markern

So, does anyne have ersonal experience with the Jhanas? And if you have experienced them are you able to reenter them in daily life. Do you know to what a degree it is possible to regulary access jhanas up to say the 4th in daily life or is retreat almost always necesary for that?

How can I work on the solar plexus specifically? Besides the spleen it is my obvious weak point. It has felt weak and all messed up for at least ten years maybe more. And healers have pointed out to me that it seems blocked. Currently the only direct way I have of working with it is pressing two acu points that are in the solar plexus area and massaging the area. I do a qigong for the spleen that seems to spill over and help the solar plexus but it does not work directly. I have been adviced to visualize a sun there and I felt it could do a lot of good but set of more chakra activity then I felt I could handle now and since I don`t do any direct work on any other chakras I am guessing I could get very imbalanced working only on the solar plexus with a sun meditation. I don`t see the same danger in a moderate use of a qigong exericise or acu points as this probably would not set of the massive activity that the visualization did and I do other stuff for my body as a whole so moderate specific work I don`t think would be unbalancing. Are there other acu points than the ones directly on the solar plexus that work on it?

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If you look at my posts in the past you will find some perspectives that are relevant for your situation from me and others posting i the same threads. Just go to my profile and press past posts and then look at posts in threads about topics relating to sex. Most of those are quite far back in my posting history I think. As for sexual blockages that whole area is often filled with blockages. I came across a guy at the post orgasmic illness syndrome that had struggled with negative symptoms after any sort of orgasms and the did feldenkrais method or something similar and after certain blocks disappeared started feeling fine after orgasms.

http://www.debunker.com/texts/goddess.html http://www.debunker.com/patriarchy.html#goddess Some realism about the claims of a matriarchal past.

I have never ever read or heard anyone suggesting a woman who is with a man who is screaming at her and being an asshole just needs to be heard and the solution is for the woman to improve because what the man wants her to see isn´t getting through her thick head. I doub`t I ever will. Great example of how men are always held to a much higher standard in how we treat women than women are in how they treat men. He is always the responsible one and she is the innocent one. If he acts badly it is his fault, if she acts badly it is his fault. Even in the church it is like that: http://haleyshalo.wordpress.com/2012/06/03/men-you-should-stop-abusing-your-wives-women-let-me-think-of-something-you-shouldnt-do/ Despite what everyone believes women are as, probably slightly more physically violent in relationships and they more often start the violence than men do when the violence is mutual. This is heavily researched and has been known for decades but have been systematically and successfully covered up by feminists. The most violent relationships are actually lesbian relationships: http://elusivewapiti.blogspot.no/2012/06/some-facts-about-domestic-violence.html A good site for men struggling with abusive women: http://shrink4men.wordpress.com/

