Sloppy Zhang

Just now, Taomeow said:

 

Hiya!   Long time no see.  

 

I'm still here, amazingly enough, been telling myself that enough is enough

every

single 

day

but cats are creatures of habit.  TDB somehow managed to hook onto my morning coffee/computer time and that's sacred (I mean, coffee is, computer not so much) so there you have it.   

And late in the evening -- my tiny cognac (a consolation prize since I can't have coffee before bed) -- and voila, there's this forum floating in the crystal snifter so I get a tiny portion of that too.  Not every single day of course.  But it explains how it happened that I'm still here.  By itself the habit wouldn't hold up.  It's all dopamine dynamics -- coffee is dope, a tiny cognac, ditto, and TDB is like a slice of lemon on the rim.  Which explains why sometimes it tastes sour, and sometimes sweet.  

 

Hope life's been treating you kindly.        

 

 

Great to see that you are still around! I don't know if you remember this, but you made a post back in the day about process oriented languages vs state oriented languages (if I'm recalling correctly...) and how that shapes a lot of spiritual/religions which had a big impact on me and something I still think about from time to time. There's been a lot of wisdom dropped around here and you were a big part of it! I also picked up a few books on Taoism and Feng Shui off your recommendations.

Last few years have been rough and the last year especially but I still consider myself fortunate compared to how things could have gone much worse  and gives me lots to meditate on and practice.

I hope things are good for you and the coffee and cognac continues for many more years! 

Add me to the list of people who stopped coming around but about once a year get the weird urge to log in and see how things are going 

This place was crazy back in the day, and a lot of things happened over a long period of time that changed the shape of the forum.

Reddit was great for a while but always had its pros and cons, and in the last few years those have gotten more pronounced, but does still seem to vary based on the community (and sometimes even the time of day that you post!) 

I will also say that (and this may be me living under a rock), it doesn't seem like the qigong community itself has really changed much? It seems like most of the teachers are more or less the same, the books are more or less the same, maybe something new gets put out on a new author starts publishing stuff, are there any new crazy teachers or systems that are fueling the controversy posting that fueled the forum in years past? To me, I don't think so, but I don't even know...

So you are either doing the practice, or talking about thinking about doing the practice 

Coming in late but I've been doing BKF material on and off for a number of years starting with energy gates book and have also purchased a few online programs.

The first thing to understand is that BKF teaches a pretty specific "16 Neigong", and the various movements he teaches (Energy Gates, Heaven and Earth, Gods Playing in the Clouds, Tai Chi, etc) are "containers" that allow you to embody the 16 neigong. He teaches different sets because different sets are better for different things. Energy Gates gets the downward current going, which BKF is big on, Heaven and Earth helps opening and closing, things like that. Ultimately, an advanced practitioner is going to be able to embody them doing any movement, but some are better for learning than others.

So with that in mind, the goal is not necessarily to "mix other practices in' with Energy Gates", but to continue doing Energy Gates (or whatever your practice of choice is) and as it deepens and you awaken more of your energy bodies (BKF has his own 8 energy body breakdown as well) you will embody more and more of that in your practice.

Now here's the kicker - BKF studied with a number of teachers over the years, and they didn't necessarily give him everything that he is putting out. He pieced it together himself over the years and when he met his final teacher, Liu Hung Chieh, that really helped him connect a lot of the disparate pieces from the various practices he accumulated over the years and the Energy Arts system was put together in order to give some progression to help you awaken certain things.

Now all of that said... I would suggest doing the practice that resonates the most with your body and helps liven it. If the swings don't do it for you, don't keep flapping your arms around, that's not the point. If you find some other qigong that helps you really awaken your body, and feel the connection, keep doing that practice, and when you can consistently awaken that feeling in the body, try practicing Energy Gates (the swings or even just cloud hands) and then see how the practice works with your body in a different way.

It took a while for things to "click" for me, especially going off of books. As usual, the ideal method is to practice directly with BKF or one of his senior instructors. Even if you get out there only once, if you can really feel how its supposed to feel, that's going to get you much further much faster than trying to get it on your own (but it can be done if you are sensitive enough and don't easily self delude yourself, but if you aren't super self aware or familiar with other chi practices it can be hard to tell, so the safest bet is to take a trip to BKF directly or one of his seniors).

