How did you start?

[Phi92]

I was a strong anti-theist/atheist and that satisfied me for a moment.

 

However, while I rationally thought that atheism is the answer, my "intuition" or feeling just said "no."

Therefore, I wanted to add an intuitive, spiritual aspect to my life, against the odds of reason.

 

Then, one day, I meditated and felt energy over my body and mostly in my finger tips.

I tried to disprove it as blood circulation or other things, but I don't really have a good empirical explanation.

 

And why Daoism? Well, it's very simple, logical, not against science and it's very personal.

It also seems as the most accurate representation of the metaphysical principle.

Also, I love Chinese culture, martial arts, tea, philosophy... everything?

 

Another point is that the Greek philosopher Heraclitus got me interested in philosophy.

Coincidentally, Daoism is simmilar to Heraclitus's philosophy, it's just a bit more developed and more structured.

 

That's my story

[Protector]

I'm not into Chinese culture at all, it's too pointy

I'm here just for the Taoism heeeeeee

[konchog uma]

very interesting stories, thank you everyone for sharing...

 

when i was a child in america, i imagined monks in saffron and yellow robes, looking tibetan, before i knew the difference between different kinds of monks. The images i would conjure of monks while sitting in my room are still very clear in my memory.

 

when i was 14 i wondered what monks did when they meditated, so i sat down and closed my eyes with my legs crossed. I remember sitting there until i was unable to imagine the room or recreate the scene in my minds eye. There i was floating free in space with no reference points. I was hooked!

 

when i was 16 i learned to lucid dream, and read the DDJ for the first time, and a mess of other books like carlos castendeda series and basic buddhism books

 

when i was 18 i was meditating 2 or 3 hours a day, getting up sitting a little going to work coming home sitting a lot eating showering going to bed. It was very unstructured and uninformed, but i was unwinding myself and making progress. I had a spiritual sickness that year and woke from it a fundamentally different person. I consider castendeda to be fraudulent but the experience i had bears remarkable similarity to don juan's description of one who loses their human form to remain just a human mold. Who can say...

 

when i was 19, after studying taiji and kungfu under a daoist for a few years i went travelling, a self styled wandering daoist, living out of a backpack with a bedroll. I saw much of the united states and had a merry time until i was hit by a car at 20. That experience was accompanied by a near death experience which was directly out of the Bardo Thodol (the so called "tibetan book of the dead"... it actually translates as "the inbetween state which liberates upon contact") which i hadn't read yet.

 

when i was 21, having been changed by the NDE, i was having an incredibly hard time healing from a bilateral tibia fibula fracture, and trying to figure out why i could not go back to being the "worldly" (lol) person i was before my NDE. I read the bardo thodol and realized that there was a map for the territory i had stumbled into, and beyond.

 

when i was 22 i took refuge in buddhism under Ontul Rinpoche, a Drikung Kagyu and Yangzab (drikung dzogchen) Tibetan Buddhist lineage holder, and started sitting with a local Drikung Kagyu sangha every chance i got. I started taking my dharma seriously and while the years between then and 30 were characterized by vacillation between heavy involvement in sangha and my own solo exploration sans group, i continued to make progress

 

when i was 30 i doubled down again, met my ninja teacher, and, inspired to become "invisible", started cutting out the inessential things and people that were holding back my spiritual progress.

 

when i was 34 i joined TTB and started posting (i don't usually post much if at all on forums) and learned, among other things, that the NDE had wakened my kundalini... so i started working with that energy with the help of the kuji-in my ninja teacher had showed me, and with shaking practice

 

now at 36 i feel i have a firm foundation in meditation and and building an ever-firmer foundation in philosophy (which i neglected to study for a long time, being turned off by academic approaches to spiritual practice, and preferring to just sit).

 

hope that wasn't too long i left a lot out

Edited February 8, 2013 by konchog uma

[zerostao]

stick with it konchog uma

@phi92

heraclitus and parmenides were being discussed when i first joined ttb.

there was also a stoics/taoism thread. lots of philosophers get mentioned and looked at from time to time here.

but what i liked most about your post is "it's very personal." sometimes folks talk about religious Taoism

and i am in an esoteric sect, for me Taoism is just life

@reed, i stumbled in too, and am still stumbling around here

[Phi92]

stick with it konchog uma

@phi92

heraclitus and parmenides were being discussed when i first joined ttb.

there was also a stoics/taoism thread. lots of philosophers get mentioned and looked at from time to time here.

but what i liked most about your post is "it's very personal." sometimes folks talk about religious Taoism

and i am in an esoteric sect, for me Taoism is just life

@reed, i stumbled in too, and am still stumbling around here

 

I'm glad you like my story

 

I'm really a newbie and Daoism is a wide philosophy. I bet I will spend my life learning about Daoism and philosophy in general, be it western or eastern or african or indigenous. A thought is a thought, the location of it's origin isn't really important.

