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Dear Effilang, I researched on many lineages and feel very attracted to Xiao Yao Pai - it's legit as recognized as official school, so people can argue about the methods and stuff like this but it's just official and have it's lineage and texts. Same with longmenpai, wu liu pai etc. (my friend travels to white could temple so i can know some inside information for proofs here and there) So I will be look forward to become student. The highest Dao is in "regular" things. Rather then looking for constantly negative things towards every school I suggest to bring out the best out of this. If we can learn directly from immortals thru initiation (and I think it's possibile because as I stated before I had experience with similar school but related to buddhist esoteric teachings and there is "something" beyond understanding and regular shen which most of people have not cultivated it to understand subtle works of Dao) even watching flowing hands video you can see that he is not faking it. Every tradition seems have some-related practices and I would say they are just "different". It's very hard to argue that "mine god or mine immortal said this about your school" and "mine said about that" I think we missing point which is cultivation of ourself. I never seen anybody cultivation other then ignorance by grasping and attaching themselves to such concepts and I do not think immortals are interested in this things too. We have so much great opportunities now days to practice, various methods to enhance ourself but we choose to argue about petty things. I wish all the best for you all guys and I hope we will understand one day that we do not need to go to caves, living on rice and some greens from tree for 20 years just to learn basic qigong moves but we have immortal reaching to us if we are willing. For me this is dream tradition, universal with basic mechanics of life which 10 years old could probably understand. At the same time I respect other traditions because the most important thing if you are putting your heart into this or only your mouth into this. I really scrolled thru all those pages and topics on this forums about this school, I suggest to do also to others when most of question are answered with patience and clarity. I never found other schools to be have such open heart and giving hands to practitioners but people still trying to bite the hand. I do not know about you guys, but I would make the best use of this hand for myself and others and for this hand if I would have opportunity to be part of such school. Hope we will see each other in next year.

I asked Eric Isen to test Golden Phoenix when it came out. I had a dream I learned it from Sifu Christer. However he said: "This Golden Flying Phoenix is OK but somewhat limited in what it would do for you. It would help the liver and have some good results with intuition. "The Terry Dunn Flying Phoenix results in a more powerful movement of the Kundalini spiritual energy than this one and develops the power 3rd chakra in you quite powerfully." Bear in mind though it's a personal reading.

I think it is apropos to examine the double standards that men place on women and in the case of Hillary, the standard was much higher than Trump's. I needn't repeat Trump's transgressions here, but there seemed to be some biblical comparison between the two and as usual, males are usually given a pass (the story of King David comes to mind). I have seen references to Hillary's satanic influence over others or accusations that she is a witch cooking up spells. What the hell is this insanity? A repeat of a mad inquisitor's dream? It is important to go back and examine the Axial Age in which small disparate groups began forming more organized city states. Out of that arose the angry overarching monotheistic male god (patriarchal) as the main focus of worship which prevails today.

I have just finished a gong of over 100 days and while I can't really say much on this thread to contribute to what has already been said many times by different users posting here, and because I already outlined it in my personal practice forum here on The Dao Bums, what I will share here is that I will now try to attempt a year or longer of uninterrupted practice. It was already a challenge to do so for over 100 days, but it worked and had a deep impact on me. Yes, I have more energy, but I find its unique property of more alertness and gentleness, very subtle and still impacts my healing to the point I don't even consciously have to give Reiki to patients before they feel better in my presence. Yes, I dream more lucidly and do forms that impact lucidity, especially Monk Gazing at Moon, Monk Holding Peach, the first two basic seated meditations (5% 60% 80% 40% 30% and 50% 30% 10%) that allow me to manipulate the dream world if I really need to save myself from trouble. And yes, my martial forms are much stronger and alert when doing sensing hands or even defending myself from hooligans attacking me at night. Yes, the plants in my apartment are growing very, very well in the room that I practice Flying Phoenix. All of this I believe I shared before and detailed even more in my personal practice journal. I am thankful again to the Doo Wai family and Sifu Terry for this. If I have anything else to contribute, perhaps I will add, but it's really reinforcing more of what has been said many times here about the benefits, unless it's something unique to my own health and karma.

This is exactly what I was getting at, dear Taomeow. We are both master and slave, positioned right between our duty to serve this bodily universe that gives us divinity, and in turn a willing slave to the processes outside ourself that require our devotion and understanding. We should be as willing as the matter that performs so dutifully within our own universes. The pyramid symbology was never meant to be about dominance and control of power, but instead a massive reminder of our responsibility. However, the way we see it, is the way we collectively feel. Our society has become obsessed with selfish indulgence. Everyone trying to be unique and stand out for "flashing cameras". Many of us know not our duties or "where to go". We have become disconnected from the whole, like cancerous cells growing to their own purpose; and we see cancer increase within ourselves the further away we pull. We all feel that conflict within of who we are, and the hint of purpose long lost still lingers...but we're committed to this path for a while longer. Committed to the asylum for the mentally ill. Sure, this is by design, and perhaps there is a set of elites who have understood this power, twisting it to their own agenda. However, they too are a reflection of our collective mind. We look to space and dream of the final escape, away from our mother's call. The sMother who loves us so and beckons us home, but many are unwilling to resign from this life. Mother wants nothing more than for us to be happy, yet her love brings death to all, and this is what drives us. Fear of death and non-existence. We have forgotten death's crucial role. To reach the state that you describe, Tm, means for us to give up on our search for power; and to abandon the idea of individuality as we see it today. The ideal balance must be known..the middle path..and it must be applied to all areas, as they connect like light in a hall of mirrors. Live to serve and to know the Mother, embrace her deathly hug as she welcomes us home to rest.

