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Phoenix3 quoted a post of mine from before (see above) where I touched upon that a bit. I might add that I don't see eating some fruit as a problem for most people -- of course those who do need to watch their sugar, weight, or yeast infestation problems more closely, or those who need to go way stricter with their "zerocarb" eating, might not qualify as fruit eaters with impunity. E.g. Mikhalia Peterson, whose lectures and interviews are on youtube and IMO worth giving a listen to (regardless of what one thinks of her dad's politics -- incidentally she got him to follow the same zerocarb protocol, and then her mom.) She had severe autoimmune problems since early childhood, got juvenile arthritis while at it and had two of her joints, hip and ankle, replaced because of that by age 17 -- the list goes on and on -- she fixed all of her health issues (dozens, each of them by itself enough to make it a losing bet that she would see her 25th birthday) with zerocarb, got super healthy, got married, had a child, founded two companies, yada yada. She's one of the people who are better off not taking any chances. https://www.youtube.com/user/mikhailapeterson1 But for most, I don't think it's necessary to exclude fruit. When one keeps one's carb intake low though, it becomes quite obvious to the senses how excessively sweet and "flat" modern fruit is. More often than not a lot of it tastes like sugar water to me. Whereas the real thing... but don't let me get myself into another food-nostalgic diatribe. So, if you can seek out what is not overly sweet, not overly sprayed, and not ripened by gassing (like bananas), I don't think it's a big issue. Fruit trees are sprayed extremely aggressively. Do you ever see wormholes in any fruit where you live? Here, I never do... whereas in any non-factory-farm-style garden it's a seal of approval for anything real and good -- worms understand about nutritious and delicious and safe to eat... I used to always check for the wormhole and at least half the time it was there for me to cut out -- easy peasy. I don't think I've seen one in years and years. And so what is labeled "organic" is probably also... but don't let me digress again. I think we did eat some plant food even when the oceans were frozen to the bottom and the surface of the earth covered with ice 3 kilometers thick (which is to say, for most of our developmental history as a species). I judge by the fact that in the tundra, they do get a handful of very sour, very frost-resistant berries and incorporate them, in small amounts, in the diet to this day. Wild cranberry, not the commercial variety, is very small, very bright red, thin skin, juicy inside, and sour to the unimaginable extent. I believe it may have served to tenderize meat, the way we use some acidic media for the carne asada or shish kabob today. Of the other frost-tolerant berries, I only had a few -- who knows, there may have been more in prehistory. I had cloudberry as a sour fermented drink, could be made alcoholic too. Lingonberry, native to the Arctic, also small, on the sour side, but I just had it as a preserve with sugar so don't know what fresh is like. Honeysuckle (not the flower, a variety of berries in Siberia), sea buckhorn. None of these could be a staple food, of course, but our ancestors are likely to have eaten some. They are all very, very low in sugar in their natural state.

Hi, rainbowvein ,thanks. This is a post I wrote many years ago and even I already forgot I had ever written something like this . I think it is a topic deserves more discussion although the original copy was written in clumsy English . It is said that qi is a portable capability （" 隨身本事" ) we can bring along with us wherever we go , not only letting us not bowing to the powerful and rich , curing other people at our own will , but also protecting us from diseases, cold and beasts . Carrying such a powerful energy /weapon inside us is wonderful , yet also dangerous , so virtue becomes something indispensable to confine it .

Yes, this is recorded in basically all the cultivation traditions. There's nothing new to that. I'm not quite sure what you are asking?

The thread title says neanderthal - so you can go back a bit further than 200,000 yrs. Selective cultivation of varieties and cross breeding hybrids and wotnot are not really unnatural in the sense of GM are they? Its perfectly possible that our hunter-gatherer forebears selected the best grasses, berries and roots in some way and promoted their growth.

Thanks yes I've seen her interviewed and also listened to her father (whose politics are very mild contrary to what the mainstream media like to suggest). I can see that these extreme dietary measures may be necessary for some people suffering from auto-immune conditions and so on but I'm not convinced they are essentially healthy for everyone. Jordan Peterson eats only beef, that's it, nothing else, which is very extreme. I live in a fruit growing area and have some plants myself, strawberries, blackberries, peaches, figs and so on. Nothing I grow is sprayed of course, so yes odd shapes and worm holes abound. I do eat some supermarket fruit - some seems ok but generally low on taste and high on sweetness. I know for instance that commercial strawberries are sprayed with sugar solution before picking to make them swell up - that's why they are generally so big.

