped out of them. In other words, they've adjusted to the experience of being attractive the same as our high income earners have adjusted to having money; they just pick other flaws to worry about. Sure, if you used the magical artifact up there to become Angelina Jolie tomorrow, you'd notice the difference over how you're treated now. But if you were born Angelina Jolie, you'd have no way of grasping it, the same as right now you don't realize what it's like to live life with some kind of horrible deformity (if you do have a horrible deformity, then you don't know what it's like to live with a worse one. Work with us here). Wait, it Gets Worse... You know how when the hot girl at the bar tells an unfunny joke, all the guys laugh anyway? Or when the office stud makes a mistake, the female boss laughs it off? Attractive people live in a world where most feedback they get is bullshit. The compliments mean nothing--they've learned that's just the sound people make when they walk by. That's why studies show they tend to dismiss the genuine compliments they get in other areas (their work, personality, sense of humor, creativity) because it gets lumped in with the same counterfeit flattery they've been getting their whole lives. #2. Genius  We're using the broader definition of the word "genius" here, meaning anyone with an extraordinary talent or skill. So for instance Dennis Rodman was a genius when it came to rebounding basketballs, but was probably not a genius in the way that Einstein was. But as Dennis demonstrates, genius--whether it involves writing ground-breaking computer code, picking stocks or writing the dopest rhymes--means one thing above all else: You are forever granted an exception to society's rules. The fictional archetype for this these days is TV's Dr. House, whose being a genius means he gets a free pass to do drugs on the job, break hospital policy, insult his superiors and treat patients like shit. But don't blame the writers, the real world examples are just as extreme, from Hemingway to Kanye West. Being a genius means you get to do great things, sure, but it's also a blank check for douchebaggery. Who could turn that down? So What's the Problem? Want to know what it's like to live life as a genius? All you have to do is go hang around with the stupidest, most incompetent people you know. Cringe at their stupid jokes, feel the frustration as they fumble even the easiest tasks and fail to grasp the simplest concepts. Being a genius must be like that, only everyday. Everyone is an idiot compared to them. They're living Idiocracy. We can't imagine what it's like to make friends in that world. Genuine connections will be rare indeed when every honest expressions of thought or feelings on your end is met with a look of dull Keanu Reeves-esque befuddlement. If you're not the Einstein kind of genius, it doesn't matter, any situation where you're 10 levels above your coworkers is going to be daily frustration. If you're a genius at spreading concrete, that feeling only occurs to you in the form of everyone else being sloppy and helpless. No wonder they wind up treating people like dirt. Not that you'd have time for friends anyway. Genius takes practice. Lots of it. Shows like House don't tell you that to become as good at your job as Dr. House, you've got to devote an enormous amount of time to working, studying and practicing your craft (at least 10 thousand hours, according to that Malcolm Gladwell book everyone is quoting these days). Behind the genius is hundreds of weekends spent pouring over texts while everyone else was at the party, playing bikini Twister. All of this is a great recipe for the stereotypical depressed, moody genius who dies alone and bitter. Wait, it Gets Worse... If your genius lies in some kind of creative field, then there's a good chance you have actual mental illness to deal with. While only one percent of the population suffers from bipolar disorder, it is claimed that 50 percent of poets, 38 percent of musicians and 20 percent of painters have it. It's just part of the package. Compare the number of great musical innovators who have died of suicide or drug overdose versus, say, the number of plumbers who have died the same way. It might be better to just stand in the poop all day. #1. Power You never hear little kids say they want to be "powerful" when they grow up. Parents don't encourage that sort of thing, since it's kind of terrifying coming from a toddler. Yet, power is what everything else on this list is about. Fame is about having power in the relationship with the fans. Beauty is about gaining power through others' sexual desire and jealousy. Genius means society needs your skills more than you need its approval. Money . . . well, money and power are conjoined twins. So it's pretty safe to say that while not many of you reading this specifically aspire to go into any kind of political office, a great many of you do aspire to some kind of power. Maybe you're eying the kind of job where you'll be the boss, or maybe you want to go into law enforcement. Or maybe you're just driven by that bitter, unspoken urge almost all of us feel at least once in our youth: "I'll show them! I'll show them all." So What's the Problem? Saying "power corrupts" is stating something so obvious we feel stupid even typing it. It's like saying elevators elevate. If you found out tomorrow your congressman was caught firing orphans out of a cannon, you'd barely raise an eyebrow. It has nothing to do with the "culture of corruption in Washington DC" the Libertarians are always talking about. You find it everywhere, from the asshole supervisor to the bitter gym coach. Small people driven to mindless, unethical behavior, drunk on just a few drops of bullshit power. They often can't make friends, their marriages end badly, they self destruct. The world is full of these miniature, sad Tony Montanas, destined for a proverbial bloody downfall.
Usually instead of a mansion it's a cubicle, and instead of bullets it's a series of pissy emails Wait, it gets worse... The thing is, it's the desire itself that's poisonous. You find that need for power most in the type of person who hates having to obey all of society's social contracts, particularly the ones that require them to not act like cocks all day. These are the people who are only nice guys because of fear of retribution if they do otherwise, so their main goal is to become strong enough that no retribution is possible (this is why sociopaths tend to seek positions of power, by the way). So it's not just that power will destroy you. It's that the urge itself is bad news. That desire for power is a vicious, ravenous animal and feeding it only makes it strong enough to tear its way out of your belly and go on a bloody rampage. 
"So what will make me happy, Cracked.com writers? What's left?" For the next 10 seconds, stare at this picture of a guy hugging a tiger. Notice how you weren't worrying about your job during those 10 seconds? Experts have figured out that the brain has no ability to actually predict your emotional reaction to life changes that haven't happened yet. In other words, you physically do not know what you want. The act of sitting around pondering it is apparently what fucks you up. This might be because for most of human history, we didn't have time to do that. We were too busy gathering berries and running from wild animals. Now that we've got things so under control that the animals hug us. . . well, we're like the guy up there who didn't know what to do with his lotto winnings. This may be why studies show friendships, altruism and religious practices bring happiness. It may be that taking the focus off your own happiness is what makes happiness possible.  If that sounds like a mind-boggling, ridiculous paradox, clearly arranged by the gods to torment us. well, we agree. 6 Brainwashing Techniques They're Using On You Right Now By David Wong September 23, 2008  Brainwashing doesn't take any sci-fi gadgetry or Manchurian Candidate hypnotism bullshit. There are all sorts of tried-and-true techniques that anyone can use to bypass the thinking part of your brain and flip a switch deep inside that says "OBEY." Now I know what you're thinking. "Sure, just make an ad with some big ol' titties on there! That'll convince people!" While that's certainly true ... ... they've got a whole arsenal of manipulation techniques that go way beyond even the most effective of titties. Techniques like ... #6. Chanting Slogans  Every cult leader, drill sergeant, self-help guru and politician knows that if you want to quiet all of those pesky doubting thoughts in a crowd, get them to chant a repetitive phrase or slogan. Those are referred to as thought-stopping techniques, because for better or worse, they do exactly that. Sounds like: "Say it with me now, folks!" "FOUR MORE YEARS! FOUR MORE YEARS! FOUR MORE YEARS!" "One, two, three, four, I, Love, The Marine, Corps. One, two..." Why It Works:
The "Analytical" part of your brain and the "Repetitive Task" part tend to operate in separate rooms. But you didn't need an expert to tell you that. You know you can't solve a complex logic puzzle if I force you to scream the chorus to that Chumbawamba song over and over again while you're doing it. Try it. Meditation works the same way, with chants or mantras meant to "calm the mind." Shutting down those nagging voices in the head is helpful for stressed-out individuals, but even more helpful to a guy who wants to shut down an audience full of nagging internal voices suggesting that what he's saying might be retarded. Recently Seen:
At the political conventions, notice how they trained the audiences to fill the gaps between applause lines with chants ("U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!") rather than, say, pensive silence to carefully consider what the speaker has just said. Also, those of you who've worked at Wal-Mart are familiar with the "Wal-Mart Cheer" that begins every shift: They used to sacrifice a goat at the end, but PETA put a stop to it. #5. Slipping Bullshit Into Your Subconscious  The rise of the internet news portal has given birth to a whole new, sly technique of bullshit insertion. What They (and from here on, "They" with a capital T means anyone who draws a paycheck by manipulating your opinion) have figured out is that most of you don't read the stories, you just browse the headlines. And there's a way to exploit that, based on how the brain stores memories. The Drudge Report lives off this. A single anonymous source will report to some news blog that, say, Senator Smith runs a secret gay bordello in New Orleans. Drudge will run the headline: NEW QUESTIONS ABOUT SMITH'S SECRET GAY BORDELLO Or perhaps there'll just be a question mark on the end: SMITH: SECRET GAY BORDELLO ASS MASTER? It doesn't matter that the headline merely involves "questions" about the bordello. The idea has been planted, and two months later when somebody mentions Senator Smith around the water cooler you'll say, "The gay bordello guy, right?"
