Leaderboard

" If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world." From The Hobbit

Nothing like what you've linked. I have worn different types of medieval armor in the past (mainly lamellar, as my armor is made of, but also some chainmail and some plates), and yes, the weight is an issue. The bigger issue imo is concealing it. If you go around wearing visible armor all the time, at the best you'll be ostracized and at worst accused of terrorist activity. Where I lived in America, it was a very real danger of some triggerhappy wannabe hero just shooting you when he thought you looked threatening. Thus, you'd need something that can be disguised as normal clothes and preferably, something bullet resistant. A quick Google search brought up the following sites, but I cannot speak for the usability or reliability of either of them: https://bulletproofzone.com/ https://garrisonbespoke.com/custom-suits/bespoke-bulletproof-suits These are expensive and very likely both unstylish and uncomfortable, as they are not made with those purposes in mind. A more viable option imo, would be knife resistant sleeves (similar to what Nungali linked), but even that might get you some side eye depending on how it looks, and it certainly will not be comfortable to wear every day. In the end, for both weapons and animals, the best option is to maintain an intelligent training program every day and to know your enemy. For example, if a dog bites your arm, the move is the push your arm further into its mouth to lock its jaw down. Would you try to do this for a snakebite? (No!!) You gotta know what the characteristics of the weapons and animals you're likely to face are in order to intelligently defend yourself, and oftentimes the smartest defense is to recognize: "Hey, I shouldn't be here..." and to get out before it becomes physical.

I didn't say anything about anyone in particular! Ignore me, your post just reminded me of dramas in the past.

This is the sort of banter they didn't want on AG TBs is full of it .... and we survive ! They also didn't want silly converse and people posting memes and supposedly related video music hits .

Hi Vajra Fist, Important points of clarification: There is no inference or implication that "if the FP Qigong 'doesn't work' for someone, then that someone is 'evil'." First of all, I had never stated nor written that "Flying Phoenix Qigong doesn't work for evil people"---nor has any other instructor in Bok Fu Pai arts nor any of my in-person students. What I quoted Grandmaster Doo Wai as having said is this: "Evil people will not practice Flying Phoenix Qigong." • And I will elaborate upon this statement to explain exactly what GM Doo Wai meant based on my being in the room with him when he said it, and based on my direct experience in teaching FP Qigong since 1992: "Evil people will not continue to practice FP Qigong once they have tried it and felt its effects--because evil people DO NOT like the way FP Qigong transforms their body-mind to pristine health." The implication is that FP Qigong works on everyone--to some varying extent. The fact is that evil and corrupted people who are intent to continue doing evil, will not practice FP Qigong because they don't want to stop their ways--i.e., they don't want their nervous system reprogrammed to not do evil. Evil people who have tried FP Qigong cannot in all honesty deny that FP Qigong has some positive effect on the body-mind. Thus they will spurn its practice. • The implication ( and yogic fact) being that FP Qigong is so steadily transformative of the body-mind to a pristine (and at