Taomeow

So do you reckon the will of heaven is like some kind of benevolent daddy's guidance, a growth plan for an individual or a corporation? Taoism is not monotheistic, so for starters, "the will of heaven" is not equated to "the will of god," because one would have to quickly ask, "which god's will do you mean? The Jade Emperor's? Quan Yin's? The Grand Duke Jupiter's? The dragon-god of steamed rice? Nuwa the creatress of human beings? Laozi in his divine incarnation? The god of the river Luo? Deified Ancestor Lu?" and so on. Futhermore, the will of heaven, in classical taoism, is not separate from the human being, it resides in the kidneys, in the form of kidney yang and zhi. Zni is the kind of willpower that is subjectively perceived as intuition and, often, hindsight wisdom -- you look back at the moves you've made, at the decisions past, and see a pattern, realizing that those moves and decisions brought you somewhere where you were "meant" to go, and that things turned out a certain way because it was "meant to be." A split between one's own body and one's own mind and spirit gets one to conclude then that it was some higher power's guidance that's responsible. However, someone connected with herself, to the point of being aware of the will of her kidneys, not just her brain, comes to the classical taoist conclusion that the will of heaven is her very own. She IS heaven, earth, and all the natural forces in between. Once the will of heaven is understood as her own zhi, she is on an even keel with deities, forces of nature, and tao. Takes some hard-core reconnection work though...

Actually, pack predators, never hunted alone until we invented particularly deadly weapons, always in large packs throughout pre-history. The closest picture I've seen that gave me an idea of how our ancestors did it was a documentary of a pack of baboons harassing and ultimately overpowering and killing a cheetah. One on one no baboon has a chance against a cheetah. One on one no human had a chance against large prey either, but in a group, they were efficient and deadly. High level of cooperation (that's what we developed a large brain for)... Anthropologist Desmond Morris also thinks we were loud as hell as a group and could use high noise levels to scare and disorient our prey. Some tribes in Africa and in India hunted this way as recently as the nineteenth century. The whole village would gang up on a lion or a tiger, respectively, everybody screaming at the top of their lungs, yelling, roaring, shrieking, beating pots and pans and drums, and then the armed hunters would attack with spears. Dogs, domesticated early, also chimed in and helped. (Cats would have no part of it of course, what with being worshipped as gods in Egypt for over a thousand years, with a household's failure to provide a meat dish for the cat while the whole family does have meat punishable by death!) Nutritionally speaking, however, according to real science (not junk science that always has a ball in this type of discussions), as well as the whole history of the species' existence, the technical term for the kind of creature we really are is "obligatory omnivore." Meaning we need it all. Just an evolutionary twist. A koala can't eat anything but eucalyptus leaves, he is an obligatory monofoodist, and dies promptly on any diet whatsoever that isn't eucalyptus leaves. We're on the opposite end of the evolutionary spectrum. One of the reasons I'm fascinated with Chinese culture is that they take this evolutionary situation to its logical conclusion -- there's absolutely nothing edible, whether growing in the field, running in the forest, crawling in the underbrush or swimming in the river, that they don't eat.

"Meat eating only began with ranching?" Tell it to the mammoth, hunted to extinction by our very own species. Perhaps prehistoric cavemen had their special mammoth ranches and herded mammoths there for the purpose. Not only have we hunted for as long as we've existed (I'm told "vegetarian" is the Native American for "bad hunter"), but if you study paleoanthropology (like I did), you might discover something interesting: man always went after the largest and fattest animal in his environment. On the North Pole, it will be whale and seal. On the plainlands, it will be buffalo (after the mammoth is gone). Only running out of luck with these will indigenous man eat "white meat!" I don't think any age ever produced so many myths so richly false as our own age of purported science and alleged reason... Get your facts straight folks. You are omnivores in denial, is all you are, and ain't no shame in the omnivorous part (not your fault that nature has made and perpetuated you in this capacity and no other), but the denial part is really in the way... No wait... Religious fundamentalists are usually very unimpressed by facts, so I take the "get your facts straight" part back. Won't make a dent...