http://www.menweb.org/femexpos.htm

This actually comes pretty close IMO: You don't really need to do or say much of anything. There is already tension between men and women. By definition that tension is sexual. It's always lurking just beneath the surface. If it was acceptable I believe people everywhere would be having care-free sex with multiple partners all the time. This tension is so dangerous it often leads to complete strangers having sex in less than 10 minutes. This tension is why some men feel the need to cover women head to toe in burkas. It's also why women know it's dangerous to put themselves in a situation where they are alone with you. Do Less, Not More Just by showing up, without doing anything, there is already sexual tension between you and women. It is natural and automatic. That means: 1) There is really nothing "special" you need to do or say 2) Most women are already naturally attracted to you Anti-Manifesto It is my belief that it's not so much as you need to do or say "special" things to CREATE attraction as much as you just need to NOT do the small things that reduce the sexual tension that is already there. And eventually kill it forever. - talking - laughing - reacting - fidgeting - bailing her out - supplicating facial expressions I consider this an anti-manifesto because most strategies usually focus on what you need to do or say. There is nothing to say. There is nothing to do. Your whole life you have been doing things to lessen tension. You have always tried to make everybody else around you feel more comfortable at your own expense. You do this with your friends, your co-workers and especially the women you like. When things get tense or awkward you're the big clown making everyone laugh and feel comfortable. Even when girls reject you, you are more worried about their comfort level than your own. You don't want her to feel awkward. Aw! This is bad because doing things to help women feel more comfortable with the sexual tension will be viewed by her as supplication. A woman is never going to be attracted to a man that can handle LESS sexual tension than she can. In the end it always seems to come down to who wins the little tension battles: Eye Contact: who is going to look away first Introduction: who pulls their hand away first Silence: who gives in and talks first Resistance: who tries to diffuse the awkward moment first Who breaks down and needs to have a talk about "what is going on" first Lets look at a few subtle ways guys reduce the sexual tension in their interactions with women: Opening & Silence The reduction of tension starts right away. Most guys will use a social opener or make up an excuse to start the conversation. This may help you and her both feel comfortable, but is that really such a good idea? Right from the beginning guys are scared of silences. In fact right after you introduce yourself you want to pause for a second and give her a chance to contribute. Instead what guys usually do is just assume it's their job to talk and entertain the whole time. It all comes off as they are trying to qualify themselves instead of the other way around. (The person talking is the person qualifying). When silence happens, as it always will, who feels the pressure to talk first. Seductive Listening & Facial Expressions Another way guys break sexual tension is by making supplicating facial expressions when listening. Instead of using this opportunity to bask in the natural tension of the moment guys get wide-eyed, flash goofy smiles and do lots of head nodding. And don't forget the nervous throw away lines like "oh my god that's so funny". Instead you want to keep relatively quiet and use more of a blank stare when listening. Similar to a poker players face. By listening intently but not giving her much feedback she will feel like she needs to qualify herself to you. Escalation & Resistance Anytime you get verbal or physical resistance there will be even more tension in the air. This is good news. Resistance is great! But if you react to the resistance verbally (ie. trying to diffuse the awkwardness by making a joke) you will kill that tension. The same thing happens if you look sad and become pouty. If you don't react to her resistance it never becomes real. It's not official. It's like it never happened. Being unreactive and keeping composed lets you be very persistent without coming across needy. Tests/Asd Many times it's not just you. When women become aroused they will try to reduce the tension by baiting you to break rapport. Of course you fall for this trap because you think you need to break rapport to create sexual tension. See the problem? The sexual tension is already there. Even witty comebacks and reframes can reduce tension. As such, tests are best handled this way. Hold seductive eye contact, smile and turn your head away slowly. If her test is due to a legitimate sexual comfort issue then your response can be delivered in a sexual but serious tone. ie. ~ We are not having sex tonight. We're both adults. We will do whatever we are comfortable with. Bailing Her Out When you ask women to exchange numbers, meet up or come home with you, you should just ask her and then shut the F@#$ up. When women start stalling or making excuses guys always seem to bail them out by saying something. They crumble under the pressure. Instead don't say anything and move slightly closer to her. Let the awkward moment linger. The pressure is on her. Let her feel bad for breaking rapport with you. If you can just keep your mouth shut long enough women will often come around on their own and agree to whatever you were asking for. A good rule is to always choose the option that produces the most tension. For example if you want to set up a meet it's better to call girls vs. text them. When you text girls you let them off the hook and make it easy for them to say NO. Of course it's even better if you ask her out face to face. Anytime a woman thinks you are doing something because you fear tension (ie. using a bet as an excuse to ask her out) she is going to lose attraction for you. Risk Creepy As I have discussed before you want to embrace awkwardness and risk creepy. You want her breathing heavy and get her heart beating faster. That's because these symptoms mimic the signs of her being attracted. This tension is a good thing. You want it to be a bit awkward. You don't want things to feel too comfortable. How Dare You! Not breaking the tension can be even harder for new guys with less experience. You will be tested more. Women will look at you like how dare you be so confident. Plus, if you think of yourself as not traditionally "good looking" you will automatically think you need to DO STUFF to make women attracted to you. Actually it's just the opposite. Guys need to do less. The things you are doing now might be getting reactions, but they are also reducing the tension. It's very subtle but when guys believe they don't have a shot with a woman, they say or do things to sabotage their chances. The funny thing is at the beginning the sexual tension and attraction was there. But because they didn't believe she was attracted, that tension made them feel awkward. So of course they were the ones to break it off first. The key to assuming attraction is to remember that on some level there is already sexual tension between you and most women. This tension exists naturally. An automatic connection if you will. As such, your focus shouldn't be on what "special things" you need to say or do, but rather just on not breaking the natural tension and attraction that is already present. Do less. 60 http://www.pualounge.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=52&t=2357

Drew you need to read up on the Bonobos because you are spreading myths. They are NOT haveing sex all the time in the wild. In the wild they have the same amount of female male sex as other comparable monkeys but do have some more homosexual sex. They are also NOT peacefull. Further stduies have shown them to be quite violent and there is reason to believe that their violence has a tendency to escalate further to serious damage and death to a larger degree than several other species. The guy that is resposnible for spreading the image the Bonobo has gotten has never studied them in the wild only in captivity. He has a clear agenda and those who are now doing actual research in the wild disagree with him on numerous points. I don`t`have time to dig up sources for you for what I have read but I just encourage you to do some furhter research on them because you are spreading myths.