Imagine a world where people are so stupid, that they need ask eachother about how they are feeling. "Hey man, how am I feeling today?" "I don't know bro, do you know how I am feeling tho?" "No sorry, I don't even know how I am feeling." "Do you exist tho?" "I'm not sure man... I don't know how I feel about that..."

I read Tales fo demon and gods - my first manga related to cultivation Battle through the heavens and other 2 comics written by same author and connects to the same world of this manga Soul land God of martial arts Volcanic age Star martial god Mythical realm Rebirth of urban immortal cultivator And I was trash These two are my favorites since they tell the lives of cultivator in modern world.

Some people think that qi is cultivated by getting away from the crowd or hiding in the innermost of the mountains may not be true. Qi, in fact , not only can be cultivated in a secret, private place , but also among the crowd. For every mocking you return it with a smile ; every other people's disaster ,you try stretching out your help hand; every plot against you , you return it with forgiveness...all these do upgrade and expand your qi . This is the reason why Laotse is aslo called "Dao Da (virtue) Jing" . It may sound strange to many people , qi is , in fact , the basis of virtues. Same as a marathon runner who deliberately train himself on the plateau, a taoist can polish his qi in the society, a place full of temptations , accusations and dangers.

The phase of the baby. Before she is indoctrinated by the human world. Hey baby

Did you paint these? They’re really pretty.

You might be the first Bum in history to state that Taomeow hasn´t "done enough research" on any subject. Just sayin´.

Thank you, Phoenix3. Oh, the stories I could tell about how and why I got to learn everything under the sun about nutrition and then everything hidden from the light of the sun too... The stories I could tell about my real-life schooling and real-life teachers, gurus, ex-gurus, faux gurus, true masters I apprenticed under... The stories I could tell about people I met, problems they had, solutions we found... Not today though. Today it would tantamount to Giordano Bruno's lawyer asking the Holy Inquisition to abandon its teachings. He would promptly join his client at the stake if he did.

Daoists are very much in favour of eating meat. Chinese culture and chinese medicine sees plenty of benefit of eating meat, and only due to famines did Chinese people stop eating meat temporarily. I originally wondered about the uric acid problem. I knew that blood is kept at a constant pH, but the thought of all these new acids circulating around the body may cause some problems. But Taomeow said not to worry about it, and since I don’t have any real evidence more than a concern, I will agree with her. I agree with her because on the subject of food, she knows what she is talking about (in my opinion).

... some people can live happy and fulfilling lives living on sea and ice and off blubber, seals and fish .

^ Interesting info ^ Natural milk eggs and meat are good for you . Oh wait ..... 'new research' has shown they are not .... cholesterol - nasty . Oh wait .... 'newer research' has shown they are good for you . ( When I was living up on the plateau, the soil is very good there ; grows excellent potatoes and other veg, good for grazing, also there is a trout farm nearby in a pristine river . The local butcher only sold meat from the surrounding farms , no imports . I used to like making meals from all local ingredients ; Smoked trout, potato salad, and garden veg salad. Steak and potatoes and veg. I think the local soil and environment are important ( Archaeologists can tell where some people lived and roamed because their food had a specific mineral signature relating to the land it grew on and that is lodged in their bones ) Another recent innovation is the ' mobile abattoir ' .... Instead of stressful and expensive trucking to huge regional abattoirs ( since a heap of smaller regional ones have shut and that has driven a lot of small farms out of business , or given over to 'big biz' ) and then being distributed all over the place , a couple of modified trucks come on to your farm - cows in one end , meat out the other and to the local butcher . I lived on a farm , I dont want to do the big biz, I have slaughtered and butchered a cow manually - I dont want to do that either , this new method seems the better option - you can control food quality and content from the ' soil up' . Dorrigo Plateau soil ;

