Chinese Shamanism

[Sloppy Zhang]

Hi Sloppy.

 

i don't know if the book exists in English. I need to check! It's a scholarly deal but I reckon very good to read.

 

What I'm trying to get better at is the "feeling" of the things. So say if a certain situation has X inherent in it (tends to be people), you can "feel" it stretching through time (of course the feeling is an illusion;-)) towards an outcome. But what about the things you can't feel?

 

Well one of the things that Joel Signeur did in his lecture was break down each of the trigrams and kind of do an outline of what each one "feels" like. In methods such as Franz Bardon's Initiation Into Hermetics (which I think shares many similarities to what has been described in "Opening the Dragon's Gate" of the Dragon's Gate sects method, so for me that gives it some credibility) one does various exercises in which one meditates, reflects upon, and accumulates and then expels the five elements (fire, water, air, earth, void) from the body (initially the mental body, then as you get stronger it becomes a powerful astral force, and as you get even stronger, it becomes a physical reality).

 

So the basic idea is that you realize all of the elements in you, and when all of the universe is in you (the microcosm) then you can understand and interact with the outer world (macrocosm) perfectly.

 

I think many Daoist traditions have that same philosophy, and while the structure is different (culture, worldview, etc) I think the overall methods are the same.

 

Pietro has made some really good posts about the Yi Jing, you might want to find them, but if I recall correctly he says that aside from divination one should study each of the hexagrams, what it is, how it develops (changes) into the next one, and learn to recognize it in your life.

 

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that you could even spend some time trying to embody the hexagram itself. Reflect upon your life in the past, how did you feel then, try to feel it now, and then change to the next one.

 

As for the stuff you "can't feel"..... keep practicing, and maybe eventually you'll feel it

[安永樂]

---

Edited August 22, 2019 by 安永樂

[Sloppy Zhang]

I was quite surprised to see this remark, because one of my acquaintances, who had a rather severe bladder inflammation, etched the Bagua symbol on a printed circuit board and put it on the problem area. It took him a couple of days and the problem was healed.

 

I don't know though if he used the xiantian or houtian version. He never heard of Joel Signeur or anything similar. It was just a flash of inspiration that struck him and he also didn't do any preliminary or other astrological calculations.

 

An

 

WOW, I'd say your friend has some pretty darn good intuition!

[Birch]

Thanks Sloppy!

 

"he says that aside from divination one should study each of the hexagrams, what it is, how it develops (changes) into the next one, and learn to recognize it in your life."

 

Yeah, well here's the reason I'm reading this latest book. I'm struggling with the correct perspective. It's a different approach to perspective-taking. I think it would be worth doing as the book suggests and start with weather prediction with it. It seems to me to be a more "scientific" and less subjective way of learning.

 

The danger of seeing the trigrams (or hexagrams) in one's own life without sufficient knowledge of them is the fact of making up a new story as to why things happen/happened. Something I'm trying to stop doing

 

Besides, right now I'm concentrating on conduct (the very least I took away from the Joel Seigneur website was that this year I should behave like "heaven" ) I didn't get that he was describing each of the hexagrams in those lectures, he was talking about 5E which involves trigrams and bagua but not the 64 hexagrams. Is there another lecture I'm missing? Thanks!

[Gerard]

Early Daoists discovered the Bagua by watching a spider building its web. I realised about this the other day myself. It was an enlightening experience.

[Sloppy Zhang]

The danger of seeing the trigrams (or hexagrams) in one's own life without sufficient knowledge of them is the fact of making up a new story as to why things happen/happened. Something I'm trying to stop doing

 

Early Daoists discovered the Bagua by watching a spider building its web. I realised about this the other day myself. It was an enlightening experience.

 

Yeah, when observing your own life, and stuff like that, you really have to try to NOT put your own spin on everything. I like the Daoist cosmology because when I look at the universe, even when I DON'T think of the Daoists in particular, I see the cosmology. It's one of the reasons I got into Daoism, because I had already seen aspects of it my entire life!

 

And it's also what's prevented me from getting into other systems- they have a certain view of the universe, and when I try to see the universe their way, I can't! Sometimes they say, "well you just have to practice" and my response is that if it's something I have to construct myself, then I might as well just write a fictitious novel!