HOW TO LEAVE YOUR GURU

https://www.facebook.com/LifeWithoutACentre/photos/how-to-leave-your-guru-the-moment-you-follow-someone-you-cease-to-follow-truth-j/1336040623160209/

"The moment you follow someone you cease to follow Truth"
- J. Krishnamurti

If your spiritual teacher promises you unending bliss, an end to all your problems, freedom from anger and doubts and sorrows, permanent access to higher states and realms, the complete transcendence of all human concerns...

... well, then, your doubting is ingenious, and holds infinite creativity.

Walk away from anyone who makes you such promises, and never look back. Then, you are free. Because, finally, you trust yourself, as you did when you were very young and hadn't yet split yourself in two, the knower versus the known, the certainty versus the doubt. You are no longer a carbon copy of someone else, buying into the dreams of another, clinging to second-hand promises. You are original again. No longer seeking what others seem to have, but resting in original knowing.

No matter what anyone says, however enlightened they claim to be, however many books they've written, however many fans or followers or disciples they have, however shiny their smiles and charismatic their personalities, however perfect and 'spiritually correct' their language, they really do not know. They are a child of life, as you are, innocent at the core. They are not the authority, have no privileged knowledge, do not hold answers. They can only share their journey, their insights, what they have noticed. They are what you are, consciousness itself, and on that level, you are profoundly equal. There is no 'club' for the awakened. No wave in the ocean is more 'ocean' than any other wave. Life knows no levels in this way. Humility reaches everyone in the end.

Nobody can be 'in' a higher state. States come and go. Even the most blissful feelings, the most ecstatic highs, cannot be permanent, just as no wave can be permanent in the ocean, and cannot be maintained. If you are chasing states and experiences, striving for the 'next big thing', you will be exhausted before long. And that kind of well-earned exhaustion is a wonderful thing; it is the beginning of a great awakening.

Your exhaustion is sacred, see. Your sorrow is not a sign of your ignorance, but a fresh expression of life. Your fears are not mistakes. Your pain is not an indication that you are far from awakening, or that you are being punished for your ignorance. Your longing is not something that needs to be eradicated. Even your confusion is holy. And your doubts have kept you supple, curious, open; they have protected you from the greatest pain of all: arrogance.

You are not a victim, friend, but so damn alive. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. It would be their loss, anyway.

You tire of the promises. You get exhausted from trying to be something that you are not. You get sick of walking another's path, following someone else, trusting their truth over your own gut. It is not your nature, to follow, to worship, to create external gods.

Slow down. Come closer. Get curious. Question everything.

And most of all, trust your doubts as you walk.

- Jeff Foster

5 minutes ago, Robin said:

but personally I don't find questioning the premise of my request very helpful.

Well then I'll stop

But I've seen many, many threads about this here over the years. Some are about Bruce, and some are for other systems and other teachers. As several others have said, everyone encounters this question at one point or another.

Personally, I think understanding the premise of the request is THE thing you need to reflect on. Because otherwise, what's the point?

I hope you get some good advice from other practitioners and I hope you find what you're looking for.

33 minutes ago, Robin said:

I think it would be even more helpful to hear about others' experience of similar situations, key moments and deciding factors, and how they resolved them.

34 minutes ago, Robin said:

Hearing about these would be helpful so I can compare and contrast and hopefully get some insight into my own unique situation.

34 minutes ago, Robin said:

I may have to sit with the confusion a little longer until it emerges. In the meantime other people's insights are valuable to hear about.

Question - what would you need to hear that would change your mind one way or the other?

If someone tells you a fantastic story about how Bruce helped them, would that re-contextualize your experience? Would you disregard the feelings you've expressed so far, or just learn to deal with them? What information would you need to receive to change how you are feeling?

If someone told you they also felt frustrated and found a new teacher and became happier, would that validate the feelings you are experiencing? Would you move forward with the teacher who told you to email them any time? Would you stop practicing what Bruce teaches, or would you keep what you've done so far but study with a different meditation teacher?

What exactly are you hoping to gain with this thread? What exactly are you hoping to gain from the advice of others? There are any number of current and former students you can reach out to and ask these questions. But I think it would be good to define what you are hoping to achieve here.

5 minutes ago, Robin said:

While I certainly can overcome the "triggeredness", the question for me is whether I want to, as it may be entirely reasonable. It seems some people are OK with taking what serves them and ignoring the rest, which is fine, but for some, including me, it's not quite that simple. I guess for me there is something about harmony within the totality of my experience. I don't mean in a naive way, expecting no issues ever to arise, but a sense that overall there is harmony and balance.