 Sounds like: "WHAT IS OBAMA'S CONNECTION TO LEFT-WING EXTREMISTS?" "TOYOTA PRIUS - MORE WASTEFUL THAN A HUMMER?" "OFFICIAL SAYS WTC COLLAPSE 'UNEXPLAINED'" Why It Works:
They call it "Source Amnesia." For instance, you know what a wolverine is, but probably don't remember exactly how you learned that piece of information. The brain has limited storage, so it stores just the important nugget (that a wolverine is a small, ferocious animal) but usually discards the trivial context, such as when and where you learned about it (the movie Red Dawn, probably).  In the era of the web and information overload, that's a mechanism They can exploit very easily. What They have found is that a piece of information--say, an ugly rumor about a politician--can be presented with all sorts of qualifiers (a question mark, attribution to a shitty source, the word "unconfirmed") but often the brain will only remember the ugly rumor and completely forget the qualifier. And get this: it happens even if the headline we read was specifically about the rumor being untrue. You'll see this daily, in every election cycle. The entire point of putting a shaky rumor into the press is to force your opponent to deny it. Why? Because They know that the denial works just as well as the accusation. Thanks to Source Amnesia, for millions of people all three of these ... SMITH DENIES GAY BORDELLO RUMORS SMITH REFUSES COMMENT ON GAY BORDELLO RUMORS SMITH ADMITS GAY COCK BORDELLO ... register as the exact same headline. Recently Seen:
During the presidential primaries, Drudge ran a huge photo of Barack Obama wearing a turban. Under it was an inflammatory headline about how disgusting it was that Clinton staffers were circulating such a picture. But a huge number of people who saw it only remembered the picture (months later, 13% of voters still thought he was a muslim). That's the idea. #4. Controlling What You Watch and Read  Restriction of reading and/or viewing material is common to pretty much every cult. Here on the internet, we've all heard horror stories about Scientology, which goes as far as filtering members' internet access. Obviously the idea is to insulate the members from any opposing points of view, to keep them marching in line. That technique works just as well outside of the cult world, but They have to be more subtle about it. It just takes a little poison in the well, that's all. Sounds like: "Of course the public is misinformed! They're reading that trash in the liberal mainstream media!" "Of course the public is misinformed! They're watching Faux News and the other trash in the corporate mainstream media!" Why It Works:
Studies show the brain is wired to get a quick high from reading things that agree with our point of view. The same studies proved that, strangely, we also get a rush from intentionally dismissing information that disagrees, no matter how well supported it is. Yes, our brain rewards us for being closed-minded dicks. So with a little prodding, the followers will happily close themselves in the same echo chamber of talk radio, blogs and cable news outlets that give them that little "They agree with ME!" high. This wouldn't have been possible even 20 years ago. I grew up in the 80s, in a house with three TV stations. Three. We got one newspaper, the local one. You didn't get to pick from the conservative news or liberal news, back in my day you took what you got and you were thankful for what you had, dammit.  Today, I go through that many outlets a day just to get my freaking video game news. And now, that explosion of the 24-hour cable news stations and, later, the web and blogosphere, has created these parallel universes of Right vs. Left media outlets, complete with their own publishing arms.  And for each, their favorite topic of discussion is how corrupt and ridiculous the other side's media is. They each even have "watchdog" groups that exist purely for the reason of hammering away at each other (the left has FAIR and MediaMatters, the right has the Media Research Center). Recently Seen:
When an MSNBC interview with candidate John McCain got tense, he responded to the question by openly accusing the reporter of being an operative for the other side: Just days later the campaign called The New York Times "a pro-Obama advocacy organization." This technique is relatively new, but you'll see a lot more of it in future elections. The candidate will talk right past the reporter asking the questions and says to his supporters, "These guys work for the enemy, don't believe a word they say. Their lies will only poison your mind." What is the Monkeysphere? By David Wong September 30, 2007  "One death is a tragedy. One million deaths is a statistic." -Kevin Federline What do monkeys have to do with war, oppression, crime, racism and even e-mail spam? You'll see that all of the random ass-headed cruelty of the world will suddenly make perfect sense once we go Inside the Monkeysphere. "What the Hell is the Monkeysphere?"  First, picture a monkey. A monkey dressed like a little pirate, if that helps you. We'll call him Slappy. Imagine you have Slappy as a pet. Imagine a personality for him. Maybe you and he have little pirate monkey adventures and maybe even join up to fight crime. Think how sad you'd be if Slappy died. Now, imagine you get four more monkeys. We'll call them Tito, Bubbles, Marcel and ShitTosser. Imagine personalities for each of them now. Maybe one is aggressive, one is affectionate, one is quiet, the other just throws shit all the time. But they're all your personal monkey friends. Now imagine a hundred monkeys. Not so easy now, is it? So how many monkeys would you have to own before you couldn't remember their names? At what point, in your mind, do your beloved pets become just a faceless sea of monkey? Even though each one is every bit the monkey Slappy was, there's a certain point where you will no longer really care if one of them dies. So how many monkeys would it take before you stopped caring? That's not a rhetorical question. We actually know the number. "So this whole thing is your crusade against monkey overpopulation? I'll have my monkey castrated this very day!" Uh, no. It'll become clear in a moment.  You see, monkey experts performed a monkey study a while back, and discovered that the size of the monkey's monkey brain determined the size of the monkey groups the monkeys formed. The bigger the brain, the bigger the little societies they built. They cut up so many monkey brains, in fact, that they found they could actually take a brain they had never seen before and from it they could accurately predict what size tribes that species of creature formed. Most monkeys operate in troupes of 50 or so. But somebody slipped them a slightly larger brain and they estimated the ideal group or society for this particular animal was about 150. That brain, of course, was human. Probably from a homeless man they snatched off the streets. "So that's the big news? That humans are God's big-budget sequel to the monkey? Who didn't know that?"  It goes much, much deeper than that. Let's try an example. Famous news talking guy Tim Russert tells a charming story about his father, in his book Big Russ and Me (the title referring to his on-and-off romance with actor Russell Crowe). Russert's dad used to take half an hour to carefully box up any broken glass before taking it to the trash. Why? Because "The trash guy might cut his hands." That this was such an unusual thing to do illustrates my monkey point. None of us spend much time worrying about the garbage man's welfare even though he performs a crucial role in not forcing us to live in a cave carved from a mountain of our own filth. We don't usually consider his safety or comfort at all and if we do, it's not in the same way we would worry over our best friend or wife or girlfriend or even our dog. People toss half-full bottles of drain cleaner right into the barrel, without a second thought of what would happen if the trash man got it splattered into his eyes. Why? Because the trash guy exists outside the Monkeysphere. "There's that word again..."  The Monkeysphere is the group of people who each of us, using our monkeyish brains, are able to conceptualize as people. If the monkey scientists are monkey right, it's physically impossible for this to be a number much larger than 150. Most of us do not have room in our Monkeysphere for our friendly neighborhood sanitation worker. So, we don't think of him as a person. We think of him as The Thing That Makes The Trash Go Away. And even if you happen to know and like your particular garbage man, at one point or another we all have limits to our sphere of monkey concern. It's the way our brains are built. We each have a certain circle of people who we think of as people, usually our own friends and family and neighbors, and then maybe some classmates or coworkers or church or suicide cult. Those who exist outside that core group of a few dozen people are not people to us. They're sort of one-dimensional bit characters. Remember the first time, as a kid, you met one of your school teachers outside the classroom? Maybe you saw old Miss Puckerson at Taco Bell eating refried beans through a straw, or saw your principal walking out of a dildo shop. Do you remember that surreal feeling you had when you saw these people actually had lives outside the classroom? I mean, they're not people. They're teachers. "So? What difference does all this make?"  