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Hi, I would like to start a practice thread or a cultivation thread is what you call it. Thanks!

Found this and will watch tonight. Will be interesting to hear your views on it, if of course you have time to watch it. Part: 1 Part:2 Part: 3

Anybody tried dry fasting? Apparently it can be very beneficial for ones health. I'm in the process of cutting my fluid intake down as well as keeping away from modern beverages such as tea, coffee, alcohol, cola etc. Herbal tea, water, fruit and vegetable juice is what I would choose to drink.

Hi Bums! I would like to go on a fasting thing to lose weight and detox. If you done one, please share tips and tricks. I am particularly interested in containing(?) energy, as I have no interest in "flying high". In fact, I think I have started eating meat and more meals for that particular purpose of "not flying high". I dunno what they put in kale salad, but that diet sure makes you "off". However, seems sugar and meat are piling up and I need to get rid of it. Not interested in any "spiritual" stuff at this point, just to detox. Meow

Sooo due to some comments in another thread, I came across the topic of fasting. It only seems relevant that if I'm going to be practicing Brahmacharya (celibacy), I might as well start by testing my self control with regards to food. I ate my dinner last night, and all day today I haven't had a bite of food. I like how it has been making me feel. Yeah, I'm not the highest energy today, but I've been feeling very spiritual and very blissful all day. I feel like I've been more in tuned with situations, and more my true self. It is also nice to step back and realize how thankful I am for the food I recieve. I think I want to start giving thanks for food before I eat it as well. My stepmom is Japanese, and her family says "tadakie mas" (idk about spelling) before eating as a way of giving thanks for the food and farmers that it came from. Fasting gives my body a chance to regenerate and cleanse apparently as well. I can also tell that next time I have a but to eat, which will be tomarrow, it will be the best bite I've ever had I've been drinking water all day and I took my liquid multivitamin as well, but that's it. I got the idea from a really amazing bum named Arramu and I am very thankful. I also want to fast one day per week or at least every two weeks. What are you alls feelings towards fasting? Does anyone practice multiple days of fasting at a time? What kind of fasting have you all done?

I seen fasting mixed in with other topics, but I feel fasting deserves its own thread There are correct ways to fast, and some very bad ways to do it If you fast, you should do it as a routine rather than just a randomly "not eating today" This way, your body gradually starts to detox and every fast feels better than the last one Since 1982 I have incorporated daily fasting I eat one meal every 24 hours and on Saturday I entirely skip it So that's 6 meals in 7 days I have found that food increases Jing but too much food can deplete Jing (Of course what you eat is a big variable here too) Less stress on the digestive process, more energy elsewhere.

Does anyone have a particular Taoist practice or discipline that they follow for eating? I live in the United States which is a country in which, ironically, it is the abundance of food that is making us gravely ill. So it makes good sense to have good habits that promote spiritual cultivation and growth. The below page I recently read, and found it to be a good resource for this topic: http://www.seventhfam.com/temple/books/eattolive_one/eat1_10.htm I think one large meal a day is more than possible, and honestly makes good sense because you can devote the majority of your day to everything besides cooking or eating. It just seems to be cultivating an "eat to live" mindset. I have never done well with several meals a day. I've had very religious experiences fasting for a couple days, it seems to open creative and soul channels which are closed after consuming food. I have never gone longer than a few days though because I'm already slender. I've also read about one bowl meditation where you put everything you want to eat in one bowl. Not sure about the practicality of this if eating one meal a day.

A great deal of our growth in the arena of expanding our awareness and on the path of enlightenment has more to do with the simple basics and far less to do with the so called "advanced" practices. Advanced practice is reached primarily from basic practice. Basic practice becomes advanced all on its own. As you progress on the path, the simple teachings are in fact by a very long shot the most important and the easiest to skip over - pushing them aside in a race to "master" the basics. It can also be hard to think straight in your teens and early 20s with what for some of us is a raging hormone storm and this may create the feeling of the urgency to "master" the basics aside from the intense desire to do so. Included in the basics are meditation, some breathing techniques, and some posture basics. Often wholly brushed aside is diet - or as is freqently the case - it is an egotistical way of life diet of only organic items and a very full identification with this diet (certainly nothing wrong with the diet - it is a very good diet - but the identification is often so enuciated it should be obviously an area to work on). Also brushed aside in general is the Ego - we see this all across these boards - statements of surety that is so obviously way beyond actual experience, the over use of quotes as though this redeems a lack of thinking or real experience. Almost no desire to consider what Right Thinking actually might mean - little discussion of it if any - an assumed understanding - ["my" understanding] Right view Right intention Ethical conduct Right action Right effort Right mindfulness Right concentration Take right effort: About 99% of the effort is done towards Gain The gaining of advanced practice skills, and the effort to maintain a good practice in order to continue "up" along the path. We indulge in poor food, alcohol, smoking and a limitless supply of energy reducing behaviours and think nothing of it. Even if we eat well, do not smoke and our drinking is none or well within a composed fashion, we attach ourselves to every cause under the sun and compress huge amounts of judgement into them and cast our will about the universe with abandon - often ready to pounce upon any protrusion from our indefatigable indignation. We practice this daily! It is our story and our biggest practice! It is primarily how we die - and how most of us are completely dead by the age of 45 - deadend to our story - our treasured illusion. We come out of it briefly in our old age when it hits us that we have been way off and need to purcase some insurance. Or we do not come out of it - and our after death is quite a delay for us. Another thing we skip over - though this practice is now coming to light - is the mindfulness to those energies we have come to know: If you have come to feel a particular chakra or energy center - try to stay aware of it at all times. This is a primary way to Awaken Say you feel the warmth of your 4th chakra in meditation and everytime you put your awareness on it you can feel it - then put your attention on it and be with it during the day. Slowly but surely it will be present more and more - and with it will come an increase in other awarenesses as well. Soon you will be more in this space than not - perhaps all the time. Practice not venting your energies on your story - stay with your being - notice when you leave your awareness space - you will find it leaves you often during the "you" that you believe you know best (the one you identify with). Many of the most "advanced" practices become your story - your new story - you are identified with your prowess of stretching, your ability to do some esoteric practice - and your ability to use the word esoteric as though you know what it means to be inside the innermost 3rd circle. If you ignore the basics - the balancing basics, then learning the "higher" forms present much more danger than they afford apportunity and growth. Another form of over engineering comes from fear - but this is a long enough beginning for now. Please join this discussion!