liminal_luke

That poem is about one person`s take on the experience of being black in America. In that excerpt the second person narrator "you" is black, but there`s nothing in that excerpt to indicate that. The poem is about race, but if I didn`t mention that it was written by a black poet it would make no sense. It`s a poem that only makes sense if the reader understands the context...that it was written by a black poet about the black experience. I`m all for equality, believe me. I think everyone should get a fair shake regardless of race, creed, age, gender -- you name it. Perhaps in an ideal world we wouldn`t notice that Barack Obama is black or Hillary Clinton a woman. But we do notice those things. We notice and I think it has to be OK to say we notice. Otherwise we`re just playing a game in order to try and occupy some illusory moral high ground. There`s no hope of having an open public conversation about race, a conversation we desperately need to be having in the United States, if we`re constantly calling each other out as racist for mentioning someone`s race.

Your post was very critical of my viewpoint, so it`s a little odd to me that you underscore it with this wonderful quote that`s pretty much exactly what I was trying to say.

If you don`t like what the freedom of speech rally`s represent and believe they are a bunch of white supremacists, well then for heaven sake don`t attend their functions. Don`t counterprotest. Counterprotesting is a misnomer. It should really be called "giving the alt-right free press." The freedom of speech protestors and the counterprotesters are working together in a bizzare alliance to create a story out of what would otherwise be small beans. Of course racism exists. The KKK and Nazis get all the press, but I`d wager that it`s the everyday racism -- all the little racial assumptions that most people make -- that actually effects people`s lives. Racism has become such a dirty word that nobody can admit to it or even look for it within themselves, and therefore nobody can change it. You can`t change what you can`t talk about or be aware of. Here is an excerpt of the poem "You are in the dark, in the car" by black woman poet, Claudia Rankine. I think it powerfully exemplifies everyday racism.   The new therapist specializes in trauma counseling. You have only ever spoken on the phone. Her house has a side gate that leads to a back entrance she uses for patients. You walk down a path bordered on both sides with deer grass and rosemary to the gate, which turns out to be locked. At the front door the bell is a small round disc that you press firmly. When the door finally opens, the woman standing there yells, at the top of her lungs, Get away from my house. What are you doing in my yard? It’s as if a wounded Doberman pinscher or a German shepherd has gained the power of speech. And though you back up a few steps, you manage to tell her you have an appointment. You have an appointment? she spits back. Then she pauses. Everything pauses. Oh, she says, followed by, oh, yes, that’s right. I am sorry. I am so sorry, so, so sorry. Claudia Rankine

When you feel bad, paint beauty. my partner Jose

Thanks for this Yueya! I wanted to quote this final paragraph because it`s especially meaningful to me.

I`m normally a fan of nudity (at least for other people), but if you`re going to be rude put on some clothes.

And this is a bad thing?

In case there`s any doubt, "internally complete" is a very good thing indeed -- and not at all the same as what usually passes for self sufficiency. In most cases, self sufficiency is a ruse, the attempt to appear internally complete in order to be safe. Self sufficiency is a scared child too terrified to come into relationship with the other because of deep unacknowledged inner wounds. Internally complete is OK alone and OK with others. Internally complete is peaceful through and through. Internally complete radiates calm without even trying.

As antonym suggestions go, present is an especially useful one as it suggests a solution, a way of converting lonliness to mere aloneness, taking the emotional sting out. Is it true that when I`m truly present I can`t be lonely? I don`t know but what an interesting question. When I`m lonely it`s not always possible to find a group of supportive people to join up with. But I can cultivate presence.

OK....I`m taking the antonym of lonely challenge! Looking through my online thesaurus, I was initially attracted to buoyant. Like lonely, it`s a nuanced feeling word. I like the uplifted feeling of buoyant which nicely opposes lonely`s downward facing gaze. The trouble with buoyant, in my view, is there`s no sense of the interpersonal. While a person can feel alone without being lonely, lonliness is at it`s heart about feeling separate from other people. It`s interpersonal. Then it hit me...how about buoyed? (Buoyed is generally a verb, and that might be a disqualification. You can dress it up in adjectival clothes though.) To feel buoyed is to be lifted up by the perceived presence of someone (or something) else, just like to be lonely is to be cast down by the perceived absense of someone else. He was lonely in high-school, the spiritual nerd reading the Bhagavad Gita while everyone else went on about football. Only when he found the tribe of weirdos on Taobums did he start to feel the reassuring presence of human community. Here he was welcomed, supported, and felt himself at last a buoyed boy. Anyway, that`s my pick.

Alethia, People here are allowed to spout off all kinds of nonsense, obviously. Nobody is going to get kicked off the board for being a fake qigong master, and it`s not the job of the moderators to weigh in on people`s spiritual achievement or lack thereof. A moderators job is simply to spot personal insults and put a stop to them. That and to try to maintain some sort of patience and inner calm when confronted with threads like this one.

rethinking...rethinking...