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you have a roomate that is gone 11 months of the year Interesting. I especially found your comment on the practices being better suited to a monastic than a lay environment interesting. Two questions Seth. My impression has been that those who hang out at thedharmaoverground.org and kennethfolkdharma do get very fast and very real results with vipassana and also in terms of getting into jhana very fast. Especially after stream entry they have xtremely good Jhana results. Compared to those who go on retreat after retreat without practicing with the (updated) maps and techniques they use at these sites at least they get waaay more progress. As there is a lot of overlap between those sites and thetaobums I would have thought you were familiar with them. Have you used the maps and techniques discussed there? How would you judge the progress of those who hang at those sites? Your comment about getting deeper faster with practices from other traditions triggered my interest. May I ask what practices you have found most effective for getting into deeply concentrated states and most effective in general for cultivation? You have such wide and deep experience I have been wanting to ask you this for a long time.

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And yet the times we live in today are probably the most peaceful and least violent and most civilized in history, at least for as long as there have been enough humans for conflict about land and resources to be meaningful. Studies of skeletons show that in prehistoric times the rate of violent death was 15% or above. This is just from seing injuries from weaponry on the skeleton but you could easily be killed by and arrow or a sword without damage to the skeleton so the likely number is much higher. Studies of violence levels in tribal societies today show them to mostly not be peaceful but rather extremely violent, with rates of violent death at 15% up to 40%. The fact that our DNA shows only 40% of men and 80% of women have reproduced in each generation on average indicates massive levels of violence throughout human history. From the time we started to build larger city states and up until today the rates of violent death has steadily decreased be it death in war or murder. The death rates has decreased century for century and millennium after millennium. Even the second world war was a LESS violent time than the historical average. This century has also seen a further decline throughout most of the world both in terms of war and in terms man to man violence. In addition domestic violence has massively gone down and treatment of animals has improved more than at any other known or probable time in history. The last few hundred years has also seen the abolishment of slavery (although it still exist) and a massive reduction in use of torture which used to be extremely common. Steven Pinker documents this with massive amounts of evidence in his latest book The better angels of our nature: Why violence has declined. The most important of this process has probably been building large societies with a Leviathan to monopolize violence. So although, there are large problems in the world today there is hardly reason to scrap the system, at least without certainty of a more workable one. The reason we believe everything is so bad is probably in large part due to television and newspapers teaching us what goes on in the world today and showing us pictures of the violence we previously would know nothing about. As for the economy, happiness studies show that there is a huge increase in happiness once GDP grows to a certain level then it flattens out. If you look at the numbers for economic development in the last 200 years you will see that almost all countries have had massive growth, even the really poor ones, and that largely the development countries today have faster rates of growth than the developed countries had when they were at a similar level of GDP. Sure life in a tribe that does not have any enemies probably makes people a lot more happy than life in modern society. However, the data clearly shows that the rate of violence was normally so high there is little reason to want to have lived in one of those societies unless you got really lucky and found one without enemies. Because people in tribal societies generally produce a ton of babies, far more than 2,1, tribal life will always eventually lead to conflict over land. It will necessarily lead to a situation were you either die of starvation or fight your neighbor. Once that level is reached you need to build larger civilizations to start of the process steven pinker describes. The one we have built beats any other known civilization. There is massive room for improvement of course but there are highly positive trends amongst negative ones. For example the spread of meditation, yoga and qigong and the research that is going into it. In 30 years time once the research is very thorough and detailed it will be pushed on people by all doctors, all therapists, by personal trainers and gyms, by corporations who want their employes to be healthy, by universities who think it will lead to better results amongst ste students, by schools who think the same etc. In addition people will start doing it more on their own because they see it as a way to a happiness beyond what they even thought possible. Another factor that can lead to huge advances is karezza. Most relationships are not very good and half do not last. Besides the couples themselves suffering this has enormous effects on society because of the negative impact of divorce and the father being forced away from his children (women initiate 70% of divorce) which leads to mental health problems, crime, drug addition, violence etc. Karezza provides the long lasting glue that almost all relationships lack. The first couple of years are usually fine but after the initial feelings mostly die off there is no proper glue and karezza provides that. Eventually, that will also be researched and once the results are in the spread is going to be massive. Both those trends leads to lots of other positives. So I think there is reason to celebrate were we have come and be optimistic about were we might be going. Unless, of curse climate changes or a nuclear war wreaks everything, and that might happen so I`dd say the general trend is very good but there is potential grave danger.