Aeran

You're taking him a bit too literally, I think he's just pointing out his understanding of what an aspect of the problem is - and it is a big aspect of it. Any source on obesity will tell you that the emotional side of it is a huge component, it's not a coincidence that there's a strong correlation between obesity and mood disorders.

But think about how many pennies could be saved if you never had to pay for a stove lighter again?

Or they could just restrict it all to one place. Create a big 'Mo Pai argument/drama/debate/MPG telling everyone they don't do real cultivation' thread, move any discussion which veers into that territory there, and let MPG go for gold on the subject all he wants within the confines of that on thread. That way if people want to be exposed to it or take part in it, it's on them, but others don't have to read it and it doesn't constantly pop up in other discussions and sidetrack them.

Firstly, obviously the extremities of poverty are a different situation, but they aren't a majority, and quite frequently the 'oh but good food is so expensive' excuse is trotted out by people who have the latest iphone, expensive brand clothing, high end computers, etc etc. It's about prioritizing, though if someone genuinely can't afford to eat then I have nothing but sympathy for them. My point is that weight gain doesn't happen by magic, nor overnight. There are plenty of opportunities to stop and look at what is happening to your body, to evaluate what is causing the problem and fix it, or, if it is too late, to reverse it, but that never happens if you're too busy blaming the food industry, or genetics, or other factors out of your control. You can't alter your genes (although the effect they have over weight is vastly exaggerated - and precisely because it gives the individual an excuse to avoid working to solve their problem), you can't stop corporations from being greedy and evil, but, barring extreme circumstances which only apply to a minority, you can control how much you eat and how much you exercise. If encouraging people to take control of their lives and address their problems head on instead of wallowing in victimhood is insensitive, then give me insensitivity any day of the week and twice on Sunday. That said, the people I do have sympathy for are those who are raised on horrible food and in a bad lifestyle and end up obese by the time they're a teenager, with absolutely no control over the situation. Even if they grow up and finally manage to lose weight, there's already massive and permanent damage. It's nothing less than child abuse, and should be treated as such.

But isn't that exactly what he's talking about? Comfort eating and the use of unhealthy food as a response to unpleasant emotions? I don't think anyone is overweight because of the food industry. I agree that the state of the Food Industry is atrocious and that much needs to be done in that regard, but nobody has to choose between eating bad food and getting shot. Every mouthful of unhealthy food is a choice, even if it isn't a conscious one, and you don't do people any favors by shifting the responsibility for their own health away from them.

Good for them. I always found the idea of making consensual sex illegal a tad absurd.

The only claims I've ever seen that Lovecraft's work was channeled were made by fans decades after his death.

Aren't those first two lines from The Hobbit?

Interesting, but not exactly conclusive. I have a friend who's really into this stuff, and it's fun to talk about (not to mention the occasional drunken episode of Ancient Aliens), but the proof just isn't enough for me to take it too seriously (also: this same friend once stated that he believes the moon landing was faked, so...)

So uh, does anyone else get stalked and molested by their cat after practicing chi kung?

I was a few years too old for that, Pokemon was just getting big when I was in primary school Yeah definitely, logically I know that everyone has their own growth to go through, and that the time I spent in that mindset wasn't 'wasted' because I learned and grew a lot from the experience (and probably wouldn't have been mature enough to approach this stuff properly beforehand), but it's still hard not to feel like I wasted a bunch of time, and to think about how I might have achieved years ago the things I'm struggling through now if I'd had a slightly different experience or circumstance. Ahh well, such is life.

Sounds interesting, I'll go back and watch it I think that's definitely the case. While I think a lot of psychics and mediums and so forth are just scam artists, there are a handful who seem legitimate, despite not having undergone any spiritual training (in the current life anyway). Sadly I'm not one of those people, I think it would have made things a lot easier when I was trying to get out of my deep seated materialist/reduction/atheist funk Although it's interesting that, as far as I can tell, few of those people go on to actually full train and develop their talents and dedicate themselves to spiritual development.

