Ian

How did you find the process of submitting your manuscript to Lulu? This is something I'm planning to do soon. Any tips? Any problems? Once I've got it sorted, I'll surely buy yours if you buy mine! Best wishes, I

Wonderful, thank you. Nice to be reminded. If people don't mind me going sideways, two quick thoughts about tailbone, which you asked about a while back. 1- It often seems to me that good posture for opening the front of the hips has the side effect of closing the back of them because it's a little overdone. And pushing the back of the heels of the feet out sideways a little tiny bit can help. 2 - I've had it suggested that if you can't get into an area, just run the attention repeatedly over the space just beyond it, i.e. above the skin. Regards to Lukas, enjoy the season of glug. I

I don't wish to seem like I'm trying to set up a "My way is better than yours" discussion, because I haven't tried the method you outline, so I'm not qualified to comment. But I would like to mention that the method I suggested, in addition to being slower, does have the benefit of taking the practitioner into the reality of their body and can lead to purification of the actual physical areas where the emotions that cause the thoughts are stored. Can you say more about the long term benefits of the method you describe? How are you now in relation to your thoughts? How long/often have you practiced it? Many thanks I

I've memorised so many forms that it would take me a day to do them all once. All Michael Winn's, couple of BK Frantzis, some of Zhizing Wang's, Dirk's basic Meridian forms, same Shaolin ones as forestofsouls, Eagle's claw, twin dragons chasing pearl, couple of tao yin forms..... The only movements I now do are Sifu Yap's hexagram dance. It is amazingly beneficial to do the same thing again and again and again. Three years now, on this apparently simple set, and I'm more of a beginner than when I started. There is such a danger, when you have a basket of practices to pick from, that you think "now would be a great time to do some of this one" where actually you just needed to plough on with the same one. Can make it very easy also to be thinking what to do next, instead of being where you are. If I could only pass on one piece of advice, it would probably be to pick one practice and ignore all the alternatives. How to choose it? No idea...

Starting meditation is like trying to stop a speeding truck by standing in front of it with your hand out. You won't be able to make any appreciable difference to the amount and ferocity of your thought for some considerable time. What you can do is gradually deposit more of your attention into sensation. This gives you a place to be, from which you can view thought instead of being it. Gradually. Give yourself a break. It's all quite normal.

The one thing I remember about that book is the story of the person with multiple personality disorder. He was on his way to his weekly therapy session and was stung on the face by a wasp. The therapist thought the swelling serious enough to cancel the session and send him to a medical doctor. When he arrived at the doctor he was in a different personality and the swelling had vanished, only to reappear, reduced, the following week when he was back in the first identity. I've been quoting that to people for about fifteen years, as primary evidence that life is very odd. I hope it's true.

I'm doing about two litres of green smoothie maybe four days a week. Apple, banana, lemon, water, sometimes cucumber, and the green du jour. Either spinach, or watercress, or broccoli, or chard, or kale, or caballo nero, whatever that is. Using a L'Equip 228 blender like Trunk has.

I've been trying it for a couple of weeks. Libido pretty good, but then it has been for a few months now. Wish I had the patience to change one thing at a time and be scientific about it. Cos I've been adding the the green smoothies big time during the same period. Have often been feeling inexplicably good and waking up early. Damned if I really know why. Have also been drinking like a fish. Maybe that's it. Freeform, did you order yours from the link you gave there? Did that seem a better bet than any UK suppliers? I got mine off ebay, and have no clue as to the quality. And I've been climbing the walls a whole bunch too, Thaddeus. But no more so since trying this stuff.

Thank you people: here's what I've found out so far. Compost is great. Worms are great for compost, mainly red wrigglers. Other worms good for soil, esp lumbricus terrestris, night crawlers. Compost worms don't like plain soil and vice-versa. Horse manure needs to be dug in and rotted. Compost can be left on top as mulch, worms will take it down. Crop rotation is great for avoiding some diseases: some other plants, if allowed to die into the soil, give what is needed for the next generation. Weeds and insects do not attack seriously healthy plants/soil. Some weeds are great, because their roots penetrate down on plants' behalf. Virtually no-one double-digs any more, apparently. The debate is between single digging and no till, it seems. I've ordered twenty kilos of rock dust, and a biodynamic planting calendar. As to orgonite, how major a device do people think would be needed to make a difference to an outside plot about 40 feet each way? Dum de dum, home time...

Not any more. Reclassified to Class A, regardless of moisture content etc, about a year ago. Heavy penalties, mind how you go etc etc...

