Aetherous

2 minutes ago, thelerner said:

Likewise, if a daughter or friend had an abortion, would one be okay with them being locked up for years?  

Hard questions. 

 

Think of it like this: if a daughter or friend murdered a 12 year old, would you be okay with them being locked up for years? That's not such a hard question.

21 minutes ago, thelerner said:

Woman young and old die when abortion is made illegal.

 

I sympathize with (the idea of) the woman in poverty who truly can't afford to raise a child, and would simply be bringing a life into this world only to starve it despite her best wishes otherwise. But perhaps there's a way for the child, once born, to be taken care of by others.
 

Or a woman who truly can't live with the idea and reality of bringing a rapist's offspring into the world.

Some things don't have solutions, or at least not easy ones. Is the solution to this dilemma you present that we permit the mass murder of the innocent? Is that truly a better result?

37 minutes ago, liminal_luke said:

At what point in development does a potential human cross over and become an actual human being?  People can give various answers to this question based on belief or religious conviction but very few of us, if any, know.  Aetherous has said that he believes life begins at conception.  Nevertheless, he´s willing to consider the morning after pill in cases where a pregnancy has resulted from rape.  Some Christians go further and prohibit birth control, prohibit masturbation on the grounds that it represents the spilling of sacred seed.  Others allow abortion up to a certain point in the pregnancy process.  Still others, allow abortion right up until almost the moment of birth itself.

 

Whose right?  Perhaps there´s an enlightened sage somewhere who could give an enlightened answer but such sages are scarce in the halls of congress.  Since our lawmakers are unqualified to answer this question with any great confidence, they have no business making laws about it.  This matter is thus best left to the person most directly effected, the pregnant woman.

 

She isn't an enlightened sage, so I can't agree that it's best left up to the individual...especially when approximately half of individuals have been successfully brainwashed to think they have the choice to kill their babies, that it's okay, etc...when their "friends" inside of their ideological bubble actually encourage it.

We do need the truly enlightened sages guiding our society. Society needs to listen.

 

I wish you'd honestly address the issue...when does life begin? It's not a hard question. What is a sign of being alive, scientifically speaking? When do some mothers (the ones who want their babies) consider their baby to be a baby? If you have an opinion on the subject, which you do, it should come from a factual basis...do you know why you have the ideas that you do?

2 minutes ago, thelerner said:

We all know we're talking about abortion for poor people, right?  That if you have enough money, you'll have a choice.  If you're poor you don't or risk your life with an illegal back alley abortion.  We're clear that those are the real choices we're debating here?

 

I mean, that might be on topic for the thread's title...but I think this thread isn't about certain people having access to abortion and others not having access.

 

2 minutes ago, thelerner said:

Speaking of the debate, at its logical extreme, if we consider a fetus to have the full rights of a citizen then abortion would be premeditated murder.

 

It's not an "extreme", although I understand it seems that way to people who assume abortion is the norm/moderate position.

There are many countries where abortion is fully illegal because a fetus is considered a human life. Even in our country, we have legally considered the fetus to have personhood at viability (arbitrarily).

Think about a mother who actually wants her child, and let's say she's at 9 weeks. Her and her husband have been trying for years to get pregnant, and now it has finally happened thanks to costly fertility treatments. Then someone who is jealous comes and beats her so as to end the pregnancy, and the embryo dies.

Does this mother not consider it to be a premeditated murder of her baby, who she was already starting to care for?

Is the law not there to serve individuals, like this mother who has been wronged? Why, in the US, should this case merely be considered "battery"? A human life that had its own heartbeat was snuffed out in this example.

 

2 minutes ago, thelerner said:

In many states the woman, the doctor, the nurse would be killed under the death penalty.  Anyone who helped her or knew about it would get a lengthy sentence.  If the father knew, he could be killed or go to prison for decades.   In states without the death penalty people would just go to prison for decades.

 

If it was criminal, there would be criminal consequences to committing the crime, just like any other crime.

I don't think, if the law changed, that people would be convicted retroactively.