Oh, not much. It's just the one single reason society doesn't work. It's like this: which would upset you more, your best friend dying, or a dozen kids across town getting killed because their bus collided with a truck hauling killer bees? Which would hit you harder, your Mom dying, or seeing on the news that 15,000 people died in an earthquake in Iran? They're all humans and they are all equally dead. But the closer to our Monkeysphere they are, the more it means to us. Just as your death won't mean anything to the Chinese or, for that matter, hardly anyone else more than 100 feet or so from where you're sitting right now. "Why should I feel bad for them? I don't even know those people!" Exactly. This is so ingrained that to even suggest you should feel their deaths as deeply as that of your best friend sounds a little ridiculous. We are hard-wired to have a drastic double standard for the people inside our Monkeysphere versus the 99.999% of the world's population who are on the outside. Think about this the next time you get really pissed off in traffic, when you start throwing finger gestures and wedging your head out of the window to scream, "LEARN TO FUCKING DRIVE, FUCKER!!" Try to imagine acting like that in a smaller group. Like if you're standing in an elevator with two friends and a coworker, and the friend goes to hit a button and accidentally punches the wrong one. Would you lean over, your mouth two inches from her ear, and scream "LEARN TO OPERATE THE FUCKING ELEVATOR BUTTONS, SHIT CAMEL!!" They'd think you'd gone insane. We all go a little insane, though, when we get in a group larger than the Monkeysphere. That's why you get that weird feeling of anonymous invincibility when you're sitting in a large crowd, screaming curses at a football player you'd never dare say to his face. "Well, I'm nice to strangers. Have you considered that maybe you're just an asshole?"  Sure, you probably don't go out of your way to be mean to strangers. You don't go out of your way to be mean to stray dogs, either. The problem is that eventually, the needs of you or those within your Monkeysphere will require screwing someone outside it (even if that need is just venting some tension and anger via exaggerated insults). This is why most of us wouldn't dream of stealing money from the pocket of the old lady next door, but don't mind stealing cable, adding a shady exemption on our tax return, or quietly celebrating when they forget to charge us for something at the restaurant. You may have a list of rationalizations long enough to circle the Earth, but the truth is that in our monkey brains the old woman next door is a human being while the cable company is a big, cold, faceless machine. That the company is, in reality, nothing but a group of people every bit as human as the old lady, or that some kind old ladies actually work there and would lose their jobs if enough cable were stolen, rarely occurs to us. That's one of the ingenious things about the big-time religions, by the way. The old religious writers knew it was easier to put the screws to a stranger, so they taught us to get a personal idea of a God in our heads who says, "No matter who you hurt, you're really hurting me. Also, I can crush you like a grape." You must admit that if they weren't writing words inspired by the Almighty, they at least understood the Monkeysphere. It's everywhere. Once you grasp the concept, you can see examples all around you. You'll walk the streets in a daze, like Roddy Piper after putting on his X-ray sunglasses in They Live. But wait, because this gets much bigger and much, much stranger. "So you're going to tell us that this Monkeysphere thing runs the whole world? Also, They Live sucked."  Go flip on the radio. Listen to the conservative talk about "The Government" as if it were some huge, lurking dragon ready to eat you and your paycheck whole. Never mind that the government is made up of people and that all of that money they take goes into the pockets of human beings. Talk radio's Rush Limbaugh is known to tip 50% at restaurants, but flies into a broadcast tirade if even half that dollar amount is deducted from his paycheck by "The Government." That's despite the fact that the money helps that very same single mom he had no problem tipping in her capacity as a waitress. Now click over to a liberal show now, listen to them describe "Multinational Corporations" in the same diabolical terms, an evil black force that belches smoke and poisons water and enslaves humanity. Isn't it strange how, say, a lone man who carves and sells children's toys in his basement is a sweetheart who just loves bringing joy at Christmas, but a big-time toy corporation (which brings toys to millions of kids at Christmas) is an inhuman soul-grinding greed machine? Strangely enough, if the kindly lone toy making guy made enough toys and hired enough people and expanded to enough shops, we'd eventually stop seeing it as a toy-making shop and start seeing it as the fiery Orc factories of Mordor. And if you've just thought, "Well, those talk show hosts are just a bunch of egomaniacal blowhards anyway," you've just done it again, turned real humans into two-word cartoon characters. It's no surprise, you do it with pretty much all six billion human beings outside the Monkeysphere. "So I'm supposed to suddenly start worrying about six billion strangers? That's not even possible!"  That's right, it isn't possible. That's the point. What is hard to understand is that it's also impossible for them to care about you. That's why they don't mind stealing your stereo or vandalizing your house or cutting your wages or raising your taxes or bombing your office building or choking your computer with spam advertising diet and penis drugs they know don't work. You're outside their Monkeysphere. In their mind, you're just a vague shape with a pocket full of money for the taking. Think of Osama Bin Laden. Did you just picture a camouflaged man hiding in a cave, drawing up suicide missions? Or are you thinking of a man who gets hungry and has a favorite food and who had a childhood crush on a girl and who has athlete's foot and chronic headaches and wakes up in the morning with a boner and loves volleyball? Something in you, just now, probably was offended by that. You think there's an effort to build sympathy for the murderous fuck. Isn't it strange how simply knowing random human facts about him immediately tugs at your sympathy strings? He comes closer to your Monkeysphere, he takes on dimension. Now, the cold truth is this Bin Laden is just as desperately in need of a bullet to the skull as the raving four-color caricature on some redneck's T-shirt. The key to understanding people like him, though, is realizing that we are the caricature on his T-shirt. "So you're using monkeys to claim that we're all a bunch of Osama Bin Ladens?"  Sort of. Listen to any 16 year-old kid with his first job, going on and on about how the boss is screwing him and the government is screwing him even more ("What's FICA?!?!" he screams as he looks at his first paycheck). Then watch that same kid at work, as he drops a hamburger patty on the floor, picks it up, and slaps in on a bun and serves it to a customer. In that one dropped burger he has everything he needs to understand those black-hearted politicians and corporate bosses. They see him in the exact same way he sees the customers lined up at the burger counter. Which is, just barely. In both cases, for the guy making the burger and the guy running Exxon, getting through the workweek and collecting the paycheck are all that matters. No thought is given to the real human unhappiness being spread by doing it shittily (ever gotten so sick from food poisoning you thought your stomach lining was going to fly out of your mouth?) That many customers or employees just can't fit inside the Monkeysphere. The kid will protest that he shouldn't have to care for the customers for minimum wage, but the truth is if a man doesn't feel sympathy for his fellow man at $6.00 an hour, he won't feel anything more at $600,000 a year. Or, to look at it the other way, if we're allowed to be indifferent and even resentful to the masses for $6.00 an hour, just think of how angry the some Pakistani man is allowed to be when he's making the equivalent of six dollars a week. "You've used the word 'monkey' more than 50 times, but the same principle hardly applies. Humans have been to the moon. Let's see the monkeys do that."  It doesn't matter. It's just an issue of degree. There's a reason why legendary monkeytician Charles Darwin and his assistant, Jeje (pronounced "heyhey") Santiago deduced that humans and chimps were evolutionary cousins. As sophisticated as we are (compare our advanced sewage treatment plants to the chimps' primitive technique of hurling the feces with their bare hands), the inescapable truth is we are just as limited by our mental hardware. The primary difference is that monkeys are happy to stay in small groups and rarely interact with others outside their monkey gang. This is why they rarely go to war, though when they do it is widely thought to be hilarious. Humans, however, require cars and oil and quality manufactured goods by the fine folks at 3M and Japanese video games and worldwide internets and, most importantly, governments. All of these things take groups larger than 150 people to maintain effectively. Thus, we routinely find ourselves functioning in bunches larger than our primate brains are able to cope with. This is where the problems begin. Like a fragile naked human pyramid, we are simultaneously supporting and resenting each other. We bitch out loud about our soul-sucking job as an anonymous face on an assembly line, while at the exact same time riding in a car that only an assembly line could have produced. It's a constant contradiction that has left us pissed off and joining informal wrestling clubs in basements. This is why I think it was with a great burden of sadness that Darwin turned to his assistant and lamented, "Jeje, we're the monkeys." "Oh, no you didn't." If you think about it, our entire society has evolved around the limitations of the Monkeysphere. There is a reason why all of the really phat-ass nations with the biggest SUV's with the shiniest 22-inch rims all have some kind of representative democracy (where you vote for people to do the governing for you) and all of them are, to some degree, capitalist (where people actually get to buy property and keep some of what they earn).