I object. In this country, dogs and cats, as well as humans, get most of their nutrition out of corn and soy and a helluva lot of chemicals, which is what "pet food" and "prolefeed" (Orwell, 1984) alike really consist of. That's why all dogs and cats on a diet of commercial pet food get cancer in the end of a physically, emotionally and mentally morbid life of obesity, arthritis, diabetes, allergies, renal failure, liver disease and foul breath. And this is why most humans fare likewise, regardless of whether they are vegetarians or not. However, since dogs in this country are indeed mostly vegetarians, through no choosing of their own, "ignorant as dogs" seems to pertain to vegetarians rather than to us omnivorous regulars (who've been this way for the past one million years, give or take), don't you agree?

Thanks, Witch, but let's not compare "advancement levels," I'm sure there's areas where you're far more "advanced" than me -- e.g., you published a book, I only keep meaning to! I have twins, a boy and a girl, all grown up -- they were born when I just turned 21. I wish I knew then what I know now. I would rear them in a remote cave in the mountains or something, I swear.

You mean a child is born spoiled and in need of immediate and ongoing correction? That's a traditional Christian view. Taoists believe the opposite, the child is born an "uncarved block" -- perfect -- and all the carvings we proceed to apply only damage it. There's nothing more unnatural than a spoiled child, or more ubiquitous. In our "civilized" world, it's the term used to describe a child who has abandoned her natural needs because of early-on hopelessness to get them met, and has embarked on a lifelong act of substituting symbolic needs, which the world based on mandatory unreality is better equipped to accept.

Meaning is innate. Things mean "pleasure" or "pain" from the start. We are brought up to promptly lose this innate ability to tell what means what. We are taught to be confused, to seek what we normally would avoid and to avoid what we should seek. We are trained to take pain and call it pleasure, to be ashamed of being pleased, to be proud of suffering. It takes about five years, according to research, to teach a child to lie. Here's the experiment that showed it: they were giving chocolate that had no sugar in it and instead was mixed with something very bitter to a group of adults, a group of two-year-olds, a group of three-year-olds, and a group of five-year-olds, with the instructions to say "yum, sweet, so tasty!" and show pleasure with the facial expression, show that they're eating something very good that they are enjoying. Adults had no problem whatsoever doing that. Two-year-olds simply squirmed and cried. Three-year-olds managed to get the words "yum, sweet" out but had no control whatsoever over their faces that showed extreme contortions of suffering while they went, "yummy, tasty!" And finally, five-year-olds performed as well as adults. The meaning of the experience was there all along, the same for everyone. It's the training that allowed people to lose it and substitute something arbitrarily offered. Training in unreality destroys the innate meaningfulness of each and every experience we have. Losing unreality restores it. And a glorious feeling it is too, resonating accurately with the medium and message of meaningful change that Chinese civilization calls qi...

OK, let a poet chime in. Here's from "The Great Summons," by Qiu Yuan, 4th century BC, who ate a vegetarian diet for nine years and came to feel his soul had been driven desperate and was about to give up on him and depart: The cunning cook adds slices of bird-flesh, Pigeon and yellow-heron and black-crane. They taste the badger-stew. O Soul come back to feed on foods you love! Next are brought Fresh turtle, and sweet chicken cooked in cheese Pressed by the men of Qiu. And pickled suckling-pig And flesh of whelps floating in liver-sauce With salad of minced radishes in brine; All served with that hot spice of southernwood The land of Wu supplies. O Soul come back to choose the meats you love! Roasted daw, steamed wingeon and grilled quail -- On every fowl they fare. Boiled perch and sparrow broth-- in each preserved The separate flavor that is most its own. O Soul come back to where such dainties wait! (...) old songs are sung: "The Rider's Song" that once Fu Xi,* the ancient monarch, made...(...) O Soul come back and listen to their songs! _______ * Fu Xi -- the founder of taoism

...too... ...I know.