 

Also, besides learning, I hope I will experience the Dao more and more. I got myself the Daoist book "The Secret of the Golden Flower", I hope that will help me as well

[Ansijia]

Interesting topic, thanks AsheSkyler

 

Since my school years I've been into self-exploration, collected articles from newspapers and magazines on esoteric, mystical and paranormal events, was inspired by Indian yogis practicing in solitude in Himalayas. Reincarnation, chakras, aura, energy fields all sounded right.

 

In my 20ties I became a disciple of an Indian meditation teacher. After almost a decade of taming it, I had to face a major outburst of sexual energy where I lost it. The only advice I could get was to pray and meditate that no longer worked, Master had already passed away (I do credit him for subtly guiding me and re-directing the excess energy into more productive expressions, when he was in his physical). I had no knowledge and understanding what's really going on. It was a very hard period with lots of emotions and feelings uprising, that however gave me an impulse to look for a new direction in life.

 

I left that path and embarked on a new journey with a quest to find out more about that energy thing. Explored kundalini and other yoga schools, reiki, tantra and few other things, then found a book by M.Chia from where I got interested in qigong. I started learning about Taoist philosophy which made a profound impression on me with its' many ways of practical application in all the areas of life. And I do want to know more of it.

 

I hardly shared this with anyone, and never in public. Good to let it out though.

Edited February 12, 2013 by Ansijia

[shanlung]

I think I was a Taoist from the day I was born except I was too much of a fool to know that.

It was not until the day I met a Taoist Immortal on a rain swept and wind swept road of the tail end of a typhoon in Northern Taiwan.

I wrote of that in

Fragments of earlier memories of Taiwan

http://shanlung.livejournal.com/111670.html

 

You read above and you decide for yourself what that entity was.

 

I wrote that time for a different audience, who kept birds and/or cats.

How to explain to them what is Taoism?

 

I could not even want to try to explain the unexplainable as to what Taoism was to them.

I foist off to them instead.

" For those who wondered just what is Taoism, Taoism is the Zen in Zen Buddism."

Surprisingly, they all accepted that and not a question was raised as to what was Taoism

 

You seen me used that phrase above recently here again. Now you know where that came from.

 

Idiotic Taoist

[zerostao]

I'm glad you like my story

 

I'm really a newbie and Daoism is a wide philosophy. I bet I will spend my life learning about Daoism and philosophy in general, be it western or eastern or african or indigenous. A thought is a thought, the location of it's origin isn't really important.

 

Also, besides learning, I hope I will experience the Dao more and more. I got myself the Daoist book "The Secret of the Golden Flower", I hope that will help me as well

i have that book, my friend lazy cloud was kind enuff to leave it on my bookshelf.

i like jungs contribution in that book.

" A thought is a thought" i like that and i may use it , if its ok? most likely i will use it anyway.

anyways a thought has power, the spoken word has enuff power to cause creation and yet it is the thought that comes b4 the spoken word. or should hahaha

[zerostao]

I think I was a Taoist from the day I was born except I was too much of a fool to know that.

It was not until the day I met a Taoist Immortal on a rain swept and wind swept road of the tail end of a typhoon in Northern Taiwan.

I wrote of that in

Fragments of earlier memories of Taiwan

http://shanlung.livejournal.com/111670.html

 

You read above and you decide for yourself what that entity was.

 

I wrote that time for a different audience, who kept birds and/or cats.

How to explain to them what is Taoism?

 

I could not even want to try to explain the unexplainable as to what Taoism was to them.

I foist off to them instead.

" For those who wondered just what is Taoism, Taoism is the Zen in Zen Buddism."

Surprisingly, they all accepted that and not a question was raised as to what was Taoism

 

You seen me used that phrase above recently here again. Now you know where that came from.

 

Idiotic Taoist

i enjoyed the link very much, thanks for sharing

[Phi92]

i have that book, my friend lazy cloud was kind enuff to leave it on my bookshelf.

i like jungs contribution in that book.

" A thought is a thought" i like that and i may use it , if its ok? most likely i will use it anyway.

anyways a thought has power, the spoken word has enuff power to cause creation and yet it is the thought that comes b4 the spoken word. or should hahaha

 

Use it, by all means

 

People should observe thoughts as pure thoughts, without divinding them into any harmful categories.

 

That's why I cherish Kant as much as I cherish an old sage from a tribe or Taoism.

 

The only thing that should be a criterium for accepting or disproving thoughts is reason, critical thinking, logic.

 

That's what I thought (no pun intended)

[adept]

I got myself the Daoist book "The Secret of the Golden Flower", I hope that will help me as well

 

Only if you have the Thomas Cleary version.

[Phi92]

Only if you have the Thomas Cleary version.

 

Indeed I do

[adept]

It may seem difficult at first but persevere. Read it again and again. Let it absorb into you. Put it down, leave it for a few weeks, months etc. Then come back to it and see how it reads.

[newTaoist]

About 10 years ago I was sitting in my therapists office for a session and she thought that I could benefit from Taoist teachings. I read the TTC by Legge and then read all the books that I could get my hands on.

Edited February 27, 2013 by newTaoist