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Fingers crossed 🤞

Luke might be able to send you some Mexican sandals via Fed-Ex after he finishes his good Mexican beer? (but he will need to know if you went back down-under or are still headed upwards towards Portugal for a shipping destination?) That reminds me I think I'll go get a refreshing Modelo Especial from the fridge which may have some of the same drawbacks as eating grains (?) and read more of my "Wheat Belly" book; btw a slight beer belly sounds like a better attainment in comparison but could also just be a variation of a wheat belly? (as Taomeow might further enlighten us about with her diverse knowledge)

chess can reveal your ego to yourself and or that of another...it is a hard core war game but also has an artistic/creative/puzzle solving aspect to be enjoyed. (and if you really get into it time and most everything outside the game drops away, even though games are timed which can't be ignored)

Understood, me either. I once took some cooking lessons. The chef's dogs were Mexican Hairless... the Xoloitzcuintle Oy!

thanks for the welcome I'm gardening now, in a small window of dry weather, before lots of wet days. As soon as it rains, i'll be back, chasing the comments I saw about nei-yeh, which led me to join

This was going to be a response in another thread, but I think this topic warrants its own discussion or acknowledgement... A few days ago I was on an hour long conversation over the phone with one of the mods on a pretty popular reddit subform. We spoke about all sorts of things, but mostly kundalini, inner alchemy, and lastly morality and ethics when conducting any magick or esoteric arts. He drew my attention to the wiki’s of r/kundalini. Which basically states there are unwritten “cosmic laws” that basically states the following: 1.The First Law: Don't mess with others' minds. 2.The Second Law: Kundalini is for knowledge, wisdom, growth, and defence, not attack. 3.The Third Law (more of a guiding criterion): Always send or use Kundalini with the condition "With No Karma Back To Me." If karma would result, Kundalini does nothing This is similar to the concept in Wicca/Witchcraft of The Threefold Law. We also spoke about Qaballah, The Qlippoth, Thelema, cause/effect, and maintaining balance in the natural world when conducting magick. In the past I’ve used a method that sort of expands my weiqi out to shield myself from extremely windy conditions when I was out walking and once to lessen a torrential down pour. He thought that even those acts could possibly have a karmic backlash via upsetting the natural order of nature. Any of this is very well and great as an opinion, but I do also acknowledge strong evidence for this theory. I see the value of defence and not offence. I note that it is important not to mess with the minds of others, which would be considered black magick to some and unethical. I've also heard some occultists say these rules or laws don't exist at all. The last thing he pointed out to me was how many old sorcerers do you know? Demonologists? Necromancers? There are not many that make it into old age. (Paraphrasing) But is that true? The most famous mage of modern times that I can think of is The Great Beast, Aleister Crowley, he lived until 72, which is an extremely interesting number in and of itself. 72 years isn’t too bad in my opinion, although he did die in poverty, with poor health and addicted to opiates. Jack Parsons was a protege of Crowley's, he died in an extremely violent fashion while attempting to his own Babalon Working. Jake Stratton Kent, a modern formidable necromancer, mage and occultist. Apparently on his death bed the nurses had to take his pen away as he was overcome with drawing sigils and spewing forth unintelligible incantations. Rasputin the mystic was murdered in his late 40's. These are just a few modern occultists that practised in a more darker tone that I can name off the top of my head. Now, one death in modern times that struck me as interesting was that of Christopher Hitchens. While not a sorcerer or necromancer, Hitchens, an atheist, was a man who spoke out quite dramatically against the Abrahamic streams, be it Judaism, Islamic, or Christian. He died of throat cancer. Western folk magic we often hear about the Crone Archetype, The Wise Woman, she who helped the younger women with birthing, protective spells, shamanistic rites and various incantations. The Wise Women were to be feared and revered in their communities. Unfortunately many of them were also burned at the steak. But, they did make it into old age and many of their practices carried on into modern times. We often see depictions of Chinese Mages or Sages who reach a very old age. But what about necromancers wrought with more darker practices? So, what gives? Maybe balance, integration and transcendence? What you put out- whether good or evil comes back, if you shoot an arrow expect the recoil and unbalanced practices drains life force. Failure to integrate both light (healing, purification or devotion to a higher principle) and dark forces results in the practitioner staying in the shadows or remaining begotten to chthonic forces. Remaining in those dark places without seeking the balance of higher devotion (the Dao, Sophia, Shiva, etc), cultivating life or transcendence those places sucks the literal life from you. We see many old Sages, but rarely do we see old necromancers and demonologists. We often see those practitioners stuck in the shells of the Qlippoth, unable to transcend them and their minds or bodies (or both) ravaged in the process.

