Sloppy Zhang

I'm going to say something pretty radical here. Now it's not to say that things like focusing on getting work done and all is not a good thing, because it is. Leading a stable life can lead to a really content, full, pretty pleasant feeling. But since everyone's going to tell you that anyway, I'm going to suggest something a bit more.... out there....

Has it ever occurred to you that maybe the things you are doing, the things that "fantasy" "distracts" you from, are not really the best things you should be doing?

I say this because when you really get into something, time flies. You aren't looking for excuses to take breaks. Sometimes you forget to eat or sleep. And it's not even really a conscious decision. Sometimes you'll, say, make a sandwich, but then get re-absorbed in whatever it is you were doing, and then before you know it three hours have gone by and you've still got an uneaten sandwich on the counter! You are just really absorbed in the activity. The stuff that gets produced as a result of that activity are really high quality.

Now, there are ways that you can train/make yourself have this kind of focus for other things. But I'm suggesting that maybe you ALREADY know what it is you should be doing and how you should be spending your time, but you're trying to fit somewhere else.

B.K. Frantzis has a pretty good blog here. He's recently made a few posts titled "for the love of the game or ego?" He raises some interesting questions. He also relates a story that he's told a bit, about how, when he was younger, around 19, people would be amazed that he was doing 6 hours of really slow, really exacting qigong exercises. He says that he didn't ever set out to do a 6 hour practice. Rather, it was just minute by minute, second by second, that he kept making tiny micro changes, completely absorbed in the process, and before he knew it, 6 hours went by.

Maybe you should try to find that.

What's wrong with having your head in the clouds? As long as your feet are on the ground

If you knew anything about real internal martial arts, you'd know that touching a master like that is like getting tazed each time!

These people get off easy, since they are already open to the energy, he doesn't have to exert for them to feel it. But if it was against a determined attacker, he'd have to pump them full of so much electricity that they'd probably die before they felt it.

which is why this intense master will never be in the UFC or any other "sport", because his skills are just too deadly, no one would comprehend it, and UFC would never make any money.

[/sarcasm]

*ahem* Of the little yiquan stuff I've actually seen, most of it is pretty grounded in reality- I've seen yiquan guys training against boxing jabs, working with heavy bags, and generally addressing things that occur quite frequently in modern fighting, but that you don't see a lot of in traditional martial arts.

Big emphasis, from what little I know, on standing practice, in other words, the fundamentals, basics of the basics, which is good. A lot of people get caught up in techniques and forms that when push comes to shove, they don't have the ability to actually DO any of it to someone who isn't their student.

Don't know what this video was trying to show. Qi development perhaps? Probably not anything that was supposed to be taken as "you can do this to someone who grabs you", probably more like, "look at what happens when you've practiced for a long time and someone sensitive touches you."

Still, as always, I advocate a more scientific approach to investigating these phenomena and abilities of teachers/masters. Because unless there's some hard studies done about these guys, they just make for some.... uh.... entertaining? videos.

I think remember Trunk saying something a while back about how a voting system would have the function of archiving the really good posts for future generations to find. I think that is an awesome idea, but one that would require DISCIPLINE on the part of forum members not to abuse the voting feature. Which, unfortunately, is probably impossible for a forum of this size and growth rate.

I hope there is not an archiving system which is based around, or prioritizes, highly voted posts. Some unpopular posts might have some great truths to them, but just got voted down because it's not popular. Another good post could also get lost in the abyss simply because people read it, thought, "wow, great post!" then didn't comment and didn't (or forgot) to vote, simply because they felt the job was done and they moved on.

Not to pick on you specifically but OMG...you people are so sensitive. Must be all that meditation stuff you are doing.

 

Does anyone honestly believe this forum to be heavily moderated??? Exact opposite of no moderation??

 

Didn't Stig say something about hitting the neg button for people who hijack a thread to indicate to stay on topic and that a post is going away from the topic?

 

Anyway...get over it. TTB is NOT heavily moderated. But that's just my opinion of course, not being a moderator.