Above: Democracy A representative democracy allows a small group of people to make all of the decisions, while letting us common people feel like we're doing something by going to a polling place every couple of years and pulling a lever that, in reality, has about the same effect as the darkness knob on your toaster. We can simultaneously feel like we're in charge while being contained enough that we can't cause any real monkey mayhem once we fly into one of our screeching, arm-flapping monkey frenzies ("A woman showed her boob at the Super Bowl! We want a boob and football ban immediately!") Conversely, some people in the distant past naively thought they could sit all of the millions of monkeys down and say, "Okay, everybody go pick the bananas, then bring them here, and we'll distribute them with a complex formula determining banana need! Now go gather bananas for the good of society!" For the monkeys it was a confused, comical, tree-humping disaster. Later, a far more realistic man sat the monkeys down and said, "You want bananas? Each of you go get your own. I'm taking a nap." That man, of course, was German philosopher Hans Capitalism. As long as everybody gets their own bananas and shares with the few in their Monkeysphere, the system will thrive even though nobody is even trying to make the system thrive. This is perhaps how Ayn Rand would have put it, had she not been such a hateful bitch. Then, some time in the Third Century, French philosopher Pierre "Frenchy" LaFrench invented racism. 
Above: The French This was a way of simplifying the too-complex-for-monkeys world by imagining all people of a certain race as being the same person, thinking they all have the same attitudes and mannerisms and tastes in food and clothes and music. It sort of works, as long as we think of that person as being a good person ("Those Asians are so hard-working and precise and well-mannered!") but when we start seeing them as being one, giant, gaping asshole (the French, ironically) our monkey happiness again breaks down. It's not all the French's fault. The truth is, all of these monkey management schemes only go so far. For instance, today one in four Americans has some kind of mental illness, usually depression. One in four. Watch a basketball game. The odds are at least two of those people on the floor are mentally ill. Look around your house; if everybody else there seems okay, it's you. Is it any surprise? You turn on the news and see a whole special on the Obesity Epidemic. You've had this worry laid on your shoulders about millions of other people eating too much. What exactly are you supposed to do about the eating habits of 80 million people you don't even know? You've taken on the pork-laden burden of all these people outside the Monkeysphere and you now carry that useless weight of worry like, you know, some kind of animal on your back. "So what exactly are we supposed to do about all this?"  First, train yourself to get suspicious every time you see simplicity. Any claim that the root of a problem is simple should be treated the same as a claim that the root of a problem is Bigfoot. Simplicity and Bigfoot are found in the real world with about the same frequency. So reject binary thinking of "good vs. bad" or "us vs. them." Know problems cannot be solved with clever slogans and over-simplified step-by-step programs. You can do that by following these simple steps. We like to call this plan the T.R.Y. plan: First, TOTAL MORON. That is, accept the fact THAT YOU ARE ONE. We all are. That really annoying person you know, the one who's always spouting bullshit, the person who always thinks they're right? Well, the odds are that for somebody else, you're that person. So take the amount you think you know, reduce it by 99.999%, and then you'll have an idea of how much you actually know regarding things outside your Monkeysphere. Second, UNDERSTAND that there are no Supermonkeys. Just monkeys. Those guys on TV you see, giving the inspirational seminars, teaching you how to reach your potential and become rich and successful like them? You know how they made their money? By giving seminars. For the most part, the only thing they do well is convince others they do everything well. No, the universal moron principal established in No. 1 above applies here, too. Don't pretend politicians are somehow supposed to be immune to all the backhanded fuckery we all do in our daily lives and don't laugh and point when the preacher gets caught on video snorting cocaine off a prostitute's ass. A good exercise is to picture your hero--whoever it is--passed out on his lawn, naked from the waist down. The odds are it's happened at some point. Even Gandhi may have had hotel rooms and dead hookers in his past. And don't even think about ignoring advice from a moral teacher just because the source enjoys the ol' Colombian Nose Candy from time to time. We're all members of varying species of hypocrite (or did you tell them at the job interview that you once called in sick to spend a day leveling up on World of Warcraft?) Don't use your heroes' vices as an excuse to let yours run wild. And finally, DON'T LET ANYBODY simplify it for you. The world cannot be made simple. Anyone who tries to paint a picture of the world in basic comic book colors is most likely trying to use you as a pawn. So just remember: T-R-Y. Go forth and do likewise, gents.

Its good to be thankful but the energy spent was certainly not givven to you. You came across as condesending, my sincerity was for the sake of the group I am a member of, information spreading in general, and per the subject of the thread I am participating in. So be thankfull, but be like Tao and keep it to yourself My first point was Simple minds take credit for such complex things. "You" are eating and tasting? Your not in control of any of the electro-chemichal reactions that make up your experience. If you can not see how experience is an illusion "at all", even in the physical sense that everything is energy and all experience is had as a delayed and developed in the brain, then that is one of the major factors in your energy blockage. When you say that "you" are the one eating and tasting are you saying that the body is ego, or that senasation is ego? If not, and you believe that consciousness is ego, then when you taste somthin'g nasty, why don't you try to get it out of your mind instead of spitting it out of your mouth? Are you saying that ego is the relationship between body and sensation? What about the aspects of body that dont deliver sensation. Do they not happen? It is more accurate to realize that the ego does no eating and does no tasting. You are not doing the tasting. The body was doing the tasting before the ego's development was ever born. Babies unconsciously stick things in their mouths because they are assimilating organisms and their enteric nervous systems are processing chemical information about the environment. If something that is unconsciously/egolessly placed in the mouth of the body and it is too bitter, the tongue, in an electro- chemical reaction is pushed out of the mouth so that the aspect of the environment it was exploring gets pushed out all as a result of an electro-chemical reaction, the ego wasn't even there. The ego and even self awareness are a product of experiences that an egoless identityless mechanism was "experiencing" things before it was even aware that it was aware. Part of your ego is developed by the work your body was doing without you. As far as having unique taste, that is because the body has both generic and unique needs, but you are born without preference for this or that; the human form does not have tastes and tendencies so that an ego can enjoy them. Tasting the food you eat is only apart of the electro-chemical reaction that happens when a subtsance touches the tongue. As the food passes through the digestive system it is processed by the enteric nervous system. Lots of information on its chemical and nutritional composition and whether "you" like or want that food ever again is largely based on information that "you" were never exposed to. There was a guy on a life raft lost at sea for weeks who survived so long because he was able to catch fish to eat. He had no problem catching them but he lost taste for the fish meat after several days of eating nothing but fish meat; he stopped liking it altogeather. What happened then was that he found himself all the sudden finding the fishes eye balls,other organs and blood to be tantalizing, causing "his" mouth to water where as the fish itself was all the sudden revolting. This ego who had likes and dislikes and and thought that these discriminations were part of its make up, found itself witnessing as through watching a movie in a movie theater, its supposed form and frame devouring raw fish, frantickly slurping up its blood and absolutely loving it. It was over ridden by unconscious behavior and its tendency to meet nutritional needs but again, it doesn't do it for the ego. He appearently didn't really like, or dislike anything and the ego was barely just a witness of the event. Lotsa things happen to the body that the ego is unaware of because there are no nerves in certain area to message the experience to the consciousness and the ego is only aware of what the conscious is paying attention to. Not to mention there are no nerves wired into the ego for it to recieve the sensation. A cigarette smoker feels satisfied because nicotine molecules are similar to certain chemicals released by the brain as a reaction to having met a biological need. Cigarette smoke ingestion obviously