liminal_luke

The Life Chaging Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing, by Marie Kondo https://www.amazon.com/Life-Changing-Magic-Tidying-Decluttering-Organizing-ebook/dp/B00KK0PICK?ie=UTF8&btkr=1&redirect=true&ref_=dp-kindle-redirect

Along these lines, I´m a fan of Jin Shin Do.

You mean digging up heads of Daoist masters and working magic to get them to teach you ancient wisdom from behind the grave? Or perhaps you mean the Kunlun practice itself along with the various other techniques taught in Max´s system? Exhuming bodies may be just another day in the graveyard to you, but to many of us it´s a tad odd.

I like the book Taomeow recommended awhile back about throwing out everything that doesn´t "spark joy." A great way to raise your vibration, imo.

Fifty Ways To Leave Your Lover....um, scratch that....Parents

Hi Cheya, Thanks for the foundation training information. I want to try to do that one-founder-a-day 30 day challenge and see if it makes a difference. Watched the video and it wasn´t clear to me: when you bring your hands up a little more are you holding your breath or breathing regularly? Thanks, Liminal

Feeling chi is very cool, but hardly the be-all-end-all of practice. If you´re enjoying what you´re doing and getting benefit then I wouldn´t get hung up on whether or not you feel chi or not. Maybe someday you will. Maybe not. I´m reminded of a story Sifu Jenny Lamb told of a student who didn´t experience any movement with the Yi Gong practice for months, when most students begin to move right away. The student merely held the basic posture and patiently waited. After some months of this, the movement did happen and turns out the student was actually much more advanced than the students who had been moving from day one. Here´s my point. You might think that you´re "behind" other students who feel chi easily and have healthy backs. And you might be wrong.

There´s some irony for ya. Nobody listens to you when you´re alive, and as soon as you´re dead they dig up your grave and try to get you talking. Well I say it´s too damn late.

We don´t need a conspiracy to shut down America, we need a conspiracy to keep it going.

There are different systems that do different things, some of which might be better suited to a particular practitioner. But more powerful we don´t need. Lots of folks had trouble with Kunlun/Yi Gung, and it wasn´t because it wasn´t powerful enough.

I don´t question the great spiritual good that might accure should I follow the advice of Spotless about exiting mind-loops and being aware of the frequencies I surround myself with. But the first benefit is a more prosiac one: I´d spend a lot less time reading the "Trangender Problem" thread and fretting about the opinions expressed therein.

I really want to riff on this hilarious comment but I´m speechless.

While there´s an urgent need to work for economic justice on many different levels, government regulations will never entirely succeed at smoothing over the inherent unfairness of life. There are several people on this board, for instance, who are much smarter than me -- and they did nothing to deserve it! It was just their genetics or maybe what their mom ate while pregnant or something. And that intelligence allows them to understand things and do things I can´t. (Not that I think I´m stupid -- it´s all relative.) On the other hand, I grew up in the United States to middle-class parents. As a kid I took piano lessons. My mom had the free.time, energy and goodwill to drive me to diving team practice every weekday during the summer. That´s not fair either. Where I live now in Mexico very few kids are so privileged. Part of coming to terms with life is accepting this kind of inherent unfairness, while working to expand everybodies opportunities as best we can.

To my ear "bum" also suggests a certain informality. Bums aren´t rushing off to work in three-piece suits; they are more like hanging out. It´s a bit like "hobo," a sense of being open to what the day will bring. The closest Tarot equivilent is probaby "The Fool."

For many people of all ages, being childish comes quite naturally, but it takes a lot of self-discipline to be child-like.

I don´t have any statistics handy, but I´ll bet a disproportionate proportion of prisoners have been raped and molested before they ever get to prison. Being sexually abused makes it more likely that a person will become a criminal; being imprisoned for criminal acts makes it more likely that a person will be sexually abused.

Thanks Veezel, that narrows it down a lot. Unforunately, it´s not really my area but I might be able to point you in some directions. Taomeow is quite an expert in this area, and recently posted a list of recommended books as an introduction to Taoism. Unforunately, I can´t find that post right now. But she has a thread in her Personal Practice Forum called "1-800-Dail-a-Meow" where she invites bums to ask her questions. You might ask her and she if she has any suggestions. Highly recommended. There´s also a thread you can search in the courtyard called "Plx recommend books on the introduction to Daoism" that has reading recommendations from knowledgable folks. Another thread you might want to search for is called "can you please tell me the names of daoist scriptures and their authors." Hope this gives you a start.

