Zhongyongdaoist

Actually Sublimation, one of the problems of the first post, and I think subsequent posts on the thread you mention, is that it does not link to the original video, and thus provide us with the means analyzing the match that caused all of the commotion about this. I think in posting this you have done us a service and I suggest keeping this up, I will link it to the other thread, and that thread to this one. This is the present thread dealing with the topic: UFC Fighter Says He Will Defend Tai Chi

The condition is not as unusual as you think, nor is it technically a problem with the "third eye", but rather a habitual suppression of the visual part of the brains natural "image stream". While I had noticed that there did seem to be such a stream much earlier, it was confirmed by reading a book called Your Limitless Inventing Machine by Win Wenger, in the mid to late Seventies. On the Dao Bums thelerner posted an excerpt from some of Wenger's material here: Image Streaming and I posted a link to his site: Project Renaissance The title of the opening thread in my PPF, Zhonyongdaoist's Limitless Mischief Machine, is, as I point out, a sly reference to Wenger's work mentioned above. You might wish to take a look at what thelerner posted and then Wenger's site, I think it will help you understand what is going on, and even give you techniques for recovering your wife's natural image stream and developing a faculty for visualization should that be something she wants to do.

I've never questioned effectiveness of shunning, nor of solitary confinement for that matter, but first you have to give them something to think about.

Well, the satanists will just claim that the devil made them do it. Well, isn't that special.

Sorrow yes, hope no, as this tends to indicate: i think i am good here if i call others names and insult them: So, this is your definition of skillfull means then? Insulting people and calling them names? This is rhetorical, because I have read you posts, I know how you think, and I can certainly understand that insulting people and calling them names helps you to feel good, but does it help anyone else? Basically it doesn't even help you, because while you were whining about a possible ban, you continued to engage in the same behavior that would have resulted in a suspension, or maybe two or three before an outright ban, but an eventual ban nonetheless, if you did not stop behaving that way. So again, and now again I ask you, though not rhetorically, but to give you something to think about, is insulting people and calling them names your definition of Skillful Means? Because if so, you have the most bizarre and out of touch with the reality definition of Skillful Means that I have ever come across, since it should be obvious that skillful means are those that get the point across to the other person and not alienate them. That's certainly my definition of Skillful Means, and I think that anyone who claims to have meditated and become wise, should have the self-control and wisdom to use real Skillful means to get their point across to the other person, and not the means to alienate them and stop them from listening to you, like calling them names and insulting them does. So, as far as I am concerned, your behavior is not the behavior of a wise person, and if not wise, certainly not an accomplished meditator, and therefore, I don't see any reason to consider that you have any reason to dismiss anyone as a "noob", just because they are not impressed with you, or to insult them further and call them names, and if you continue to do so, your sublime "wisdom" will get you banned, something which you have said that you wish to avoid. While writing the above liminal_luke posted, and I applaud his compassion in this matter, but I have seen several Dao Bum's members such as you, allinone and also SeekerOfHealing, be banned, and in some cases readmitted and banned again, for the type of behavior in which you both routinely indulge, and indulge is the right word, because it is more of a vice than a virtue. You personally are here at this time because of a beautiful intervention of Dao Bums led by marblehead, and he, and all the Dao Bums who followed his lead are to be commended for that, but based on past experience such interventions are never enough, because they don't and cannot address the fact that you and SeekerOfHealing need to be taking herbs to deal severe organ imbalances, and while I would be willing to provide some general advice on that, I really don't hold out much hope that, in the long run, like several before you, both you and SeekerOfHealing will be banned. I wish that this were not the case, but there is only so much that I or anyone on the Dao Bums can do for people under the limitations of a forum like this. These situations are always hard on a group of caring people like the Dao Bums, and it is certainly not easy for us Mods, who must deal with the situation and enforce the rules. Regrettably, people need to take responsibility for who they are and how they act, and wonder if they are as advanced as they think they are and their behavior as wise as the like to think it is, before the type of potential about which Brian is talking can be realized, and most people just aren't willing to do that.