 

I'm personally not in favor of the death penalty, since I think outside of a war or self defense scenario, it's no one's right to end another's life...and I think it harms the people whose job it is to perform the execution. My view of justice is that it's not merely a punishment, but also a protection for others in society...so let's say a serial killer, they should get life imprisonment in order to protect the public primarily, and not for the purpose of vengeance against them.

 

2 minutes ago, thelerner said:

To fully ensure the safety and survival of all citizens when a woman find out she was pregnant she would have to celebrate then registrate, ie notify the government or her gynecologist would have to.  If anything happened, a miscarriage, she'd need to produce a body, no matter how small and an investigation and autopsy would have to be performed.  With no body, she could be liable for the death penalty, because there was a murder and she's the number one suspect, along with her family and friends. 

 

Could be...although we all understand that miscarriages happen, and I think if things were this strict it'd be more than a little insane.

 

2 minutes ago, thelerner said:

Needless to say the pill would be not only be illegal but treated as poison, in certain circumstances it can keep an embryo from attaching.

 

I like your post, because I think things like this make a good point.

As a healthcare practitioner, I do think the pill and intrauterine devices are often harmful to the woman (I've treated them in clinic where we find out the side effects). Messing with hormones so as to become infertile, I do think could be considered "poison". But this is not to say that I'm opposed to birth control.

 

The birth control issue is really a Catholic thing only.

If it were to be legally decided that an embryo at conception is a human life, then yes this would be something to address.

 

2 minutes ago, thelerner said:

Anyone found using it would be arrested with some kind of murder charge.  Same with the day after pill.  Again this is mostly against the poor, the rich will find ways around it.  The poor and middle class woman will live or die in back alley abortions.

 

The day after pill is even trickier since it's not "birth control" but is really a very early abortion.

I tend to view pregnancy as a scale, where at conception a human life begins, and at birth the human life comes out...and along that scale it's more and more severe ethically for an abortion to take place. While it might be murder to take a day after pill, at least for me, that's much less worse than a late term abortion. In cases like being raped, where the woman didn't have the option to use birth control or even abstinence, I could personally be understanding up to a certain point...because the human life is so undeveloped that, let's say prior to 6 weeks, it doesn't even have a heartbeat yet. So something taken the day after is the least harmful option.

Truly...it's a difficult issue.

 

2 minutes ago, thelerner said:

Abortion is a hard subject, painful.  I fully respect those who wouldn't have one, but I'm don't think the right should be taken away from all.  In truth I don't think it can be.  It's the womans body, if they want to abort they will find a way. 

 

Why do you repeat that it's the woman's body? The fetus isn't her body. This is a basic and obvious scientific fact. For a husband whose wife got pregnant, when he wants a child, he also doesn't think of his future baby as "her body", and would be pretty distraught if she decided to kill their baby because she thought it was her body only.

 

Regarding fully respecting certain people...I've had numerous friends who got abortions. They felt like they could confide that in me, at times when they had kept it a secret. I respect them, and am understanding that our culture is confused and brainwashed on this issue...and I didn't chastise them with even a single word for having done it (which I logically think is murder). Just something that might not be obvious in an internet discussion forum.

 

2 minutes ago, thelerner said:

The good news is the abortion rate has been going down steadily for years.  It'd be wise to know what factors contribute to that and build on them.  To make sure woman know they have a choice and that there babies, wanted or unwanted can find a good home. 

 

The kind of choice I like is whether to adopt or not. One of my friends ended up doing that after her first abortion, which was very hard for her, and while she missed her baby she did have a much better time with that choice.

24 minutes ago, Spotless said:

buffoons do what buffoons do - the play their buffoons.

 

13 minutes ago, ilumairen said:

And perhaps you just meant buffoon? 

 

Maybe he meant bassoons?

 

 

5 minutes ago, Spotless said:

The above was in reference to:

 

“Some speak of murder - but  a great many would say that no Being has been killed. Over half of the inhabitants on this planet would say that no Being has been killed - that a possible body for that Being was dis-allowed - but no murder took place”

 

Perhaps you Aetherous should examine your bubble instead of projecting it upon others. By far the majority of humans on this planet believe in reincarnation - and MANY studies show that a very very sizable percentage of Christians do as well.