does not meet any biological need. As a person feels satisfaction, the body is being fried and the ego thinks that it is a body that is satisfied by the smooth tasting smoke and that it is experiencing the sensation of satisfaction. But satisfaction is not a sensation, or a reaction to sensation. Satisfaction is a chemical reaction that we think is a response to sensation, but cigarettes are harsh and the stimulating effect of nicotine is not a pleasent one. Never the less, europeans and their American decendents swore up and down that they smoked cigarettes for centuries because they liked it, before discovering the chemical nature of its addiction. When Im getting ready to go somewhere I often times think I just remembered something I need to bring and Ill say something like "dont forget the keys", but then I inevitably do forget them. Why is that? Its because my brain was actually impulsing my body to retrieve the keys from the counter at that moment, but my ego who has no memory distracted the flawless nature of my being and distracted it. My ego thought that it has a memory or that it has acsess to one and it thought that it was remembering the keys and told itself not to forget something that the body was just about to follow through with on its own. The impulse is blocked by a distraction and the keys aren't remembered at all. It comes to my attention that I don't have them when I get to the car. How come egos only experience part of the body? The body reacts to the sun, when it is too hot the body moves for shade, the ego doesn't feel the heat, but it assumes that it must not like it so it says "the body is moving because I don't like heat". When the body is in tempreture conditions that are optimum for its function and health (VIt-D absobtion.), the body tends to stay put, but the ego who doesnt feel hot or cold assumes that the ego likes the temreture and it is staying because the ego likes the tempreture. But ego is not the body, or the bodies actions, or tendencies, and all those things are designed for homeostasis, not for the ego to like or dislike. What the ego is is the shine on the apple, but not the apple, and its reflection is an inacurate one at that because it thinks it can think and falsifies what it experiences by judging and experienced a judgment. ok well, this- is not a complete sentance. Should we expect everyone to be writting in MLA format or what? The ego is a developed aspect of the psyche; the psyche is also developed. In other words it is not a real thing that can feel any of what you just said it feel. Its like saying that your cosmology likes the way the sun feels, or that when someone builds you up with a false sense of confidence, that the false sense of confidence experiences this or that, and that it liked or disliked it. Our actions and responses, where they come from and what causes them come from the same place it does with ants and spiders. Do you think that ants and spiders have egos. Do you suppose that the same way that you said "ego in people is for the grater good, and survival purposes", is what causes ants to become so organized and selflesss that they all contribute to the greater good? Is that the product of ego? I dont believe it is the product of ego that organises ants. All the chemical reactions that maintain the brain and senses are uncoscious, not directed to or eminating from an ego. The sensation of this or that was recieved and reacted to long before you, your ego was born within the psyce, so who was feeling them then? Not you. Not an ant, nor a spider. If your ego is an illusion, then the fact that it has a life and it is living one is an illusion. Since awareness and sense of being were never born they never die. Having a life, living one and comming to its death are all illusory concepts to describe the subjection that awareness and sense of being are under, but they are not under that subjection, only the ego who dreamed up the concept has a life and thus must die. There is proof that ego is illusion. The brain doesnt have one. Thats like saying there is no proof that we dont have wings. Awareness is unborn, and the awareness you are using is not yours, though it is subject to its form, position, behavior, and culture the awareness along with sense of being, will leave your ego and suffer no loss. The ego has become the object of your experience and that is why its an illusion. You experience only ego and ego is illusion. Have you ever had a dream? Everything in it was just a dream. That looked like your mother or your son who died in that dream, but it was just a dream and they were just part of it. "Oh but it was real! I felt the painful emotion, I cried because I lost them when they died in the dream!" This is wrong, whether you felt the emotions, and whether you saw it with your own eyes and whether it made you powerfully sad and whether you cried buckets of tears does not make the dream not a dream. There is an energy in the universe so subtle that it cannot be detected, looked at or observed, yet I believe t exists. You can get all the amino acids enzymes and DNA, wrap it up in a nuclear envelope but it will just sit there. Scientist have tried to start it up with all the materiel parts, and in the propper construct but they cant get it to work. The life force that illuminates us cannot be detected or sinthesized. If you and the entire feild of molecular biology cant detect, test or make any intellectual sense of something why do you believe it?

Hi Dawg Well, you can be my guru anyday. I've adopted you. Consider it an honour! I'm so impressed with what you have written that I'm sure you have found the key. The key is the conscious mind. After reflecting on what you have written for a few days, I can see how this all fits together. It all really makes sense to me. I agree that the conscious mind can talk to the subconscious mind, and tell it what to do. I verify this each time I go to bed and tell my body to wake up at a certain time and it does. I verify this each time I meditate for 1 hour and something lets me know the bell is about to ring about 20 seconds before it does. I am testing this by telling my subconscious to heal myself of this cold, and after 1 day, it is almost gone. If this all works (as I have always suspected) I should be able to tell my subconscious that it is ok to be enlightened and it should work. The purpose of most practices is to remain in the conscious mind, to strengthen it and take back control from the subconscious mind (or, I guess you would call it the delusion). That's why most Buddhist/Realized teachers say that you must be mindful 24 hours a day. You have to learn to live and control the conscious mind, turn the balance from the subconscious to the conscious. That is why, people who awaken end up calling the enlightened state "just the normal mind". These are some of my conclusions at this point: - Controlling the breath only subdues the conscious mind, bringing the subconscious mind into focus. You will never awaken by subduing the conscious mind, although bringing the subconscious into focus is part of the learning process. The conscous mind has to be active and in control, which is why Zen and Buddhists say to meditate with eyes partially open, to keep the conscious mind in play. - Consciousness can stand on it's own and by itself. It does not always need an object to focus on. Whenever I squash a bug, I think to myself "I've just set a little blob of consciousness free". - Whatever you believe (from your subconscious mind) is at odds with whatever the conscious mind desires. If the conscious mind wants to levitate or walk through walls, the subconscious mind tells it, from past experience, that this is impossible. However, you should be able to tell your subconscious mind that it is possible, and if you repeat it often enough and with enough conviction, your subconscious mind should eventually believe you and then manifest the event. - Both the conscious and subconscious mind use the 'little voice in your head' to communicate. It talks to you and you talk to it, "you" being the conscious mind. Actually, I don't even know why I'm kind of repeating or elaborating on what you've already said. It is so wonderful to have someone say that I have experienced the 'enlightened mind'. That really means allot to me. Next, to make it permanent. My life's dream.. A hundred and eight thank yous to you, Dawg! TI

I know man, but I can dream can't I? I imagine that somewhere out there is woman who shares my dreams, passions, interests, etc., someone I would really connect with on a soul level, who didn't have any sort of mental problems or personality disorder, who was good in the bed and had a high libido, who didn't want children ever, who worked together with me financially instead of expecting me to support her, who pursued my dreams with me as they were her dreams too, someone that worked together as a team towards a common goal. That's my idea of love.

You know, in lucid dream that you can control the dream. This monster came out of blue to chase me. I just couldn't change it. I couldn't run away from him. He chased me out of my dream. :-(

Before I taking up meditation, I did some lucid dreaming stuff. I had a OBE via lucid dream onnce. It was fun until a monster showed up. :-( Right now, I fucus on opening my meridian channels and erase any pain spot on my body. I think we're living in a "simulated" reality already. My goal is to "astral travel" in this "real" world. The astral travel is fun too from what I've heard. But I haven't found any reliable way yet. If you figure it out, let me know.