Hi Effilang, Can we see some testimonials from people who've stuck with the school for a long time? Or can we hear about some of your experiences now that you've been practicing for a long time? You have spoken before about some students being able to directly hold conversations with their fufashen immediately after initiation, and you also speak about all sorts of quite dramatic changes occurring for those of you who make progress in the system over the long term. And yet, in all of the testimonials I ever can recall seeing here, the only thing that separates what people are talking about from good-old qigong zifagong as well as the effects people here report from Max's Kunlun, Jenny Lamb's spontaneous practice, Michael Lomax's Stillness Movement, etc., is this: belief. They attribute what's happening to the "FFS," but that's after they've been given an extensive theoretical education that explains the phenomena and its mechanisms before it occurs. You show that they report experiencing the phenomenon, and they take the existence of the phenomenon as evidence for the validity of Xiao Yao Pai's explanation. But all of these people have been prepped. This begs the question: is their surety that XYP's explanation is accurate any different from the surety of people who've already been "initiated" into teachings on catching the Holy Ghost going into dramatic spontaneous movements at a Pentecostal revival? They will happily and with extreme confidence tell you that they know exactly what is happening, and why it's happening. My firsthand experience, research, and the many, many anecdotes I've heard over the years have lead me to believe that spontaneous "practice" isn't all that hard of a thing to trigger in human beings. That is probably especially true when one considers that most of the humans we're dealing with in any setting devoted to this behavior have self-selected and are in fact looking for a certain type of goods. Even our "curious skeptic" in the most recent testimonial can ultimately barely contain his desire to taste the Kool Aid. I've raised this question long before, and years later, we're still just seeing XYP testimony from rank beginners. As wonderful as it is (truly) for a man to go off of dialysis, you've still shown us nothing to suggest that practitioners jump a bridge from "typical zifagong" to directly experiencing anything that proves that the Xiao Yao Pai explanation for what is going on and why is any more valid than the explanation a Baptist preacher, late 20th century qigong master in the PRC, or Kunlun student would offer. Could you offer testimonials from people who report actually directly experiencing the vast cosmology that you paint for us here? Do you yourself now, after several years with your school, hold actual verbal discussions with a spiritual entity, or several of them? Do you--not in a dream but in the completely conscious state that you say is the mark of XYP practice--have the ability to enter into the wuji realm and confirm firsthand for yourself that what you say about this celestial hierarchy, gold auras, immortals affiliated and unaffiliated with various lineages, and so forth is not just a "teaching" but an actual, tangible experience available to you as a living human being? I know it is not typically considered to be polite in traditional Daoist circles to ask another about his personal practice, but then again, as you say yourself, the XYP way is pretty clearly one that has divorced itself from much that is traditional. I think that the questions I'm asking are quite loudly begged by all of the testimonials you place here.

That's sound like dream come true for spiritual practitioners. How person can be initiated besides waiting for initiation in UK or US? There is way to travel for initiation?

In truth the country is relatively evenly divided between Dems and Repubs <1>. Trump could have won the election with a strong anti-illegal immigrant message, but he went further. Repeatedly calling 11 million illegal Mexican immigrants rapists and drug dealers <and maybe some good>. He repeatedly went on stage highlighting murders and rapes done by Mexican immigrants. His surprise trip to Mexico read like a poorly written Shakespearean tragedy especially considering his US speech afterwards. He could have stated a strong policy without such demagoguery. By going overboard, personifying it, he awakened a sleeping giant. The largest ethnic majority in the US, Latinos and set them against him. There's a very good chance he will lose Florida (and endangered the usually solid Texas) because of a large number of new enraged Latino voters. <1> according to Pews http://www.people-press.org/2016/09/13/the-parties-on-the-eve-of-the-2016-election-two-coalitions-moving-further-apart/ "This year, 48% of registered voters identify as Democrats or say they lean toward the Democratic Party, compared with 44% who identify as Republican or lean toward the Republican Party. That is identical to the balance of leaned party identification in 2012. ( Explore detailed tables for 2016 here.)" me> Thus Republicans have a slightly uphill battle to begin with. Course there is also the reality that both houses of congress are Republican as well as the majority Governor seats (not surprising since Democrats are generally more 'Urbanly' located with many low population 'Rural' states being majority Republican). So beyond such self identification there is quite a bit of variation. A good candidate persuades the middle and independents. The above Pews article is well worth reading because Demographics may be more meaningful and decisive then any political argument or story. The growth of Latinos, the 'rapid aging' of the Republican party members, these factors are immense. The candidates and there policies may be second fiddle to these shifts in population. addon> musings.. I'm reminded of the OJ Simpson trial. He won the trial 3 weeks before it started. They picked a jury member who after the trial admitted she'd never vote a black man guilty. Thus his 'million dollar dream team' actually kept him in prison months longer then needed by drawing out a long trial. Similarly Trump may have lost the election day one, hour one, with the '..Mexicans are rapists..' line that he continued to go with. Because that theme was bound to not only cost him the Latino vote but (we will see) enlarge and empower an ethnicity that historically was not filled with passionate voters.

Hi SmallSteps, You're welcome. Regarding W.Y. Evans-Wentz's book, besides the introductions concerning your posted topic question, the unity of all religions, I strongly recommend reading and studying the first 1/3 or so of the book devoted to "Precepts of the Gurus" and "Elegant Sayings". They form a complete proverbial book of wisdom and an invaluable yogic, psychological, and spiritual roadmap for any person committed to the path of healthful integration of mind and body, the elevation of consciousness thereby, and the development of one's spiritual potential. As I've stated many times in many places, the footnotes of "Tibetan Yoga and Secret Doctrines" contain more authentic yoga and secret, esoteric yogic doctrine than any shelf full of new age books. Everything from detailed yogic and spiritual operations with purposes ranging from self-purification, to mastering the dreamstate, to perfecting lucidity during earthly existence and transfering it to the bardo state, to attaining liberation from sangsaric existence (enlightenment), to healing the individual, to healing the state through numerous sacred rites of exorcism and Mystery Plays, to becoming a bodhisattva, aka saint, Taoist Immortal, . But most useful and relevant to the neophyte meditator and yogin are the Precepts of the Gurus, which is so complete so as to "fill in all the gaps" that might exist in any spiritual path that one might be embarked upon, including monastic orders north, south, east, or west. e.g., here is a definition of "Gift wave conference" on pages 213-214 of one yogic operation that one can utilize while in Flying Phoenix Meditation. ...Arya Deva, hath said: 'All apparent phenomena are like dreams and magical illusions, As all followers of the Buddha assert; But those [of the Southern School] who oppose the practice of inducing "gift-wave" conference on oneself,4 See not by actual realization this dream-like and illusory nature of things.' 4 This refers to the practice common to Northern Buddhists, in Tibet, China, Mongolia, and Japan, and opposed by Southern Buddhists, of Ceylon, Burmah, and Siam, of employing rituals which imply a direct appeal or prayer to deities, either regarded as being imaginary, as in the visualizations contained in the various texts comprising this volume, or as real divine impersonal forces, as symbolized by the Dharma-Kaya. There are some, but very few, amongst Northern Buddhists who, in this matter, side with the Southern Buddhists. The 'gift-waves', or spiritual power telepathically transmitted from the superhuman gurus to the gurus on Earth and thence to the disciples, are evoked in virtue of a yogic process akin to auto-suggestion. In other words, the yogin aims at making known his desire for divine guidance by consciously projecting perceptible waves of psychic influence to the superhuman realms wherein exist the Great Teachers, Who are no longer incarnate. To this end he makes use of mental concentration upon rituals and visualizations of deities, either purely imaginary or relatively real. The Southern Buddhists, in Arya Deva's view, are in their opposition to these Northern Buddhist yogic practices, much like the psychologist who seeks knowledge at second hand, or from external sources, rather than from within himself. The essential teaching of our Mahayana texts is that the Divine Wisdom, the All-Knowledge, is innate, or internal; in the Christian sense, that the Kingdom of Heaven lies within. Enjoy your reading of this treasure trove of yogic and spiritual secrets. Sifu Terry Dunn

Thanks rv I'm not particularly concerned or fixated about these things. I just posted to see what the bums think about these phenomena and also that they share them... This is just different from my having teachers visit me in dream state (which is what I experienced for the great part of my practice, especially initially) or seeing beings in waking state observing me while i practice (very rare). My teachers have consistently told me, don't fixate on phenomena. They come and go. The aim is to become empty...let go. Thanks to all for sharing their thoughts.