Yes, you and "SeekerOfHealing" both have the same problem. From a TCM prospective you both have sever Liver problems which should be dealt with by herbal treatments, neither acupuncture alone or meditation is like to be effective in either of your cases. The fact that neither of you realize, and will probably vehemently deny it and very defensively last out at anyone who points this out, shows how far both of you need to go on the spiritual path. Yes, the world is full of cruelty, but why should I or anyone else lower myself to be part of it? In his dialog Gorgias Plato argues with all of the dialectic and rhetorical power at his command that it is better to be the victim of injustice then to perpetrate it and I will quote from my post on the possible Platonic influence on the Gospel according to Matthew Plato's conclusion of that dialog: I leave it those who care to read the dialog to see how Plato arrives at this conclusion. I was preparing this while allinone added to his post above, and also thelerner's contribution.

Thanks for your clarification morning dew: It's not that I missed this, or you disdain for the video, but that I did not think that it was strong enough: it should be obvious that we would all (Roosh included) be shooting ourselves in the foot: Yes, I agree it should be obvious, but it isn't, otherwise we wouldn't be having this discussion at all would we? And the fact that it is not obvious is why we should condemn this type of attitude in the strongest possible way, which is what I set out to do, though since most people have no idea of the influence of Plato on whatever was and is best about Western Culture, it could not be as strong as it should have been, or should be, but that ignorance is not my fault and much as I would like to rectify it, and tried to do so in Plato and Platonism 101, and other posts on Dao Bums, it is simply an uphill job when people confuse Philosophy as Plato and the Platonist envisioned it with the pale, insipid nonsense of Nineteenth and Twentieth Century "intellectualism". What Plato is talking about is the equality of "Souls", and not the "gender roles" which which the "secondary causes" created through evolution in the process of evolving bodies for those "Souls" to achieve "self-realization" by conscious action in the world. It is this opportunity to waken from the "bardo dream state", to use Buddhist terminology, which is offered by incarnation, and it is the struggle to awaken which is the great struggle and challenge of human life, and one which regrettably, most people fail, and fail for a variety of reasons, but they are certainly not being helped by the sexist nonsense of "SeekerofHealing", who in his opening post on the welcome page said this: before his own emotional blocks and problems reasserted themselves, and he became "GiverofBadAdvice", a person who seems to have learned nothing from two suspensions and stands on the precipice of being banned, for reasons which I am sure he will not be able to comprehend. I am going to take advantage of this opportunity to repeat my link to: Why are women being educated? and urge people who haven't already, to read the whole series, its not as easy as watching a Video, but it is worth the time and effort.

I'm not going to repeat the disugusting video posted in Post #50 with the title: Why are women being educated? But, I will answer why we are educating women, and that is because 2500 years ago Plato argued in the most powerful terms that he could, that not only should we, but we must educate women for their good, our good as men, and for the good of the future of the human race. I posted this sometime back in Post #49 of Plato and Platonism 101: Please read that passage aloud at least three times. No analysis or commentary that I could offer will convey these complex ideas and images with the power that Plato imbues in them. Do these words resonate for you with insight and mastery of communication as they do for me? If so, then you share with me an experience of the richness that Plato brings to thought and that philosophy creates for human potential. The metaphor of nakedness as the striping away of appearances and prejudices imposed by society upon nature reveals Plato's deep intent. This position of total gender equality is a radical claim bound to be dismissed by his contemporaries. In anticipation of that rejection, Plato is asserting that it is society itself that must be challenged. It turns out that not just Plato's society needs challenge, but yours and mine. The norms and conventions of our culture are based in appearances, not natures (reality). Enforcing such norms creates an unnatural and corrupted society. Only by the courage to face truth through reason and to accept the consequences of change based in reason, can the society be redeemed. Otherwise, the culture and the people in it are doomed to ignorance, injustice, and repression of the fulfillment of human potential. The theme of appearance vs reality is pervades The Republic and Plato's work generally. The most famous statement of that issue is The Allegory of the Cave which is also in The Republic. Personally I wish it was needless to say the type of misogynist nonsense that permeates this thread is unworthy to be on the Dao Bums, but as the course of the thread prove, it is needful, very needful, to repeat this over and over again every time the ignorance of the gorilla mind shows up parading itself in the guise of wisdom.