4 minutes ago, Robin said:

I don't think they can necessarily be separated,  and I'm not confident they should be, entirely.

So in theory I agree with you, and theoretically your spiritual teacher should be one with whom you have a strong teacher/student relationship, that the spiritual practice they transmit is perfectly aligned to optimize your body, mind, and spirit, and gives you the tools to address any situation you encounter on this journey called life.

Unfortunately life does not always align to our theoretically perfect ideals. And the desire to find "perfect" may get in the way of "good enough".

So I think you need to first come to the realization that you won't find perfect, or rather, in the time it takes you stressing over finding a teacher that fits you "perfectly", you could have practiced to a point where you could handle any imperfections.

So then the question becomes - what is good enough for now, and what do you care more about so you can prioritize where you spend your time?

Do Bruce's practices help you heal and improve? Then you should continue doing them.

Is another teacher more available? Then maybe you should build a relationship with that teacher and see where that takes you.

I understand the "take a little bit from multiple teachers" is a very modern approach, and there have been many, many debates about cross training and mixing and matching. I myself have struggled with it a lot personally.

But the fact of the matter is, we live in a modern world. You don't always have a teacher/student master/disciple relationship like the old days. So if you're hitting a wall, and you find something that helps, do the thing that helps, and that helps you move forward.

6 minutes ago, Robin said:

I'm not quite seeing any contradiction. Things have not got weird, but I know with deep mediation work they can. Another teacher I have guarantees she will respond to all emails, and strongly encourages you to write if things do in fact get weird.To be fair her following is probably smaller, as she's all about (Tibetan) mediation. My sense is that Bruce may or may not help if needed, and he can be very unapproachable in my experience. Sometimes warm and welcoming, sometimes seemingly downright hostile.

What are you looking for - the teachings, or the relationship with the teacher?

1 hour ago, Robin said:

There's a couple of things though. One is that for meditation, the buck stops with Bruce - there's no one as "senior" to ask or get help from if things get weird, which they can. So even though Paul is a great teacher, I'm not currently convinced that I want to continue down this particular meditation path.

You say this, but given your earlier points it doesn't sound like you have a strong relationship with Bruce. Have things gotten "weird" for you, and has Bruce been able to help you?

2 hours ago, Robin said:

It seems like a silly situation.

It might be worth expanding on this.

At the risk of being too blunt, you made a similar post on this in 2015:

In that post, you state:

Quote

  Finally, in my recent research into alternative spiritual paths and teachers, I came across an article about Zen meditation in which the author wrote that to consider that someone is your teacher, you must see them in person a least once a year and they must KNOW YOUR NAME! Perhaps the crux of my whole experience here is that I predict a low probability that Bruce could remember my name unprompted, in spite of the time, effort and money I have put into learning from him. Of course one could argue that he has given me a great gift by sharing the teachings, and is in no way beholden to me, but regardless, there’s something about the totality as my experience which “doesn’t feel quite right.”

So, my question is: in the 6-7 years since you created that post, do you have a better relationship with Bruce? Does Bruce know your name unprompted? Have you grown in your practice? Have you met another teacher?

You felt like something "doesn't feel quite right" in December 2015 and here you are again in 2022. Has Bruce changed? Have you changed? What's different today than 6-7 years ago?

Rather than getting into the specifics of any one teacher or any one system, I would take a step back and ask if you are stuck in the same pattern, and what that pattern is, and take it from there.

Damn. Seems like every time I check in on the Bums I get some bad news  

I didn't know him personally but he always had very even keeled responses even in the threads from the wilder days.

4 hours ago, thelerner said:

Got it a few days after ordering.  I thought it'd take longer and was surprised it came so quickly.   Good book, worth it in my opinion.  Though I'm keeping my practice relatively simple these days, so I'm reading more for the philosophy then multitude of techniques in it. 

Yeah, my own practice plate is pretty full. I got the first book they put out (Ling Bao Tong Zhi Neng Nei Gong Shu) and there was some good content in there but seemed to be mostly tuned for people who already had the practices from that lineage.

Still I found it interesting to compare and see what they have going on.