Most theories about what cannot be, or isn't logical, are forced to preclude a "multiverse" concept. Because if this is truly the nature of the universe, then pretty much all bets are off for what "might be" concerning other-identities. (Or even our own identities in other parallels, as I call them. Or us as other identities in other parallels.) I think a couple decades of active imagination meditation work are part of this, but I really dislike that term, because it is so misleading about the experience. It is only consciously imaginative when you are new and really bad at it. :-) With skill, even in a fully alpha/beta state, you learn to "allow the autonomy" of all that is perceived as not-you.... just like it works in real life. If the brainwave is closer to theta the experience is more "vivid and visceral." I was a hypnosis nut for about 15 years, and studied biofeedback and so on, so intentional brainwave states were already my thing even before I ran into this kind of meditation. The public seems to think brainwave states are like some kind of switch. The terms only refer to the 'dominant' quantity of waves in a certain frequency bandwidth. You can be walking around calmly and have everything from gamma to delta in your head -- it's merely that you will have 'mostly' beta (eyes open, conscious motion) with a degree of alpha (the calmness). But there's still plenty of other stuff going on. And you can entrain yourself to change this. At one point in my life I thought the archetypal world had "accidentally animated itself" for me somehow -- I mean, I was a logical, practical person, and if you switch timelines when you're home at lunch (mind-bending), talk to entities in the night (mind-bending), and then you gotta get up early to give a presentation to the board of directors the next morning, it can be a little disconcerting. You come up with all kinds of theories to try and explain it to yourself in a way that doesn't require a straightjacket (or a chemical lobotomy of drugs). Because of the meditation I'd been doing, and my long experience with my own states of mind, I was pretty sure I'd become able to hold a fairly high degree of delta while keeping enough beta for alertness. (I was almost never not lucid in dreams, and even had periods where despite my body sleeping I was utterly lucid 24/7 for days at a time.) (Probably an over-stim chakra side effect, is my theory now. Although I had been lucid in most dreams -- and even intentionally if I chose -- my whole life anyway. Wish I still had that ability. It's rare now.) So I was talking to this friend a couple years later, who had been a manager in a sleep research center for awhile. I told her I thought I was holding more delta especially in that earlier era, and I was wondering, could "Information streams" that normally are only perceived by the deeply asleep brain, be perceived by the conscious brain in that case? And seem real to me? I mean -- the information (energy) being 'real and valid' -- just that normally you would not 'perceive and translate' it unless you were sleeping. I told her, in addition to some of the anomalies from the earlier time, of some recent experiences I'd had back then (I think this is circa mid to late 90s) where I had been deeply asleep, and was abruptly woken. It was more like just stepping sideways into this world rather than going through a linear waking process. But the thing was, at the moment I awoke, I had been doing something with other people in another world that was ABOUT this world, and when I awoke it was utterly real to me -- even though I knew I had been asleep, even though I understood it had to be a dream, it didn't matter, my brain interpreted it as completely real, as much as anything tangible in my outer life. It was like I gave instant-validation to it. She said actually, it's interesting you brought that up. She told me that she had, on a few occasions, had someone be in deep delta and wake up abruptly -- and insist that another person had been there that they were having a conversation with and, even though they understood they had to have been dreaming, they still insisted that as far as they were concerned, it was still utterly real. She said it happened more than once, and the anomaly for her was that they were in deep delta and you're not supposed to be dreaming in deep delta, yet they were describing things that clearly seemed like a dream. And the second anomaly was that even though they had to know it was a dream, to them it was still real-valid. So I had this idea for awhile that perhaps my brain was simply carrying a larger quantity of theta-delta streams around while I was awake, as a side-effect of my practices, and it was sort of "expanding the frequency bandwidth" that my brain was likely to perceive energy within, and translating it in accordance with my biological filters, belief systems and expectations. I think it is possible that culture, genetics or both could lead people to perceive a "larger bandwidth" of energy than our focus-reality normally makes manifest. I have a friend in the Ozarks who has seen a ton of anomalous beings in the forest where he grew up -- and a couple of them were wild predators or seemed like it and terrified him -- most of this stuff gets no press because it doesn't fall into the "aliens probed me" meme. Later in life he was to find that at least some of these things, which were utterly novel to him a kid and young man, are found in old native legends, or in grimoires of allegedly mythical things. In my current multiverse model, there is (to shrink this down to human brain sized linear logic, which of course it's not) a collection of energy (or something that, eventually down the line so to speak, has an emergent property that to us, is). Every individual 'perception' that is created (and infinitely, these are created) basically has their own interpretation of all that -- a reality distinct to them. However that perception is probably categorically grouped -- in our cases, it's in a certain range of frequency, and within that it's a certain biological (massively filtering) creature, and within that there's a certain cultural set. And so when a given area or group of energy is experienced, it is likely to be experienced "very similarly to" other perceptions which have the same "settings." That doesn't mean whatever is being perceived is some objectively-same-thing. There are no objects-things, there is no objectively, there is only energy perceived subjectively. But we see it "basically" as similar-same for the same reason most people see trees and rivers the same way. I suspect the underlying energy is similar; but the individuals experiencing it will be filtering/morphing it into what works for them. So maybe in a world where people walked around in cloaks and had cultural stories of the fey with pointed ears, that is what they would experience. But maybe in a world where anything foreign is alien, it seems like that instead. I think Jacques Vallee and Richard Thompson have both done an excellent job of providing historical review of stuff that parallels modern cultural reports, making it patently clear to anybody with half a brain that is exposed to this that nothing new is going on and we just have different labels and contexts now. (Despite that I dislike the title, and that Streiber wrote the foreword -- I'm sure the publisher thought that was cool at the time -- the book "Alien Identities" by Richard Thompson is totally worth reading. It is one of the few books I have kept on my shelf since I first read it, circa 96 or so. He is a Vedic scholar.) I met what I called 'the blondes' and the 'fragiles' well before I actually realized other people called these 'nordics' and 'greys.' I thought aliens looked like the thing on the Streiber book, which I avoided even looking at if I could help it, in bookstores. I didn't think of them as aliens. I just thought of them as other-beings. I figured if there were ANY other beings than us, then probably there was no limit. But it was mixed in with all kinds of other symbolism. I had what amounted to celtic lore, modern alien lore, south american shamanic lore, all in the same experiences sometimes. Those were usually visions or dreams back then. Some readers may be happy to know that I do not talk to aliens anymore. On the other hand, just a couple of months ago I was utterly wide awake and getting up when a man walked in my bedroom door who was not in my manifest-focus-reality. And, another ref to mixed up cultures or timelines: he had very pronounced cheekbones, and medium dusky skin, but the top half of his face, to his cheekbones and nose, were a dusky red color. It struck me as vaguely familiar but not until later did I conclude I think I might have seen ref to it as a mask for south american shamanic stuff, at some point. But this was his actual skin. So later, thinking about it, I wondered if they were 'trying to look like' his people. Anyway he just walked right in and talked to me. I have had some very conscious awareness of stuff before, especially a few aspects of self, but he was just a guide and it was utterly clear. I was blown away by the experience. What if some peoples, via genetics or culture or some other factor, were simply able to perceive such things all the time, or some of the time, or in certain areas (who knows why, environmental effect)? Psychically, when you hear (it's more like feel, but it feels like "the tiniest whisper-voice ever") an insect like a spider, it "feels" tiny. But there's no reason for it to feel tiny as far as I can tell, except that this is my "translation" of part of the nature of the being. Trees "feel" deep. Planets (by their definition, not ours. Ganymede believes he is a planet) are gods-little-g's. Sometimes when I first perceive something, it will have clear symbolism I have learned to understand means, "this being is way more powerful than me." Like they will seem huge to me, or they will be sitting up on something high above me. It's just my symbolism. If I am unable to perceive something clearly due to some distortions in my relationship with an energy, I will perceive it in ways that show me this -- it may seem 'multi-faceted' or it might be a guy with a bear head or wings or, in one memorable case that made me laugh (it's one of my Aeons who is in two parts), it's a horse. I was told (from the inside) that it's simply how my brain is forced to 'translate' for me. By the same token, sometimes there is an energy very powerful but I really just don't have capacity for most of it, and if I perceive that thing at all, I am likely to perceive some incredibly "shallow version of it." Literally like it's a paper doll or a cartoon or something, it will be completely different than how I am perceiving everything around it. It's all just symbolism. But that's all reality is -- even this focus-reality, let alone any of the infinite others. That doesn't mean the entity/experience doesn't have validity, it just means that in my instance of the universe, everything is translating through my frequency bandwidth, through my biological filter, and the last part of that is my brain, with its culture and experience and beliefs -- and finally, the imagination which 'creates' something called "reality experience" for us out of that energy, rather than our just existing in the middle of a bunch of pink noise. I suspect that there a lot of parallels that are, to put it one way, "closer to" us and that we are likely to run into at some point in life. It is possible (even probable I think) that the evolution of the energy gateways within us (our chakras) have something to do with this. So chances are we run into "generally" the same kind of energy. Sometimes a really powerful entity that might span millennia of our time. Sometimes a 'people' who, while individuals vary, generally look about the same with our filters in place, though their clothing and detail might vary with the culture of the person perceiving it. In magickal workings one may be taught to actually expect certain identities, or recognize certain correspondences, and by this realize some of what you're working with. I avoid any such exploration as any 'expectation' on my part makes me invalidate myself usually so I avoid it, but later (usually after I have recorded an experience somewhere, and someone better educated on such things contacts me) I find it interesting. When I was temporarily involved in that world (magick), I used to regularly have experiences with things about a couple days or week before first hearing or reading about them, as if my exploring mind were ahead of me. (I did that with books, too, nearly channeling whole sections of them intuitively just prior to reading them. Seth [Jane Roberts] and Crowley were very strong with me that way.) I was never into summoning anything -- frankly the other worlds seemed more than capable of getting their ass here all on their own if you asked me -- but I ran into stuff that to this day I think is freaky. Like once, I saw a magickian friend in a world I was in while dreaming -- (an interesting thing we call 'when the body, hardwired to this frequency and beat-pattern, reflects some small portion of brain activity, from the larger self, during far more complex activity in what we would call "there" if we knew it. This causes our people to assume nothing whatever is happening except a moment of brain activity, and we ignore a huge percentage of our human experience as assumedly "doesn't count" as a result.') -- and when I was trying to find to where he had vanished, I met this group of girls, like six or seven siblings, and the youngest, I was talking to her and she wouldn't answer me. I got mad and yelled at her and she just walked away as if I could not hold her. I told my friend who got a kick out of that, as he was really "involved with" this so-called entity named Madimi who was the youngest in a "seven sisters" mythology. Did I perceive that because HE believed it and it was part of his construct? Or because it was a third-thing from either of us? Maybe there is no such thing as a difference. At the time I'd never met him except online and phone and never heard of the entity. I have learned to not invalidate what seems like 'symbolism' because everything is symbolism. How we perceive a butterfly, a tree, a skyscraper, is just as symbolic as anything else -- it is all translations at the final point of our nervous system that give us the "immersion effect" of reality. I've been fully lucid in innumerable realities, many of which I totally understood were considered 'a dream world' from THIS reality -- but at the time, I understood this reality to be just as much a dream as anything else. If the multiverse is truly infinite, then it just doesn't matter. I sometimes say: Every time I wake up here, it seems so real! :-) RC