What lemon juice? I put wasabi on my sashimi. Always ask for some extra too. Wasabi kills parasites and bacteria. Please don't shoot the messenger... This whole line of thinking is junk science at its worst, a virulent meme with a life of its own that has no basis in reality. There's no such thing as "acidic" or "alkaline" body. There's very strict parameters of the acid-alkaline balance of different fluids maintained in the human body. What one of them is like at any given time tells you absolutely nothing about the rest. The hydrochloric acid that is produced by the human stomach to digest proteins is as acidic as it gets (or we wouldn't be able to even digest mother's milk at the breast, let alone whole bones some taoists swallow to train themselves from the inside), and the production, sadly, declines with age (most probably not so much from aging itself as from inadequate lifelong diets), which can cause many problems. (The body also downregulates hydrochloric acid production if its owner is not eating enough protein -- that's the case with all digestive enzymes too, what you're not exposed to gets downregulated, the body doesn't want to work for nothing.) In some cases people suffer from low or even zero adicity of their stomach juices, the condition is a spectrum from unpleasant to debilitating. In other cases there's stomach hyperacidity, but it is usually the outcome of a complex metabolic problem, in many cases related to stress. Now then, the blood is the one fluid that can't go "acidic" or "alkaline" outside a very narrow range. The normal blood PH is very tightly regulated between 7.35 and 7.45. It can't, and does not, respond to your diet with any wide fluctuations. Any deviation from these parameters is dangerous and can be life-threatening. Acidosis -- when blood gets more acidic -- is usually the outcome of kidney or lungs disorder and often demands urgent medical attention. Its opposite, alkalosis -- when blood gets more alkaline -- is usually the outcome of metabolic, hormonal, or respiratory illnesses and often demands urgent medical attention. Then there's a wide range of acidity-alkalinity of the urine. With a ketogenic diet, you don't just change the acidity of your urine (although measuring it can help determine if you're really in ketosis you' re shooting for -- not to be confused with ketoacidosis, a dangerous complication of some illnesses, e.g. diabetes). You actually switch the pathways whereby your body gets energy, from burning glycogen (sugar and starches derived) to burning ketones (fat derived). Before this post grows into a dissertation (which I could write on the subject anytime if someone paid me), let's just leave it at, "for every complex process, there's a simple explanation -- the wrong one." What those hippies measure in their mouth, i.e. the acidity or alkalinity of their saliva, has everything to do with the indigenous bacteria (a very individual population) in one's mouth, which can change it in response to the foods it likes or dislikes, but it's useful to remember that the food preferences of your mouth bacteria may have nothing to do with what's good for you. They are the ones responsible for you dental bills after all, so you can safely assume that they maintain their own acidity or alkalinity with nothing like your best interest at heart. Oh, and it gives you zero information about anything I've talked about above -- any of the body fluids and their PH and whether it's good, bad or a non-issue.

May I suggest an eye-opening book.

Killing plants is totally cool, we get to kill things and have a mental separation of higher and lower life forms. Who does god love most a plant, an animal, a baby or a baptized baby? This was an illustration from bible school when I was a kid. The correct answer IMO is that the question is wrong in sooo many of ways.