Been away from the ol' bums for a while, and coming back to find there's a new Wang Liping book  

On 5/10/2019 at 11:05 AM, thelerner said:

cool.  Here's a review and more info: http://threepinespress.com/

 

$49 is expensive but its 430 pages and his seminars are bookoo bucks, so if you pick up a good pointer or two, its probably worth it.  Livia Kohn was the editor and that speaks well of it too. 

 

<addon> just purchased it from lulu.com, an indie publisher.  Hopefully more money to the author and publisher and less to middle men.   There's a good chance it hasn't been printed yet, so getting it might be a wait. 

@thelerner have you gotten the book yet? How long did it take to print? I just put in an order myself.

I looked at Jerry Alan Johnson's book on  Taoist  Magic a few years ago because it was a subject I was interested in. I was looking  for magic specifically from a Taoist point of view, but I saw his book would reference several western  magic  sources for several practices. Some of the western magic sources were good and I liked them, but not really what I was looking for. Also called into question, for me at least, some of where his information was coming from.

But I've never met the man or taken  a formal  course with  him so just take that with  a grain of salt.

Bruce Frantzis tends to say something along these lines-

Energy that goes up does not necessarily come down. Energy that goes down can more easily go up.

Most of the reason why people experience qigong/kindalini psychosis is because energy rises into the higher centers (mental/psychic centers) and they cannot appropriately ground this energy or integrate it properly in their system.

I would STRONGLY advise that you cease the above practices and work on the download flow of energy. Get into your body, get into your feet. I don't know where you live, but at the very least find a nice patch of grass and walk around barefoot for a while at the very least. When some of this stuff (particular kundalini) kicks off, you WILL mess yourself up if you aren't ready.

I have a strong suspicion that thelearner is correct in his appraisal: 

36 minutes ago, thelerner said:

I get the feeling that for most (including myself) the MCO tends to be more awareness of nerve sensation moving around, then actual Chi.  Most haven't.. ignited.. the chi movement, so they're not getting the 'real' MCO.  Not that its a total loss, but for most, its not the real thing, which I assume is more like a controlled kundalini-esque experience. 

Most of the early feelings in peoples' practices are psychosomatic. The feel a tingling somewhere because they put their mind there. That's not bad. But as the saying goes, "mind moves the chi". So you put your mind their first and eventually the energy goes there. Whether it goes there quickly or after much practice is up to a variety of factors. But when that kicks off... it will kick off.

Nothing- this is not a knock against you. I'm not sure what your level of practice and experience is. But again, if you are having issues with the downward current, I would highly suggest prioritizing that and come back to the kundalini stuff later. 

For a practice, i would suggest Bruce Frantzis' "Opening the Energy Gates of Your Body". That set focuses on the downward current and getting the energy body "woken up". Once you get the downward flow down, going back up should be no problem.

Word on the street is the lottery was set up to catch time travelers and magicians.

You're probably better off laying low.

Find some good tech startups to invest in, make a few million off a valuation or IPO, then cash out after a couple of years for a few million before it collapses in on itself.  but I'm just a nobody so don't mind me!

9 hours ago, Apech said:

 

I kind of agree the board has lost some of its edginess but the reason for moderation wasn't advertising.  The reason was that Sean realised that endless trolling, dog piling and flame wars meant that conversation died.  Remember the Gender wars?  You were part of that i think.  'Generally' doesn't mean 'most' and all that?  Entertaining - then crazy and dull.  Anyway the point of moderation - which gets lost sometimes is just to make it easier to have a good conversation rather than repetitive insults and deliberate hijacking.  It is supposed to be light touch and impersonal.  If you want fire you can attack the other persons ideas, tear the ideas to shreds - but not the other person.  When I was a moderator I had a rule for myself 'if in doubt don't act' - so the weight was always with non-intervention - which is kind of why Off Grid and the political threads exist and despite the constant stream of reports from certain people we hardly ever intervened - cos of Freedom of Speech I guess (which doesn't seem to exist any more in my home country by the way ) but in Amurica is more or less alive and well.

I do remember the gender wars  crazy times, and also a good example of how an individual may identify with a larger group, or with an ideology.

It's hard to keep them separate. If I respond to your post with "that's crazy", am I referencing your post's ideology, or am I referencing you? If I respond with "how can anyone think that?" am I being critical of the idea for being unthinkable, or am I criticizing you for believing it?

Personally, I remember the good ol' days when there were less boards (it's just so hard to navigate now and keep up with new posts), and less moderation. I think it was around the time that teachers and authors started to have more of a presence here that the decision was made to "clean up" the board a little bit. To me it cut down a little bit on the "crazy wisdom". But I guess we got better advertising? Or something.

