Barnaby

Wow... After that blinding last selection, I can only respond with this

art of the supreme you just keep me hanging on except when you Stop!

A White Crane practitioner? 🤔

Visualization, Merriam Webster: to make visible In this case, the practice is making it visible apparently…

Quite amusing how we had that epic thread about visualization and how un-Daoist it was, and now it turns out there’s all this visual stuff going on in nei dan practice… 😂 After all visualization doesn’t have to imply effort or artifice. It can just mean visualize, in the sense of “see”.

in the twilight zone black and white television gremlin on the wing

Yeah, but that's the thing. "Christianity" could be used to refer to different things. The body of spiritual beliefs and practices. The congregation of practitioners. The different institutional frameworks that have come into existence. All three. Or none of the above. It's a catch-all that obscures a multiplicity of distinct realities, like saying Buddhism or Islam. But I don't think there's any point in going much further, because we're derailing the thread, and I think we probably agree about all this anyway

Very cool, didn't know that period Mondrian at all

I don't really know what other things he did, but the story of his escape from Tibet is extraordinary. I'm not condoning anything. But that sort of ordeal can leave a lot of scars.

Cool, misread the sarcasm...

Let's loose the broad brush, guys... What do you know about the motivations of millions of ground-level practitioners?

With all due respect, that statement is as absurd as saying that Tibetan lamas are alcoholics and rapists. Educate yourself on pre-Synod of Whitby Christianity in the British Isles and the Celtic saints. Or Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Or Elise Rivet, who volunteered to take the place of a fellow prisoner in the gas chamber at Ravensbruck, because the other prisoner was a mother with children.

Yep, of course. Or maybe it would end up getting exactly to those who needed to hear it

We're getting way off topic, and it's not my intention to tar everyone with the same brush. But I do think there's something evil about manipulating, exploiting and peverting the natural spiritual yearning of manifested beings for material gain.

I didn't know he charged for them...

Video and Zoom... Infinitely scalable too. Blame the Internet

I answered "other" because I don't consider any of this stuff to have the slightest importance for my daily practice. For me right now, progress is much more related to loosening the bonds of attachment and ego consciousness, and transforming the way I interact with those around me.

So much mythologizing... Like the supposed Daoist origins of Tai Chi Chuan. They would have you believe it was invented on Wudang mountain by Zhang Sanfeng. When Yang Luchan pirated the Chen village style, which many martial arts historians now think was heavily influenced by the nearby (Buddhist) Shaolin temple. And Yang Luchan never even called his art Tai Chi when he arrived at the imperial court. It went by a variety of names: neutralizing fist, soft fist etc. The Tai Chi moniker – with its Daoist associations – came from an educated courtier. But who needs truth when you can buy the myth?

Dunno anything about 2023... I enjoyed 45. He goes over all the KLF stuff, delves back into the Liverpool/Teardrops/Bunnymen era, talks about art and ley lines... It's a good read.

Yeah, but I do have a soft spot for 3am Eternal

All of Steve’s posts on this have been bang on the money, but this point resonates. I can vividly remember when a teacher told me, in a faux candid aside: “It’s so good to have someone like you in the school, someone who really understands, not like all these others who might as well be doing ping pong…” Like Steve says, they know how to get to us. And it’s often via the ego.

Ah cool, I’ll watch that with interest! Jimmy Cauty and Bill Drummond, takes me back… Cauty had a big squat in Stockwell, round the corner from a mate’s place: Trancentral. Memorable parties 🤩 Drummond’s 33 1/3 book is a good read. Burning that million quid was bad karma though, I reckon 🤣 EDIT The Drummond book: 45 Getting my speeds mixed up 😉

Hardcore psychedelia, not for the faint of heart… 😉

Yep. And in my experience these latter martial versions also refer to themselves as nei gong. So the terminology is even more complicated than you say. A real can of worms…

Exactly. As with much Chinese, an ancient origin legend and a multiplicity of modern interpretations. In that context, who’s to say what’s “authentic”?