The examples that you cite seem to all point to an origin in Fundamentalist Christian writings, so it is no wonder that they point out examples that support a “Christian” conclusion. Many people here have addressed them in one way or another, so I am going to point out an alternative view for you, that if you think it through may help you get a different perspective on who and what Jesus might have been which would be totally incompatible with fundamentalist ideas about “Jesus”, and if Jesus is not who the fundamentalists say he is, then no notions derived from fundamentalism can be true. Back in the late Seventies I read a book called: Jesus the Magician by Morton Smith which was part of my own research into the problem of “the historical Jesus”, and thought that it was a fascinating view of Jesus, and just as well argued as the books that said that Jesus was a nice young Rabbi whose teachings were distorted by Paul, and the ones that argued that he was a zealot revelutionary, and, well the list goes on, oh, it did include one that argued that he was an allegory for the hallucinogenic Amanita Muscaria mushroom, which by the way ruined that scholar's career, and he was not a minor figure in Biblical scholarship either. Each one of these different portraits of such an important figure took what little we do know and wove totally different and mutually exclusive pictures of Jesus, each one argued very well by scholars, that I reached the conclusion that it would be impossible to tell who or what the historical Jesus really was, though I was pretty sure that he was not a mushroom. I tended to view him, if he actually existed at all, as possibly a religious activist with a background in some form of religious esotericism which could have been magic, like Morton Smith said, or maybe he was an Essene, these are not mutually exclusive by the way, that is how things remained from the mid Eighties until recently when I was looking for internet resources that related to Morton Smith's book, I found this fascinating site: Jesus as a Magician Which is a very well researched and tightly argued doctoral thesis which updates Smith's work and rectifies such criticisms as this: and is one of the most interesting and compelling discussions I have read. After reading it, as far as I was concerned the idea that Jesus was an actual person and that he really did practice magic, became, to me at least, the most likely interpretation of the Gospels, and if so then, as I said earlier, all fundamentalist doctrines can safely be ignored.

Just taking a quick look at this material it is very similar to material that I started to work with in the late Sixties derived from the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. The Golden Dawn material is in turn derived from Qabalah dating back at least a thousand years, and with it roots the Hellenistic period. This material was extremely powerful and I achieved very good results from it, but became dissatisfied with the fact that it seemed rooted in a particular ethos, that of the Judeo-Christian tradition, and I started to expand in different directions of practice, thus qigong, etc., from which I have also gained considerable benefit. The material in these instructions seems workable and because of its more general vocabulary, a more universal appeal, try for example, getting an anti-semite interested in Qabalah, or for that matter someone who is utterly convinced, largely due to lack of familiarity, that the West has, and never has had anything of value spiritually, to be interested in the material that I originally studied and you will see what I mean. There are however certain virtues to the material as I originally practiced it which might not be accessible using the approach outlined, at least in so far as I understand it now. While this may be a more modern adaptation, with what I consider some dubious associations, the outlined practices and ideas, are not "new age BS", though as they stand they could be expanded and extended in ways that are both powerful and not obvious from the way that they seem to be expounded here. Edit: Changed typo, corrected to "largely do to lack of familiarity".

i kept hearing the word 'tosser' in my mind: I am assuming that you mean "tosser" instead of a "keeper", if this is so this person is obviously very manipulative and is toxic just to be around, whether they possess any type of psychic power or knowledge. Obviously "tosser" is part of a pattern of denigration designed to make you feel that you are lucky he is only treating you like dirt. I cannot disrecommend Jason Miller's book too heartily, and yes I do mean don't read it. He is as far as I can tell a competent enough writer and practitioner, but I have never read his books and unless someone wants to pay me to read and review them I probably never will. I don't need them, and you don't need what Protection and Hex Reversal Magick has to teach, and unless you get deeply into the study and practice of magic, probably never will. Instead get yourself: Spiritual Cleansing by Draja Mickaharic and read it with what I have to say here in mind: You need to heal and grow yourself, until you dwarf spiritual pygmies like this troll.

Not only would I not mind it, I would consider it an honor. It may be possible to move it, as I said in your thread, the topic is important and little understood.