 

Something that, I think B.K. Frantzis wrote in one of his books was that if you can dissolve/let go of something, then it wasn't really real. Maybe someone else said it and I'm incorrectly attributing it, so I'm sorry if that's the case. Maybe a lot of people have said it.

 

But basically, for me it's about stripping away. When I personally strip away something, I see stuff like qi, the five elements, the bagua and Yi Jing. For me, it's there. When I look at animals, I see Daoist principles. When I'm doing something new, I apply Daoist principles and everyone tells me I'm a natural. For me, it really is the key to the universe.

 

I don't want to depress anyone if they study something like the Yi Jing for a long time, but when they "strip away" the Yi Jing turns out to be the thing that is stripped away. That's totally fine. I don't think you should force it.

 

But I don't want to discourage you from studying the Yi Jing either! Ack, this post is going crazy!

 

 

Do it, and look at the universe. Whenever possible, break it down, strip away, see the underlying structure. If the underlying structure YOU see isn't something that's written in a book, toss the book, IMHO.

[Sloppy Zhang]

From the Stilling the mind thread, I found spectrum's comment appropriate to add here.

 

Thanks for posting that quote!

 

There are types of meditations where your focus is on the image of a deity, a mandala, or some other type of thing where you get absorbed in the image's energies and it helps you to sort of become that image.

 

So in light of that, a balancing symbol that represents all the energies that are in circulation would help to, well, balance (at least in theory, and apparently in practice as well!)

[Gerard]

...Do it, and look at the universe. Whenever possible, break it down, strip away, see the underlying structure. If the underlying structure YOU see isn't something that's written in a book, toss the book, IMHO.

 

Very true, my friend. Simplicity and emptiness which is interconnectedness of all phenomena. Things are very simple but our minds make them way too complicated

[Birch]

Alright, so how close would you say the Yi Jing is to the actual structure? It's like asking how close quantum physics is, perhaps? Both of these fall into the realm of "applied" theories (and it would seem that Bohm actually had an interest in and experience with the Yi Jing so basically we should be laughing at ourselves right now for going around in pretty circles with this;-)

 

However, as I mentioned in another thread, there might very well be more effective ways of viewing things and talking about them. I see Yi Jing, Taoism, shamanism, 5E etc as sometimes (although not always) "better" than some other ways (like mind/body splitting philosophies and some "medical" approaches.)

 

Oh, plus it's just so easy to appear genius to some people who are using one system (highly flawed) over another (less flawed). "only the results count"

 

So why are we wasting billions of dollars (and lives) barking up the wrong research trees when we have a potential fasttrack right here with Taoism (and other related techniques?)

[Sloppy Zhang]

Alright, so how close would you say the Yi Jing is to the actual structure? It's like asking how close quantum physics is, perhaps? Both of these fall into the realm of "applied" theories (and it would seem that Bohm actually had an interest in and experience with the Yi Jing so basically we should be laughing at ourselves right now for going around in pretty circles with this;-)

 

I don't know how close it would be to the actual structure. In fact, I don't think that it is the actual structure- for me, it just feels like a good representation. Like the difference between me drawn a cup on a piece of paper, and a skilled artist drawing a cup, and then an actual cup. For me, if I was doing a side view, it would be two parallel lines on the side and one flat line on the bottom. Like a box without the top. Yeah. That's my cup. From an angle, it might be a poorly drawn cylinder, and you might have trouble figuring it out what it is.... But with a superb artist's rendering, you're going to see the cup.

 

Other ways of looking at the universe, other cosmologies, are rough. I don't look at it and go, "aha, a cup!" I go, "eh, well, if you turn it to the side and if you picture it a little differently in your mind, yeah, it could be a cup."

 

In terms of cultivation, I've recently been doing a lot of studies with Hermetics, namely Franz Bardon's "Initiation Into Hermetics." The system makes sense. Everything is laid out. He has his own way of looking at the universe based on the five western elements (earth, water, fire, air, space/void) and he connects them to different parts of the body and different attributes of the soul. But when I am in meditation, I don't feel it. When I'm feeling my body, I don't feel that the elements are there. When I meditate and clear my mind, and observe my body, I have to conjure up a picture in my mind of what it is I'm supposed to be seeing according to the system. It just doesn't work for me.