Um... if I was to avoid killing what I eat, this would by no means be limited to meat. When you bake leavened bread (as I do), drink kefir or yogurt or kombucha, make miso soup or munch on sauerkraut, you kill living beings -- yeast cultures are living beings, and incidentally, animals, not plants! So if you mean it's OK to kill plants but not animals, lots of food groups in addition to meat will have to be abandoned. All fermented foods. All foods that haven't been sterilized to death -- these have billions of animals, bacterial animals, in every bite. So you probably mean it's not OK to kill animals for food that are big enough for you to notice. Meaning, long as you're in denial because you can't see what you're killing, you qualify as a non-killer. If you were to kill a human being, e.g., without noticing (as in a hit and run car accident when you're too drunk to pay attention and to even notice that you hit some pedestrians), this would be perfectly fine if we follow this logic. However, there's another problem. What did vegetables do to you? Why is it OK to kill them for food while it's not OK to kill animals? Do you hate plants? Do you despise them and therefore deny them the status of "living beings?" They ARE living beings, believe me. I spent one most enlightening summer learning from a fern, Sifu Fern in my backyard who told me in a dream he would teach me, and did. I learned Sacred Geometry from him, three months of the best education I ever had (and I do have a master's degree from a human university! ) Doesn't it prove that this plant is not only a living but a sentient being? Some Native Americans call trees Plant People, they even go as far as to call some rocks Rock People. If I were to adopt a faith that forbids eating live beings, in this system, as well as in classical taoism, I'd be prohibited to even put salt on my food... and, furthermore, WHAT, if anything, could I really eat at all with this prohibition in mind if taking the blinders off lets one see that everything in creation is a living being and avoiding the use of same for food is simply not one of tao's concerns? And my cat, my cat! you mean I would be spiritually or morally superior to my gentle but incorrigibly carnivorous cat sage if I was a vegetarian? That's speciesm in my book, the worst form of racism!

Is there an ultimate context? -- I guess tao might qualify. Is there a relationship that encompasses all relationships? -- Per taoist cosmology, no. Twenty percent of everything is unpredictable and is governed by pure chance. Twenty percent of all connections, the ones arising from this probabilistic set-up, are not determined by any prior connections, they form their own relationships instead which can rearrange not only prior but simultaneous and future connections -- some of them, or even all of them! This is the realm of mystery, and true mystery is not mysterious because we're ignorant or some such pending "awakening" or some such -- it is mysterious by default, ziran, it can't be anything but no matter what we do or don't do about it. What is the context like? -- Per my inquiry, it is the Triple Realm of people, things and events; humanity, heaven and earth; and tao. The Lower and Middle realms are "meaningful" through their interconnections all the way through. The Higher realm, that of no form and no substance, is triple meaningful, because it has "pure" connections without form and substance; it IS the realm of connections free for the taking by anything that would care or chance to get connected, erroneously dubbed "nothingness" in many traditions, of which taoism is not one. In taoism, "nothingness" is neither nothing nor something, neither empty nor not empty, neither exists nor doesn't exist -- it's a realm of ultimate "pure potentials," which are "connections" or "relationships" by other name -- one hundred percent random before they manifest, and still twenty percent random after manifestation. Does it have a result? -- Apparently. We call it Hou Tian. The world of manifest phenomena. Unlike in buddhism, which thinks of it as "samsara," something ultimately "bad" and unnecessary, in taoism, it is glorious and meaningful, this ability of tao to manifest as tao-in-motion, taiji, in no way inferior to the unmanifest tao-in-stillness, wuji. And if there is no result, what use is there to say that it has meaning? -- Tao-in-stillnes produces neither results nor meanings, and simultaneously manifests as tao-in-motion that produces both. What is or isn't said about it doesn't seem to make a dent. What would it connect to? -- A result without discernible meaning would connect to mystery. Connections of events to mystery are spontaneously mysterious. As for my existing always and forever -- that's likely, but wouldn't one have to re-define "me" before announcing one's "true nature" as eternal and unchangeable without batting an eyelid? Do you remember yourself as a two-day-old infant? Do you identify with this entity as "you?" And if you do, what are the practical repercussions of such identification? And if here and now you can't discern any, how about your being an "eternal entity" of some Buddhist-Hindu extraction or other being an even greater irrelevance for purposes of handling your here-now existence and all its meanings and connections?