Hmmm. A couple things come to mind. First, my immediate reaction to the piece of plastic/paper is that you are dealing with static electricity. It might have more to do with the atmospheric conditions, what sort of clothes you were wearing, etc. Either way, I wouldn't fixate on it. As Mskied pointed out that "enlightenment" is about gaining insight and wisdom. You've had an experience of some sort---that isn't enlightenment. In most spiritual systems what you are experiencing would be considered a distraction. (Zen, for example, calls these sorts of things "Maiko" or "Devil illusions") There are other currents in most systems that would consider them eminently "groovy", but it's my opinion that all this stuff is pretty much irrelevant to the real goal, which is gaining wisdom. They do have value, IMHO, in that they are the sort of thing that can "shake" someone up and get them to realize that there is a lot more to life than the dominant paradigm would lead us to believe. Many people do have these sorts of experiences and they help them gain more insight into life, the universe, and, everything. But lots of people also get them because of problems in their body: epilepsy, brain tumours, various psychiatric disturbances. So, if they continue---and especially if they grow in intensity----it would be useful to talk to a psychiatrist about these things. (You live in Germany, so I assume you have health insurance.) I'm concerned about your statement that "Knowledge about many things was streaming into me with this light. Understanding about death, birth, emotions, connection with other things and oneness of everything. It was very, very intense." This is a very common experience---I've had it myself---but it's important to realize that this "knowledge" is a bit like "witch's gold": it very quickly turns to ordinary dirt. Real wisdom doesn't come from visions and revelations, it comes from struggle over time. This isn't to say that your experience isn't potentially worthwhile, but it's important not to read too much into it. Our society punishes people who talk about mystical experiences, which means that very few people talk about them. That means that they are dramatically "under reported". It might be that you have just had one. I got involved in this stuff because a guy in a bar got me into a conversation about meditation, I tried it, and, had a tremendously intense visionary, out-of-body experience. I've spent the last forty years of my life travelling the path that set me on. But lots of folks have similar experiences and just walk away from it. It depends on the person. Others find out that they have organic problems with their brain, and, these experiences are just a symptom of an underlying problem. Unfortunately, all this stuff is tremendously ambiguous and there are as many answers as there are people. One piece of practical advice I would offer---both from my personal experience and academic studies: try to live a blindingly "normal" life. That doesn't mean "locking" yourself into something like a job you hate, but make sure you have a job. And try to "fit in"---don't wear wear strange clothes, eat strange diets, say weird things, etc. In lieu of having a teacher to help you out with this stuff, it's important to not isolate yourself from mainstream society and your already existing social support group. Even if you decide to go down the rabbit hole that has opened up before you, make sure that you do it secretly. Only share what you experience with people you think might be able to understand what you are saying. This sort of stuff is esoteric not because people don't want to talk about it, it's esoteric because most people don't want to hear about it.

I also enjoy this trend, and they also make number 1 so scary that the cultivator incures lightning tribulation or some other force of nature upon them. i will say that I learn a lot from cultivation comics because I began to feel chi when I began to sit for longer periods like the characters did, some characters could sit and cultivate for years in a cave and I believe this is possible of cultivating in a place full of chi but cultivating in your room is not the same since the level of chi on the air had reduced compared to the olden days when pollution was non existent. they have people they call breatherians who live on air alone and don’t eat for long periods or at all, So it makes sense that the are feeding on chi, the main building block of all things including food. what cultivation comics do you resonate with the most. Coincidentally I signed up for this blog when I read cultivation chat group and since then my cultivation improved since picking up ideas fro these comics. heres a few I’ll recommend. Cultivation Chat group Master of Gu tales of demons and gods World of cultivation return of the immortal what comic are are you reading @Xiao San

Occultism is way older, not particularly Western in its origins, and, like shamanism (which is much older), almost universal -- but at a different stage of our history. Shamanism ends with the city-state phase of social innovation, as tribal and nomadic life gets gradually or abruptly, and in most cases thoroughly and irreversibly, replaced by the agricultural Sun-King empires. From there the sun of occultism rises, heralding the dawn of modern history. From there it unfolds its "tales of power." Shamanism is not concerned with power for the sake of power -- whether for an individual as occultism does with its king, priest, sorcerer, or a group whose interests coincide on the goal of a power grab explicitly toward, or else invariably leading to, its abuse. In fact, these are the two consecutive main currents through our history: the natural human collective, i.e. a tribe, versus an individual (or an individual heading a group of minions toward the same power-grabbing goals) climbing on top of the natural human collective and reshaping, intermixing or dissolving, demolishing or abolishing, converting by force or by cunning, this natural group into something else: slaves. Sheeple. With the shepherd on top. This is the core difference between shamanism and occultism -- despite a bunch of similarities between them and despite a bunch of widely dissimilar practices and methods within each. Siberian shamanism and African shamanism, on the surface, are quite different, and by the same token occult Voodoo sorcery and occult Jesuit secret societies may seem very dissimilar. Yet at the core of the first two is the shaman as the intermediary between the tribe and the spirit world, serving the tribe -- in the second two cases, the sorcerer, priest, General serving themselves and their own power-amassing goals. I have this in my notes, from an article I liked and lost: (to be continued when time allows )

Sorry guys, don't mean to hijack.... but I have a sort of joke I'm looking to place. Qi is the money in your wallet. Jing is what's in your saving's account. Shen is your stock in the universal divine energy. You know what they say - you need a balanced portfolio ? So get all three. A system that uses only one is unbalanced imo. Ha ! It's not funny Sebby - GTFO ! < escapes > (just exited the thread)

