liminal_luke

Can people be mobile power spots?  Is the force that draws us to some people the same as the force that attracts us to places?  

2 minutes ago, DreamBliss said:

 

But being able to sense energy as if it were a tangible thing 

Our own @Trunk ´s posting about qi spheres might do the trick.  Qi Sphere: Beginning | John Dao Productions (wordpress.com)

Just now, Maddie said:

 

Ok but being more serious, the social skills of most younger (and some older) guys these days is just awful. 

Do you think it´s specifically a guy thing?  Or maybe a straight guy thing?  The stereotype of straight guys is that they don´t like to have long, "processing" kind of conversations, but I´m not sure how true that is these days.  Has your socializing experience changed for the better since your transition?

Is it really so surprising that most Bums can´t get girlfriends?  Many Bums don´t have a "self" and, for many women, particularly the more earthy types, that´s a nonnegotiable.

25 minutes ago, dwai said:

 

How did the encounter make you feel?

Actually, it felt really good.  He had a white rock that he´d tied up with twine and made into a necklace.  I commented that I liked it and he took it off his neck and gave it to me.  In the end he did hit me up to give him something and I offered a banana from my grocery bag which he seemed happy enough with.  I´ll give him something else if I see him again, food or money.  An uplifting encounter.

2 minutes ago, Apech said:

I think that fruit loops may be the most unreal food in existence.

Agreed.  In "reality" I don´t eat fruit loops but, of the available breakfast options, I thought fruit loops worked well in my sentence so I scooted it in.  Loops, loopy -- just think it works.

Unpopular opinion: These kind of discussions about the nature of reality are best quickly skimmed through while slurping up one´s morning fruit loops. (Just my uneducated, unspiritual opinion.  Please don´t throw unreal tomatoes.)

Yesterday I befriended Mario, a guy who I suspect is homeless.  He was hanging out in an empty lot filled with weeds and debris.  He offered to cure my bum foot with his manos de milagro, miracle hands, but I turned him down.  I just walked by the same lot a few minutes ago and noticed a still life of sorts very consciously constructed in the very center: two low cardboard boxes stacked on top of each other, topped by a piece of cement cinder block which was in turn topped by a potted green plant.  To me, the arrangement had the feeling of an altar or a shrine.  It seemed to heighthen the energy of the entire space, infusing the otherwise junky lot with the intentional consciousness of it´s creator.  Did Mario put it together?  Perhaps I shouldn´t have been so quick to say no to that healing treatment.

12 minutes ago, thelerner said:

 

Also, if it doesn't drive you mad, I find there's much to gain in believing competing paradigms.   

Logical consistency -- way overrated!  

For most, reality-bending abilities, if they come, come after decades of dedicated practice.  But the good thing is that a person can start on a path and see real life-changing results way before entering the miracle zone.  Even if you´re not walking through walls in a year, you can absolutely be happier, more grounded, a better Bum in so many prosaic but meaningful ways.  No shame, by the way, for wanting to walk through walls.  I want that too!  There´s a lot of juicy low hanging fruit though -- I´d pick that first.

47 minutes ago, liminal_luke said:

 

I´m making another push to eat healthy (whatever that means) and considering daily salads.  The angel in my ear wants me to use vegetables as a condiment; the devil, meat.  

5 minutes ago, Taomeow said:

 

 The gold standard is meat, fish, butter, cheese, animal fats, eggs.  Meow!    

My sentence above is a little confusing as it inverts the conventional wisdom but, if you read again, I think you´ll find we´re agreed on angels and devils.

1 hour ago, Taomeow said:

 

 Sometimes (rarely) there was this cucumber salad (just a peeled, sliced cucumber with a little vinegar), plus I've seen people eat cucumbers in the street straight up, the way we might eat an apple, they consider them fruits rather than vegetables.  

 

My TCM doctor of long ago here in the US used to ask me about my weekend at my Monday appointments, and at the time, a typical for me answer would be, "we went to a Japanese restaurant."  (We lived next door to a local Japanese community so there was an outcropping of good ones, and I am a big fan of Japanese food).  "You ate raw food?" he always doublechecked.  "Yuck!"      

Here in Mexico street fruit vendors often sell cucmbers as fruits too.  You can get your mango, papaya, melon, or cucumber sliced up and served in a big plastic cup with optional salt, lime juice, and chile powder.

I´m making another push to eat healthy (whatever that means) and considering daily salads.  The angel in my ear wants me to use vegetables as a condiment; the devil, meat.  

From a TCM point of view, is it healthy to eat a green salad daily?  Would it be better to get one´s greens cooked rather than raw, say in a soup?