 

Now take something like Joel Signeur's breakdown of the elements using the five phases model, the breakdown of the chakras that he describes. For me, that makes sense. When I meditate, when I stop thinking and just observe, THAT is what I see in my own body. When I am sitting in a park bench gazing at a pond, or looking out a window to the mountains, it's the Yi Jing that I see- Heaven, Earth, the rest of the bagua, and their interactions.

 

This doesn't mean that one's better than the other. Plenty of people get along great with Bardon's system. It's certainly a lot more accessible and open than many Daoist paths. But for me, it just doesn't work. LOGICALLY though, they cover the same ground. Each of them has a method for explaining the same things. You can draw parallels. "Ah, this thing in one is this thing in the other."

 

So maybe a large part of it is subjectivity. Objectively they could be the same, but for each person, there could be a different feel.

 

In any case, neither of them are actually the thing itself, I don't think. The Yi Jing and other Daoist ways of explaining the universe are good ways of describing what I feel, but in the end those too are constructions used by us to understand an abstract concept.

 

So why are we wasting billions of dollars (and lives) barking up the wrong research trees when we have a potential fasttrack right here with Taoism (and other related techniques?)

 

Well I think part of it is maybe that subjectivity. One of the things Joel Signeur mentions in the video is that the world is in a wood phase right now. Wood deals with rationality and logic. Just think about it- the best way to discredit someone is to say they are "illogical". I'm not talking about an argument per se, but to discredit them as a person. "Don't believe what that person says, they're crazy." It doesn't matter if you have all the proof in the world, if someone sees you as incapable of using logic, you are pretty much thrown out by society. Even though plenty of people make very successful careers based on non-linear, non-logical thought. And when they are successful everyone "ooohs" and "aaaahs" and they say, "how do they come up with that stuff?"

 

 

So perhaps part of it is, we understand something from one perspective, now it's time to understand it from the "logic" perspective. Now we have to explain the how and the why. It's just a phase.

 

So part of what you have to do is appeal to logic. Joel did it in the video. He mentioned how the European guy connected the beating of the heart to the pumping of blood, whereas Chinese medicine had discovered that a LOOOOOOONG time before. And Joel said, "if they discovered that so long ago, and Europeans just recently caught up, what else has already been discovered that the western world has yet to validate on its own?" That's a pretty logical thing to say. We've taken one step, and Chinese medicine doesn't stop there, so logically there must be other steps to examine.

 

But then you get into stuff like profits and greed. And assumptions. There's the assumption that many people have that, "if it's true, science would have discovered it by now." A lot of responsibility is placed elsewhere (that's not new).

Edited June 16, 2010 by Sloppy Zhang

[forestofclarity]

I've been listening to some of these audios --- interesting. However, a lot of stuff is left out--- like divination, and basic stuff on yin-yang and 5E. Anyone have any resources for further study?

[Birch]

"the end those too are constructions used by us to understand..."

 

Good call. I felt the need to hack off the end of it because I figured you'd already drifted into conceptuality;-)

 

These days, whenever I try to call to mind the correct word for it (the whatever I'm trying to understand in it's totality) I can't. In fact I end up holding my breath instead.

 

I liked the way you approached it relative to your body by saying it "feels like this and not like this" - and I wonder how that works. Because surely the way something feels has a natural correlate of some kind? Maybe not...

 

The notion of energy patterns. Here's an idea that "felt like this here and that there with a mix at this point and a flow on the other side." And then we pin a label on it (like trying to pin a tail on a donkey) and make a call about what that is/means.

 

But don't certain energetic patterns have their clear correlates? I'm very much thinking of "feelings" such as joy vs sorrow or are we still "pinning things on" even in that case? What do you do about "pre-verbal" stuff?

 

A lot of "therapy" work is based on taking a pattern/feeling that one doesn't like the feel of and attempting to attribute something "positive" to it. Along the lines of "No, you're not actually anxious, just really looking forward to something." - ok I'm oversimplifying, but you get the idea?

 

I believe 5E also attributes to specific emotions. For example, to master/control a wood emotion, call upon a metal one? Something like that?

 

There were some good pdfs on the Joel Seigneur site.

[Sloppy Zhang]

"the end those too are constructions used by us to understand..."

 

Good call. I felt the need to hack off the end of it because I figured you'd already drifted into conceptuality;-)

 

Hack away!

 

These days, whenever I try to call to mind the correct word for it (the whatever I'm trying to understand in it's totality) I can't. In fact I end up holding my breath instead.