Xuan answers @Walker who asked this very question in the thread. He replied:

Here's some stuff from the Xiao Yao Pai thread that maybe sheds a bit of light on this if Xuan does not have time to elaborate, @freeform in relation to their practices. Main thread is here.

hi, which school have you been talking about here? I'd like to read more about it

Herbophilia

Lots of good teeth healing info from Denise Minger...https://www.marksdailyapple.com/nutritional-cures-for-damaged-teeth

Something is remineralizing my teeth, but I'm not sure which new product is doing it. It's either the boron(@ 30 mg per day, 9 months) or the diatomaceous earth, which contains lots of silica as well as other minerals. (One Tablespoon daily in water or food, 4 weeks so far) Or both, of course. I got enthused on these products from watching these two videos by Dr. Jorge Felchas, MD: Boron: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJp7SW1pY2I Silica: (I have used diatomaceous earth for this, which is approximately 85% silica, and is MUCH less expensive than commercial silica supplements) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faBAT3hIbGw

God already loves you. Just gotta find a way to let go of or stop blocking it (which we don't do on purpose, trust me, no one does it on purpose). Often we think a thought, or hold a perspective, that keeps us in that mode of perceiving, which does not allow your full realisation of all the love that you actually are and could be allowing yourself to be the more fully realisation of it, evermore. And the reason this happens, is because you are focusing on a certain frequency of energetic thought patterning, that allows you the greater ability to translate, and contemplate, and expand upon, your realisations upon these frequencies. But if these frequencies are actually diminishing your very own greater allowed realisation, then you are literally lessening your own consciousness, and expanding upon the lessening of your own consciousness, and so you would be feeling atleast some negative emotions in that, to the degree of resistance of those energetic thought patterns that are being expanded upon. So you focus consistently on a meaningless mantra for example, or a sight or sound or breath. Maybe OOOoooooooooooohhhhhhmmmmmmmmmm, so your experience is experiencing the experience of that sound fully, and nothing else in that moment. And thereby you stand aside, you open the door, to the love of the infinite. And the primary manifestation is the emotional indicator of alignment and allowance and harmonic blending, indicated by the energy motional feeling of good feeling positive emotion, like love. And as you allow that feeling, in the here and now, as that is indicating you are allowing your true self in that moment to be more fully realised by you, you allow it to expand into evermore fully realisation of not only inspired thought after another, but literally, eventually, full blown experiences of realisation as real as flesh blood and bone, real physical reality realisation, literally, unconditional allowed realisation of all and any conditions coming into full blown realisation of all their truth of being and becoming evermore in ever expanding freedom and joy. And this is simply not capable of being said in words, as the words don't teach, only the experience teaches. So here I am using many different words to point at the same one experience from all the different points of view that I have of this same one experience. So that you can try it out for yourself, and find some guiding posts of hey, this I experience the same thing, so it really is that easy, to allow ourselves to be who we truely are. And you can even say hey, wow, it truely is easy to not allow ourselves to be who it is we truely are. For then you realise, you can always do something very easy, to allow your greater nature to more fully come forth through you again and be more fully realised by you again. As simple as focusing on the experience of the sound OOooooooooooooooohhhhmmmmmmmmmmmmm, and thereby simply allow yourself to let it happen. All of it. Requires trust to focus fully and emmerse your awareness into anything. So it will always naturally happen when you allow yourself to focus consistently on anything that doesn't encourage thought, like the experience of the sound of Ooooooooohhhhmmmmmm, and relax your awareness into it, and place your attention on it, and replace your attention on it, and hold it there as consistently as you can, ongoingly, untill you thus then naturally do feel the emotional relief, eventually, and you do feel better and you are thus then more fully capable of allowing your greater realisations of all that you truely are being and becoming evermore. So you basically close your eyes, and as you open it you're saying peekaboo! Here's God! Here's the love of God for you. Oh it's gone... I had a thought of worry. Well, let's let go of that thought. You close your eyes again, or you focus on Ooooohhhmmmm, then you peek into your reality, and you notice you feel good. And PEEKABOO here's the love of god! and you think "please don't go away!" oh darnit, it's gone, because I subscribed to a thought of vulnerability.... "OOooooooooohhhhmmmmmmmmmm" 20 seconds into the experience, you allow yourself to notice the emotional relief again of feeling better. And you think, this works all of the time, I really don't have to do anything to allow this love. Most of the thing I have a habbit of doing, usually just blocks myself from more fully allowing myself to realise it. So take this ability to meditate with you, and you always got your ability to allow the love of infinite and eternal. Whenever and wherever you are, for whatever reason you want, for what reason is greater than the one of simply feeling good and being happy and feeling in love and of love. Everything anyone has ever wanted is because they thought they would feel better in the having of it, and when you feel good unconditionally, under any and all conditions, regardless of any and all conditions. The conditions will also be more fully realised by you. And then everything will simply come back into full alignment and harmony of ever expansion and freedom and joy. So you understand, allow the good feeling first, then the thoughts which are in harmony with it, will come eventually, I promise you, and then you simply allow them to naturally flow through you as they feel so good when you allow these thoughts which are in full harmony with all that you truely are being and becoming evermore, because they feel so good. And then your evermore greater allowed realisation of all nature of being will come, I promise you. And all it requires is atleast 10 minutes of consistently focused meditation, for the purpose of allowing it more fully. Where the love will take you, only God can know. You just gotta trust it, for it will take you places. Even if you cannot move. IT will even give you the power to achieve the impossible, because it always surpasses your mind, you always simply just gotta trust this love for the purpose of it feeling good, it's simply the path of least resistance of who you truely are.