For those who might appreciate the visuals...

a big gay disco

beloved by straight white cis men

all-inclusive tao

20 minutes ago, Taomeow said:

 

Boredom is a prison, a solitary confinement that can lock you up anytime, anywhere -- at a cheerful and seemingly eventful party, while working on a world-changing technology, while interrogating criminals, while painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.  To say nothing of sitting in traffic, studying for the test in a subject of no interest to you, flipping hamburgers, sewing countless t-shirts or manning the assembly line.  Boredom can have the face of your wife or husband, of your parents, co-workers, teachers, TV presenters and politicians with their same old same old, the face of your life.  Being sick is boring, being poor and unable to afford anything is boring, being filthy rich and able to afford anything gets excruciatingly boring fast, being smart bores you with your own wits that turn into a boring routine, being dumb is boring but you don't know why 'cause you're too dumb to understand. 

 

Civilization is boring.     

We have different takes on boredom but I´ll say this: unlike some spiritual practices, your writing is not boring.  

I´m intrigued by the shadow work of Phil Stutz.  Shadow Work — THE TOOLS (thetoolsbook.com)

8 hours ago, steve said:

 

Sorry to intrude but spiritual practices are boring because you’re not doing anything else. If meditation is boring do it with Netflix or a nice meal. Do it with your partner and when you floss. One caveat. When you bring it off the mat, boredom is replaced by frustration, so like they says, no one said it was easy to break the cycle of rebirth.

2 hours ago, snowymountains said:

 

It takes a certain type of personality to systematically engage in meditative and spiritual practices. Those who do it long term enjoy it.

 

It's impossible to maintain a long term practice because of "shoulds" and "musts", or just because of a spiritual promise seen in scripture.

 

Only people who genuinely enjoy it can stick around, and that's fine, people should do what they want, without internalising shoulds from others or scripture.

Good points, both.  My opinion about good spiritual practices being boring was more of an intuitive hunch than something I had a well thought out basis for, so when apech asked me why I was a bit stymied.  Didn´t stop me from reverse engineering an answer though!  Clearly there are lots of non-boring moments on the spiritual path.  I do think that boredom is an underappreciated state of mind that can be productively embraced rather than turned away from.  

@Apech

Why are the best spiritual practices boring?  

Hmmm...maybe it´s not so much that the best spiritual practices are boring, but rather that people shouldn´t be advised to stop a particular practice because of boredom.  Spiritual practice can certainly have great peak moments, so it´s not as if it´s all a misery.  Perhaps spiritual cultivation is analogous to journeying through all the layers of the earth´s crust to the very center.  Being at the center isn´t necessarily boring -- it can feel great or super scary or just peaceful -- but to get there one has to go through a huge layer of boredom right underneath the surface.  The surface of the earth is where all the Netflix programming is -- very entertaining but if you want to get to the center ya gotta go through the boredom.  

Sitting in silence isn´t boring if you are in the quiet center of your mind.  But if you are a newbie somewhere between that center and Netflix-land, then yeah, you might be bored.  Doesn´t mean that sitting in silence isn´t a good thing to do.

If all your political opinions line up squarely with the position statement of one political party or candidate, you´re not thinking independently enough.

A more economical way to give dishes the umami kick of anchovies is to use fermented shrimp paste.  

In the present cultural climate, with it´s overemphasis on being "self-made," to call someone priveledged is a slur.  I don´t believe in hierarchies of suffering.  We all come into the present moment with complex histories, intricate webs of advantages and disadvantages in life.  It´s impossible to say that one person is priveledged based solely on the groups they belong to.

Most people will not be harmed by mixing and matching qigong practices.  

The best spiritual practices are boring.

It´s a courtesy not to engage servers in conversation so that they can do their jobs rather than chitchat with the hopes of getting better tips.  

2 minutes ago, Apech said:

Wait! Hush! Is that Gloria Gaynor singing?  Just follow the sound!

I Will Survive: the anthem of Taoist would-be immortals everywhere.

7 minutes ago, kyoji said:

yeah it was.... before everyone left because Sean showed up and turned this place into a big gay disco.

In my (extensive!) experience, big gay discos are not often attended by nondualists or their detractors.  I would love to go to a big gay disco with a Buddhist section, lots of sweaty queer mystics reclining on orange throw cushions, reciting mantras between sips of cheap well drinks and flirting in Pali.  

Just now, kyoji said:

you want to quote the bible after making jokes like that? perverse and sick.

I´m not Christian, kyoji, and don´t believe the Bible is the word of God.  Does the Bible contain mystical wisdom?  I´m guessing that it does although I haven´t studied it in any kind of in-depth way.  I do believe there´s great value in humor and that, in general, we´d make more serious progress in life if we didn´t take ourselves and our pet issues so seriously.  Still, I didn´t mean to offend.  My apologies.

Just now, kyoji said:

you guys are sick in the head.

 

Guilty as charged.  Let he who is without sin throw the first stone.

2 hours ago, Maddie said:

 

Do you think he has PTSD that nails would trigger?? 

That would suck.  Makes it hard to find work as a carpenter.  Then again, I imagine that many people who come back from the dead are looking to start a second career anyway.