By the way, I've seen ancient taoist texts dealing with nutrition list the "Five Sacred Meats" which are supposed to be consumed by humans. These are: 1. Cow 2. Pig 3. Dog 4. Sheep 5. Goat Looks like "sacred" meant "domesticated" to our taoist forefathers. Perhaps their rationale was the same as in the Wenzi (Wenzi is believed to have been the only student of Laozi to have left extensive written elaborations on what the master taught orally, which is a lot more than what made it to the Tao Te Ching) -- concern for wildlife (already, to a keen taoist eye, overhunted dangerously in those anicent times) rather than any objections pertaining to the nutritional value of game. To my knowledge, some but not all monastic taoists were vegetarians, non-monastic ones (daoshi, "scholar warriors") were overwhelmingly meat eaters, and all taoists would use a vegetarian diet for a short period of time towards a specific goal -- e.g., prior to performing certain rituals or tasks, usually for three days to a week one would be required to keep the vegetarian diet. Far from moral or superstitious considerations, the practice has to do with controlling one's own qi: a vegetarian diet can act as a short-term stimulant of shen qi by lightening the load it moves, i.e. the Blood. Qi moves Blood in the human body, among other tasks it performs. A vegetarian's blood is "thinner" and "lighter," in particular because it has less Metal (iron, copper, zinc, etc.) than a regular omnivorous human's Blood, so when a taoist is to perform a task that requires the use of a lot of her own qi, e.g. for writing a talisman or performing a very difficult healing, she will want to "lighten" the load of internal work her qi carries so as to have more available for an external task. Once the task is completed, meat eating is resumed and qi is reverted back to its internal task of moving "undiluted" Blood.

Things are connected to other things, events to other events, and the meaning is in these connections. An acorn falling on the ground doesn't mean anything by itself. Rain doesn't mean anything by itself. The sun doesn't mean anything by itself. An acorn plus rain plus sun mean an oak tree. An oak tree doesn't mean anything by itself. The word "oak" doesn't mean anything by itself. Attached to a suffix, it means my family name. My family name means nothing by itself. Written under a published work, it means money. Money doesn't mean anything by itself. Its absence doesn't mean anything by itself. If the only way to get food is to get it in exchange for money (a rather prevalent type of connection throughout civilized history), its absence means death. Death means nothing by itself. Having someone point a loaded gun at you and asking them to pull the trigger for no reason whatsoever would be one's ultimate proof of the absence of meaning from life as well. Whoever would do that would definitely prove to me that for them, there was no meaning in it all after all. Whoever won't do it would have to have a "because" to explain why they won't do it -- and this "because" will constitute their personal meaning, connected to "everything" in such a way that they will be reluctant to just disconnect from "it all" meaninglessly, for shits and giggles, "for no reason whatsoever." From meaning, you can run but you can't hide!