times blissful) state of health (homeostasis) that any person who is so bent on doing evil (and is thus so mentally bent by evil) will not allow any thing or influence come near that might unbend him/her. • The further implication being that there is no such thing as "original sin." That's the reality that's experientially proven by Feng Do Duk's Ehrmei Mountain Flying Phoenix Qigong. That's the experience shared by GM Doo Wai when he said, "Evil people will not practice Flying Phoenix Qigong." Relatedly, the physically healing and spiritually purifying effects of FP Qigong are so extremely powerful that after years of practice, one becomes thoroughly and deeply calibrated to discern and recognize evil energy instantly (on a neurological level)--and even distinguish between different "grades" of evil. In November 2024, I wrote this substack article about sighting in a public place and almost confronting a prolific serial killer, Lonnie Franklin Jr., in L.A in August 1995. (This article was in follow-up to my Oct. 10, 2024 article about attracting and crossing paths with another serial killer 9 years earlier in 1986 [named Michael Player, aka. "The Skid Row Killer"] in the Miracle Mile district of L.A., and explaining how that earlier incident was my harshest lesson in anger management, resulting in me getting shot in the back with a .38 pistol and the shooter dying the same night.) https://open.substack.com/pub/terencedunn/p/seeing-the-grim-sleeper-in-my-very?r=5i7g9&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false In this substack article, I explained how I was able to instantly recognize this person (who later turned out to be Lonnie Franklin Jr., aka the "Grim Sleeper") the instant I laid eyes on him as I was checking out of a Ralphs supermarket in LA and he was 4 check stands away to my right. When I wrote the article, I attributed my ability to instantly recognize him as a dangerous killer --AND knew that he had just killed someone (i.e., he was "fresh from a kill")--to my practice of the Tao Tan Pai Nei Kung system for 21 years up to the time of the sighting. But I am stating here and now that I believe that my "ability to instantly recognize strong evil" was also attributable--to a much lesser extent--to having practiced FP Qigong for 4 years, as of August 1995. After 34 years of practicing FP Qigong, I now firmly believe that long-term practice of FP Qigong enables the practitioner to access (turn on at will) the self-healing state of allostasis (self-healing) and slip into FP Qigong's uniquely sublime higher state of consciousness that enables one to readily perceive and recognize any type of animal consciousness (mental energy. intentionality, and yes, even spiritual energy) that is opposite in nature to the Flying Phoenix healing mode to an extreme. That is, as a side effect of FP Qigong practice, one is conditioned to perceive and instantly recognize negative energy, destructive energy, destructive intent, evil karma, and ultimately "demonic energy." Remember that FP Qigong is the health cornerstone of the vast Ehrmei Mountain Bok Fu Pai ("White Tiger")Kung Fu system, an authentic Taoist monastic tradition founded by Feng Do Duk (Feng Dao Deh) in 1644 that systematically trains warrior-healer-priest-exorcists. I hope this clarifies. Sifu Terry Dunn P.S. This is the link my earlier written article in October 2024 about my violent encounter with "The Skid Row Killer" on October 8, 1986: https://open.substack.com/pub/terencedunn/p/sifu-terry-dunns-tai-chi-for-health-ac0?r=5i7g9&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false