I'm curious - is Clairvoyance (and its various subcategories) counted as a siddhi under Buddhism and treated with the same attitude? I've always been taught that it's, if not required, then incredibly beneficial towards spiritual progress and the work entailed, allowing one to see the true nature of reality.

Really cool photos.

I don't know about people, but I'm fairly certain animals react to energy in a strong way. The other week I was out in the back yard practicing, when I finished an exercise and opened my eyes only to see that the 10 or 15 Rosellas who hang out in the big gum tree there had all gone perfectly still and silent and were all sitting there with their heads tilted, staring at me. Pretty cool moment.

God I wish. I'm lucky if I can force myself up before Midday, and even then only if I have a lecture or something else going on. I'd love to be able to wake up just before dawn, meditate etc. for an hour or two, exercise, then grab breakfast and go about my day, but it never seems to work out for more than a day or two. Realistically, I usually end up practicing around mid afternoon - early evening.

I read an interesting article the other day which speculates about why so many of these Yoga gurus end up in these sex scandals: http://www.healingdao.com/cgi-bin/articles.pl?rm=mode2&articleid=35 Not that that excuses exploitative behavior but it's an interesting perspective.

Nope. However, I have, I think, lately been getting a visual perception of energy. The best way I can describe it is faint, slightly glowing heat waves. At first it was so weak that I just figured it was an optical illusion, but it's grown more visible over the last year or so of regular practice, to the point where I can actually pick up a kind of weak 'glow,' especially in the dark or when I'm actively working with energy, kind of like a really faint light condensed into a 'misty' form is the best way I can describe it. Maybe I'm just going crazy though, I dunno, but it's interesting

Am I reading this correctly? $800/hour for private classes? $3000 seminars? Seems a tad... exorbitant. Are those price ranges typical for this kind of teaching?

What about non-sexual love? It sounds like part of the problem is that your conception of love is based on the pop culture idealizing of it. Love, in my experience, isn't something that hits you immediately, or even quickly. You can be attracted to or infatuated with someone very easily, but love is like friendship, it builds up slowly over months or years of interaction and gradually getting to know the person and share your life with them. The problem is that we've had misleading notions of love and romance shoved onto us for centuries, and so we expect something that we'll never find and as a result write off potential opportunities for the real thing to surface. And I don't think I've ever met a man who actually likes the dating process. I know I hate it personally, it's so artificial and fake and often mercantile, something which restricts the development of love as much as it fosters it. It sounds like you just need to stick to it, unless there's really some kind of neurological/psychological/energetic disorder going on, which it doesn't sound like (from my very amateur opinion). If you've spent your whole adult life immersed in porn and hookers and random meaningless hookups, then you aren't going to be able to do a 180 and swap to forging meaningful connections overnight. I would guess that you just have to stick to it until you adjust to approaching the whole issue of sex and relationships in a different manner and, yes, as trite as it sounds, start meeting women who are more compatible for you. If you aren't already doing so, maybe try meeting women in a different environment, one where you can interact with them around similar interests and get to know them slowly instead of using the internet and jumping straight into the dating aspect of it with all of the consequent expectations and assumptions. From what I've seen and my limited experience with them, websites are great for meeting women for casual hookups, but pretty atrocious for forging actual connections.