To get back to this: Liver and Gallbladder have a lot of relationship to eyes and ears, this is because the Liver releases its excess through the Gallbladder and its channel. A standard symptom of Liver excess is high pitched tinnitus, and over sensitivity of vision and hearing are associated with Liver/Gallbladder problems. Now, just some general observations based on what you have described so far. If this person you have in mind was a demanding, demeaning boss, who constantly berated and bullied you, then the idea that over time you would develop a fearful attitude to him, as well as feelings of anger and frustration related to him seems reasonable. If in letting go of the fear issues that you mentioned, you also let go of some of the inhibitions that kept have kept this anger and frustration "locked up", because to express it would be harmful to your work situation, then the anger and frustration, which are associated with Liver and by extension Gallbladder, may have also come to the surface, possibly even in the image of the dream wolf as a symbol of this old boss, whose dream attack on you mirror your bosses attacks on you, then this may help explain a good part of what has been going on. That doesn't mean that there aren't "psychic attack" levels going on, because a person who in rage is yelling at you, is projecting an awful lot of negative qi, and if they dwell on this, they can unconsciously create "thought blobs", which don't deserve the name "thought forms", which can be mildly harmful to others, but this is not a psychic attack in the sense of being a spell or something like that done by a person who really knows what they are doing. Your real danger here was probably not from him, but from your own reactions to him. Keeping a positive attitude, learning some simple shielding and strengthening your "defensive qi" may be a good idea for future dealings with this person. Remember, this is only based on what you have told me, and I have not done any deeper investigation, but I do have a lot of experience with this sort of thing, and have a pretty good sense of what is usually involved. I hope this is helpful. ZYD

Your wish is our command. Well, at least sometimes. We don't delete posts, but I can understand about this being too personal. I didn't leave a link in the General Discussion section pointing here for privacy reasons, though of course guests couldn't follow here anyway. I thought about leaving one, but decided that since you wanted privacy I would not link it. I don't know if its possible to put it in after a move.

You are certainly welcome. Just as a note, one of our members, Qicat, has created a good thread: Observations on Qi Deviations In her personal practice discussion. Unfortunately for our Dao Bums guests reading this post, this link is to a members only thread and they cannot access it (Hint, hint, join Dao Bums today!). Regrettably a lot of what passes for "kundalini" experiences in common experience are just Qi Deviations, and the misreading of these experiences as somehow "spiritual awakenings" can result in long term problems.

They are all related and like most families are a tangled web of love/hate relationships unless you have done a lot of "family therapy". Bladder and Gallbladder meridians both run through the head and the stomach down from the bottom of the eyes to the feet, and a strong qi release in one area can result in another spontaneous release in another related one, so yes it is very possible that your symptoms could be because of your earlier "release" experience, it just happens that not all releases create positive feelings at first, though once they are resolved by the energy fully "running its course", the long term benefit will be apparent.

The physical symptoms which you describe are much like a "qi deviation" involving Liver Fire and stagnant Liver energy moving up the Gallbladder channel into the head and remaining stuck there. That said, it doesn't mean that there might not be an element of psychic attack going on, because such attacks will stimulate energy weaknesses. Psychic attack is relatively rare, but not as rare as people think. As a bit of acupuncture therapy "first aid", you might do a search on the Gallbladder meridian and massage the Gallbladder points on the feet that can drain heat and stagnation, this might help relieve some of your physical symptoms. I hope that helps with you immediate symptoms, anything else about this would require a deeper look. Just in case there is an element of psychic attack going on you might want to review what I posted here: Salt baths for psychic cleansing and protection I hope this is helpful.

Wuji is probably a better description, since the point is to get outside of Taiji (Tai Chi, supreme ultimate), and into the limitless, wuji, outside of space and time, the prenatal void which is not empty. Put another way, it is to switch from the post-natal world of the Loshu to the prenatal world of the Hotu. This is an interesting cross cultural comparison to a passage in Plato's dialogue Phaedrus: I hope this is helpful.

I don't accept Berkeley's "Idealism", but the following is about as succinct a discussion of its most important aspect, and the one that is usually left out of the type of discussion going one here, God: In Berkeley's philosophy God is the perpetual witness of all, and the guarantor of the "objectivity" of all perceptions. There is more to all of this of course, however, this gets rid of problems with stones and trees, but what Berkeley is really trying to deal with is certain problems with Locke's empiricism which have "bedeviled" Western philosophy since the Seventeenth Century. By the way, Locke, basically a Puritan in Anglican clothing, as well as just about all of the advocates of the Seventeenth Century revival of Epicurean atomism, were as dependent on "God" as an explanatory element as was Berkeley. Seventeenth Century Epicureanism was "Christian" Epicureanism from its inception to the middle of Eighteenth Century, when group of evangelical libertines did everything they could to exorcise the Holy Ghost from the machine.

And John Barrie wrote Peter Pan. The secret behind the secret? Sprinkle yourself in fairy dust and think happy thoughts.