 

Please feel free to disagree. Carry on with civil discourse.

 

Craig

I agree that this place isn't heavily moderated! Which, to be honest, is very refreshing.

But for me, it's more about how it could be (ab)used by the users. Sure, anything is open for abuse. I think TTB is one of the best communities around, all things considered. But it's gotten pretty ugly in the past. While moderator action only happens in pretty extreme cases, there's a lot that goes on which DOESN'T get (or in my opinion, require) moderator action. HOWEVER, I think this system would be open to the abuse during those types of situations, which normally would blow over, but now might be exacerbated because there's a literal gauge for what's going on with the post outside of the post's content.

If that makes any sense...

Its all in the interpretation I think. If people minus click a post or if I look at someone's overall reputation what am I supposed to make of it? Using Vaj as an example - he stimulates a lot of debate and livens up the forum but ends up with minus scores what am I supposed to do with this information? If I was a new member I might be put off or distracted by it.

 

The other things is that certain members might score every post they read while others never bother - so all we are getting is the opinion of a few. For it to have any meaning everyone would need to use it and I am not sure that we all want to. If that's the case it becomes meaningless.

 

Why not do a poll - who wants it and who would sign up to using it?

But if some people never use it, won't the same people just not vote to begin with y'know, voter apathy and all?

My concern has been less of moderator action with regards to these things, but the action taken upon other members. A bit more specifically, I think it can open up an avenue for people to gang up on another member.

So, say a bunch of people decided, "hey, this person is a troll" or "this person is just advertising" or "this person just doesn't understand the true nature" or something like that, then they all just minus the comments. And then, since we can all see the numbers, that same group of people can say, "well look at that, I guess nobody liked/agreed with what you said/are saying, maybe you should just go away and...." and yadda yadda, something like that.

Basically, it could take the focus away from the content of the post itself, and be more like, "well nobody likes it, so obviously you don't have anything of value to say".

Don't know if your average day at thetaobums would produce such a scenario, but I think a few threads/situations/people have gotten to a point where such a scenario could be a possibility.

BKF's teacher was not a hermit. He lived in Beijing and headed a taoist sect. Taoist sects do not initiate members or students without confirming the fact.

Well he's referenced as an "urban hermit" of some sort, because while he did live in Beijing, he didn't really make contact with a lot of people, and didn't teach any students other than two or three (BKF, Bai Hua, and I seem to recall reading somewhere that he taught a relative of someone he knew from the bagua school he was in, but that may have just been Bai Hua, as the running story that you hear is that he only taught two).

As an aside, the book, "The Whirling Circles of Baguazhang" has an interesting little bit at the front about who taught whom and from where. They do a very good job about connecting the dots with martial arts teachers/students, at least, some of it gets very complicated, especially when cross generation people start teaching people from other lineages, and so-and-so is so-and-so's martial uncle/cousin/brother yadda yadda. Not much on the spiritual lineage tracing, but I seem to recall it's from this book that my recollection of a third student comes from. Anyway, Liu Hung Chieh and BKF appear in that little segment, which I'm sure can be found on google books still, for anyone wanting to check it out.

I agree with the rest about verifying a lineage I know many people just want to find "a practice that works", and don't really care about lineage. And that's fine. But sometimes you DO want a lineage, and in those instances, you gotta do the research. And people claiming a certain lineage, you gotta back it up!

But I've never really felt comfortable saying, and maybe it's because I don't read it too often, "BKF's lineage". I think that in the books he mostly refers to his stuff as "the water tradition of daoism". I'm not sure how much BKF really fashions himself, if at all, an "inheritor", I don't know how much, if any at all, he's really changed the material/structure of the system (though I know he has, in many cases, distilled some of his vast experiences into a few forms that are highly effective and representative of certain principles). From what I've gathered from the writings, when his main teacher passed away, BKF wasn't really ready to start teaching the "serious" stuff (meditation, advanced qigong, advanced bagua and advanced tai chi) and mostly stuck with the basics, and it took him a while to kinda grow into teaching more of the serious stuff. But that may be my oversight and skewed interpretation!