Hey Seth, is that the saint of death in your avatar? I have seen her as well in my dream scapes. But she usually protrudes or seeks to inflict me some how. Tis peculiar.

Interesting interpretation. I'm not to sure what to say. These cops have become a common occurrence. If there are spiritual forces in the astral or dream scape, I have experienced plenty of different kinds in the last few years, even governmental ones. All who were some how seeking to hold their dominion in that moment. Whether this was a good or bad entity in my eyes. They all failed to understand that I all wanted to do was.. UNDERSTAND. The only being who understood this was HUGE and lifted me up with his hand in the sky. He was mighty, but very gentle. In His presence I felt sustained and understood. I did not feel imposed upon or restricted. I felt as a child would in the presence of loving parents, free and unconditionally loved. Every other being has been on pair with my own sense of being, all seeking to be liberated some how.

Hello Tibetan Ice, You said… As this experience occurred a few more times, in various circumstances, I noticed that they all had the same characteristics: 1) Monkey mind was gone (no voice broadcasting anything). There was a distinctive inner silence… (this is what is meant by the mind being “empty”) 2) There was great bliss, love, joy, beyond belief… (nirvana) 3) Whatever I was looking at was crystal clear, brighter and luminous (leaves on trees, the sky, grass, etc). 4) There was an overwhelming feeling that I "was" everything. It was all me. The sense of "me" had become everything. I was the soap in the shower, the tub. I was the trees, the sky, the park bench, the other people. 5) You can still 'think' but it is a direct knowing, like the thought (which are few and far in between, I don't know if I would even call them thoughts) just appears in an instant 'knowing'. And, the knowing is very clear, precise.. almost luminous. Also, the thought comes from a location above the head, instead of the usual locations with relation to the head space… These experiences have been so wonderful and mind-shattering that I wish I could just stay in them forever. ( I also wish I could make others experience the same state). The states have never lasted that long... Have I described the state that you are permanently in now? Did you notice the feeling that "you were everything"? Do all objects seem brighter than before? Is that what you are calling awakening? …………………………………………….. Yes, this is what I experience permanently now… yes, this is what I am calling awakening… what you describe is like the enlightened mind, the permanent state of consciousness that you are in when you “awaken”… what you have done is to temporarily escape “delusion”, and see man’s natural state that is hidden behind the delusion… then delusion closes in around you again, and your vision of enlightenment fades away and is hidden again… the only way to reach that state (of enlightenment) permanently, is to destroy delusion permanently… Although It is the subconscious mind (6th chakra which absolutely and totally controls the lower five chakras) that becomes enlightened when delusion is destroyed… it is only the “independent” conscious mind (7th chakra) has the ability to destroy delusion… this is because the conscious mind has the power “to think outside the box” of its conditioning (free will and logic)… The Buddhist meditation that I did, systematically neutralizes delusion’s control of the conscious mind… starting with learning to stop the voice temporarily (Samadhi/concentration)… then as the concentration gets deeper and deeper, getting rid of anger and greed, reaching equanimity, and then moves on to body investigation meditation… the conscious mind becomes stronger and stronger… the goal is the middle path, where there is no “duality” (delusion)… everything “just is”, nothing is good or bad except intension… in this way, the conscious mind weakens delusion’s control of it, bit by bit… until (one day when you least expect it, and are relaxed in a “safe place”, with your mind free of thoughts), delusion (mundane reality) collapses and is swept away amid loud noises (louder, higher, and deeper than you have ever heard) and blinding flashes of lights… then the bliss hits you, and it is as if you have been asleep, and have just awakened from a dream (the delusion that seemed so so real)… you are now back home, back in the “real world” that you have had glimpses of before… I think I'm a bit afraid that if this state were to persist, I would no longer know how to perform my highly technical skilled job at work or even be able to drive a car... I imagine that it takes some getting used to! You might experience some minor disorientation at first (like getting used to the bliss)… like you would experience if you go from bright light to darkness, or darkness to bright light… and your eyes need some time to adjust… but the awakening makes it easier (almost effortless) to do all the things you did before… and your ability to “know” by intuition, would greatly enhance your ability to perform at your “highly technical skilled job”… you would be able to intuit solutions to problems… you would become a “genius” at doing your job… and it would not endanger you while you were driving your car, your ability to concentrate and intuit would make you safer… your enlightened subconscious mind would never throw you a curve and put you in danger, it would always be protecting you from danger… you would be safer than you are now. Dawg

Yes,...sort of. Real Compassion is surely beyond belief,...however real compassion, as Buddhism instructs, also has empathy for the suffering of sentient beings. If you could see suffering, and the cause of suffering, even though you understand it to be just a dream, would you as Lao Tzu said, "Who can enjoy enlightenment and remain indifferent to suffering in the world? This is not keeping with the Way?" In a way however, we are getting tripped up on the sequence here. First we must understand the nature of compassion,...before we can really discuss in any depth, how it responds to suffering,...in other words,...before one can honestly argue if compassion is tolerant or intolerant of that which steps between a sentient being and their direct experience,...we should understand compassion itself,...of which, as stated in post #2,...I will be discussing from a Buddhist point of view,...not society's point of view as espoused by Marblehead. What is the good deed that Marblehead recommended? Do not Christian and Muslin evangelists perform good deeds everyday? Flolfolil's comment is too sophomoric to respond to,...yet if you watch, one that the overwhelming majority share. It's sort of, if you're in the box, and the box is sustained by beliefs, then anything outside the box must also be a belief.

Tantra was primarily the way or means to understand the mysteries of life and universe, somewhat akin to the old Pythagorean concept of ‘philosophy’ which was ‘contemplation, study, and knowledge of nature’. At the earlier stages of history, Tantra arose as the sum total of man’s knowledge of the objective world around him. It was a way of life that sought the significance of knowledge, not in the realization of some illusory absolute, but in day-to-day activities of people. Essentially, Tantra is synonymous with science. Tantra is synonymous with religion, and religion is synonymous with science. Science is defined as a branch of knowledge or study dealing with a body of facts or truths; a systematic knowledge of the physical or material world gained through observation and experimentation. Science is exactly Tantra in its original form. The scientific treatises composed in India are generally known as Tantras, or otherwise as ‘the scripture by which knowledge is spread.’ That’s all religion and spirituality is about. The Tantric tradition which was evolving since time immemorial as the philosophy of the masses, had a great metamorphosis when elements of the dominant class were imposed on it. It was distorted and its principles were remodeled so that they would conform to the philosophy of illusion (i.e. Advaita Vedanta, non-dualism). The scientific and materialistic traditions were relegated to background, and all references to technical and manual labor, observation and experiment were effaced from the texts. This contempt for worldly knowledge was possible only because one section of the community lived on the surplus produced by another and withdrew itself from the responsibility of labor and hence from the obligation of acknowledging the reality of the material world. Earlier portions of the RigVeda knew neither caste-distinction nor contempt for empirical knowledge and its functioning in different spheres of life. Brahmanical social ideals were superimposed on the original Tantra to such an extent that the real contents are completely obscured. There have been countless attempts to convert Tantra into a kind of Vedanta. Also, while Tantra attaches supreme importance to Saktism, the popular belief that Tantra is the same as Saktism is wrong, although its heavily intertwined. Originally followers of the Tantric tradition were denounced for their anti-Vedic attitudes. The fact is that religious systems like Pancaratra, Pasupata, Sakta, Ganapatya, etc. were exclusively Tantric, originally having nothing to do with the Vedas. Actually original Tantra was atheistic. The incorporation of the Vedas brought the gods and goddesses. These forms of religion were extremely popular among the masses, and so therefore the followers of the Vedic tradition had to give them Vedic sanction. Slowly but steadily Vedic elements were infused into these systems. The grafted elements were given publicity and patronized by the ruling class and the elite, while the true tantric elements were blackened and severely condemned. The Vedantic orientation of later Tantric cosmogony gave rise to numerous anomalies and contradictions by which the medieval Tantric texts and commentaries are pronouncedly characterized. The purely illusory position of the world, as suggested by the absolute non-dualistic form of Vedanta on the basis of the queer logic that the cause alone is real and that its apparent transformation in the form of effect is only illusion, created much confusion among the Tantrics who believed in an organic psycho-physical process of creation in which qualities were common to the cause and its effects were stressed. The belief of the idealists, that the material world is an illusion, are refuted…the knowledge of external objects is true because there is no such knowledge which can reject it, just as the experience of the waking state, which rejects that of the dream, is perfectly true. If the absolute is, as is asserted to be, absolutely pure, the world itself should be perfectly pure. An impure world cannot be viewed as the outcome of the pure Brahman. Tantrism was basically not a moksa-sastra or science of the liberation of the soul, but was in fact an attitude towards life, a distinct outlook or viewpoint. Its intimate association with the practical aspects of life is proved by the emphasis it attached to the arts of agriculture, metallurgy, manual and technical labor, chemical sciences, physiology, embryology and medicine. Also, the sociological viewpoints expressed in the Tantras were in virtual opposition to those upheld by the Smarta-Puranic tradition. In the Vaisesika-sutras it is stated that every element as cause can produce effect, and this production of effect is conditional. This is opposed to the non-dualist view that there is only cause, and that that cause cannot be conditioned. Under the different historical conditions although this materialistic outlook was suppressed, it could not be totally excluded from the framework of the idealistic philosophical systems. Tantra is basically characterized by the doctrine of elements, and also the idea that there is no soul apart from the body. Tantra’s goal was only liberation within this lifetime and seeking physical immortality within this lifetime, that’s it. Anything else is Vedas-adulterated Tantra or western Neo-Tantra. Real Tantra is Dualist. Real Tantra is Science.