The whole thing is so bizarre. Trump is just so blatantly INSANE (not the kind you lock up, but the kind that are in society with a profound personality disorder). In common parlance, a loop-de-loop, a nut job, an ego maniac. And he's a hate monger, obviously has been practicing that all his life. An emotional 8 year old. All of that is just so obvious, every time he opens his mouth, from the very beginning. To me it's bizarre that anyone is taking him seriously, at all. I grant that I don't know everything about HRC, and I have a local friend, a close friend who I respect who is more into the internet-research level of study on HRC and hates her. And I admit that I haven't done all the HRC research that this friend has... but to him I've said: Even if you profoundly disagree with her policies, even if you think she's destructive, she is not bat-shit crazy (Trump is). She is super smart, can hold an adult conversation and is very experienced. Trump can't hold an adult conversation. To me it's so blatant that it's just bizarre that we're having this conversation at all. (And I have no expectation to change anyone's mind in this thread.) I mean, if Rod Serling popped up and started telling us all that we are actually in some dream ... I think I'd actually be relieved and it would make more sense. (And yet I've done some study on people like Trump, and I have a relative who is a retired psychotherapist, and I do understand some of it.) in my view, Trump is just the most obvious, blatant narcissist and demagogue and he's just pushing everyone's buttons for emotional reactions. He's been doing it all his life probably. And on the inside, he only cares about himself. Look at his whole life: what has he *ever* done for other people? What has he *ever* done to serve others or society at large? Louis CK said something along the lines that he is a sad man who has a hole inside that he is trying to fill with money and attention and no amount of either will ever be enough. ~ edit ~ p.s. Someone comparable to Trump comes to mind: Charlie Sheen. Remember when Charlie Sheen was totally off the deep end, saying he was "winning" and "a rock star from mars"? Seems to me that anyone could watch any portion of those interviews and answer the question, "Is that guy psychologically healthy?". Charlie Sheen (during that period) seems like a comparable candidate to Trump. I might even put Charlie as a more fit candidate because, at some depth at least in some areas (like "domestic policy" or "international relations"), Charlie might've realized that he's in over his head. And Charlie is not a hate monger.