Actually it's anything but an idiotic question if by idiotic you mean a question that idiots ask. Idiots never ask important questions like this because they already think that they know everything important. It is however, a question that inquiring minds ask, and its a good one. As a person who has given a lot of thought to wisdom and how to get it, from my early teens a long time ago to the present. I do have some ideas about that. The first thing is to ask what wisdom is, and having at least found a preliminary idea, you have a better notion of what you are seeking and what it might look like if you find it. A provisional definition of Wisdom which I worked out sometime in the eighties, was that wisdom was doing the right thing, at the right time, for the right reason. To see why this is so let's look at fools. Do fools do the right thing? Well seldom if ever, that is why they are called fools. Do fools do the right thing at the right time? Well if my some odd happenstance they do actually do something that in general can be considered the right thing, they almost always do it at the wrong time, that is why they are called fools. Do fools when they do things at the right time, for the right reason have the right reasons for doing them? Now by right reason, I mean something that indicates a real understanding of the situation, and how to act in it. Well, I suppose by definition fools don't have a real understanding of the situation, that is why they are called fools. Now a little thought about the above will indicate its general applicability from the most mundane questions, such as "How to safely cross a street?", to the highest levels of "esoteric" wisdom. In all of these matters you want to do the right thing, at the right time for the right reason. If you want to succeed at any task you must do it rightly, and doing it rightly is doing it wisely. Now the other the other aspects of what you ask are a little more complex, especially since there are so many things running around claiming to be wisdom and the right way to do things. The best place to start with all of this is with yourself, and to start by asking what do I believe, and why do I believe it? Do your really have good reasons to believe what you believe, or when you thing about them do they seem a little thin and not convincing? What are the consequence of what you believe? In other words if what you believer is true is true, what does that belief imply about the world, about people, about yourself? Beliefs are often built up from other beliefs, these are called presuppositions, you need to ask yourself, what things do I believe in order to believe this other belief that I have? This type of self-inquiry is the beginning of wisdom, in doing it you are starting to know yourself and knowing yourself is the most important knowledge that you can acquire.

So is differential calculus, and as we all know little tangents can make big differentials.

I guess that's why they're called "First Principles". Which is a very Platonic principle by the way. In late Platonism, i.e. "Neoplatonism", the rule is that the most fundamental property is the most powerful ontological reality. Since every existent thing has the property of "unity", being a whole made of parts, "unity", and thus "the One", as the source of "unity", is the most powerful ontological reality, and from there, pun very much intended, "it is all downhill". All of this is ultimately derived from the logical analysis of the One and the Many in Plato's dialogue Parmenides. Also my preliminary skim of "The Golden Rule of Forecasting" makes is look very valuable indeed, since it is not merely an abstract discussion, but an outline of the recommended procedures which someone could easily extrapolate in their own practice. Taomeow's response is interesting and deserves a longer response, but as a start I think that she is neglecting Prigogine's Dissipative Systems and the relationship between entropy and information, of which living systems are a prime example, both as information, structure and energy dissipation. Human beings for example, having, albeit unwillingly, mastered the art of dissipation, in several senses of the word. That said, one needs to avoid reductionism, because the emergent levels of complexity invariabley have properties that are unexpected from point of view of the more primitive levels from which they originate, and so I am in agreement with Taomeow's overall point.

Thanks Brian, I appreciate both the original post and the "better" link to the "Golden Rule" paper, as it saves me the trouble of searching for it myself and I did want to investigate it. The OP is very interesting and brings together a lot of ideas that I read about or had as my own insight over the years, and there are many interesting ways in which this thread could develop while exploring them, for now though I am going to read the paper on forecasting because the abstract suggested to me one of the applications of the Confucian method of Zhongyong, which I like to translate as "concentrating on the center", and was oddly enough a principle which I worked out in late adolescence, long before I ever read anything on Confucianism. Though, now that I think about it, there are also ways in which the OP could be viewed as related to Zhongyong. It's a weird world, isn't it?

This is an excellent example about how common sense notions don't carry over into the world of the very small where they don't apply, but until their falsity is discovered they continue to influence our thinking. By the way, for those people who aren't really up on "paired" particles, if we are going to import "twin" metaphors into the very small, they are more like "fraternal twins" then "identical twins" since each "twin" has one fundamental characteristic that, like gender in some fraternal twins, is the opposite the other. This characteristic is one of the reasons why they have been so important to the development of physics, though that opens several cans of vibrating, wiggly "strings" about which way too much could be posted.