I agree. As I recently mentioned somewhere,...Milarepa suggested that (talking of Theravada, Mahayana, and Vajrayana) Buddhahood is not attainable if any of the three is lacking. I disagree that "cutting down ego" as you said can be accomplished with humor. People do not want to see that what they considered meaningful, is actually meaningless,...and humor is not going to achieve that. For example,...Why do Christians go to Church? Remember, it's a joke. Christians go to Church because they have faith. It's hilarious,....first time I heard I cheeks hurt from the laughter. A very good example of how "ego is cut down" can be found in the story of Tilopa's Shoe (the enlightenment of Naropa) This is part of my copyrighted version: The biography of Naropa is both an amusing and illuminating description of the tests devised by a master of the Short Path to train and direct an initiate. Naropa, born around 1010, c.e., was considered a man of refinement, a learned doctor and deeply convinced of his superiority as a member of the Brahmin caste. Having been greatly offended by a rajah to whom he was chaplain, he resolved to kill the prince by an occult process. For this purpose, he shut himself up in an isolated house and began a magic rite to bring about death; the dragpoi dubhab. As he was performing the rite, a Dakini faery appeared at a corner of the magic diagram and asked Naropa if he deemed himself capable of sending the spirit of the rajah towards a happy place in another world, or of bring it back into the body which it had left and resuscitating it. The magician could only confess that his science did not extend so far. Then the faery assumed a stern presence and reproached him for his nefarious undertaking. She told him that no one had the right to destroy who could not build up again the being destroyed or establish it in a better condition. The consequence of his criminal thought, she added, would be his own rebirth in one of the purgatories. Terror-stricken, Naropa inquired how he could escape that terrible fate. The Dakini advised him to seek the Sage named Tilopa and beg from him initiation into the mystic doctrine of the Short Path which frees a man from the consequences of his actions, whatever they may be, by the revelation of their true nature, and ensures enlightenment in one single life. If he succeeded in grasping the meaning of that teaching and realize it, he would not be reborn again and consequently would escape a life of torment in the purgatories. Naropa stopped the performance of the rite and hastened towards Bengal where Tilopa lived. However, before Naropa would meet the Sage and receive the Ultimate Teaching, that is, Tilopa's Mahamudra, through which Enlightenment could be realized in one lifetime, he would first undergo twelve astonishments, followed by twelve ordeals. The Twelve Astonishments were challenges to Naropa's conditioning, that is, his ego and beliefs; whereas the Twelve Ordeals, or Hardships, were intended to encourage complete surrender. The first meeting of Naropa with Tilopa occurred in the courtyard of a Buddhist monastery. The cynic Sage, nearly naked, was seated on the ground eating fish. As the meal went on, he put down the fish's backbones beside him. However, in order not to defile his cast purity, Naropa was on the point of passing by at some little distance from the eater, when a monk started to reproach Tilopa for parading his lack of compassion for the animals, that is, killing and eating the fish, in the very premises of a Buddhist Monastery; and ordered him to leave at once. Tilopa did not even condescend to answer. He muttered some words, snapped his fingers and the fish bones were again covered with flesh. The fishes then moved as if living and swam away through the air as if it was water. No vestige remained of the cruel meal on the ground. Naropa was dazed, but suddenly thought that this strange wonder worker, no doubt, was the very Tilopa whom he was seeking. He hurriedly inquired about him, and the information given by the monks agreed with his own intuition. He ran after the Sage, but Tilopa was nowhere to be found. Then in his eagerness to learn the doctrine that could save him from the purgatories, Naropa wanders from town to town with the only result being that each time he reaches a place where Tilopa is said to be staying, the latter has, invariably just left it a little before his arrival. In the coming months, as if by chance on his way, Naropa would meet singular beings who were phantoms created by Tilopa. Once, knocking at the door of a house to beg food, a man comes out who offers him wine. To offer wine or spirit to a high caste Brahmin is an insult, so Naropa feels deeply offended and indignantly refuses the impure beverage. The house and its master vanish immediately. The proud Brahmin is left alone on the solitary road, while a mocking voice laughs that man was I, Tilopa. Again, the traveler sees a brutal husband who drags his wife buy her hair, and when he interferes, the cruel fellow tells him, you had better help me, I want to kill her. At least pass your way and let me do it. Naropa can hear no more. He knocks the man down on the ground, sets free the woman, and, lo!, once more the pantasmagoria disappears while the same voice repeats scornfully, I was there, I, Tilopa. The adventures continue in the same vein. Proficient magician though he may be, Naropa has never even conceived the idea of such display of supernormal powers. He stands on the brink of madness, the beliefs he clung to for his identity shaken to their core, but his fortitude to become Tilopa's disciple grew still stronger. He roamed at random across the country, calling Tilopa aloud and, knowing by experience that the Sage is capable of assuming any form, he bows down at the feet of any passer-by and even before any animal he happens to see on the road. One evening, after a long walk, he reaches a cemetary. A fire is smouldering in a corner; at times, a dark, reddish flame leaps from it showing shriveled- up, carbonized remains. The glimmer allows Naropa to vaguely discern a man laying beside the fire. He looks at him, and a mocking laugh answers his inspection. He falls prostrate on the ground at Tilopa's feet. This time the Sage does not disappear. The obscurations which inhibited Naropa from recognizing the Sage had waned. During the next several years, Naropa followed Tilopa without being treated as of any import, athough the Sage engages him in twelve ordeals, as mentioned above. Each Ordeal or Hardship, according to later Mahasiddhas of the lineage, contained one of twelve instructions of the Fourth Empowerment. As the first three empowerments encouraged the blossoming of the sapiential mind, the Fourth liberated the sapiential mind. However, only a few of the ordeals will be given here to grasp the principle of Naropa's release from his belief barriers and surrender to the Sage, whereby he fully understood the acquenscence of who he thought he was, and realized who he actually was. One of Naropa's first hardships arose following a begging round. According to the custom of Indian ascetics can beg for food, or alms, once a day. Coming back to his master, he offered him the rice and curry which he had received as alms. The rule is that a disciple eats only after his guru is satisfied, but far from leaving something for his follower, Tilopa ate up the whole contents of the bowl, and even declared that the food was so much to his taste that he could have eaten another bowl full with pleasure. Without waiting for a more direct command, Naropa took the bowl and started again for the house where generous householders bestowed such tasty alms, even though he knew he could not beg again. When he arrived, he found the door closed. However, burning with zeal, the devoted disciple did not let himself be stopped for so little. He forced the door open, discovered some rice and various stews keeping warm on the stove in the kitchen and helped himself to more of what Tilopa had so much enjoyed. The masters of the house came back as he was plunging a spoon in their pots and gave him a harsh thrashing. Bruised from head to feet, Naropa returned to the Sage, who showed no compassion whatever for his suffering. What adventure has befallen you on my account, he said with a cynical calm. Do you not regret having become my disciple? With all the strength that his pitiful condition left at his disposal, Naropa protested that far from regretting having followed such a Sage, he deemed the privilege of being his disciple could never be paid for too