 

Your positioning and insulting reference and lackadaisical  reference is why joining in this conversation was done with great trepidation. Buffoons unable to respect intellectual discourse because of extreme rigidized anchoring in core beliefs.

 

Even a Buffoon can look up such statistics - and even a Buffoon can politely question what one was referencing - but most buffoons do what buffoons do - the play their buffoons.

 

Hey buddy, I engaged you intellectually without insulting you, and you didn't come back with anything intellectual in response, but just tried to call me a buffoon multiple times. Nice argument.

8 hours ago, Spotless said:

Over half of the inhabitants on this planet would say that no Being has been killed - that a possible body for that Being was dis-allowed - butno murder took place because ownership had not transferred from the mother and her body to a birthed child that is separate and autonomous in breath and body.

 

 

I know you were just presenting ideas to ponder, but this one in the bold sounds like an attempt at stating a fact. Did you take a survey of "the inhabitants of the planet"? No. Someone else could just as easily say that 75% of all people in the world believe that a being has been killed...how does anyone know these stats? It might seem likely that your statement is true, to you, if you live in a liberalized area, because you're used to a majority of people having that certain opinion...but there's a whole other world outside of that bubble.

 

Also, "ownership had not transferred from the mother and her body to a birthed child that is separate and autonomous"...well, a child doesn't have to be birthed in order to be autonomous. That's why we speak of "viability" - the point at which the child could survive on its own outside of the womb, prior to birth. There's another aspect to this: who says that a mother "owns" the unborn? She's responsible for it, but it's a unique life (has its own heartbeat, will later develop into a full grown person), and she doesn't OWN it.

44 minutes ago, Harmen said:

I am sorry, I don't have the equipment to make a recording :-( . I find the workbook as it is not very useful for self study. So I am working an an expanded version that I hope to finish in about a year or so.

 

Thanks, I look forward to it or a future seminar if I'm not able to make this one.

5 hours ago, liminal_luke said:

This is a beautiful story and what makes it beautiful, in my opinion, is the woman´s life-affirming choice.

 

Making a choice isn't the part that made the story beautiful, Luke. Not in the least.

 

5 hours ago, liminal_luke said:

But what if instead of choosing to have her son the woman was forced to give birth?

 

"Forced to give birth" is a very weird way to put it...when the alternative to giving birth (which takes about 9 months and is inconvenient for the individual only) is murdering another human being (which lasts forever, and is infringing on someone's else's right to life).

I'm often "forced to" be around certain people that I dislike...that doesn't give me the right to murder them in order to not feel "forced". That's not my "choice" to make.

Parents are "forced to" support their children until 18, or even further...again, they can't murder their kids as a convenient alternative.

No one thinks of this as the government "forcing them" to raise their own kids.

 

Basically, your way of looking at it assumes that abortion was an option in the first place. It's not, ethically speaking. There is getting pregnant and giving birth, and then there is not getting pregnant. Just like, I can choose to go to the store, or not...and choosing to go to the store doesn't include murdering people there who annoy me so that I have a better shopping experience. That's something I could do, but ethically, it's not up for grabs: to do such a thing is absolutely unethical.

Of course, people can choose to abort...the current US law unfortunately allows it, and even if it didn't, people could still choose it...just like they can choose to murder someone, or anything else with severe consequences.

 

On the aspect of someone being raped and then having to go through 9 months of being reminded of that, among other things...abortion is still far more horrible than that, for quite a few reasons. I also think much less harm is done in the case of a morning after pill than abortion, even if human life begins at conception...and perhaps such a thing could be reserved only for those circumstances? I don't know the solution to every tricky situation.

Here's something I do know...liberals keep trying to gain more ground in murdering children, by insisting on late term abortions, beyond viability, and even killing newborns. If someone was raped and got pregnant, there is a lot of time prior to all of this bullshit, where they could've had an abortion...why late term? Why try to get mothers choosing to kill their newborns like the Virginia governor? It's unnecessary in this absolute worst case rape-scenario, and is simply disgusting.

 

5 hours ago, liminal_luke said:

For me, being pro-choice is not about being pro-abortion.  It´s about respecting other people.