Sounds like you are remembering your awakening from a previous lifetime, and that was probably an awakening caused by a tradition that uses energy work (like Kundalini yoga or Western Alchemy). Had the same thing myself when Bang .... suddenly massive energy rememberances visions and powers. Was half insane for two weeks, thought I was in real trouble and there were 2 people inside, but it settled down. Much later I understood what happened. Happens a lot, it seems to be how existence pushes you to remember yourself, sometimes forcefully, like running into a way and smacking your 3rd eye on the wall. You instinctively know what to do to work with energy. So that's all fine, congratulations this isn't your first life, you have already survived at least one death. What do do now ? Well ... nothing to do, it's all already inside you and you put it in, so don't worry, just let it unfold and try to become friends with what is inside you. The discomfort is probably the remembrances trying to find a way to emerge into this incarnation, and you seem to be unfolding them naturally, nothing to worry about. It might be nice to light some incense in the evening and sit with the remembrance of your soul and see what unfolds, no hurry just friendly. And if you need to be with a group, then look on Meetup and just go and share your experiences with any kind of friendly group near you, just for company really. You can also research any images you get like the Seed of Life, and perhaps you can be guided to rediscover the tradition you come from or something similar anyway. As for the pain, you didn't describe it exactly. You could try BK Frantzis Outer Dissolving, or you could try speaking to it (visualizing it), or just surrendering very deeply and letting go, letting things happen. The changes in your head and resulting vision are typical, and as energies change in the head it can indeed hurt, but be in trust. Best thing to do is to relax and trust, because it is all in motion now. Maybe print off a large and beautiful Seed of Life picture and stick it on the shrine, wave a dead chicken in the air, and sing Pink Floyd songs backwards hoping on one leg ... just have fun with it, in the end it's only life !!! Don't worry.

Seems like a part of you opened up to the energetic realm. Also sounds like you are naturally inclined or inborn talent for such things. Very cool story, thanks for sharing.

Hi Gerard, I would be interested to know the whole procedure. Maybe I will try such a flush beginning of next year. Thank you very much, greetings

Color me crazy but I'm still waiting to see this oft-vaunted tangible scientific evidence. I mean, I know I'm just a kooky old-fashioned physicist in this regard but I still consider scientific evidence to involve data and I haven't seen any presented. What, exactly, did they measure? Voltage? Amperage? Charge? An electric field? A magnetic field? Electromagnetic radiation? Changes in impedance? Where are the numbers? Watts? Volts? Coulombs? Webers? Ohms? Anything??? Where is the presentation of hypothesis and method? Where're the predictive tests? How about a null hypothesis? Where are the charts, graphs and tables? Where is the error analysis? As I've said many times, I take John Chang at face value and assume both him and the Mo Pai to be legitimate but NOT on any scientific basis, and I see no justification for claiming either that it has been scientifically verified or that it has any sort of exclusivity in this regard.