dearly, even if one was to purchase it at the cost of one's life. Another ordeal took place while Sage and disciple lived in a hut near a forest. Once, returning from the village with Tilopa's meal, Naropa saw that during his absence, the latter had fabricated a number of long bamboo needles, and with covered with molten butter, hardened them in a fire. Inquisitively he inquired about the use Tilopa meant to make of these implements. The Sage responded with a queer smile. Could you, he asked, bear some pain if it pleased me? Naropa answered that he belonged entirely to him and that he would do whatever he liked with him. Well, replied Tilopa, stretch out your hand. And when Naropa had obeyed, he thrust one of the needles under each of the nails of one hand, did the same to the other, and finished with the toes. Then he pushed the tortured Naropa into the hut, commanded him to wait there till he returned, closed the door, and went away. Several days elapsed before he came back. He found Naropa seated on the ground, the bamboo needles still in his flesh. What did you think while alone?, inquired Tilopa. Have you not come to 'believe' that I am a cruel master and that you had better leave me? I have been thinking of the dreadful life of torments which will be mine in the purgatories if I do not succeed, by your grace, in becoming enlightened in the mystic doctrine, and so escaping a new rebirth and having to begin all over, answered Naropa. As the years went by, Naropa drank fowl water, a defiling thing according to religious law; crossed a blazing fire, nearly drowned in icy water, and performed other fantastic feats which often put his life in jeopardy. Once, Sage and disciple were strolling in the streets when they happened to meet a wedding procession accompanying a bride to her husband's house. I desire that woman, said Tilopa to Naropa. Go bring her to me. He had scarcely finished speaking before Naropa joined the cortege. Seeing that he was a Brahmin, the men of the wedding party allowed him to approach the bride, thinking that he meant to bless her. But when they saw that he took her in his arms and intended to carry her away, they seized on everything they could find and belabored poor Naropa so soundly that he fainted and was left for dead. Tilopa had not waited for the end of the performance to pass quietly on his way. When Naropa came to his senses again and had painfully dragged himself along until he overtook his whimsical guru, the latter, as welcome, asked him once more the usual question, Do you not regret?. And as usual, Naropa protested that a thousand deaths seemed to him but a trifle to purchase the privilege of being his disciple. By some accounts, Naropa's last ordeal was said to have occurred at the end of a day walking in a remote mountainous region. Stopping at a cliff, Tilopa asked, what if it would please me for you to jump off this cliff? Before the final word was finished, Naropa leaps off the cliff, breaking nearly every bone in his body. Tilopa made his way down the steep, rocky cliff and asked Naropa who was clearly in agony, How are you?. Naropa answered that the pain was unbearable. Then, in a calm voice, Tilopa commanded him to heal himself. Instantaneously Naropa healed himself, and his broken body was fully restored. That evening, while seated at a fire, quite unexpectedly Tilopa took off one of his shoes and soundly slapped Naropa on the head with it. In that instant Naropa saw the inverse flow of forward moving waves of Light, and would not again transgress into the sleep of samsara, the always changing and impermanent dream of Maya. The full meaning of the Short Path was then told to Naropa through Tilopa's twenty-eight verse Mahamudra, or Ultimate Teaching. The story of Tilopa's Shoe is considered a historic occurrence. Several variations of the story exist, some handed down by oral tradition, others written in the biographies of famous lamas. Yet, unlike other philosophies, the historical legitimacy of Kagyu makes no difference, for the essence of the Short Path, the realization of the sapiential Mind in a single lifetime, is contained within the story. .

Hi SOS Gee, I thought you knew about those. I've been posting links to them for quite a while now, but in the Buddhist section. Alan Wallace's podcasts are so wonderful and he has a full array of practices. Here is one retreat that I've listened to three times now.. becaue it is so informative and takes you through all the stages all the way up to pure Dzogchen.. http://archive.org/details/IntroductionToDzogchenRetreatWithAlanWallace2012 Also, here are some personal notes I made about this series of talks: (sorry, I keep missing 1 to 3 but they are worth listening to too).. 4 two guided meditations. Compares life to a dream. Mode of existence. Three mundane jewels: wealth power and fame... Valueless at death. People on retreat 5 One guided breath meditation. General talk about minor benefits of meditation, watching the breath, no breathing during cell phone- checking email, dalai lama and soft cushion on chair. 6 Talks about relaxation, stability and vividness Anti-effort The 8 concerns -abandon hinderances 7 shavasana corpse posture One silent meditation 25 min. 8 two silent sessions are skipped Talk is about questions and answers. Dissolving coarse mind during meditation. Personal identity is dissolved. Fear and get over it. Death and the substrate consciousness. Length of sitting times Background of Theravada Sleepitate 　 9 start of watching thoughts as per Dzogchen Two good guided meditations Architecture of dharmadatu rigpa, microcosm, macrocosm 　 10 wonderful visualization meditation eyes partially open Space of the mind 11 two meditations Talk about shamatha All practices have limitations Defines Dzogchen as beyond stages of generation and completion 12 silent meditation only 25 min 13 2 meditations cut off Questions and answers Substrate dissolve into Prana accumulates in heart, throat xfor dreams, etc Senses dissolve Tummo, dissolving into central channel, subtle mind, Do absolutely nothing then the winds will dissolve into the central channel and go to the heart drop but it is not easy. Path: shamatha vipassana trecko thodgal rainbow body How to check out past lives by using the substrate Remember what u had for lunch a year ago Buddhagosa 　 14 five obscurations whole path Lots on path (if you had to listen to just one, I would pick this one). 15 can't practice Dzogchen from a coarse mind, first gear One meditation silent session 16 history and commonality of rigpa, arahats science luminous bliss unborn unceasing Vidyadata unborn unceasing resting in rigpa Prajnamitra the nature of existence is clear light Franklin Merrell-Wolff There is no Buddhism in Dzogchen 17 pointing out instructions meditation 18 getting the view. Dreams clarity emptiness. First insight is often dull. A spacious path to freedom Karma Chagme. Stories about reincarnation and mundane psychic powers 19 two silent meditations Spaced out danger: Must be a flow of knowing Lucid dreaming Really excellent talk about bliss, shamatha, stability, rigpa, the progression... 20 calichakra tantra Rainbow body Stories about masters Industructible drop at the heart 21 awareness of awareness on second meditation Invert and expand awareness From padmasambhava. Book called Natural Liberation Develop introspection Do you need a guru? Relationship to the guru 22 one guided meditation on being aware of being aware Center then release and repeat 23 No meditations Question and answers Stories about rainbow body and cremation Talks about continual knowing, Vividness luminosity, subtle thoughts, Insomnia- 24 two meditations second is guided. Phase 2 of awareness of awareness. Talks about Richard Geer and reifying gurus 25. One silent session Talking starts at 26 minutes questions and answers Cultivating introspection By stage 8 you don't introspect anymore question about prayer 26 two meditations : second is guided 27 one meditation session silent Q&A location of awareness 28 Two meditations are cut Q&A Levels of practice Rumination is grasping Cat and elephant in a pool of water 29 general advice two meditations, one silent Second is "shamatha without a sign" guided -starts at 34:50 Meditation: calm mind with breath, focus awareness without an object up, then return, then right, return, left, return then take an elevator down to the heart. Then expand awareness in all directions without an object Then come back to the center. Meditation is from padmasambhava "natural liberation" Talks about death 30 loving kindness meditation TI