 

I liked the way you approached it relative to your body by saying it "feels like this and not like this" - and I wonder how that works. Because surely the way something feels has a natural correlate of some kind? Maybe not...

 

The notion of energy patterns. Here's an idea that "felt like this here and that there with a mix at this point and a flow on the other side." And then we pin a label on it (like trying to pin a tail on a donkey) and make a call about what that is/means.

 

But don't certain energetic patterns have their clear correlates? I'm very much thinking of "feelings" such as joy vs sorrow or are we still "pinning things on" even in that case? What do you do about "pre-verbal" stuff?

 

I honestly have no clue.

 

A lot of "therapy" work is based on taking a pattern/feeling that one doesn't like the feel of and attempting to attribute something "positive" to it. Along the lines of "No, you're not actually anxious, just really looking forward to something." - ok I'm oversimplifying, but you get the idea?

 

Hmm, yeah, that's interesting. I dunno, I've always felt kind of.... apprehensive towards methods like that. Same thing with hypnosis. Even in Bardon's system, he has a method for "auto suggestion" where basically you get into a half awake/half sleep state before you go to sleep at night and tell your subconscious to make changes. But to me, that puts a level of distance towards things. You have your consciousness, then you have your subconscious which is doing its own thing, and you have to come in from the outside and reprogram it.

 

I dunno, something about that doesn't sit well with me. I prefer a method like B.K. Frantzis' inner dissolving process, where you feel some sort of feeling or emotion, and you follow it. If images keep popping up in your mind (from the subconscious, for example) you follow it down towards the subconscious, and you work with it directly. To me, that's a method that I like. Because at the end of the day, the subconscious is still you. So, I always prefer the more direct methods. Using self suggestion or "reprogramming your mind"? Maybe it's effective, but I just don't like the method.

 

I believe 5E also attributes to specific emotions. For example, to master/control a wood emotion, call upon a metal one? Something like that?

 

This happens to be a specialty of the ever-so-infamous Wan Qi Kim. He's written a couple blogposts on the subject on his website, journik.com.

 

Here's the first one:

 

I was about to kill a man...but I decided to kill the anger instead.

 

The most powerful emotion for action is not love. It's certainly not joy. It's obviously not fear. Anger is what gets things done. This is why make-up sex is so cathartic.

 

Now that you are all alchemists and know the "Five Elemental Energies," You know that anger is the wood element. Fittingly, the liver is the vital organ of the wood element. If you've ever been to a bar, you know that people who are shy and insecure will start hitting on girls and get into fights. This is because drinking alcohol is water element. It feeds the wood creating anger. Anger or wood then feeds the fire element creating action.

 

I have a friend. I wanted to kill him. It would have been fun.

 

But I decided to do the more practical thing. Mainly because it's less work. =) I decided to kill the anger. How? Destroying the wood element simply requires the metal element... sadness. All I have to do is make him sad.

 

How do you make a person feel metal energy aka sadness? Use earth chi. And we all know what earch qi is right??? RIGHT? Love!!! (GUITARHERO!!! IM LOOKIN AT YOU!!!!)

 

So... anyways... these were his comments to me that made me want to kill him:

 

I'll be contacting the above people who you named to let them know of your wrongdoings and promises posted as they deserve to know- they will be considered persona non gratas if associated with you and it could ruin their careers..

 

I will alert them to your blogs as well as the comments made by others about your VC lies and ALL others....

 

People are smarter then you, they DO do the research and are honest humans, unlike you

 

So, I wrote this in a google findable blog and sent it to him:

 

Scott is one of the most kind and caring people I know. As is a personal practice of mine, whenever I feel like I've reached a plateaux in my life, I'll go take a little sabbatical for a few months.

 

I'll survey where I am in life and start from scratch. Leaving all my successes and my fuck-ups behind as one big messy chapter I'll go into meditation.

 

Last two time's I've started from scratch, I've landed in the warm hospitable couch of .... He's a Hollywood Producer. He works with top notch people who've even been nominated or won an Oscar. But this is only because he is of the same calibre.

To help me get back on my feet, he even introduced me to the people who do any of my film, cinematography work.

 

I strongly recommend calling the Montana Avenue are of Santa Monica your home for anyone else who wants to build their network of powerplayers like Scott.