Me too... did we have the same dream... I couldn't find it either. Here is Nina's translation: http://daoisopen.com/ZhuangziTranslation.html In an unexplored area in the far north, there was a fish whose name was Kun. The Kun was so big that no one could figure out how many feet across it was. It transformed into a bird whose name was Peng. No one could figure out how many feet across its back was. When it burst into flight, its wings seemed to hang in the sky like clouds. This bird had the capacity to make its move to an unexplored area in the far south where the sky was like a large lake. From Qi Xie's "Tales of the Supernatural" (a book of legends and myths): Xie wrote: "On the Peng's migration to the unexplored south, it beat against the water for a thousand miles. It spiraled upward like a cyclone for thirty thousand miles. It traveled for six months before it stopped to rest. Horses went wild. Dust and dirt flew everywhere. The creatures on the earth had their breath taken away by all that wind blowing everywhere." The sky is one shade of blue. Is that its original color? No matter how far it extends, is it without an end? Might the sky appear the same when looking down from above? Interesting that she makes it about the migration.

Doubt it, that's the dream of the Corbynites. A tiny group of vocal and often violent people who have more in common with the national front fascists than soft liberals. I imagine the USA is headed towards a collapse and likely civil unrest on a wide scale. What comes out of it I hope is far better than what went before. With luck you will find your constitution and start laissez faire capitalism going.

Well, I just have a fish dream this morning. What was the big deal? It means that would be something big, attention grabbing event unfolding soon. Currently, my mind is on the Nov election and the war in Syria. Well, I think it has something to do with the latest FBI decision to reopen the Hillary email scandal because it may force her to step down if the latest emails are damaging enough. Here is why. In this dream, I saw a school of discus fish. Fortunately, they are normal size fish. I used to keep them a while back. I was very captivated by the color (mostly blue) and the round shape of the fish. It was just captivating and extremely lucid with vibrant color. When I did was I cut the fish tank in half, even with water with it, while I was herding which fish I want to keep with the other half. Physically, it isn't possible because water is not solid. However, water was behaving like solid in this dream. I cut the tank, along with the water and my chosen fish, in half and I grabbed this half with two arms and to put it in another fish tank. Apparently, I was doing a water change. Now, with the latest FBI decision, the FBI director discovered new emails from the Anthony Wiener investigation (his wife worked for Hillary in the past). And he managed to tie this new emails onto the existing Clinton's case. There..... Finding damaging emails from one case and to tie them to another existing one. Originally, I thought this dream was referring to the Syrian war and Russia. But....can't relate. So what happens next??? Well, I was doing a water change. It may mean the latest FBI decision could change the outcome of the Nov election.... Let's wait and see....

Thanks Randomer. Wow that sounds like a miserable experience. At one point (I need to resume this. My health issues with heart put everything else off) I was taking liposomal vitamin C (I was taking Aurora brand, which is bottled and has the best price) and liposomal silymarin (sold as Life Extension's 'european milk thistle, advanced phospholipid formula). (Sorry if this is over-detailed but I have been forced to be a health freak for the last several years!) I believe these are the bomb for healing -- with some TMG for most people especially most caucasians. It's a given that I always mean "in the context of a full spectrum of necessary lipids, aminos, and enzymes" of course. Back when I was taking emulsified lecithin+ascorbic (some people call this homemade liposomal C but it's really more micro-emulsified than liposomal -- it is SOME liposomal -- but what % are the liposomes are <200nm as needed who knows) I had a great dream where Tek -- that is what I call my body-intelligence as a guide -- told me that I needed to keep taking the "liver food and repair juice" and that I needed to take it in smaller doses but many more doses through the day. A later dream, he also called it the 'liver food and repair juice' and then I understood at the time the sunflower lecithin was the liver food and the ascorbic was the repair juice. Later, when I'd stopped taking that and then restarted some high-dose large chewable ascorbic tablets, another dream had Tek tell me that he liked the liquid C better than the pills. I need to re-take up the (real) liposomal C and the (even better version) milk thistle (silymarin is the primary active component in milk thistle) in small regular doses... In my skimming research for quite a few years now, nearly everything that helps the liver actually helps all the organs -- particularly the kidneys, gallbladder, pancrease, spleen. I bet the liposomal C and liposomal silymarin combo would be really good for your kidneys and everything else over there. (Lots of published research on silymarin.) It should not be THAT easy to hurt your kidneys -- even if the one supplement pill you took wasn't good -- frankly even if it were arsenic I'd expect anybody to be over it much sooner than you got over that. So clearly something is wrong that isn't getting 'healed' even if you're compensating via energy handling for whatever condition it's in. Lucky you have a good teacher to help with that stuff. RC

You experience a dream. The reality is the experience of a dream. How do you know it's a dream ? Where did the concept of a dream arise ? The distinction was made that it wasn't reality. The dream is the real experience, but the content is not.

And drove the evil spirits into the swine who drowned themselves. What did the pigs ever do? Oh, and cursed the fig tree for not growing! (That'll teach you to not grow! Now you'll not grow more! So there!) :-) :-) I have nothing against the dude. I'm being light hearted there. Anybody who cares is sometimes irritated, I suspect. I once had a dream where a voice told me that Jesus and Martin Luther King Jr. had this in common: that neither were nearly as perfect as everybody assumed they were, and that they both to a great degree lived for what amounted to an ideal and a dream they held. No idea why I dreamed that as I certainly hadn't been thinking of either of them for any reason. RC