A lot of people have said a lot of things about celibacy. I highly suggest you go back and search through some of the old threads.

Not to sound too hippie-ish, but a lot of things Taoist fall under the "do things naturally" category. But "what's natural" depends on a whole lot of things. What's natural for one person might not be natural for another.

Rather than following something dogmatically, or rather than following something you think might be the best for you, or following something because that's what you want to be true, you should do a practice that involves listening to your body, and doing whatever practices fit your body at that time (I say it that way because that may change over time, or with other circumstances). Trying to work it all out, trying to know what's with a bunch of different systems, or something of that sort, is going to leave you incredibly focused on the issue, and, in the worst case scenario, get your mired in the very problem that you hoped to avoid.

Don't be afraid to do something you've never done before if it truly feels better, and don't be afraid to stop doing what you've always done if it truly feels wrong.

I agree with the points system but I think it is still weak. I would introduce karma stars under each member (like some forums do) to slow down/deter trolls from posting, and there are few around in here, but I guess like anything in life they are required to balance the system: good-evil, positive-negative.

But see that's the thing though- even perception of who/what is considered a "troll" is subject to opinion. Someone could be raising valid, though unpopular points, and be considered a "troll" equally with someone who is legitimately just dicking around, and be considered a "troll" equally with someone who is just not eloquent enough to get their thoughts across completely.

Any type of user rating/ranking system is open for abuse stemming from someone's opinion about the poster, rather than about the quality of the posts themselves. Even brilliant posters don't always post the next holy book, and even unpopular posters can hit the nail on the head in a topic. Best to just have everyone read the post how they want, free of any sort of plus/minus.

In my humble opinion.

Hmm, yeah, I found the introduction of the rating system to be a bit silly. Doesn't really seem to be part of the "spirit" of this forum? At least in my very humble opinion.

That said, I haven't really seen it used that widely. I've given a few positive points to people right after I commented on how much I liked their posts. I've only seen one negative one given, and I think that was by someone who explicitly said, "see it was me who gave you that negative point".

Maybe I'm not paying much attention.

Popularity has never really been in my interest on TTB. It'd be nice if I got a couple thumbs up, but I'm not really looking for it. I'd like to think I wouldn't care if I got negative points, but you never know I recognize people by their names and the consistent quality of their posts, not the number associated with them.

I figure that in general, it'll have as much of an impact as the users give it. I for one am not paying it much mind.

That said, perhaps this might be better suited to be moved to a different section of the forum? Or perhaps it won't get as much attention there. To be honest, I don't visit many other parts of the forum besides this one too frequently, despite there being some good stuff in other parts!

I don't know if you've seen this before, but "Initiation Into Hermetics" puts the exercise you are doing in the step I mental category.

It's certainly useful in the way that Bardon's method works, and the later ways in which he deals with subconscious, habits of conscious, etc etc.

For me, personally, that's not the way I liked to go about doing things, and for me, I came across the things that taomeow and de_paradise have already brought up.

It was pretty easy for me to get focused, and for a while, I reaped great benefit from it- I noticed that I could work long hours and be completely focused on just doing my work (whereas before my mind would wander and I'd procrastinate). I realized that I could fall asleep in about two seconds after lying down because I was completely focused on sleep (whereas before it took me about an hour to fall asleep). Yet I still noticed, from other practices I had done which got me into the habit of observing these things, that I was still pretty tense.

And as taomeow already put it, it's like a cat watching mice- if the cat is around, the mice aren't going to come out. But in my opinion, even if you have a cat, you still have the mice! As much as I like a cute little mouse, if I want to get one out of my house, I'll lay a mouse trap. The REAL test is when you leave a bunch of traps around and no mice show up!

Didn't see anything, but heard bits and pieces through the grapevine at the office. Any reliable info? I was outside a good chunk of the day.