 

But the aborted one is a human being, and a person. Its life is taken for someone else's convenience, at a time when it doesn't have a voice to speak up for itself. Why do you not respect that person? I think it all boils down to some like yourself refusing to admit that the unborn are actually human beings in development.

I challenge you, Luke, to truly think about when a human life becomes a person, and if you're truly able to tell how that happens based on your definition, or if you're just guessing. Also, question if your view is established on scientific grounds, or if it attempts to ignore that.

 

5 hours ago, liminal_luke said:

It´s about not assuming that everybody else ought to live by my values.  It´s about giving people the freedom to make their own decisions about their own lives.

 

We don't have the "freedom" to take another person's life (even if the US law right now says that we do). That's not freedom at all...that's the opposite of freedom for that person, who lost their freedom to live. And murder isn't a "freedom", it's a crime (although current US law turns a blind eye to abortion being murder).

The same thing could happen to you, as happened to them, where for some reason it's thought that you don't really qualify as human or worthy of life (in fact, it does in other countries).

Also, there are countries in which abortion is currently illegal...and therefore people don't have the "freedom" to kill innocent humans in those places. The ones who want to don't think of abortion as a "freedom", as you're privileged to do, but instead think of it as something criminal...which it actually is.

Also, "freedom to make their own decisions about their own lives"...abortion is making a decision about someone else's life much more than it is about making a decision for one's own life. If it was about one's own life, then no one would care; at least I wouldn't. I often hear the nonsense, "men shouldn't tell women what to do with their vaginas, only women can" (despite the fact that MANY women are pro-life)...but this issue has nothing to do with a vagina. I don't care what women do with their uteri.

The point is that there's a separate human life involved, so it's not whatsoever a "decision about their own lives".

1 hour ago, ralis said:

female reproductive rights

 

No one has the right to take another person's life. This issue isn't about women, but is about soon to be babies. Your terminology is intentionally manipulative and misleading.

 

1 hour ago, ralis said:

why not fund sex education in schools, free birth control with annual examinations for health. Then there will be no more whining!

 

Why DON'T liberals change the conversation to this, instead of continually fighting for the ability to abort? Let's also throw in making it easier for couples to adopt children.

 

1 hour ago, ralis said:

My guess is that some of you are under a religious imposition that forbids birth control, most likely Catholicism.

 

I'm certainly not.

24 minutes ago, Pilgrim said:

all the talking about it here did nothing to change the ways of the world and it is a pointless exercise

Respect to whatever you decide to do, in regard to participating in this thread or not...
 

There's something to be said about planting seeds in people's minds (through discussion, as challenging as it might be to "discuss" in the midst of two sides digging in their heels, with no apparent open mindedness)...and if others eventually end up seeing that those seeds are true through their own reasoning and experience, they'll end up nourishing those seeds on their own (having their own ideas and beliefs about things) and their lives will end up changing entirely as a result. They can go from apathetic about the murder of innocent beings, to someone who strives to protect every life. But this process must be natural, and it normally takes years for a seed (an idea we've heard about somewhere) to develop into anything...so contrary to this discussion being pointless, it can be fruitful if you look at from the perspective of years or decades rather than whether we can instantly convince someone else of anything.

Or we can remain silent as approximately half of our population thinks murdering innocent humans is a choice they can make in life. But I tend to think that's more of a pointless exercise (the milquetoast silencing of the truth), compared to sharing ideas which might eventually help people find a better way of thinking and being.

One life changed can potentially create a domino effect in the world, or that person may end up being incredibly influential for many others. Thinking that we're individually incapable of making a positive dent in the world just prevents us from ever doing so.

30 minutes ago, liminal_luke said:

I suppose I could speculate.

 

You already did, and I'm calling you out on that.

 

There's nothing more horrific which would make someone choose abortion as a "least horrific" option.

22 minutes ago, liminal_luke said:

it´s usually best to choose the least horrific -- and sometimes that´s abortion

 

Could you be specific about what would be more horrific, which would make one choose this horror?

2 hours ago, cheya said:

My last dental X-ray had something odd in it... the dentist confirmed that I was regrowing a wisdom tooth!  It was extracted decades ago, and was not there 5 years ago. Alas it was not intentional (woulda done it on the other side first, ), so I can't tell you how my body did it, lol.  Seemed REALLY weird to me, but the dentist says it happens relatively often... So it is possible...