 

I'm sure I'll have more to say about Scott as my experiences with him deepen. Stay tuned! =)

 

ps. just now entered into google. If I tell enough people about this blog, I'm sure it'll be on page one of google.

 

Notice that I mentioned my "FUCKUPS." And I mentioned that I slept on his couch. These are things he THINKS he could have used as weapons against me. So, before he draws his swords, I grab them from him. Art of War Rule #373,879.3b

 

BUT notice that the first thing I did was start with LOVE. First sentance was all love. Then... as you get into the body of my counter attack, I imply my familiarity with his life (he has skelletons as im sure we all do). Finally, I end with an implied threat that I can change and edit this GOOGLE RANKING blog if he even slightly pisses me off again. EVER.

 

How do you think he responded? Well... killing the wood element allowed his Earth Chi or Earth Kundalini to be free again:

 

You don't just kicks ass! You inspire others to want to know HOW you kick

ass so much!!! You are a zen buddah, the real deal, one of my greatest

teachers, and for that, I thank you. - Scott

 

And the second post he made:

 

Ok... so we have all faced people who get mad at us. Or ridicule us. Make fun of us. It seems like such an unpleasant experience unless we understand how to turn that into love and joy. Maybe we should do a webinar about the 5 elements again...

 

hmm.

 

Anyways, I used to get angry or upset when someone ridiculed or was angry at me... After learning the power of the five elements, It all becomes very simple to manage. When was the last time someone made fun of you? Ridiculed you? Got insanely angry with you?

 

This is a thread of people who are angry and degrading of me:

 

http://rumsoakedfist.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=3838&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&start=15#p68501

 

Interestingly... if you remember the 5 elements... anger comes from fear. So you know that you can transmute anger into joy and then love.

 

Ridicule is actually fear. It comes from sadness. If you dont know what I'm talking about... just google "5 elements"

 

So... in this thread, the person who is angry with my got that way because he had too much fear. The person who ridicules got that way because he had too much sadness. And as it happens you can either cancel it all out using the destructive cycle OR ... I prefer to preserve the energy and transmute it into GOLD. Love.

 

HOW?

 

Well first of all, it may not be obvious that ridicule is fear. But it is. When ever you are really afraid or nervous, you tend to do that nervous giggle and crack stupid jokes. Everyone else who laughs with you at that stupid joke is also afraid. Simple.

 

So the man who is rediculing in the thread above has actually transmuted sadness into fear and is doing the very natural nervous joking thing. The person telling me to demonstrate internal fist or palm was very afraid but is now angry.

 

The first man can be brought to be my friend and joyful if I simply add joy energy. BUT it would be easier to make him angry first... then the anger becomes joy just by sheer momentum. He is afraid (and the first this scared people say is "i'm not scared") because he was very sad. He became same because he was never taught these concepts that he is ridiculing from his teachers. How do I know this? If he was sad about some other concept, he would be ridiculing that OTHER concept. All you have to do to make him your friend is to make him angry. VERY ANGRY... then that anger will feed his joy. It's just nature.

 

Next person is already angry. It will be a LOT easier to make him love me. All you have to do is push his anger over the top. And he will be joyful... The momentum will carry him into love.

 

So, basically, Anyone who CARES ENOUGH about you to be ANGRY or FEARFUL or SAD... DONT push them away. Push them towards joy and love.

 

If you have any questions... http://meditation-mantra.org/alchemy as always! =)

 

PS... look at chris fleming's avatar and signature... i just now noticed it... he has fear written all over his forum persona. OH... I never did explain why he is afraid... he is afraid that he is weak. This is why he wants to defend "gullible" students. Quite admirable actually. BUT he cannot defend the "gullible" until he lets his anger become joy.

 

I'm explaining this because you all have people who come at you with various unpleasant emotions... THIS is how you can win them over and make them your friend.

 

Just something to think about!

 

There were some good pdfs on the Joel Seigneur site.

 

I agree, I've been referencing every couple of days since I saw them!

[Birch]

Neat post Slopsters ;-) Thank you ( random experiment ;-))

 

I guess this guy's MO wouldn't work with a realized master, or would it still ?