blue eyed snake wrote: Mine certainly has both polarities, the whole spectrum. I have been dealing with issues of the heart chakra for some years. Physically not just 'spiritually'. I do not actually consider these unrelated because I believe the body/mind/spirit are really just different perspectives on the same group of energy. (Easy to say, harder to live.) I've had a really difficult time of it as I've had some serious blockage there. Not anymore. Kundalini cleaned me out one night, at request, which was quite lovely until the heart attack it inspired right after that of course (just what I asked for, perhaps not what I wanted). In any case, after spending years dying of an undiagnosed genetic heart valve defect, I then spent six months officially dying of it, but got surgery and four months later I am doing really well. It'll take me a couple years to develop the body systems to handle the 70% higher flow of oxygen/nutrients (good grief! no wonder all the docs were so amazed at how 'with it' I was despite those stats), and quite some time to get properly mobile again given three years of nearly bedridden, and to deal with a truly insane amount of edema slow to come off it seems. But it's all good now... it's all getting better though I have a long way to go. On the bright side, as the docs said in real surprise, my arteries etc. in the heart area where all totally clean but for that valve's problems. So at least there's that...! Since then I have not been meditating very well or often I confess, but I am still at a low level working on my heart and I think spontaneously my 'self' is trying to help, because I find that lately a few things from my past keep coming to mind and really bothering me. Stuff I haven't much thought about in eons and seldom think about. They are all things where people I was forced to be close to really, really hurt me. Thing is, I'm a pretty assertive personality and not particularly emotional (that is changing radically as I age but wasn't present until recently). So the number of people that have hurt me seems pretty small, maybe it's not. Most of my relationships have been positive and many life-changingly good. But there are five (I am 51, I've had some time :-) is that a lot?) who were all in job or avocational areas (nothing romantic, but the force of association made us very close and it became personal), and one past relative, so that's over a period of 35 years... even when I try to be objective, I simply cannot understand it. I literally have to invent in my head some hypothesized past life where I must have like, kidnapped and tortured them for years to account for anybody being so pathologically lying, intentionally devious, ongoingly evil and harmful toward me and so very personally, when I was actually so good to them (unusually so in most the cases), and totally believed in them (to the degree of refusing to believe indicators and others telling me of the problems, I gave them the benefit of the doubt). I believe that reality is a reflection (or rather, the actual embodiment of) my energy, so I "assume it's my fault" (I know that is the wrong perspective; it isn't about fault). Clearly, if something happens more than once (which with a list of five, it has, although of course all were very different in detail, though similar in nature in some points) then I am part of that energy, or all of it. I know the energy is rooted in me, and I want to take responsibility for that and not just blame others. But it is so difficult not to feel the emotion now. I think most of it, I felt then and suppressed and repressed, and now that my heart body issues have actually seemed to open me up a lot more to emotion, I am suddenly 'dealing with' emotion stored up over the last 35 years about this. I don't feel like I have anger or rage, but I do think hearing of their as-soon-as-possible and as-painful-as-possible demise would seem well deserved and make the world a better place, so obviously I am not at all clear with myself, I must have those emotions or how could I be that way. Consciously I still just feel horribly abused but mostly just so betrayed, due to my trust, and the surreal injustice of the situations. I realize their known pathologies are part of it. They all had literal extreme-textbook-degree pathologies, but some are the sort that are hidden as part of the pathology itself. Like reactive attachment disorder, which is mostly in kids/teens but does not magically vanish when people turn 18, it just makes them the most terrifying person short of kidnappers and serial killers to be loosed on the adult world. Because nobody ever suspects, why would you, that anybody would behave that way and it is self-protective (and well practiced, and pathological liars are the most utterly convincing people in the world). It's such a horrible condition, a psych friend told me all the mental health places he knows of in this region will take anything in a teen or young adult, suicidal, homicidal, you name it, but will not accept people with RAD. It is just that difficult to deal with and that scary... you can't fix it and it is about 100% certain to cause serious problems with the staff who have to work with them. It's like people are just broken and we should take them out and shoot them for the good of society or something. Another in my life was later diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic but I don't blame myself for that one! -- my father married her when I was young. I know the constant reminders -- I just keep thinking about this stuff when I haven't thought about most of it very often since it happened, some for decades -- is my inner world telling me this is energy in focus now, I need to deal with it. I do have some exercises the sun (an archetype whom I consider a friend) gave me that are kind of like a heart energy kata and help "push out" "stuck energy forms" in the body (in the heart area in this case). He helped me push out one that was very powerful, from a traumatic experience I actually had in meditation/dream nine years prior (can't recall which it was, my dreams are unusually linear and vivid, and I have visions, and I do imaginal meditations, so frankly it's really all part of the same spectrum for me), that had created immense grief and fear in me ever since. As the shape (that had about the size, shape and firmness of a peppermint patty :-)) pushed out of my chest finally, just as it started hitting near the surface, I was totally "In" that energy -- as if that event were happening literally in the moment but condensed in time, and I was literally wailing loudly in reaction to the condensed pain -- but as it passed out of me, then it was gone. Utterly! I still remembered the event but it was "Information, not emotion" after that. Wow. Just totally gone. It was slow though. I know I should do more of that (and I will) to help with these other things but every time I think of any of these people I had those hurts from, my sudden desire to stick a knife in them (still absent the conscious recognition of rage) interferes. :-) I used to think of myself like a jellyfish in air instead of water, and wind and emotion would "blow through me." It was a good exercise for letting go, especially when working to be calm with thoughts and not hold on to things... not so good at that now... and these things just trigger me. I fall into daydreams where oops. They accidentally die horribly. Haha! Too bad! (mwahahahaha) So far it's just not ending well for my enlightenment, suffice to say... :-( Any exercises besides "just let it go" -- obvious, but obviously not easy for me -- I'd be happy to hear from anybody. RC

Hi Bindi, ...maybe. I'm no expert at anything, but in my own experience, it's more like a sort of shallow spiral upward, where every spiral you gain another odd %, except, within that spiral, there are tons of places where you are 'missing spots' and some where you have more than one layer in some little spot. By the time you get a little ways up, which you (I mean me) may think is progress but is probably infintesimal LOL, from the top down it probably looks less like anything opaque or a road than it does a very low % array of white noise, interspersed with spots all over that run the spectrum from higher than average level to utterly empty. I run into the same things over and over and over again, but it always seems like "a new level of understanding." A new level of the spiral. Which reminds me of one of my favorite paintings, "Modern Shalott" by John Stephens: I loved that pic partly because I had once had a deep dream where (to summarize greatly) I was cared for by a part of my larger-soul working as a medical guy, in a cave up high, then run down a winding path in a rickshaw by another part (my twin/mate), then put in a small boat with my hands crossed on my chest and sent down a river. I loved the symbolism of that later when I thought about it! This pic made me think of it. RC

Perhaps, but then again Johnson might have just as much a chance. Oh wait, thats a pipe dream.

Here you say 'a room with a flea' this is you saying the room has a flea in it. How did you know it was there ? Oh yeah, look, you imagined it would be. Exactly the same is happening when you are making up the other stuff, you are confirming your own fallacy, it's a form of question begging. LOL so, if I say, in my little dream world there is no flea, then one could not have been experienced, then this is the same question begging. However I wouldn't argue that way. All we can say is that we experience a flea, or we didn't, in any particular place.