So it raises dopamine levels in rodents? I believe it. Here's why I'm not so sure about humans: I come from Russia where pretty much every child of my generation was dosed with fish oil once or twice daily, it was mandatory -- especially in my family, with a pediatrician aunt supervising my nutrition/supplementation and a nurse grandmother administering it. (And, yes, they learned nutrition in med school and in nursing school, respectively, unlike MDs and nurses in this country.) I was supposed to take it using a "dessert" spoon (middle of the road in size between a teaspoon and a tablespoon) and it was strictly enforced (which it had to be, since I hated it, like most children do -- talk to any compatriot of mine aged over thirty and there's a 95% chance that they will shudder the moment you ask them if they had to drink spoonfuls of fish oil as kids.) There were multiple reasons for the practice, good ones all of them, but enhancing sexuality in three-year-olds wasn't one of them, I'm pretty sure. Incidentally, old medical books from all over the world advise fish oil intake on a regular basis in doses close to what I was getting, give or take, and consider it an obligatory supplement for growing children. The practice used to be part of medical standard in this country too -- e.g., I have an American medical encyclopedia from 1850 that spells out why it's such a good idea. However, the point is somewhat moot, because orgasmic pleasure is contingent on dozens of psychochemical reactions, not just on dopamine, and not even "primarily" dopamine. (Of course abnormally low dopamine levels will damage or destroy it, but that's a different issue.) If we talk hormonal back-up (which is not the whole story in any event), what makes or breaks orgasmic pleasure (I'm talking quality, not quantity) is the total workings of the whole hypothalamo-pituitary-reproductive hormonal axis, what we taoists would call "Kidney Yin Fluids." By the way, just the other day I saw a movie by the same title, Dopamine -- you might want to check it out!

Really sorry to hear about your health problem, Zenbrook. Why can't bad things stop happening to good people! Q: do you have/ did you ever have eczema or psoriasis? It occasionally predates AS, and in case it does, I might know what to do diet-wise with some precision. AS is occasionally triggered by prescription meds (especially corticosteroids, antibiotics, immunization shots, and many other toxic goodies) and, to my knowledge, responds to dedicated all-around liver detox protocols better than to most other interventions. However, an important strategy to consider would be complete elimination of all gluten-containing grains and any and all products made of these. The reason is that a lectin (a type of protein) found in wheat and all its relatives has a special affinity to the cartilage of the joints and gets deposited there, whereupon some people's immune systems (dazed and confused by childhood vaccinations) proceed to mistake it for some ancient pathogen or other (this protein is structually similar enough to some viruses, e.g., to be erroneously "recognized" as one of them by a confused immune system). If this happens, the immune system will attack the joints, and keep doing it for as long as you eat wheat and wheat-related (and other gluten-containing) grains, i.e., in a typical Western diet, daily. Much of arthritis out there is exactly of this scenario, due to the fact that modern wheat has been selectively bred for higher-than-normal protein content. It was supposed to make it more nutritious. "Normal" wheat had 2% protein, which didn't pose a problem for most people. "New and improved" wheat has up to 24% -- which translates into a twelvefold dose of the harmful lectin in each mouthful. Many a joint has ached from the assault! The according dietary changes would have to be rather drastic in this gluten-gobbling part of the world (you'd fare better in many parts of Asia, with their gluten-free rice for staple food). However, I've seen several "miraculous" cures brought about by this one dietary change alone.

Nice! -- although I have to mention, for the sake of traditionalists among us (I'm hoping I'm not the only one ), that some traditionalists might object to calling qigong or taijiquan forms a dance. Dances are for show, while high-level qigong is invisible, and high-level taijiquan is for hiding what you're doing rather than displaying it. So a mid-range practitioner will be able to demo the most beautiful form, a high-level master might show less, and the highest level "ti taiji," "taiji embodiment," won't show anything -- the beauty of his or her form is equal to its efficiency, which can become (in rare special cases) absolute. Like the wind whose dance you can't see, and can only guess at from the effects it has on the objects in its way. However, if you're looking specifically for outer beauty, I think nothing beats Chen, with its spectacular snake-like coilings and spirals (outer "show" of peng, which of course is the part of peng that only hints at the real thing, the invisible thing)... Chen Laojia Yi Lu, aka Old Frame One, and Chen Laojia Erlu, aka Old Frame Two, aka Cannon Fist, don't go overboard with outer show of it like Chen Xinjia (New Frame) forms; which one is more beautiful to look at is a matter of personal preference. My teacher says that Yang is like a river that flows over a smooth bed of sand; while Chen is like a river that flows over a bed of rocks and boulders. High-level Chen can make a truly spectacular splash running into those boulders, but the highest level form has a kind of superconductivity -- so the boulder doesn't know what hit it as the river dissolves it in its way!