Then I think it was around the time of the Kunlun craze that we started to get some posts revealing some, uh, personal and behind the scenes information of some Kunlun practitioners. Appropriate for public? Probably not. Insightful for those outsiders potentially interesting in checking out the group? To me, I like to hear all the feedback before going into something, good and bad.

Again, rules were updated, posts got edited, pruned, moderated out, etc. And for me... that's kind of when the board lost its magic. I can't claim to be an expert in Daoist alchemy, but you need water AND fire to make steam. We can't always just be agreeable. We can't always just post "nice things". Sometimes we NEED to post something controversial, to "stir the pot", in order to get a good discussion rolling.

Trump, in that respect, makes a great conversation starter. He's that spark of fire that will really get a conversation rolling. But the parties involved need to bring their own water. And too many times it just degenerates into personal attacks as one or both parties try to bail on the argument without saving face.

I've always erred on the side of less moderation. I think you need to get a little heat to make things interesting. But some people would consider such an environment hostile. And to be sure, there are some hostile, unwelcoming online environments. So venue needs to be taken into account as well.

You know it's interesting Taomeow, about a year ago I stumbled across the Youtube channel of a guy named Jeff Cavaliere, he runs a site and youtube channel called Athlean X: https://www.youtube.com/user/JDCav24

He's a physical therapist and strength coach for a professional baseball team, so he works with a lot of high level athletes at a very high level.

And what I found so interesting is so many of the principles and exercises that he put into his videos were just like the principles taught in Tai Chi and Qigong movements. He frequently talks about how many of the mainstream sports, exercises, and strength training taught actually build HUGE muscle imbalances, and not just with opposing large muscle groups, but on the underlying small muscle groups and other fascia.

Might be worth a look.

[Edit]

And since specificity was a requirement, here is a video where he points out specifically, amongst others, the Supraspinatus, Infraspinatus, and Teres Minor (at 3:30)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBR4N95asKo

Is this a sticky rice? Chopsticks are fine for that kind of rice.

But most fried rice I've had at most Asian places in America is downright impossible to eat with chopsticks. Use the spoon!

Seeing as how Daoist practices tend to do things differently than other practices, and have their own methods of doing things in general, I would absolutely say that Daoist Alchemy has its own set of practices as unique from other "alchemy" practices. The endpoints may be comparable, but I'm sure the methods are different.

As far as it being "energy stuff", I feel like it is and then again is not just "energy stuff". It most likely occurs on an extremely subtle level, so in that respect is like "energy stuff" in that it's a subtle energy practice. But on the other hand, is so much more inconceivably subtle than just "energy stuff" that it's almost beyond compare.

From a practical standpoint, at least for me personally, it's barely even worth talking about since I'm so far away from being able to sense (let alone control) those types of subtle energies. Even with an instruction manual right in front of me, I wouldn't be able to actually perform the steps beyond a complex visualization practice.

So yeah, that's where I'm at with that.

1 hour ago, Taomeow said:

Thank you, SZ.    Where have you been all this time?  Is the grass greener there?

 

Bruce was one of my learning-from-books sources before I had live teachers.  I second the recommendation, he gives the basics, and he's very much on the right track with that. 

I've been around here and there  I check in every once in a while to see what's going on. Good to see the old faces are still around.

Great posts as always Taomeow!!! 

To the original poster or anyone else interested in learning Taoist Meditation, Bruce Frantzis has a Taoist Meditation Circle online group. It's $8 a month and lasts for 16 months. It lays the foundation for building awareness, lengthening your breath, and introduces the basic energies of the internal organs. 

http://www.energyarts.com/taoist-meditation-circle-online-group

It's a great foundation for the meditative aspect of his other practices, and if you have the extra money, his Energy Arts Training Circle programs have some more advanced meditation stuff in there. But it all starts with the basics, and it's cheaper than Netflix too 

I'm going to assume that this depends largely on where you are. I won't pry into that. And even if you live in an area that isn't particularly white-dominant, we culturally expect white males to be IT people -- maybe black and brown are historically less likely to study in your field? (There's an older thread concerning women & IT in which I had a similarly drawn-out argument with people about the idea that women are historically quite important in the IT field but still represent less of the workforce that one might expect.)