I am going to write my dream journal here..just for the record keeping. It happened this morning. I had this dream. It began with me finding myself sleeping on a double bunked bed. I woke up and to realize that there was a stranger sleeping with me. It turned out to be a naked man. I am not gay but not short of having dreams involving gay individuals. Nothing sexual. Once I woke up, while in the dream, I felt that I was sleeping in a public facility like a shelter. I realized that this was the place for all kinds of people and strangers to stay overnight and to sleep in. It was a bit disturbing because I went to bed in my own bed and in my home and waking up, in the dream, in a public facility with all sorts of strangers. The location reminded me of my apartment as a kid. In the dream, I felt that I have no belongings...except my camera bag. It was like I lost all of my possessions except my camera bag. This may mean that the only material things I am still clinging onto are my camera equipment. Anyway, in the dream, I jumped to the floor and immediately was greeted by a Caucasian lady. Out of nowhere, she told me that she saw darkness in me. I then asked what did she mean by that....if my darkness came from my own mind or being generated by the surrounding. I found her assessment was a bit odd to say that I was dwelling in darkness and yet I could ask discriminating questions about the nature of this darkness. I told her I have the ability to read people's emotions and to assimilate their perspectives as my own. Now, she was starring at me very intensely. Here, I realized she was trying to read my mind. I looked at her with a smirk and began to evoke my dark energy generated from my entire life experiences. It was my attempt to scare her with my life. At this point, her expression was nothing by frights. Like someone shouldn't be piercing into the soul of another because the truths could be too overwhelming for the individuals. Now, I began to ask her what did she see in my mind. She didn't answer but attempt to runaway. Here, her figure began to fade..fading out like about to disappear. Now, I saw a black lady here and she was telling me that the nature of this facility was a public place. And my mind was originally deceived in thinking that it was my home. After she finished talking, I noticed that my camera bag was stolen. I went inside to another room, reminded me of my parent's bedroom. I saw two individuals going through my bag. I tried to stop them but my 2 cameras were stolen or missing. And these individuals didn't have the cameras on them. However, I noticed that I still had my wallet and money inside too. I walked back out and saw this lady again and asked her if this was what she meant about seeing darkness in me...that having my cameras stolen. Now, she was getting agitated and telling me to stop asking her all these questions because it was making her to do too much work. LOL LOL....She then proceeded to read my mind now with very huge efforts...and her words became incoherent...something about a King....about abuse of power...and something else. She was completely overwhelmed and she was trying to prevent herself from telling me what she saw. She saw something in my future but could barely contain her emotions. I woke up feeling refreshed and feeling a deep sense of understanding. Sometimes, these morning dreams are like that for me. They become so lucid you feel cleansed. Was someone probing my mind? For one thing, Spirit Guides or Sambhogakaya beings do not feel exhausted or agitated when asked about what they see in your own mind. They generally don't have problems revealing certain truths to you. Second, rather than pointing out what is wrong with you, they generally guide you with instructions in order for you to overcome certain issues you have. This white lady was like trying to create fears in me. Instead, she saw her own mirror...her own fears. And this place I was in.....first my mind was drifted to it because it reminded me of my old apartment as a kid. Then, a black lady telling me it wasn't real, this place was actually a public facility designed for people to sleep in. And they searched my camera bag but they didn't find any cameras in it. I get the feeling that someone was looking for something in my mind. It turned out my mind is pretty simple. I couldn't help but to wonder if the NSA or the CIA is using some psychics to read my mind and to unearth some secrets. Hate to disappoint them but my life has no secrets. No, I don't work for the Russian govt or the Chinese govt despite that I frequently made many correct assessments about the war in Syria, in Ukraine, and recently about president Duterte turning his back on America...to become an ally with China.

Dream on: Britain was deforested rapidly once Bronze Age axes became available. Fires were used extensively and often got out of hand, destroying hundreds of acres and the animals that inhabited those woodlands. Scientists have concluded that it was man that hunted the Mammoth to extinction and it was the American Indians that began the destruction of the Bison. Ancient man had midden heaps which would pollute water courses and kill off the life in the waterways for many miles. Man has always polluted, because man must utilise raw nature and convert it into products.