There's marked leaning in Wu style, coupled with the deepest root of them all. There's no ball-of-foot stance in Chen style, we use the whole foot. So it isn't that... What "pinching the gua" means I don't know, it's a term I've never heard. I know how to "open" and "close" it, and this is indeed crucial. Personally, I work on rooting via the use of Wuxing and bagua -- you're dealing with thirteen phases of qi altogether and need to know them intimately so as to master them. You learn to discern the inherent, proprietary direction and quality of each incoming force, i.e. the phase of its qi. Earth rotates, Water flows down, Fire ascends, Metal contracts, Wood expands. Throw in the bagua directions and you have your Northeast Fire ascending force, e.g, which you counteract with Water from Southwest...

Thanks, Trinity! I learned it from a student of Swami Satchidananda's. Basically, I've described all it is, except you're also sitting in full lotus for it, and you have to be able to reach your opposite big toes with your criss-crossed hands (I think), and aren't supposed to attempt it before you've become prficient in hatha yoga and in a bunch of gazing meditations (with a candle, a black dot on a yellow field, and all the chakra mandalas.) I'm extremely rusty -- haven't done any serious yoga in a few years -- but when I did practice the Seven Seals, it topped the list of difficult practices -- for one thing, you can't breathe while doing it, for another, it's trippy as hell, like an instant version of some sensory-deprivation immersion or other. If you try it, start with, like, five seconds, and don't go beyond thirty -- warning warning warning, disclaimer disclaimer disclaimer! -- I ain't no swami, don't learn yoga from me!

Taoism can't be a religion in this Western sense, because the creator of all that is in taoism is neither a supreme being nor a force. Which gives us a neat alternative definition of Indo-European religions: "a belief or system of beliefs in mommy or, more often, daddy complementary to the actual ones -- someone bigger-better to create ME than the real-life mommy and daddy." Which makes any and all Indo-European religions a neurotic quest for better parents. Which means that any science growing out of this quest is every bit as agenda-driven, and therefore biased, and therefore fundamentally false, as any and all gods created in the human mind out of this need. If science is "observation of the natural phenomena," it helps for the observer to be unbiased as to what she is and isn't willing to observe. If all she's looking for is a better set of parents, the way our modern science works, better "creating forces" to harness than the ones actually in existence, her science will still be a religion. In this sense, our Western science hasn't been born yet -- we have never observed natural phenomena for what they are without trying to make them into something else. Moreover, we only observe them via opposing them, always taking a purported "objective" view, i.e. removing the scientist himself from the phenomena under scrutiny. It is still a religious stance to take, and a punitive one at that -- "separation from god" is just another way to say "scientific objectivity," and our modern scientist eagerly perpetuates the tradition of classical Christian punishment for sins consisting in one's separation from god in all his supposedly non-religious, "scientific" endeavours. Taoist sciences, on the other hand, are designed to study natural phenomena via merging with them rather than via observing or otherwise opposing them. That's how they came up with the microcosm that is no different from the macrocosm, and with a general sense that being human ain't no punishment, failing, or limitation. Being just human -- but fully human -- sufficies to be a force of nature, so forces of nature can be studied within, without, or without making a distinction between "inside" and "outside," a false one.