Awesome thread, the amount of information here and the time you've spent posting it sold me on the system, and while it's too early to report any results yet, I'm definitely enjoying the practice. I have a few questions I thought I'd throw out there if you happen to have time to answer them. Sorry if you've gone over that topic earlier, I read the first 40 or 50 pages but it's a monster of a thread Anyway: 1) Earlier today I was doing Bending the Bow, when the light on the desk in front of me sizzled with a loud crackling noise and flashed on (it's an old lamp with a dodgy switch). The actual sound wasn't too loud relatively speaking, but combined with the flash of light it was really startling and I definitely jolted a bit, though I managed to avoid breaking the stance Anyway as I jolted I was surprised to feel a distinct surge of energy through the body, especially in the head and neck, which felt rather jarring and uncomfortable compared to the usual softer energy I've been getting. I figure this is the effect you're talking about when you warn to avoid loud noises and being bumped during practice - is there anything in particular I should watch for in terms of side effects? Or anything I should do to prevent them occurring? I assume that the effect isn't too risky or you wouldn't publish the system, but I've felt first hand the effects of energy body problems and don't want to go through that again. 2) On that note, I have what I assume to be an energy blockage of some sort in my legs - whenever I do any practice which involves energy flow through that area, I get a build up of an intense, painful, prickling sensation, something like what I imagine it would feel like to have your legs immersed in a glass tank full of giant mosquitos :| Not fun (this is what caused me to give up qi gong when I first tried it out from a book earlier in the year, the Middle Pillar ritual from the Golden Dawn system of magic also triggers it rather horribly) It seems to be clearing up slowly thanks to other practices I do, but are there any particular exercises within the FP system which you would recommend to help repair the problem? I've noticed that Monk Gazing at the Moon seems to particularly trigger the symptoms, although not overwhelmingly in the way that the MP and other qi gong systems have (I can perform it for 5 minutes and even then only stop because my arms get sore, whereas I had to stop the MP ritual after 2 or 3), but I'm not sure if this is a sign that it is actually clearing up the presumed blockage, or just stimulating it enough to cause problems, although given the healing nature of the FP energy I'm hoping the former. Monk Holding Peach also sets it off to a lesser extent. And if you have any other thoughts on how to address the issue, it would be massively appreciated . Thanks a ton for your time Terry. And good luck with your legal troubles! I hate seeing artists get screwed over by the studios, hope you kick their asses in court.

Yeah first thing I did when I decided to look into it further was try find a teacher, but I'm in a smaller city in the asshole of the country (Adelaide :| ), and there don't appear to be any here. I might be spending some time in Melbourne in the coming months though, so if that ends up happening I'll definitely look around.

In that, case you can have the Mo Pai Superpower Manual for half price Act now before this unique opportunity is lost (credit card only)! Seriously though, I've already taken a peak around there, but I'm honestly here more for the Taoist side of things, since that's something I'm very new to and hoping to become greater acquainted with. I was originally going to make a post asking for advice on the best way to proceed, but thinking about it now it seems a bit too broad a scope. I've recently taken up Qi Gong again as part of my daily practice routine though, so I'm sure plenty of questions will arrive when I inevitably horrible mangle it trying to learn out of books.

I don't have any direct experience with the later stages of Bardon's system (give me another 5 or 10 years and I'll get back to ya), so for now I can't comment specifically on those energies, all I can say is that my experiences with the energies in the earlier steps (or at least those which have parallels in Taoist practices, namely the Vital Force) is that they are seemingly the same as those utilized in the Qi Gong I've practiced, and that the description of the Yin Chang in Mo Pai by Kosta is remarkably similar to that given of the Magnetic Fluid by Bardon. And I generally take an inclusive view of such things, but that's just me. Beyond that I can't say, and honestly, I'm not sure anyone can. Like I said earlier, we know too little about the definitive nature of the forces we're working with - maybe 100 years from now scientists will nail this stuff down and it will turn out that Chi is just another phlogiston. At times like this I find it's good to remember the words of Mr AC himself: Those sculptures are amazing, I think I know what I'm telling people to get me for XMas now

That paper looks interesting, shame the complete study isn't available on the site. It reminds me of the Dean Radin books I read earlier in the year, a bit dry, but they put together a very strong scientific and statistical argument for the existence of what he labels as 'psi phenomenon.' But yes, you're right about Randi's challenge being a bit of a joke (not to mention exploitative and fraudulent). it's a shame that there are so many people in the 'skeptical' community who claim to live by the scientific method, but don't apply that same scrutiny to their own opinions and motivations, or those of people who hold the same worldview. I also think the whole John Chang fiasco is a perfect example of why someone who has abilities above a certain degree wouldn't want to come forward and seek publicity. Look at the blowup he had to deal with for decades as a result of allowing himself to be filmed - granted he was a little careless about the whole thing, but as appealing as the idea of living in a society where spiritual and energetic practices are mainstream can sound, I don't think humanity is ready for it.