Lotta people saying a lot of stuff:

"It's clearly an airplane contrail," John Pike, a defense expert and director of GlobalSecurity.org, told CNN. "It's an optical illusion that looks like it's going up, whereas in reality it's going toward the camera. The tip of the contrail is moving far too slowly to be a rocket. When it's illuminated by the sunset, you can see hundreds of miles of it ... all the way to the horizon."

FYI, been juggling 10,000 things and haven't compiled the interview yet so keep firing away if you have more questions. I'm hoping to carve out some time this evening...

 

Sean

Well please let us know when you compile them and send them off! I'd really like to know how he'd respond to some of these! A few of us here, including myself, have practiced/practice his methods but have not had a chance to meet/talk with him in person (though there are a few people here who have done a great job of helping us along with Frantzis' material!), and it'd be great to hear his responses to some of these questions!

You saw that? whoops

Nah, but seriously, wasn't me, and I didn't see it. Heard about it, though.

I practice the stuff that B.K. Frantzis has put out in his books "Opening the Energy Gates of Your Body", "Relaxing Into Your Being", "The Great Stillness", and "Dragon and Tiger Medical Qigong". All of them are GREAT. The instructions in those books are very detailed. Energy Gates and Dragon and Tiger are mostly method books, focusing on specific practices and principles that you should start incorporation. Relaxing Into Your Being and The Great Stillness are a two part book set that has mostly theory and background on Frantzis' tradition of Taoism, how it is similar/different from other methods, and more philosophical outlook, sprinkled with some practices.

I have never practiced with an instructor or Frantzis himself. I have practiced exclusively from his published material. And I have to say that it is still a GREAT method, one of the best I have come across, and you can get some great results. The thing about his system is that it emphasizes naturalness of movement and flow, as well as feeling. Once you can truly feel your body, you don't need a teacher to tell you when you are doing something right/wrong- you will FEEL it AS it happens. When things start to go wrong, you can feel them sooner, identify them, and fix problems BEFORE they occur.

On top of that, the stuff in his books build the foundation for the rest of his sytem as a whole, so if you want to progress further, that's where you want to start. And if you want to do other systems, the stuff he teaches is pretty universal, and you'll be able to apply what he teaches to whatever else you learn.

The only downside is that, as far as the published material, it's really "low energy". Highly effective, but still low energy. He says that this is to prevent harm if practices are approached incorrectly. And as you very well know, his books have ample warning on all the things that can go wrong. However, I'll also say that the tools he gives you can allow you, if properly learned and applied, to take on a higher energy system. So if you can't make it to him (his seminars are pretty pricey!) to learn higher level stuff, but still feel ready to move on, after learning a bit, you might have the tools to start trying stuff on your own anyway.

So, I'm all for practicing on your own from books, even without a teacher, as I'm also a college student with a busy schedule. Other people strongly disagree. Others say you won't have as good of an experience. I don't know about that. Since I started meditation and qigong, I haven't had an in-person teacher, and I feel like I've gotten along just fine. If all of this energy work is real, and a natural part of being human, then it should be self evident through consistent practice on your own with the proper methods. There are some awesome people on thetaobums, a lot of good questions have already been asked. You can make a lot of progress with just you and a few experienced friends

Let's say you're having an OBE and you wake up you're slightly aroused or you feel like you have to urinate...does this anything like this every happen to you?

Depends on when you're having an OBE. If you are having it during your normal sleep schedule, and you wake up at the same time that you normally wake up, having to urinate or having a little morning wood is completely natural anyway, and wouldn't be an effect of having an OBE.

There are a bit more serious explanations for having to pee, or at least having the sensation of having to pee, like having an enlarged prostate. And you should consult with a medical professional to determine if something like that is the case.

Well when I watched Star Wars as a kid, it really opened me up to the idea that there was "something more" in the universe. It's also good motivation to practice when I go back and watch it, or read/play stuff from the expanded universe.