Have read that the old masters would replace their teeth as they wore out. I always filed that under myth, but... who knows? 

 

Wow, you got some extra kidney qi! Must be practicing well lately.

I don't know about zhineng qigong, but there are a few different ways that I think about this...

1) The toes tend to have energy or light beaming in and out of them similar to the fingers, so the direction that the beams point cause a different effect at that level of the body. The toes are at the lowest level of the body, dealing with our grounding and connection to earth, and the beams are pointing inward rather than being pointed parallel forward, or outward. In contrast to those other two types, the beams cross each other when pointed inward...potentially creating a kind of closed loop of energy. So I tend to think this posture has more of a closing off effect on our physical energy, and also closes off our connection to the earth to some extent...versus if we stand with toes pointed out, we're more open to the outer world and energy is more able to connect our legs and feet with the earth.

2) The symbolism of being pigeon toed has some impact on the effect. It makes us less stable...physically, and also metaphorically. On a positive side, we could say that it's training us to become more capable of dealing with instability, aka, working on our balance, by making us deal with being imbalanced. On the other hand, toes pointed out seems to me to cultivate more confidence, capability of reacting through movement, etc.

 

3) The stretches on various fascia and muscles, as well as the contractions which are caused in the muscle, has some effect. I've heard one teaching say that this posture stretches open the fascia of the sacrum and lower lumbar in the back, and so it tends to cause more of a du mai opening with yang qi rising effect.

For zhan zhuang, depends on what your personal teacher says if you have one...but I tend to think that the standing posture should be pain free. We want qi to flow, not to get stuck, and we don't want to injure ourselves with something so harmless as standing upright. So for me, if I am practicing standing qigong, if there is a pain I adjust the posture to something that works better.

This is not to say the pigeon toed type of stance is necessarily so bad that it's forbidden. Every different thing we do has a different effect, and sometimes we want the different effect to happen for some reason. For instance, if someone was doing a method that involved internal work, which required not being so connected to the outside environment, then maybe turning the toes inward could help them with that. If the practice was about raising the yang, maybe if the person was trying to transmute qi physically, then they could do this so that the du mai would be stretched open a little more. If it was someone who was already over confident in life, they could experience feeling a bit more unstable and insecure by going pigeon toed, for the sake of balance...some people are too confident, loud, positive, outgoing, scattered by being connected to outer things, etc. So sometimes if you know what you're doing, it can be good to do different methods that cultivate something you need.

It could've just been a kind of chaos magic, law of attraction, or placebo effect type thing, when Yoda's problems stopped after applying what appeared to be a solution to the problems.

Or maybe the talismans etc were legit. I mean, that's truly a possibility too. The source of them is silly, but sometimes silly people can have learned magic, too.

Either way, it was unfortunate that he felt like it was bad enough that he had to leave the forum and break contact with his fellow cultivators. Such a thing, in my mind, really looks like the beginnings of joining a dangerous cult. As such, I hope he's not associated with Mak Tin Si anymore, and is carefree and enjoying life.

My view is that a human life begins when the sperm enters the egg, at conception.

Some people think that the soul enters at conception due to a microscopic image of it apparently generating a flash of light...but there isn't actually a flash of light that occurs visibly, as you can see in the hyperlinked article. Other people might think the soul enters at the first breath when born, due to the notions of the breath being related to God's spirit...I don't think that, and think that our notion of a soul exists in the baby in the womb. Perhaps such a thing as the soul, if you even believe in it, isn't visible due to being of the spiritual rather than the material, and thus we can never be sure at what time it enters a body...and maybe souls don't "enter" bodies or individual lives, but are an intrinsic connection at all times with the body/life.

I recall that ancient Greek philosophers would equate the soul with life itself...so really, any person who has a heartbeat or is alive otherwise has a soul...more of less, whether anyone knows it or not. They also say souls are immortal, so they survive the death of the physical body, and existed prior to it. Finally, there are more perceptive mothers who attest that they're aware of their future babies, as well as their personalities, long before they're born...I might recall even hearing about a mother who knew the child (mentally or supercognitively) prior to conception (we could think of it like the spirit of the child had chosen the mother and the family to join prior to the act). So perhaps it could be said that the baby's soul is there even prior to conception, and during the love making, and the conception is simply the opportunity to become human, and embodied. If we believe in this soul business at all.