Good when the kidneys are in a good condition, not so good when they aren't. Ears can be worked on to improve the condition of the kidneys; I know a yoga routine where you pull on them, massage them, fold them, and so on. (Another one involving the ears, the Seven Seals, is a tad more extreme -- you close your ears with your thumbs, use the rest of your fingers to close your eyes and your nostrils, close your mouth, your anus and your -- hmm, I only know the female version, what would a guy close for the Seventh Seal? anybody? ) More ears trivia: in Russia, a child gets her ears pulled on her birthday, the number of pulls corresponding to her age, by every family member and guest, with chanted wishes of healthy growth; some acupuncture points on the ears are very significant diagnostically, and if they are spontaneously painful (without any stimulation), it may mean whatever illness the person is suffering from can't be cured by any methods; a qigong routine involving the ears known as Beating The Heavenly Drum causes excessive yang to descend from the head to the kidneys; very good after using your head too much, before meditation, or to almost instantly cure a headache; gold earrings in the acupuncture point corresponding to the eyes, when worn since early childhood, supposedly prevent myopia; in taoist Face Reading divination, ears are studied for their position on the head ("lucky" ears have to sit just so, neither stick out nor be pressed too tightly against the skull), their size, shape, fleshiness, color, brightness; all observations are used to draw conclusions about the person's character and to predict the future. My own ears are atavistic (with attached earlobes), which might explain why I look to the past for wisdom, not to the present or the future. Such ears can hear the sound of the time long gone, the time when everybody had them -- and miss it more than most...

Last year I was at a party where the host, a high-level taiji player, got methodically and seriously drunk and invited everybody to push him over while he was standing on one leg sipping his brandy. Everybody tried, no one succeeded. He was like an unmovable mountain, even the brandy in his glass didn't move except down his gullet! The same guy, a year later, lost a battle to a picture on the wall. He was expecting an important, and disturbing in its nature, phone call. The phone rang; it was a cordless which he usually keeps downstairs while the base sits upstairs in the bedroom, but this time, for some reason, as it kept ringing, the guy couldn't find it downstairs, started rushing, and eventually rushed upstairs in great hurry thinking it's there, on the base. As he was running up the stairs, the phone stopped ringing. He turned around in great frustration and, being a big guy, smashed his shoulder into a glass-framed picture on the wall over the staircase. The picture started falling; he threw himself after it to grab it and prevent from breaking, and momentarily forgot all about his feet, one of which missed a stair. He tumbled down the stairs and landed on that unfortunate foot with all his weight, clutching the intact, and now deeply hated, picture in his hands. The whole episode is interesting in that the root appears to be largely non-physical, and the worry over that disturbing phone call "uprooted" a physically formidable person enough to temporarily cancel his skill.

As an aside: I'm a big believer in high fat diets in general being very healthy, provided one chooses one's fats wisely. Good fats to choose are animal fat (known to our overwhelmingly slender great-grandmothers as lard) from healthy animals, butter and ghee (ditto), unmolested and very fresh vegetable oils (but not for cooking except with coconut, sesame, or palm oils, and excluding GM oils like canola and corn), fish oil; and strict avoidance of margarine and all refined, hydrogenated, partially hydrogenated, and toxic-source oils (like grapeseed oil which comes exclusively from heavily sprayed crops of grapes, peanut oil for the same reason, and anything else you can't find in its organic unrefined cold-pressed incarnation. Oils and fats absorb toxic chemicals like a sponge.) I've maintained a high-fat diet since I was a teenager, and I have never experienced any body shape fluctuations and have never gained an ounce since I stopped growing. I have never experienced any diet-mediated hormonal fluctuations either, except in the one year when I experimented with vegetarianism on low fat. The vegetarian/low fat diet made me first self-righteous, then bitchy, then energy-depleted, but within a week of resuming my normal eating, I was cured.