Avatar: The Last Airbender (tv series) also had a lot of cool stuff in it, from martial arts to meditation to energy work, which gives a lot of good motivation.

Yes, but obviously you are not a hermit, therefore...

People in the old days used to think that priests in the church had some kind of secret power that let you get into heaven, and to know what God wanted you to do. What was their real secret? They could read. They could read what was in the Bible. They could read what other mystics and academics, both contemporary and ancient, were writing. The "secret" was that they were simply educated. But back then, being educated was a big deal. Not just "anyone" could do it.

That there are people achieving things on their own tells me that it is possible. But there are people around this board saying that not just "anyone" can do it. Now the questions that then arise are: do they have something that others do not have, and is it exclusive to hermits, or is it, like literacy in old Europe, rare, but not because the talent itself was rare, but because of various social situations?

So again (for me, anyway), that there are people doing it alone means that it can be done alone, whether you are a hermit or not. There may be some factor that happens concurrently with the hermit lifestyle, but is not specific to the hermit lifestyle. Of course, everyone can believe what they want, hm?

Question:

Many of the practices you teach focus on letting go, increasing awareness and sensitivity, and feeling and working with various energies. What protective methods, if any, would you recommend to someone in situations in which feeling other energies could be harmful, or if there is an abundance of overtly negative energy?

Question:

In books such as the Power of Internal Martial Arts, you relate your experiences from lots of different arts, some of them quite obscure, such as the purely Taoist tradition of Eight Drunken Immortals. Have you considered, or will you consider, teaching methods and styles such as those?

Mantak Chia is coming out with a new book on the Taoist Medicine Wheel:

 

http://www.amazon.com/Taoist-Shaman-Practices-Wheel-Life/dp/1594773653/ref=sr_1_23?ie=UTF8&qid=1288994433&sr=8-23

 

Sources say its estimated in December.

 

 

 

But check this out, its the blog by the co-author:

 

http://krisdevanorth.blogspot.com/2010/10/taoist-medicine-wheel-1st-instalment.html

 

Looks like he has his personal version of the book out electronically (pdf and kindle), and the first four chapters free on his blog.

 

 

I haven't read it yet, but it looks awesome and very relevant to this topic.

 

 

Peace!

Looks neat, thanks for those links!

Actually I think you are probably progressing rather nicely, and will probably either have powers (or not want them ) in 3~5 years if you keep at it.

 

I also went through western occult, eventually Bardon, Buddhism, then Taoism. The journey taught me many things, and while I may have wandered a few paths I'm glad I didn't rush

Thanks for your confidence!

"Opening the Energy Gates Of Your Body" by B.K. Frantzis.

Actually I'm only kidding(I think), but there is truth is jest.

I also think there is truth in jest

How did you feel when you read what was above. 8 hours daily being beginner level for a young magi in training?

Not a problem, I just gotta set myself up so I have 8 hours a day of meditation to do

Well if you want Magic and specific advice. Read Bardon, start w/ Initiation Into Hermetics. Go to Abardoncompanion.com and start doing some sequences in Rawn Clark's series. They start easy and move progressively deeper. Bardon starts his magical series with a deep level of self understanding. He progresses after many years of study into dealing w/ elementals and various powers. But to get there you must understand and develop yourself, and thats integral to the program.

 

It may be what your looking for.

Worked with Bardon for a little under a year, precisely because he was teaching exactly what I wanted. But it didn't work out for me. So I stuck with it, thought it was something I just had to overcome and deal with. But it didn't work. As much as I want stuff, I'm not going to compromise myself to get it! "To thine own self be true".

But I really like the taoist stuff, it really appealed to me and the practices that I do (mostly energy gates + taoist meditation that BKF teaches in his books, do dissolving for 1-2 hours a day, and do taoist meditation for about an hour a day), so I thought, "why don't I find a system of magic that corresponds to what appeals to me philosophically, what I see in my daily life, and what lines up with the practices I already do?"

So, taoist magic