Aside from souls. At something like 6 weeks after conception, an individual heartbeat can be detected...which is definitely the sign of an individual human life. It's not a useless appendage which the mother grew, but is a little human in development (obviously).

 

Legally speaking, in the US, the standard was set that they think "fetal viability" is when it's a separate human life, worthy of the right to life. This is unscientific to say the least. Prior to viability, it's just that this unique human is dependent on something aside from itself (its mother) to continue living...that doesn't mean it's not a human. If we put an adult on life support, are they no longer human and worthy of living? The obvious answer is no - they're still a person. So, the law is currently dead wrong on this matter, and as such, ethically we are a nation that murders innocent humans for convenience, and arbitrarily decides on who is a person and who isn't.

Especially when a fetus resembles a developed human being while still being prior to viability, I think it's undeniable to consider it as a unique human life. Only the most depraved of people would agree to kill such a harmless thing for any reason.

 

Many people are that depraved.

Lately, some on the left have gone so far as to suggest that it's okay for a baby to be born, and then the doctors to talk with the mother and decide on whether the baby should continue living or not. See here. Currently that's the more extreme stance, whereas the more "moderate" leftist stance is that late term abortions are okay, as 2020 candidate Beto O'Rourke has clarified as his position. In a decade or two from now, I predict that the left will be arguing that newborns and even toddlers aren't really persons and that they should be allowed to legally kill them...and half of the country will unthinkingly jump on that bandwagon, just as they'll jump on the Virginia governor's bandwagon soon enough. Maybe they'll make the argument that because they're incapable of speaking fluent English, their brains are so undeveloped as to not be human.

Better to stick with science, and understand when a human life starts. And better to be ethical, and not depraved.

1 hour ago, joeblast said:

Who are you and what's your agenda?  My first guess would be you are but one of the many sotg has turned away, and thus you now have an agenda against him.  You're grapsing whatever you can to throw at a wall and you know nothing about what you're speaking of, you've conflated a handful of groups in the process, and you appear to just be a jilted non-student with a chip on his shoulder.

 

Sotg isnt a daoist master, so why it is that you're talking shit about him for not doing daoist-ey things is idiotic.  Its not "valid taoist training" because its not daoist training (its more like a toolkit of the gods, as it were,) and timing was perhaps the main reason he called it lone man pai - it was just after the "western mo pai" group had been jumping the shark for years here trying to say they were training mo pai with half baked scraplets and not only with zero blessing from the lineage, its elders, masters, and spirits thereof - but with their explicit rejection.  Those guys had a forum, and when they let it lapse, sotg swiped the forum name and began teaching his own stuff there, and it has since moved on to other forums.  You can maybe complain about perhaps glomming some traffic but beyond that you are off in left field.  Your daoism, pai gripes are entirely inapplicable and are just you ignorantly bitching.

 

Look, there's no such thing as spiritual welfare (sorry socialists, leftists, progressives) so you either put in da time or you dont get da shine.  One has to have methods that work if one has made some decent levels of achievement.  One isnt going to make attainment practicing garbage or a mishmash of shit.  Is that an agreeable angle?

 

 

I trained with sotg for like 4 or 5 years and served as a sort of forum elder there, helping train people - partly because when he showed up here and I interacted with him and got to know him, he's a good guy with a good heart - and that's why he didnt charge anything for a long long time, living pretty barebones the entire time.  His practices are indeed super strong, which was partly why my breathwork material is included with all of his material, with my explicit permission.  I believed in his effort and it was my little part to help keep a focus on grounding and energy balance, it was all time well spent.