If someone who had gone partway through medical school posted on the Internet step-by-step instructions for a relatively simple brain surgery technique, would the rational thing to do be to practice it over and over in hope that you might one day so impress a medical school that they invite you to attend? If you were a physician and you stumbled upon people trying to practice do-it-yourself brain surgery, would the responsible action be to give them a few pointers or to urge them to stop? Notice that this in no way reflects on the legitimacy of brain surgery itself, or of any particular medical school, or of any particular professor, or of any particular brain surgeon.

You keep referring to anyone who doesn't buy the "there is no system but mopai and MPG is its prophet" line -- hook, line & sinker -- as being part of some vast anti-mopai conspiracy group. Are you aware that a representative from the actual mopai came to this forum a couple years ago, during "The Great Mo Pai Wars" (that's a joke, BTW), for the specific purpose of asking the self-described "Western mopai" to cease and desist? To point out that they did not have the true teachings and were not authorized to teach anything? To ask them to please stop talking about the Mo Pai and just leave them alone? To encourage those interested in practicing Mo Pai to practice other systems instead? The response of the "western mopai" was to assume this was proof that they actually did have the true teachings and that they were trying to hide this one true system from the world and to unjustly discredit Jim's "students" (I put that in quotes because, as I recall the discussions, it came out that Jim was never authorized to teach students). I have no issues with the Mo Pai or John Chang, as I have repeatedly stated. As a trained scientist, I do categorically state that there is nothing "scientific" about any of those videos. This in no way suggests Mo Pai to be false or John Chang to be anything other than "the real deal" (in fact, I have stated repeatedly that I have reason other than those videos to believe he is the real deal). As to your suggestion, I suggest you look in the mirror.

This is from the chapter on "Daoism in Japan", The Daoism Handbook, ed. Livia Kohn, p. 830 The text is rough because the OCR software doesn't recognize Chinese characters and I don't really have time to clean it up, but this clearly shows Sugendo practice of the kuji-in and many other Daoist practices. The chapter as a whole is very informative, but obviously I cannot quote it at length. If I have time I will comment more. Edit: Connected the line containing "Rinpyótôsha cai chinretsu zalzen", which was divided. When you come across some nonsense letter combinations in the middle of text, that is the software trying to make sense of Chinese characters.

This information from the Wikipedia article is essentially correct: part of Tammon-Ten's (Vaiśravaṇa), The God of the North, Celestial Thunder Court.: In Daoist usage it would be Xuanwu, Mysterious Warior also known as Zhenwu, Perfect Warrior, and the Dark Emperor of the North. He is the patron or all Daoist martial arts, and Military Magic. Mount Wudang is his sacred mountain. The two handed mudras are not part of Gehong's original teachings, but were added from Buddhist sources at an early date and both Buddhists and Daoists use them. Jerry Alan Johnson has a discussion of them on pages 86 to 90 of Daoist Weather Magic and Feng Shui, which includes an illustration of the Thunder Court and the names of the important Thunder Marshals who are its principle spirits, as well as the six Jia spirits (These are also mentioned in detail in Saso's Teachings of Taoist Master Chuang and in other works by Jerry Alan Johnson) which it summons. It's transmission to Japan was probably through Buddhist sources, though no one knows for sure, there is a great deal of Daoist teachings (and Confucian too!) that came over to Japan from China. I don't know a lot about Japanese practice, but the idea that it is a legitimate Onmyodo and Shugendo practice makes a lot of sense to me. Edit: Rushed, I forgot to put in link to Wikipedia article.

I'm a crowd man myself. We used o go to an ashram to meditate, thought we could get away from it all. There was always someone to contend with or some noise or heavy machinery . If you can be steady in a crowd you can be steady anywhere. The goal is to be in meditation 24/7 Animals do make a racket in the country

What was the weather like in Australia 100,000 years ago? How about 300,000? 400,000? What we eat during interglacials is a moot point. Everything. What I'm talking about is the bulk of our history as a species, not the last minute of it. And even Australian Aboriginals are a last minute human culture in the grand scheme of things... so... what I said, stet. Those ants do look yummy though... have you tried them?