Why, thank you kindly. Nope to the first question. As for the second, not really trying to make comparisons. Just a bit of show and tell, is all. Sure, I've heard all sorts of less-than-stellar things about med school in the US from friends and family. I highly recommend that anybody considering any kind of medical work read The House of God--from what I've seen in western medicine hospitals here in China, I tend to believe that the author is not lying nor even exaggerating. But. Look. How to put it? The PRC is on a whole 'nother level. In the US and much or most of the west you can march in the streets in fury if your university is that bad and not only get away with it, but maybe even make things a little better while you're at it. Here? Here, to unite students to sign a petition complaining about the full-bore 100 dB broadcast of a Cultural Revolution-era exercise routine that the entire library is subjected to EVERY DAY at 10am, well, even that is taboooooooo, 'cause you don't wanna do nothing that has echos of 1989 coming off of it, even alls your doing is pointing out the absurdity of making hearing one's own thoughts downright impossible for ten minutes each day so that a red guard can screech at you to touch your toes. And nobody ever, ever, neverneverneverever stands up and does so, save for the one crazy lady who occasionally mans the front desk, and that's 'cause she was probably busy whipping real-life Dao bums with her belt in one hand a Little Red Book in the other forty years ago. And while you learn to shut up and wait for the tammany to run its course, you still silently wonder if making sure for ten minutes every day, in 2016, you still gotta sit back and let the red guard do her ululating, is an accident or something that's very much on purpose. I dunno. Nobody wants to talk about that sort of thing here. But let me paint for you a picture of a typical day in a Chinese TCM university classroom: "Professor" walks in. Boots up aged computer--these are never replaced and in ill repair (just like the foul toilets) because "the school doesn't have enough money," or so the apparatchiks who all drive Audis and Benzes tell me, "their skin smiling but their flesh not smiling." Aiya, I'm already digressing. Next the prof plugs in the USB card. Sometimes asks class what s/he is supposed to be lecturing on that day. Hopefully gets PowerPoint presentation loaded. PowerPoint presentation is dated 8 years prior. So blatant. It is just a copy-and-paste plagiarism of information that probably reads exactly word-for-word like the textbooks we bought, and if not the textbook, then it's just taken from some page on Baidu. Often (usually?) there are no diagrams. Often (usually) there are dozens and dozens of lines of small-print text filling slide after slide. The presentation has never been changed in all its 8 years, and will continue to be used to who knows when. "Professor" proceeds to drone on under the dim fluorescent bulbs until the bell rings. Anybody who is capable of reading aloud could do this job. If your prof is a ranking cadre, and therefore particularly cynical, then you may have to wait while he plays with his phone, sending messages and maybe even buying and selling stocks, upwards of 25 times in a class (yes, I have counted, many times... the fuck else am I supposed to stave off encephaloatrophy or whatever it is they're trying to give me over here?) Seven to nine out of ten students are either playing videogames on their phones, watching videos, playing with social media, taking dozens of selfies, or asleep. The remainder are passionate study-a-holics who are disgusted almost all of the time, except for the Korean study-a-holics, who betray very little of their inner worlds to anybody who is not Korean--I don't even know if they open up to each other. They say it's because they "understand Confucianism." Chrisamighty, well, my gasface proves I don't. Occasionally a question is asked. Answers range (in increasing churlishness) from (a) a re-reading of some sentence in the PowerPoint presentation to ( I don't know, to © that's not in my field of specialty, to (d, by now in openly sneering churlishness) you should already have learned that 3 years ago, to (e) please don't interrupt, I have to deliver this entire presentation to you before noon, and all of this information is going to be on the test. Phheeewwww. If any point is emphasized by a professor, 95% of the time you hear, "listen up, this is important, it's going to be on the test! The test! THE TESSSTTTT!!!" Oh, yes, the test--the TEST! Any emphasis on the actual clinic is almost unheard of. We one day will treat patients? Actual human bodies, that maybe even have hearts and minds inside of them? Then again, when you actually get to see the clinic, then you will know why the professors don't want to talk about the clinic any more than they have to. And to be fair, in a small minority of cases you hear interesting stories. There are a few diamonds in this rough, it's true. But, well, just as likely, when a prof strays from the PowerPoint, you get a nonsensical digression, which may or may not (no, just may), consist of self-aggrandizing anecdotes, like, "I went to Taiwan to teach and they all told me I'm quite amazing." Well, shucks, the Taiwanese are a famously polite people, now, aren't they? Finally, the bell rings, the prof skedaddles licketysplit, the class snaps out of its smart phone glaze long enough to pack its bags and wave cutely at each other, and the weirdos who give a fuck gather to share their bitterness for the ump-hundredth time before schlepping off in despair, reminding themselves, "well, at least I don't have to go $250,000 into debt to study here." For that is our mantra--now you know our secret. Experiences with the administration and the hospital "internship" are par for the course. Except with the administration to the churlishness is added reflex dishonesty and irresponsibility, and to the clinic, a mind-numbingly drone like attitude ("well, yes, we could tailor treatments to the patient like TCM says you're supposed to, but we're too busy for that. And more to the point, if I make up an individualized protocol on the basis of my diagnosis, and then something bad happens, then the responsibility is mine. However, if with every single cardiac patient I just use the exact same 'standard cardiac protocol' every time I do acupuncture, then even if the patient up and dies right there on the table, I won't get into any trouble, 'cause I was using the standard, and the standard is safe, because it's the standard. Standard, get it? Always go with the standard. I just use the standard and I'm safe--after all, patients killing doctors is a big problem these days, and I don't wanna get fired for doing my own thing, either--we've got rules here." Thank Hua Tuo for getting the doctor teaching us that day to at least be honest, instead of pretending to be doing TCM for the sake of wowing the foreign class, 肏!). Administratively, flabbergasting bullshit that causes you to once again push your expectation bar into uncharted netherrealms happens, at minimum, every week. Every fucking week, sometimes more often. No, really. Most recently? The mail box in the foreign students' dorm disappeared last week. With all the mail in it. Noone, not nobody, not noone in any department whatsoever, will admit knowing who eliminated the mailbox, and all the unclaimed mail that was in it. After much prodding and investigation, the mailbox returned, fetched from oblivion by a nice member of the custodial staff. The mail? Well, gone. All of it. Forever. But don't say nothing, don't lose your little smile, don't go too far with your protests, because you've thrown half a decade or more into this hole, and these vindictive little people, well, they're gonna remember it if you rub their nose in any shit, and they will just maybe fail to release your diploma when you're applying for a license a year down the line, and hell, they might even do that even if you never rocked the boat not one inch in all your years here, because really, most people eating from iron rice bowls don't give a damn about anything but gripping that next rung and slurping that next ass up the line (just a wee House of God reference for ya). So we all smile and nod and make that little polite Chinese "ah ah ah" sound as we ram our fury back into its nebbishy little cage, deep down, to not be the nail that sticks up. Oh, and that mailbox thing? You've gotta be either a fresh off the boat or princess-and-the-pea sensitive to let that get under your skin. That ain't shit, even though I do so wish I had my forwarded copy of Mother Jones to thumb through. Dag. Anyway, not being that nail, well, that's really what this is alllllllllllllll about, all of it, really. Going all the way back how and why TCM became what it is (again, watch Nugent Head's video on the history of modern TCM). The seldom-spoken reality never far from anybody's mind is that this entire sprawling monstrous edifice is a thumping, beating, quivering, metabolizing, metastasizing organic mass of Party power. It's that thing in Akira that Testuo turns into, except Kaneda just doesn't ever win, and it sprawls its guts over 1/5 of the world's population. Oh yes. And it's a Party that's damn fucking sure what it wants the smart, energetic, educated, potentially "empowered" youth of its realm doing in their dangerous years between the rigid rigors of only-childhood and the exhausting rigmarole of parenthood, home ownership, and the career ladder. By which I mean to say that the party-pooping Party wants to be damn sure that the yutes are not sitting around engaging in critical thinking, organization, or, Xi (our noble and glorious Xi Da Da!) forbid, expressing any dissatisfaction with the official China Dream and its enablers. And it just happens to be that those who run this university, are just those very same enablers--you'll only find obedient little cadres here. And so almost everybody--even a grand portion of the foreign students--just shine this shit and call it gold, and smile meekly and politely, and never be that nail, 'cause you know what, the scary thing about China today isn't that it really has to kill or imprison or disappear all that many people any more (save for, amongst the Han, a few rascally reporters and lawyers and Hong Kong publishers, and then a few Tibetans and Xinjiangese whose demise quite possibly comes in the form of a paradox--a quiet machine-gunning). Nah, by and large, the State doesn't have to work hard like it used to back when that lovely red guard work out tape was recorded. It did all that blood and guts work for so long and so well, and to boot has nowadays more or less mastered the internet, that people don't even need to see any bloodshed to know that it's best just to shut the fuck up and get busy carving out one's own little cave in the dungheap, 'cause suggesting that we might have more to aspire to than a lifetime of backbiting in a shitpile is anathema. Anathema that can get you rubbed out with the quickness. And even if it doesn't, well, ain't nobody about to take to the streets with you, so why waste time and breath you might better be using carving out your hole in the dung? So yeah, are any institutions in any lands perfect? Hell nah. Helllllllllll nah. But the PRC's brand of imperfect is something else altogether from what I ever witnessed in the three western countries I've lived in (the US, one in Scandinavia, and one in Oceania)--except for the "grey mass" that is the criminal justice system in the US, which I'm thankful to have only encountered as a white male US citizen, just as I am happy to have encountered this Red Mass as an outsider who can leave at any moment. Anyway, to tie this deluge back into what we've been attempting to talk about in this thread, well, let's just say that it's best not to have any illusions about what one is buying when one pays one's tuition fees at at a Chinese university of traditional Chinese medicine. And for those of you who might be looking for an acupuncturist, nor do you want to be under illusions about what you're paying for when you fork over your hard-earned and accept treatment from 9 out of 10 of the graduates of these institutions, a solid chunk of whom have firm and definite plans to emigrate to western countries. And I don't blame 'em--I just wouldn't let those fuckers stick a needle in me, 'cause a sizable portion of em haven't needled anybody more than 10 or 20 times in their entire five-year university careers, and that's real talk, word is bond!(!) Chinese medicine, with PRC characteristics. Yes indeed, yes indeed. Hot damn, writing that was cathartic. I need to go outside and do some Cultural Revolution gymnastics while I'm still feeling all spry and youthful, 步行者万岁，万万岁！！！！！