 

There were times he would do transmissions, and sometimes they were an entire weekend, nonstop.  At minimum an order of magnitude stronger than the other ~5 I have met and received various transmissions from in my lifetime.  (And that includes a similar amount of time training Max's stuff and training with him in person numerous times.  Now perhaps I "never experienced his full power" or something, but regardless....no offense brotha Max, wasnt even close.)  Those weekend ones were so intense, at times it would almost be debilitating, like I had a 4 trillion candlepower lighthouse in the middle of my head, coming out of my eye sockets, my nose, the sutures in my cranium - he didnt even have to say when the transmission started, there was no mistaking it - and it lasted as long as the transmission lasted. 

 

 

So I dont know what your problem is bub, but here's someone with knowledge and experience in these matters to say that you are talking completely out of your ass.  The 3 most likely places you come from are -rejected student, -"western mo pai," or one of Drew's students, since Drew rarely misses an opportunity to write 10,000 words and shit on anyone who thinks anything less than eternal celibacy is the one and only path to anything whatsoever.  Originally the discussions about Drew were merely discussions about the celibacy angle, until "Drew heard we were talking about him" and thus developed a chip on his shoulder, as evidenced by his screeds in that other thread.

 

Garbage shitposting like beachbum's (and drew's for that matter) reflect far more on beachbum than anyone else.  This is not even on topic for this thread, which is Longmen Pai.  That you cant even get this simple thing straight and just have to keep shitposting numerous times and slandering someone's name who absolutely does not deserve it - someone has to call this bullshit out.

 

My first impression of this lonemanpai stuff has been that it was something bogus and a hodge podge of things, created by someone who is probably not good to train with due to being negative.

But I 99.99% trust what joeblast says, having met him and knowing of his experience over the years, so my opinion is changing entirely now.

I think it's interesting, and then the writing quickly devolves into something that's destructive to experiment with.

On 11/15/2018 at 9:55 PM, Aetherous said:

I recently got interested in this.

 

I took the advice of a passive income investor, and did research looking for high yield funds which had dividend yields that either consistently increased or didn't drop down for over 5 years, whose stock price tended to rise over time more or less...in sectors like real estate where it's more reliable than stocks, and perhaps real estate indexes. I put together a group which (when I last checked) when combined brought home over an 8% dividend yield.

For those who don't know about this...that wouldn't be the total return for the year, it would just be the dividend payouts. If the prices went up, the returns would be higher than that.

 

When I actually jump into this, I'll want to check how these are doing each month and listen to any news about them...definitely more hands on than long term index investing. I plan on using this high dividend strategy in a Roth IRA, so that when the time comes that I'm no longer reinvesting dividends, I'll simply be able to withdraw the money/receive the dividends as a cash flow without paying taxes.

Here were ones I picked, which more or less fit the requirements (if not, for other reasons they seemed good):

25% HEP

20% KBWY

15% GLAD

25% ARI

5% APTS
5% DEA
5% O

On dividend investing, please anyone feel free to correct me or share any tips.

 

I am very slowly learning about dividend investing, due to having a busy life. The post of mine above wasn't necessarily something good to follow.

I've learned recently that with dividend yields, the percentage they pay out as the dividend comes out of the value of the stock...it's not something extra added on to the stock. So when they disperse the dividends, the stock price falls by that same amount, and due to other fluctuations this is just not so noticeable.

 

But the key takeaway is that the yield isn't extra money. You could have a non-dividend paying stock, sell a fraction of it in order to pocket that money, and have the same effect.

Finding dividend stocks with a high yield seems smart if you don't know what you're doing, like me...it seems like you get a higher percentage of extra money which you can do with as you please...but in reality, you have to look at the return on investment altogether. You have to know that it's a good stock, and not just a good yield.

Example: let's say you invest $100 in a 9% dividend yield stock; you think you're going to make 9% a year, on top of whatever the stock makes...sounds nice! But let's say the stock price plummets by 10%. Even though it will most likely pay out the dividend (that's not guaranteed, but is likely if you've chosen one that has a history of consistently paying out), you still lost 10% of your money even after the dividends were dispersed to you.

Learning how to do this is much more challenging than simply investing in the total stock market, or something along the lines of the S&P 500.

This book, so far, has been educational in regard to dividend investing.

Oh also, a good way to keep track of your investments is the website Seeking Alpha. You can put your stocks in the Portfolio on their site, and it'll send emails regarding all news of your investments.