I appreciate what you´re saying here, and I´d never argue against loving action. The question is, what would truly loving action look like in this instance? I´m not sure why, but for me, this thread has been something of an emotional sandtrap. It gets me worked up. On the one hand, I´ve enjoyed thinking about the issue and formulating my thoughts as best I can. Some fellow bums have been supportive of my posts, and I feel as though some cyber friendships have been built and strengthened. For that I´m grateful. But it´s also been frustrating when I feel I´ve made a point very clearly and a few bums have been unable or unwilling to acknowledge that I might have even the tiniest smidge of a point. I´ve come to recognize that it´s a dead end, that a person could say anything and these bums would continue to maintain that two and two are five. In any real debate, two people have to possess at least the theoretical ability to change their minds. I want to be someone capable of saying...you know, I didn´t see that before but now that you point it out that way I agree with you. Without that, there´s no real debate at all. I like to think that we are all here to learn and grow. But this is a public forum and it´s open to everyone with enough intelligence and impulse control to stay out of the way of the moderators. And that leaves the board open to a lot of less than savory characters, characters whose motive is not, shall we say, spiritual growth. Some of these people might be armchair sociopaths. They might enjoy setting off verbal bombs and watching everyone scurry around defending silly values. Some people see Taobums as a kind of game where they are the cat and everyone else is a mouse they get to taunt and play with. As hard as it is to walk away from this thread, I´ve decided it´s the loving thing to do. I´ve said all I have to say and now I need to take care of myself. I love to have peaceful conversations where philosophical topics are passionately but gently debated, but that´s not possible here and I need to face up to that sad fact. The loving thing to do when you meet a sociopath isn´t to invite him to tea -- it´s to run the hell away as fast as you can.

Hi Veezel, Marblehead really got to the nitty-gritty with this quesion. I´m no Taoist expert but I´ve been around enough to see the variety of motivations bring to Taoist endeavors. You are here -- so something must be speaking to you about Taoism -- but to provide any guidance I think a person would have to know a little more about you. Here are some possible motivations that a person might have. Do any of these sound like you? I want to develop my chi to become an energetic healer. I want to learn a Taoist martial art and become a fighter. I want to learn a qi gong form that will heal my body. I am interested in internal alchemy and want to devote myself to deep spiritual development. I am interested in Taoist philosophy and want to understand the various forms of Taoism in a historical context. I am interested in Chinese astrology and feng shui. This is just a partial list off the top of my head, and might not even include the reasons you´re attracted to this forum. So...can you narrow it down for us? What kind of Taoist would you like to be?

I agree that schools should be a safe and welcoming environment for all students. What´s different about the trans issue right now is that our society is presently in the process of establishing legal protections for transgender people where they didn´t exist before. This is the cutting edge of where we are right now civil-rights wise. The legal protections transgender people are seeking now already exist for blacks, latinos, people of different religious faiths, etc. It doesn´t mean there´s no discrimination, but as a society we´ve stood up and said the discrimination is wrong. That´s something that´s just now happening for transgender people. I agree that there´s less violence against transgender kids than, say, black kids. But that doesn´t mean we should shut our eyes and say it´s such a small problem it´s not worthy of our attention. We need to make schools for everyone.

To my thinking, there are two possible areas of inquiry. The first is scientific. What causes transgenderism? Is there involvement in hormones, early child experience, a babies experience in the womb...and so on. Whatever answers we have so far are likely preliminary, subject to further research findings. The second area of inquiry -- of far more interest to me -- is kindnesss. How can we best treat people with kindness and compassion? Here the path forward seems pretty simple: it takes nothing away from other students to allow a transgender student to use the bathroom that corresponds to their gender identity or to allow the student to play volleyball with other students they identify with. Indeed, it´s a great lesson for those students in tolerance and acceptance. And, for the transgender student, it´s a great kindness.

No specific advice from me as I think it´s very individual and you´ll do best looking around and exploring whatever practices resonate with you. Plenty of threads on different forms of qi gong etc to check out. Oh wait...I guess I do have some advice. In addition to any spiritual practices you might pick, I´d pay attention to the basics: sleep, exercise, nutrition, nature, having a social life, kindness. Best of luck on this exciting new journey.

Thanks for what I take as an honest straight-forward answer, Bodhicitta. Here, in the rather cloistered Daobums community, religious conservatives and objectivist philosophers are in the minority, I grant you. So, in some bizarre twisted way, I can see how they might seem like the underdogs. Maybe I´m stuck in the past, remembering how oppressed I felt as a gay high school kid back in the 80´s. Now we have gay marriage, and it´s a different time. What use is it to even put on a gay pride parade anymore without the protesters? There´s no drama. We´re here, we´re queer...yawn. But no matter how PC things might look at the moment, I can assure you that transexuals are still very much the "underdog" in most of the US. If you´re really fond of individual freedom and against state control, as you say, it´s not necessary to take up the mantle of the religious right just yet.

Bodhicitta, Have you struggled with issues related to gender identity in your own life, or had people close to you struggle? If not, I don´t see what captivates you so about this issue that you´d start a thread like this -- just to stir up trouble? I don´t have any tattoos, and I´m mildly opposed to them. I´d never get a tattoo and don´t see the appeal. But I´d also never start a thread about the "tattoo problem" and link to essays talking about how tattoos are bad and tattood people delusional. I just avoid going to ink parlors and paying for body art. It´s not so hard. What is it about transgender people that works people up so?

Sad proof that belonging to one minority does not magically protect a person against small-minded and bigoted views towards another minority.