I've studied cognitive neuroscience and, at one point, did undertake figuring out specifically which natural substances affect the dopaminergic pathways and receptors. The ones known to the above science were, in the order of decreasing efficiency: opiates (and a plethora of street drugs) nicotine caffeine chocolate Fava beans (and a couple more exotic ones) In addition, there's "semi-natural" ways (i.e. natural substances in unnatural amounts) to address one's dopaminergic system with combinations of certain free form amino acids -- e.g., l-tryptophan with dl-phenylalanine with l-tyrosine, give or take an ingredient (these cocktails are more efficient if put together individually, with a good understanding of the underlying problem and the "where do we want to go from here" dynamics.) I know this and that about fish oil as well, and what it will generate in the body by way of neurotransmitters is some neuroendocrine prostaglandins. It may also be useful to facilitate neuronal conductivity since if you have enough in your diet (more than enough will merely act as a good laxative -- also useful of course for people who are any which way constipated, including sexually) -- as I was saying, if you get enough it will be utilized by the brain to form an insulating sheath on the neuronal dendrites, so that any and all impulses will have an easier time traveling between synapses (twelve times faster, and with less dissipating noise, than those of the chronically deficient folks). However, there's absolutely no dopamine in fish oil, nor specific affinity to the dopaminergic system, and things it will smooth out are overall-health related. Orgasmic success is, of course, overall-health-related as well, so if one is looking at this part of the picture specifically, one might notice some improvement. Although I do think constipation will be relieved too, and dry skin, and brittle bones, and what-not... As for antidepressants, they destroy sex whether they affect the dopaminergic system or not. As for avoidance of caffeine... wrong move. Strong black coffee is sexy. As for junk carbs, they aren't good for anyone for any purpose. As for dark chocolate... does nothing for me, because its theobromine et al are sometimes converted to dopamine in some people but not all the time and not in all people, and my brain obviously doesn't know how to do it. As for nicotine... the safest way to keep one's dopaminergic system in good repair, but the current belief system has taught everybody not to. As for street drugs, they just burn the freakin' dopamine receptors to cinders in a very short time so I wouldn't go there. As for fava beans -- surprisingly efficient! -- that's because they have straight-up dopamine, no additional metobolic steps necessary. As for the best aphrodisiac I know of experientially -- it's being madly in love with someone intensely sexy.

Poor you! There's two great methods I've tried successfully (on blisters from burns though, not from walking... I never wear uncomfortable shoes! but once upon a time, I gave myself an adventurous full-contact moxa treatment with raw garlic slices for insulation over the points -- I guess an empirical taoist will do dumb first-time experiments from time to time, it's unavoidable -- so, well, qi solicited in the process was so powerful that its painkiller effect was absolutely 100%, I felt strong and exquisite pulsations all along the treated meridian and zero pain -- and the only thing that caused me to stop was the smell of roasted garlic when some smell of roasted meat started to mix in. I gave myself third degree burns which started hurting only an hour later... but how... and the blister on my wrist literally swallowed it, it was the size of an egg!) ...so, without further digressions: 1. Crush some fresh basil leaves into a poultice, apply to the blister, cover with a gauze pad, secure with some adhesive tape or a wide Band-aid. Change the dressing at least daily; twice daily is better. 2. Even simpler: buy a strong propolis extract in alcohol (the 40 or 50% one, not the 10 or 15% variety -- both are often available at HFSs). Apply to the blister liberally. It may sting for a minute but act as a painkiller (among other things) from then on. Cover with a Band-aid, and don't disturb; reapply daily, or every couple of days.

I saw a documentary about Tibetan yogi hermits with rare footage of a monk demonstrating some secret techniques apparently never seen before by outsiders. Indeed, I'd never seen anything like that, and had to reconsider what "yoga" is. We are used to those static slow versions whose effects "implode" -- well, the monk was doing the opposite. His routine was a rapid succession of explosive fajin-like moves executed from the lotus pose, accompanied by loud and weird sounds and culminating in his body being propelled a few feet upward and then forcefully slamming down with a mighty thud, as though his body becomes first weightless and then much heavier than normal. Yin-yang... Those up and down jumps on his butt had an inhuman, I'd even say non-mammal quality, I've never seen anything move like that except some of those jumping beetles that occasionally get into the house in summertime and propel themselves in random directions with a loud clicking sound, bouncing off the walls and the ceiling like a little rocket. The monk's whole body seemed to make a similar snapping sound of a suddenly released tight spiral, and then hit the floor like a cannonball. He also slapped his arms and torso, pummeling his whole body mightily -- reminded me of the routine my taiji teacher has us do before and after class, just slapping away ("not to hurt yourself but to keep your body awake"). Some of the moves the monk made definitely had high-level fajin features -- they were too fast to even understand what they were. Far out.