Maybe there will be times when no one shows up, in which case you could just meditate alone...but I think the longer a program consistently runs in the same area, the more likely people are to attend. Think like 5 years...instead of trying it for just a couple months.

Have your friends show up, and entice them with grabbing a bite or drink afterward.

Let yoga and martial art studios know, and other places where people would likely be interested in meditation. Sometimes you can leave business cards or flyers at places.

I second meetup.com as a way of letting people know you exist.

 

Anyway, I like the idea of your group...non-religious meditation. If it's a kind of fun and laid back atmosphere, and people end up feeling better from attending and practicing, then what would keep them from going each week?

@Harmen, I wonder if you could video record the Chicago yijing diagnosis seminar, and then have it available along with the workbook for people to purchase online? I'd like to attend but don't think I'll be able to, and am interested in the info. Thanks!

Some congee recipes...I didn't look too closely at this website, just saw that it has numerous recipes.

 

https://www.unfamiliarchina.com/congee/?fbclid=IwAR1UBRg2_7Z_6KKbo4TqDoJrIf1HuiNi2f7yOW4fzhOivjKVOqV1FbDvlaE

Here are my random thoughts on these kinds of topics (I don't have a wife):

Some people will say that men and women can't be friends, due to the attraction between the sexes. This is untrue. It's entirely possible to maintain friendship with women you're attracted to, or for her to be a friend to a man she's attracted to...just a matter of having a little self control.

 

...

The "friendzone" is something people talk about. This is where a man and woman hang out often, she opens up to him about her life, but if he wants her romantically he gets rejected.

 

It needs to be clearly understood by the man that what's happening here is just that the woman isn't attracted to him. No amount of trying anything will change that, so it's best to move on and look toward other women for romance.

 

Not everyone is attracted to everyone...people have different tastes, different needs, different disqualifiers. Men friendzone women, too...sometimes we just can't be romantic with someone. There are other women out there, so move on.

 

It's possible that you can still be friends with this woman who friendzoned you, but you should ask yourself if she's respectful of you as a person, or if she just uses you (for company, attention, money, venting, etc). If you're being used, you were never truly friends and you should leave the friendship as well. But it's possible to remain friends, respectfully, and move on to find a more fitting woman for you.

 

...

 

It's very possible to be friends and then become more. I think the best relationships might start that way, because they're established on the foundation of respect. If she was strongly attracted to you in the first place, as a default, it'll be easy...you could screw up and just blurt out "I think yer hot" and then you could be together the next moment.

If she could potentially be attracted to you but didn't necessarily already have those thoughts about you, then screwing up like that might just confuse her and make things a bit awkward...but slowly escalating with more trust between the two of you, more physical touch (touching hands, touching shoulder, back rub, head rub, sitting next to each other touching), and more talking about what you want in a relationship, might help. Grooming and being healthy and clean is important. Slightly more eye contact is important. Sometimes she will be surprised to find her attraction for you growing, when she was blind to it previously. I think it's important to respect what she wants for her future, in a relationship...if what she wants isn't something you can provide, to let her go...and to not try and manipulate her into liking you...don't listen to "dating advice" which often tries to manipulate her mind in order to get women in bed. That seduction stuff kind of works, if you're into that sort of thing, but it's not for having good relationships. The attitudes and habits you get from such advice can cause the end of relationships. A good relationship is built on trust. Intimacy is about trust. So be trustworthy, and true. Find out if you're truly compatible, which is even more important than if she has some physical attraction for you. Of course she will have some attraction...it's just natural that women are attracted to men. But can a long term relationship be beneficial and wanted by the both of you?

If it turns out that she's isn't genuinely interested in a relationship with you, time to move on to the next one. 

...basically, I think you're right: it ultimately won't work if she's not attracted to him.

11 hours ago, Starjumper said:

I have a question for all you expert book writers out there:  Can I get in trouble for having the phrase;  "May the Force be with You" at the end of the book?  Should I make an attribution to Lucas with it even though everyone knows it comes from Star Wars?  I guess that's two questions.

 

I don't know if you'd actually get in trouble for something so widely known, and so short...but it's definitely good form to cite sources for any quotes.