On this subject, we just had an email go out with our 2016 numbers, including the top performers in our frontline helpdesk teams. These are world-wide team members, and are highly diversified, even in our US office, between women and minorities.

90% of the top 10 were white men.

100% of the top 10 were men.

Just something interesting that I noticed.

Going back to acting though: part of the role of cinema/TV is to represent modern reality, and the reality is that modern America is mostly white, so yeah, white people are going to seem more 'qualified' for any given role, and there are naturally going to be more actors, good and bad, who are white. Simple numbers game.

Is that its role, though, to represent modern reality? That argument may hold true in a white-dominated society, but what about in, say, certain Asian cultures where "white traits" are considered more beautiful and desirable in models/actors? Does that reflect modern reality in those countries?

But even then, the one thing I constantly hear Americans talk about -- comedians, politicians, businesspeople, etc -- is "race". You guys are obsessed with it like no other place on Earth. And for good reason, I suppose, considering your history. And much of that is celebration, apparently enjoying the fact that America's a melting pot... but that is represented weirdly on screen, where the white guy takes precedence. It's not that blacks and yellows and women etc don't get hired, it's that they don't get placed at the forefront.

Race is interesting in America, and personally, I'm not sure I like the direction it is going. Before it seemed about integrating everyone of a different racial background into one cultural group, where we learned about and celebrated different cultural histories. But now people don't even like to use the term "melting pot" because it connotes a loss of cultural identity! They instead like to use the "tossed salad" metaphor (not kidding... and yeah, double entendre) where you can still pick out separate cultures.

People are afraid of things like "cultural appropriation" ("Taco Tuesday is offensive and reductionist to Latin American cultures you bigot!") And if you don't fall into a certain racial divide, you are almost precluded from making any comment on it, regardless of that idea's merit ("well you aren't Asian so you aren't fit to comment on how an Asian would perceive this").

From my perspective, it seems to be causing more divisions and tribalism than it promotes unity and education. 

Which of course carries over to representation in media, and the ensuing discussions.

Never thought this conversation would last so long. Can't even remember now how it began.

Well I came in at the end so I cheated 

 

It seems to me that focusing on individual cases one at a time obscures the bigger picture. Each production has their own reason for not casting someone, for casting someone else... but when we take a step back isn't the trend kind of obvious? It's a lot better now than it was even ten years ago (having had this conversation I've checked out Into the Badlands, and obviously there's Mr Robot, and I'm aware of a couple of other yellow/brown leads) but loads of productions fall into the same pattern: white male lead, female or black sidekick, 'ethnic' third. That's assuming the whole cast isn't white.

See, I find this argument very interesting. If you'll let me switch gears a little bit (since I've never worked in Hollywood, I don't know...) to corporate hiring.

I've been on the hiring panel for many interviews in my corporate life. Within my field (IT management) we hire overwhelmingly men. It's not that we turn away women... it's that we aren't getting a lot of women resume's coming in.

Additionally, it is overwhelmingly white. Not to say that we consciously hire minorities. It's that the overwhelming majority of the resumes that get submitted to our job postings are of white men.

So, moving further along in the interview process, we want the best candidate for the job. Who has a technical background? Who has an education? Who has prior work experience? We use a lot of proprietary software in our line of work, so it's not like we don't train you on the job, we do. But our stuff is just so damn technical, if you don't have a technical background, you aren't going to have a very fun time (believe me... we've tried.... it's not fun for anybody).

So we find a resume that has 10 years prior experience in corporate IT, military background (networking in the military), associate's degree (not bachelor's) in a technical field, pursuing classes for a four year degree, and just passed a professional IT certification. Awesome candidate.

What's his name? John fucking Smith.

And before you know it you have an enterprise networking team of predominantly white men.

(who are all super nerdy and love having conversations about the latest Marvel shows, and also into craft beer, so we can go out and drink after. Win win.)

Did we, at any point, consciously choose for or against a certain demographic? No. But blow that up, what do you get?

I've happened to work with phenomenal women in the field. As well as phenomenal minorities (including myself!)

I've also happened to work with incredibly terrible people of all types. In some cases they had the background we wanted, in other cases we didn't.

So... I don't know what I'm saying. It's hard to say. You can't always play by numbers. We certainly have a bias. We have a bias against people we think can do the job. And ultimately, we're a business. We need people who are worth the investment (time, money, effort in training). It sucks, but that's how it is.