 

I mean, even if you're pretty mindful, can you still get run by this stuff if it's done well? What if you have achieved "no you" ? (I guess that might be a good argument for doing so?) And ultimately, is the guy's intent worth bothering about if yours is stronger? Purer? I think I met a couple of those recently. They "felt wrong" or "off". But they were very good at what they were doing.

 

I'd suggest that someone who wants to be as "tight" as this with 5E perhaps might have some other issues to deal with? But then my ideal of "Tao" is effortlessness. So I wonder if that's not just more naivety on my part? How much does it matter? Whether "you" win or "he/she" wins?

 

Rainbow Vein. Thanks for the info, I will go check it out!

[Sloppy Zhang]

I guess this guy's MO wouldn't work with a realized master, or would it still ?

 

I mean, even if you're pretty mindful, can you still get run by this stuff if it's done well? What if you have achieved "no you" ? (I guess that might be a good argument for doing so?) And ultimately, is the guy's intent worth bothering about if yours is stronger? Purer? I think I met a couple of those recently. They "felt wrong" or "off". But they were very good at what they were doing.

 

I dunno, something about this guy is off to me. He's like one of those math "proofs" that make 1=2 each step sounds good, but there's one step hidden in there which breaks the rules, and it makes the proof "wrong", but appear right. Looking at this guy, he seems to have all the right ingredients. He uses all the right keywords. But in the end his conclusions come out of left field (for me, anyway).

 

His idea of mastery or what masters would do seem.... I dunno, petty. I'm not even a master, but I've moved beyond stuff like name calling. Yet he talks about "masters" who would swoop down upon some ignorant name caller, beat the crap out of them, then string their naked body up as a lesson to everyone not to question their mastery, while at the same time saying, "yeah but a master wouldn't care either way, you know..."

 

So I take what he says with several additional grains of salt.

 

I'd suggest that someone who wants to be as "tight" as this with 5E perhaps might have some other issues to deal with? But then my ideal of "Tao" is effortlessness. So I wonder if that's not just more naivety on my part? How much does it matter? Whether "you" win or "he/she" wins?

 

My idea of Tao is also effortlessness. Maybe this process is something we do all the time, we just don't realize it. Or maybe understanding the five elements help us to realize what we're doing wrong, and how we can fix it.

 

I don't necessarily see this five element stuff as a formula in the way Wan explained it- oh this is such and such element, I can counter it with this element by nurturing it with this other element. I see it more as a means of stepping back and analyzing the entire situation. See all the pieces in play. What element is this current system tending towards, and how can I position myself in such a way as to strike balance?

[Gerard]

I have something to say with regard to an specific part of the quoted material:

 

This is because drinking alcohol is water element. It feeds the wood creating anger. Anger or wood then feeds the fire element creating action.

 

Well it is really FIRE that triggers the overactive liver via water because water itself is a generating element of wood and as such would balance it.

[Birch]

"Well it is really FIRE that triggers the overactive liver via water because water itself is a generating element of wood and as such would balance it."

 

Neat. Alcohol is not called "firewater" for nothing ;-)

 

This other guy seems overly tending to the "negative" aspects of everything, he also seems "heavy-handed". I much prefer Sloppy's suggestion of "look at where it's tending as an aide to correcting".

[Guest paul walter]

 

So why are we wasting billions of dollars (and lives) barking up the wrong research trees when we have a potential fasttrack right here with Taoism (and other related techniques?)

 

 

Well the world we know physically is based on the acting out of power, which is a manifestation of fear and deep doubt about ourselves. One thing fear is really good at is creating worlds (of thought, representing our worldview) and these worlds are water tight cause that is their role--to shut out our real situation in the world (i.e. within our own minds ). This is a big problem when it comes to accepting "new" ideas, change etc. It just can't happen cause the glass is already full. So for such a society that lives this way it will take aeons for true change to happen. Til then (and there are good reasons to believe it will and can never happen)we are on the drip-feed of adopting new things grudgingly, often only to have them co-opted, suppressed and down-right blown out of the water by those more fearful of change than us (corporation people, politicians, religious types etc). So it's a long process especially here in the Age of Terror (one can see how far things/ideas/people go to sabotage the idea of change in a society/individual--just when the world is about to disappear up its own paradigm they come up with another that is used to prevent us from even considering looking outside of our own Homeland/Heimat). Only those individuals who are willing to risk their 'safety' (in itself an idea that is probably our greatest immediate threat, since we will never change unless we perceive of a net being there at all times to catch us lest we stumble--and the scary thing ios there is no net, that's the whole point of real change) will be seen as harbingers of change. Unfortunately it has always been this way and until the psyche changes in man, always must be. The heroes we make of those who do risk all further consolidate the specialness of such an individual and of such a process, therefore keeping the whole idea once again comfortably in the "it ain't for the likes of little ol' me" basket . Oh, we are human, all too human.... . Paul

[Birch]

"acting out of power, which is a manifestation of fear and deep doubt about ourselves"

 

Doubt about what exactly?