Sorry to be such a blatant old misery-guts, but I thought I should throw in the opinion that dreams are to sleep what thought is to waking, i.e. the uncontrolled rambling of the mind and provider of all misery. Just pushing you to consider exactly what you're encouraging and why. I can't remember exactly what Ron Jeremy used to say about dream practice, but it was one area where I didn't entirely disagree with him. I got the impression, from him, and from what Michael Winn used to say, that dream practice is difficult and that you really need to have mastered fusion or something equivalent before you're going to be able to do it right. Also remember a long article by Liu Ming about it and how it was more about blurring the boundaries between sleep and waking, and other dualities, than about dreams as such. Anyway, blah blah. Ignore me, have fun.....

One thing occurred to me the other day, when I was musing about this thread. Why is it that what we look for as proof of special abilities is the ability to throw people about? How special is that, really? If we want believable evidence that cultivation can lead to special abilities, why not look for someone who can provide amazing healing, or someone who's imperturbably content no matter what? One might say that these things are less easy to prove. But it seems that proof is a slippery beast, even of something as supposedly obvious as chucking folks around. Are they conditioned, is there a form of hypnosis involved etc etc. I think the "rational" mind will always find a reason not to be convinced if it wishes not to be convinced. But anyway, one of my prerequisites, if I were looking for a teacher, would be that they had not the least interest in in developing martial powers.

Just dangling this lot before you all one last time, as I'm going to my Mum's again, where I keep it all, next Thursday. Prices mildly negotiable. PM me if you're interested.

Absolutely. I'm given to understand that they are really one and the same, that the bodily lump is literally where the attitude has moved in. But I don't experience it like that yet. I don't know how to work out how often, in a given meditation period, to actually adjust myself to drop physical tension. Sometimes it seems that the tension is something I've dug up through the process and need to detach from such that it dissolves, rather than just a bad posture habit creeping in. In that case adjustment seems like an inappropriate response. I suspect that there is a more open perspective which renders such distinctions meaningless. Suggestions welcome....

I think letting go requires quite a lot of work. It is initially very very hard to do nothing, because there is an enormous momentum of doing which carries on quite happily without us. So for the first few years there is an effort of vigilance continually required to keep returning to a point where one can let go, even for a moment. The practice is to keep minimising the force of that effort.

My perspective on intellect has been developed simply by trying to maintain in meditation a state of felt sensation without thought. It soon becomes apparent, within that context, that anything my intellect comes up with is simply the writhing of a parasite that doesn't want to die. I was listening to one of Barry Long's Gold Coast talks at the weekend. To paraphrase roughly: "Every single thought you have is rubbish. It comes from your rotten stinking self." The talk also had the most beautiful answer to a woman who'd lost her son. I was spellbound. (not that that's relevant at all.)

An opportunity to poke a stick repeatedly into the hornets' nest of my own crap and attempt cheerfully to avoid resisting what occurs as a result.

The metaphor I like is that the mind is a huge speeding truck. First few months/ years, you're just trying to tie weights on the back as it rushes by, hoping to slow it down a bit. If you actually try to meet it head on you gonna know because you're all flat like wile coyote and you're inventing reasons to stop meditating. I think what I mean is increase slowly. Do major sessions when you've got the support of a teacher/ group/ really nice venue. If you can go three hours just like that on your own, you're either reaping the benefits of some serious work in another life or you're not actually doing anything. I'm doing 45 mins every morning and I'd say 95% of that is rubbish. Plus 2 hours in a group every weds, 45 mins some evenings, and a few hours at weekends about every other one. This is as good as it's ever got. The 45 mins is crucial. Once I've done that I give myself zero grief even if I do nothing else. I

Finally - my new career! Not a moment too soon. "Tactful spunk advisor to the under-age." What should i call my web page? I have a friend with a PhD whose surname is Cock (poor man). I keep encouraging him to get out of IT and become a specialist in erectile dysfunction, so that he can call himself "Dr Cock, the Cock Doctor." But he won't.

Just of the top of my head... I think it is possible to be acutely honest in describing your own experience without hurting anyone. Because if you do that right you can show that no-one else is responsible for your experience and so they cannot reasonably be offended. I think if you try to be honest about anything else you don't have access to enough truth for honesty to exist. Then it goes wrong. Does that help? I doubt it....

Just wondered: is there any reason why the personal practice bits don't appear in order of how recently they were added to, in the same way as the ordinary discussion? Would make it easier to look at, for this brain.

Never even heard of it, dude. Maybe being the pioneer can be your motivation.

Erm, dunno. Just like, in the taoist discussion bit, whenever I arrive, the topic which has most recently been added to is at the top, and the next most recently added to is next and so on. When I arrive in the personal practice discussion bit, it's always Lezlie at the top, then Lozen, then Thelerner, regardless of who's just added what to what. Just thought it might be easier if it was ordered in the same way. But if your girl likes being on top, ah ain't got no problem with that.