‘good morning it is nice to meet you’ = vai-te embora filho de puta.

Hello fellow DBs My name is Steve Clougher; I live in an unusually beautiful and peaceful part of the square world under the Southern Cross. With a loving wife, a feisty cat and fourteen chickens, who eat a lot. Plus 100 sparrows, who eat my chickens' food, without moderation. My mission is to learn how to teach moderation in eating to sparrows, after succeeding in which I will turn to teaching it to myself. I've just discovered nei-leh, which is exciting. Sorry. I'll try harder to sound calm and tranquil. For sixty years, nearly, I've studied and meditated: I Ching, Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Gurdjieff and his pupils, are my loves. Enough about me, i hope.

Glad you like it. I bought it directly from a Hungarian chess master who designed it. His design was copied by the company in India that produces the majority of the Western world's sets. They never paid him a penny, of course, but for him it is a labor of love.

Nice to hear you have somebody to train with again.

We were born to brachiate. I don't know how well-known this term is (when I first heard it in my teens someone explained it to me) so I'll define it in case it isn't -- to engage for extended periods of time in locomotion in the trees. Like all primates, we are built like brachiators, but we hardly ever climb trees anymore, let alone sleep in the trees or jump from branch to branch and from tree to tree as a means of getting from point A to point B. (I've seen forests where it would have been quite feasible and probably more efficient than any other way of moving through them, but those are almost nonexistent in most parts now -- whereas once upon a time the whole planet was forested.) Some folks in the Ancestral Movement community do this as part of their training and occasionally get very convincing and very impressive. Parkour fans do this in urban settings, but the ability harks back to the primeval forest...

I've read that book and liked it a lot -- the parts where McDougall sticks to observed facts that is, not so sure about his evolutionary theories. (We spent a good deal of our evolutionary history -- the vast majority of the past 400 000 years -- in the ice age conditions, so overheating from running may not have been as much of a consideration from the standpoint of evolution... freezing to death was a bigger concern...) There's another theory I like more -- the aquatic ape (Desmond Morris in his book by the same title goes into some of the details). But based on the evidence from genetics, fetal development, history (especially the history of the "discovery" of sedentary agriculture all over the planet at once, in places that could have no contact with each other) and so on, I tend to consider, strongly, the possibility that we are a designer species, genetically modified toward goals unknown to us and quite seriously damaged by the intervention (like all GM organisms are). However, that post of mine was not a serious foray into the subject. I just pity those cats who look like alien chickens... reminds me of Plato's definition of a human as a "featherless biped." (Featherless rather than furless because bipeds -- e.g. chickens -- tend to have feathers rather than fur.) And I miss my tail.

being more or less forced to be a good Samaritan is nuts....when doing right is really on everyone!

subconscious gremlins?

There's as many ways to do tuishou as there are components to mastering it. Their way was quite expert -- they used ting jin to listen for any tension in the opponent's body which they could use, or the weakening of the root, or the opponent getting ready to attack, or a myriad other things. Everything matters in ting jin -- including subtleties of breathing pattern, heartbeat (sic), the irises of the eyes, but primarily of course the touch. I've pushed hands with each of these women (one was a taiji classmate, the other one a regular at our workshops and co-author of several taiji books) and I know that nothing like their encounter with each other ever happened in their encounters with me. Both are aggressive and ambitious -- something I am not, so I could use it against them -- and very, very dedicated to practice, which made pushing hands with them not as easy-peasy as it would be with someone aggressive, ambitious and slacking. But they did have the skill to discern the level of skill in the opponent -- instantly, like all experienced practitioners! -- inferior, superior, or about equal. When it's about equal, which was the case between those two, things can get... um... uninteresting to the clueless outside observer. You've never done tuishou, have you?

We shouldn't doubt the narrator because of the fact that Paul Morphy passed on in 1884, should we? Still, it's a good story.

Well, think of it this way. For decades I thought americans won World War II. Watching a documentary sometime past 2020 led me to look up WW II wartime casualties. World War II Wartime Casualties United States: 400,000 Soviet Union: 8,000,000 This led to me thinking it may have been russia that actually won World War II.