There`s a lot to be said for moving, say from the US, to a cheaper country. And also some important downsides. If you move to a really cheap country, you`ll likely end up being someone with much more money than the people who were born there. That can set up some dynamics you may not want. Your money might become your most salient feature in their eyes. They might start to think of you in terms of how you can benefit them economically. Things get tricky. I remember talking to this middle-aged guy I was sitting next to on a long-distance busride through Oaxaca. He mentioned that he was a farmer, and I asked him how he liked that. I don`t think that was a question he got asked much. He told me that was the only thing to be, his own possibility. Why pause to wonder whether you like something or not when it`s your only option? I`m sure I could of rented an apartment in his village for cheap, but what would my social life be like? The people there are likely wonderful folks who have close relationships with each other. They`d just have a hard time relating to someone like me, and vice versa. (Hope I`m not coming off like a jerk; just my experience.)

TM, I like the word "connected" to describe the opposite of lonely, although it`s admittedly a bit anemic, sorely lacking in the web of cozy connotations we might expect in a truer antonym. .................................................................................................................... I`m asking myself if my adopted country of Mexico is a particularly tribal place. Yes and no, I guess. My partner thinks it`s odd that I don`t call my mom every single day. How can I love her and not want to chat every few hours like he does? When we lived in Zacatecas, where his family lives, a constant barrage of aunts, uncles, and cousins would constantly show up at our door unannounced. Nobody ever thought to call first. People were poor and often didn`t have cell phones. The ones who did have cell phones usually didn`t have saldo, prepaid credit on their phones that would allow them to make outgoing calls. We could call them, but they couldn`t call us. That didn`t stop them from trekking way across town to our apartment to get a bite to eat, play games on my partner`s Playstation, and dance karaoke. Another weird thing. Whenever women would visit us they`d start cleaning our place. I don`t mean that they`d offer to help do the dishes after a meal, something "normal" like that. I mean they`d get out the mop and start deep cleaning the kitchen. It was like having impromptu maid service and made me a bit uncomfortable. Eventually Jose got me to see that that`s just the way it was and I had better accept it. Even going to university is a tribal experience in Jose`s family. When his sister can`t finish a paper for her psychology degree, she has Jose write it for her. He stayed up half the night last night comparing the psychotherapeutic methods of Fritz Perls, Carl Rogers, and Albert Ellis. I`m embarrassed to admit that I once got into the act too, writing an essay on the humanistic philosophy of Abraham Moslow. (I got a B+ .) To my way of thinking, this is cheating -- academic dishonesty. And yet it`s just how things are done, pitching in for each other as need arises. I`ll save my thoughts on how Mexico is not a tribal place for later. LL

Taobums: the only place on the internet where a person can attend multiple Burning Man events, champion nudity, quest for superhuman cold tolerance through polar bear swims and esoteric blood-pressure spiking breathwork...where a person can do all that and still come off, relatively speaking, looking like a stodgy skeptic.

I think it`s possible to live without food, but not without sustenence. We need to take in energy and if we don`t get it from food we have to get it the qi directly from the environment. How to move in this direction is the really interesting question. Most practitioners won`t get to the point where they can actually stop eating, but could nevertheless learn how to "ingest" environmental energy.

Was it all worthwhile? Caring about being right more than your kisses?

Yes, you still exist. The person the tree fell on? Maybe not.

Some things are more real than others. Bums who insist on the solid physical existence of the material universe are just a passing dream.

Words reflect the heart but can be misunderstood. Look! Big yellow moon.

"My side. That`s your side." not the way I choose to live It`s just a haiku.

me to me to me and never ever to you just the way it goes

I love the this concept of the young, lethal-but-spazzy rattlesnake, and think we should apply the concept as a moderation tool here at Daobums. Rather than suspending vituperative posters, we could segregate them in a cordoned off portion of the board to be called the "baby rattlesnakes den."

Who are these people who feel good when they meditate (and where can I get whatever they`re smoking)? I`ve heard that some people are able to bypass "human level experience" through meditation -- and I believe it -- but it`s never been that way for me. My blockages, karma, issues, whatever you want to call it, come sledgehammering down on me as soon as I close my eyes. This is probably for the best as you`re right -- "true healing can never happen as long as you are bypassing your human level experience." If I stick with things long enough to get to some sort of inner peace, a big if, then yes, I feel good.

Perhaps you can just upload a video? As we all know, videos are objective, scientific proof -- the (alchemical) gold standard of siddhi confirmation. While your experience is indeed wondrous, it`s hardly unique. Here`s an article about the yogic practice of Kevala Kumbhaka, breathlessness. http://sivanandaonline.org/public_html/?cmd=displaysection&section_id=1326 Someday I hope to attain all these abilities. One day at a time though. At the moment I`m still breathing and eating some food, but I`ve gone almost a week without chocolate chip cookies. We start where we are.