Note to Vajra, I can tell you want to hijack this thread and I don't want you to! I want it to stick with CHINESE SHAMANISM. It's important that it does because it might HELP PEOPLE.

 

Thanks for understanding!

[Birch]

Was he channeling you? ('Cause I don't see him in this thread...)

 

Nah, it was pre-emptive because I could see the thread tending that way It was getting more towards "emptiness". Vajra seems to jump in at that point. I love his posts on DO, but I know that this thread is really to go into more detail about 5E etc. So maybe we can let it DO itself;-) ?

 

There's a lot of really practical stuff in 5E. Plus there are some very knowledgeable 5E folks on here as well. I don't want to miss out!

[Guest paul walter]

"acting out of power, which is a manifestation of fear and deep doubt about ourselves"

 

Doubt about what exactly?

 

 

Well if I knew we wouldn't all need to act it out symbolically would we . I see doubt in the the way we live how we do when basically most of us don't want to live that way at all--we doubt our own lives through not being allowed to live our deepest knowledge and needs (which would be peace/healing and transcendence of the human state for me).

[Gerard]

Honour trees if you happen to practice near them as they are great antennas that connect to higher states of consciousness. Meditate like a tree.

[Birch]

Thanks!

 

I'm suddenly confused. In a "wood" phase, like we are apparently in according to Joel Seigneur, what's the suggestion in terms of giving energy to things? If we give lots to wood then won't it just tip over into fire? And are all the liver chi-problems just being revealed because we're in a wood phase - hence highlighting our need to heal them or...??

[Aetherous]

Durkhrod,

 

Check out the book Riding Windhorses.

[Gerard]

Durkhrod,

 

Check out the book Riding Windhorses.

 

 

Hi Scotty,

 

I know. I can't wait for my big trip. Check this one out too:

 

http://www.amazon.com/Entering-Circle-Siberian-Discovered-Psychiatrist/dp/0062514172/ref=pd_sim_b_2

 

The term "shaman" is Russian and, until recently, was applied only to members of the indigenous tribes of Siberia and Central Asia by such scholars as Mircea Eliade. This exciting autobiography cum spiritual adventure by a Soviet psychiatrist is the first popular account of initiation into those tribes' ancient and mysterious traditions. Kharitidi writes (with no translator) in the slightly stilted English of a native Russian-speaker, an effect that highlights the fantastic nature of her encounters. From the grim state hospital where patients are fed only gruel to the isolated Altai Mountains, Kharitidi is inexorably led to Umai, a female shaman who passes her power to Kharitidi on her death and who continues to instruct her from the spirit world. The author's involvement with shamanism is fraught with danger, for in the Soviet Union, interest in the occult can lead to psychiatric commitment. But Kharitidi manages secretly to incorporate her new powers into her practice at the hospital. During her trance voyages, she visits Belovodia, more commonly known in the West by its Tibetan name of Shambhala, where a parallel human race with advanced spiritual knowledge hints at a radical new future for humanity. Others are also discovering Belovodia, Kharitidi learns, particularly a Soviet physicist researching the nature of time. Whether one swallows this whole, with salt or not at all, there's no doubt that with its classic New Age elements?the skeptical protagonist turned believer, exotic locales and esoteric knowledge, suspense and synchronicity?this is a great read that should sell briskly.

 

A bit more in line with Castaneda's work but still valuable. However the best things is to experience the mystical by oneself.

 

I am lucky for having a good friend who speaks Russian. I hope she can come along with me.

 

Btw, my friend once met a Mongolian female shaman in Moscow who was also a very gifted healer and channeler who was using a very high pitch with her voice to trascend to the spirit world. I would love to learn this skill. Maybe one day, who knows where my karma will lead me to.

Edited July 11, 2010 by durkhrod chogori