ok. you are “illumination”-luke.

OP clearly didn’t find his piece worthy of proper grammar and spelling.

It’s a joke. He was actually being rude to me and singing your praises

The first thing I would say is get rid of the 'vs' part . Something a bit different for each tradition . Its best to use their terms and their definition . Enlightenment is an English word that means different things in different traditions and in English different things regarding context . Of course, all sorts of people will insist to you that their definition is what it 'is' . In the western tradition there is 'illumination' , for example .

I think that’s what most people do.

If you've not seen it, this clip is worthy of watching in full. Keep reminding yourself these are actual US congressmen.

Many years ago I visited a retired military guy in Edinburg who had a PhD in something. At some stage in the rather direct esoteric conversation I must have put my foot in it, because he said: Don't you think that I am enlightened? To which I replied: We have been speaking for a couple of hours and you have shown no mental reaction - so you might be enlightened. He was satisfied with my answer Once a human controls its thoughts it is able to respond mentally rather than react. Control of thoughts is a precondition for first stage enlightenment

Intro by me, Surya (not a part of the substack) So, in the winter months, I had a chat online with this wonderfull fellow, about Jung and myth. He invited me to his substack, where he once in a blue moon shares his writings. I have decided to share this with you for several reasons: - to spread his writings - in the hope it is of interrest to you as well - perhsaps start a discussion here Cheers! Follow Your Bliss: Joseph Campbell’s Path to the Transcendent Liam James Jul 10 READ IN APP For Joseph Campbell, following your own personal myth provides a framework for personal growth and helps us live lives in tune with our nature. You find your myth by following your bliss. Discover Campbell’s teachings on following your bliss to reach the transcendent below, with help from Brazilian football and Oasis. All the Campbell quotes below are taken from Pathways to Bliss: Mythology and Personal Transformation. Pledge your support Mythic figures as guides Mythic figures can serve as role models in a given area. Campbell explains: ‘…the gods represent the patron powers that support you in your field of action. And by contemplating the deities, you’re given a kind of steadying force that puts you in the role, as it were, that is represented by that particular deity.’ Myths represent a society’s values and provide directions and frameworks for living well, something Campbell held valuable. ‘I don’t know how it is now, right this minute, when so many new possibilities have opened up for life. But in my experience it has always been the model that gives you the idea of the direction in which to go, and the way in which to handle the problems and opportunities that come up.’ But even then, in the mid-to-late 20th century, he hints at a lack of myths to represent the diversity of human experience. The ‘new possibilities’ Campbell refers to in the last century are dwarfed by contemporary risks and opportunities ushered in by technological advancements and AI, rendering the myths of old even less applicable and new myths harder to imagine. He makes the same point later in the text: ‘Life has changed in form so rapidly that even the forms that were normal to think about in the time of my boyhood are no longer around, and there’s another set, and everything is moving very, very fast. Today we don’t have the stasis that is required for the formation of a mythic tradition.’ So while the myths of old may offer some guidance, we need some new way of relating ourselves to the transcendent through myth. Read the article I wrote on Campbell below to learn more about the transcendent: Becoming Transparent to the Transcendent: Joseph Campbell on Realising Your True Nature Relating yourself to transcendence Campbell distinguishes myth from Eastern traditions as a way of relating yourself to transcendence: ‘Of course, in trying to relate yourself to transcendence, you don’t have to have images. You can go the Zen way and forget the myths altogether. But I’m talking about the mythic way. And what the myth does is to provide a field in which you can locate yourself. That’s the sense of the mandala, the sacred circle, whether you are a Tibetan monk or the patient of a Jungian analyst. The symbols are laid out around the circle, and you are to locate yourself in the center. A labyrinth, of course, is a scrambled mandala, in which you don’t know where you are. That’s the way the world is for people who don’t have a mythology. It’s a labyrinth. They are battling their way through as if no one had ever been there before.’ So myth gives you direction, unscrambling the labyrinth. But if the old models don’t fit, what can we do? Share Bliss as a model for life Campbell suggests following bliss is a reliable model for reaching the transcendent: ‘In this way, your bliss becomes your life. There’s a saying in Sanskrit: the three aspects that point furthest toward the border of the abyss are sat, cit, and ananda: being, consciousness, and bliss. You can call transcendence a hole or the whole, either one, because it is beyond all words. All that we can talk about is what is on this side of transcendence. And the problem is to open the words, to open the images so that they point past themselves. They will tend to shut off the experience through their own opacity. But these three concepts are those that will bring you closest to that void: sat-cit-ananda. Being, consciousness, and bliss.’ He continues: ‘Now, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve been thinking a lot about these things. And I don’t know what being is. And I don’t know what consciousness is. But I do know what bliss is: that deep sense of being present, of doing what you absolutely must do to be yourself. If you can hang on to that, you are on the edge of the transcendent already.’ Campbell studied in Germany and Paris, and returned to America just three weeks before the 1929 Wall Street crash. But this apparent disaster proved auspicious, as it allowed him time to pursue his bliss: ‘…I didn’t have a job for five years. And, fortunately for me, there was no welfare. I had nothing to do but sit in Woodstock and read and figure out where my bliss lay. There I was, on the edge of excitement all the time.’ The edge of excitement is a great place to spend your life, and Campbell’s experiences there inform his philosophy for life: ‘So, what I’ve told my students is this: follow your bliss. You’ll have moments when you’ll experience bliss. And when that goes away, what happens to it? Just stay with us, and there’s more security in that than in finding out where the money is going to come from next year’. I recently started rereading Jonathan Wilson’s Inverting the Pyramid, and found this to resonate with the teachings of Campbell and Jung: ‘That tension – between beauty and cynicism, between what Brazilians call futebol d’arte and futebol de resultados – is a constant, perhaps because it is so fundamental, not merely to sport but also to life: to win, or to play the game well? It is hard to think of any significant actions that are not in some way a negotiation between the two extremes of pragmatism and idealism.’ Campbell’s clearly on the ‘play the game well’ side, but his point is that this idealistic philosophy is the most practical too; more ‘secure’, to quote him. The blissful ideal itself becomes the practical guide. Discovering your myth through bliss For Campbell, bliss is a guide that will help you discover your myth: ‘Your bliss can guide you to that transcendent mystery, because bliss is the welling up of the energy of the transcendent wisdom within you. So when the bliss cuts off, you know that you’ve cut off the welling up; try to find it again, and that will be your Hermes guide, the dog that can follow the invisible trail for you. And that’s the way it is. One works out one’s own myth that way.’ The idea that it is one’s own myth is key for Campbell; earlier traditions can give clues, but they are only clues: ‘As many a wise man has said, “You can’t wear another person’s hat.”… You’ve got to find the wisdom, not the clothing of it. Through those trappings, the myths of other cultures, you can come to a wisdom that you’ve then got to translate into your own. The whole problem is to turn these mythologies into your own.’ The Holy Grail Campbell references an Arthurian myth, where the Holy Grail partially reveals itself to the knights assembled in the banquet hall. It doesn’t appear in its full glory, and is covered with a radiant cloth, before it withdraws, leaving the knights in awe. Gawain, Arthur’s nephew, proposes that the knights go in quest of the Grail to behold it unveiled. Below is Campbell’s response: ‘Now we come to the text that interested me. The text reads, “They thought it would be a disgrace to go forth in a group. Each entered the Forest Adventurous at that point which he himself had chosen, where it was darkest and there was no way or path.” You enter the forest at the darkest point, where there is no way or path. Where there’s a way or path, it is somebody else’s path; each human being is a unique phenomenon. The idea is to find your own pathway to bliss’. Leave a comment What if you don’t know what your bliss is? ‘I don’t know what it is that makes me feel alive I don’t know how to wake the things that sleep inside I only wanna see the light that shines behind your eyes’ Acquiesce – Oasis I’m realising my teenage dream tomorrow and seeing Oasis live – a band that millions of us worldwide love for the way they awaken that very feeling of blissful transcendence and liveliness within us. And while it’s probably optimistic to try and discern too many deep truths about the human condition from Oasis lyrics, particularly those related to the psychological teachings of Campbell and Jung, there is a light-hearted connection to make between the opening lines of Acquiesce and the points I’ve made earlier in this article. The point is, we may not know our bliss – what makes us ‘feel alive’ – but there’s often some hint: some fleeting moments of curiosity or sparks amid the dull listlessness of life that can orient us towards the transcendent. Campbell would advise looking out for these. In Jungian discourse, uncertainty is often just a lack of self-knowledge, and can be approached with inner work that deals with the unconscious Jung would probably go a step further than Campbell and advise using active imagination and dialoguing with both emotional sides – the general feelings of ennui and the transient moments of interest or joy – to explore them more, gain self-knowledge, and expand the personality. Summary For Campbell, bliss – that ‘deep sense of being present, of doing what you absolutely must do to be yourself’ – is a pathway to the transcendent. Following bliss puts you on a mythic path, offering an alternative model to that of Eastern traditions. And if you don’t know your bliss, you can look to Jung’s teachings on working with the unconscious to unlock the energy stored there. Thanks for reading The Creative Awakening Playbook! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Pledge your support The Creative Awakening Playbook is free today. But if you enjoyed this post, you can tell The Creative Awakening Playbook that their writing is valuable by pledging a future subscription. You won't be charged unless they enable payments. Pledge your support

He said rude things about you, but sang my praises

I’m half way there by knowing I’m not enlightened.

Well apparently of you get 100 monkeys at typewriters ..... you will eventually get a piece suitable to post on Daobums !

There’s no point arguing with people that do not have the experience.

Except for the 'data storage ' - that consumes a lot more power AI Overview '' Data centers globally consumed approximately 240 to 340 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity in 2022. Projections for 2025 range from 600 TWh to 1,050 TWh, depending on the scenario. This energy consumption is driven by the increasing demand for cloud computing, AI, and other digital services. '' ... including the storage of all your undeleted photos, emails and texts . 1 TWh = 1 trillion watts per hour .