Deepbluesea

Great question, I meant to ask this in another post, but didn't. Thanks L1, I agree completely. Exercise is really important but my experience is that pc contractions during sex led to unwanted effects. You are not going to hurt anything with a very strong pelvic floor, I think that it can only benefit. The timing of the exercise is key, and for me, absolutely not during sex. Besides, I am usually having too much fun to think about methodology.

Now I like girl on girl action as much as anyone, but c'mon, does a picture of two middle-school girls kissing really get you off?

Oh yeah, and most importantly: something I have been working on in the last few months. Open your heart and love everyone around you. Love everything around you. Be genuinely interested in the person in front of you regardless of who they are even if they have screwed you over. You sow and so shall ye reap (or something like that). I don't think that this fills your tank, I think it makes your tank bigger.

I'll throw my two cents in here. 30 minute jog, 30 min squats, bench, ab work, 30 min yoga, 30 min clear mind meditation per day. as many servings of different colors of veggies per day, some fruit. NO sugar (although I do get it from juice, honey, and maltose from beer (my real sin)). I try for almost no meat except fish. I love raw tuna, but eat the crap from a can regularly. This is what I shoot for. When I can get there I'm feeling pretty good. Maybe I'm feeling good with a half full tank. I'd love to hear how I can fill it all the way up.

You can probably destroy me with 1000 examples of homophobia in Taoism, Pietro, but that doesn't change my 100% hetero but non-homophobic opinion of your statement: that's a pile of bullshit. Findley, It sounds like you are not alone in this, which is good. You sound like you are very well in tune with who you are which is also good. Just breathe and relax, don't label yourself (labels lead to statements like the above), you will work through this. Being scared and angry is always my first response to things that I don't want to hear whether I am hearing them from someone else, or from myself. Calm down and breathe. You'll be fine. Peace always

If you know who you are then maybe it is not important to prove yourself to others. Since this hasn't been the first time this issue has been raised, maybe MTS doesn't feel he needs to respond. Sometimes people just don't respond to silly accusations. I'm not saying he is or isn't who he says he is. But his lack of response in no way confirms anything. I thought that his offer of a swine flu fu for a small or zero contribution to his temple was extremely generous. 3rdeye, My sincerest thoughts and best wishes are with your friend. May they have a quick and full recovery. Peace and love, Dave

Awake, It looks like you have a lot to think about, these are great respsonses. But this one I kinda feel like was one of the best: It is great that you have chosen the path that you are on and starting so early. There are those that grapple with these same difficulties that are two, three, and four times as old as you. And to some extent we all never completely stop dealing with them. Once you begin to "better" yourself (not a very good term) suddenly you find areas to better yourself that you never knew existed. I don't think that there really is a destination, a conclusion, where you can say, "I'm done, I'm where I want to be." Or if you can say those things, you are probably off the path. This, of course, is all an attachment of another sort: the attachment of "walking the right path" or whatever you want to call it. This may not be very helpful but I really got the feeling in your message that you were trying very hard for "no attachment." I think that you also have to be careful that you don't get attached to this attempt at no attachment. Kind of like the happiness and a butterfly parable: as long as you try and try to catch the butterfly you can't but if you chill your ass out and settle down and just sit quietly, it just might come and sit on you shoulder. It sounds to me like things are going pretty well for you. Do you really need to "do" anything? The response is good, so continue, go with the flow, you might be surprised what will happen on its own. I know I always am. Also don't ignore Scotty's advice. Keep a condom hidden in you wallet, your car, or where ever (or multiples) and make sure they don't expire (heat will deteriorate them over time). Good luck!

Wow, what a respectable piece of analysis! It sounds like you have done an extensive amount of research in measuring the moderate versus overdone effects of each. Perhaps the problem with alcohol is that since it tells you,"more, more, more" it is harder to stay moderate and easier to end up "overdone" ... or that is my experience. Alcohol makes it more difficult to say, "No."

Thank you for this. I like your thoughts, your spiritual flexibility. Thank you also for your link to the Sanghatasutra. I have read it three times now and will read it again. It is indeed a treasure: http://www.thetaobums.com/the-rare-Sanghata-Sutra-t6191.html Peace and love, Dave

If you know that you have prostrate problems, seek medical assistance ... do not pass go, do not collect $200 ... go to a doctor. It sounds like you have had the problem of the pain etc for four years. Its not a bad day, a bad weekend or bad month. Get yourself checked out. Being aroused is completely natural, you should be able to enjoy it. Help yourself, best of luck, Love and Peace always, Dave

That flies in the face of what a great man (my father) told me. "When you don't know where you are going, any road will take you there." Your road might be the road for you and I wish you luck. It might be the right road for me and I am ignoring it or I am already on it unknowingly. Since we are tapping away at keyboards instead of walking, it would seem that we are not on a road at all.

Great response. I like that a lot! Thanks!

I agree with you wholeheartedly that many people have died in the name of religion. That is really too bad. But it is nearly impossible to change other people and damn hard just changing yourself. I'm trying to concentrate on the latter. I think about all kinds of erratic stuff too ... just musing along. But I am not sure where you go with it in the end. I suppose you could try and prepare yourself for nuclear holocaust or the possibility that the world will end on some predetermined date or that a tree branch may fall on you and kill you or the SWAT team comes in and guns your family down or all kinds of concerns. I just don't know how it helps you become a better person, a more awakened person. I don't know how much control you have or would want to have over what will happen in the next instant. Living in fear kinda sucks.

Haha, that was the only thing that I could think of when I first read this post. Except I would use homemade "corn squeezin's" (about 190 proof). Unfortunately, while it was a good time, I don't know how "medicinal" it was. Couldn't handle that anymore and have no real interest in trying.

I am on a really lazy, winding spiritual quest. I think that if I was much more committed I would need to drink nothing. But since I am not there, I drink beer. I think that your progression is right on. Though the wine could be fairly equal with beer if its good wine. I have been brewing my own beer (I still drink a lot of commercial too) for over 15 years. It is about the same cost and much better tasting. Years ago I grew hops, and just this year I got started again. The home brew is not just better tasting, it is alive and packed with B12. Since I am making it myself and cultivating the hops, I can further justify what I know in my heart of hearts probably isn't very good for me. Somewhere I read that the average Christian monk in the Middle Ages drank about a gallon of beer a day. Also, a Swedish study with mice showed that drinking the equivalent of 17 beers a day dramatically reduced the chance of prostrate cancer. Health goals worth reaching? (haha)

Thanks for the kind words and advice. As you would probably guess this problem is not new. This is the latest serial in an ongoing saga and we should not have even been surprised by it. My wife and I have been through Eastern and Western styles of therapies and it is just going to take some time. Again, thanks to all, Peace always, Dave

This has been of some help to me in the short term ... a really good mantra. May not be appropriate for little ears.

We live in a very empirical culture. We use numbers to describe things, we use flowcharts and processes to improve ourselves and our productivity, our efficiency. All day long I look at numbers and charts, creating new formulas to get to where I want to be quicker. Meditation ... or just breathing is supposed to be a break from all of that. No numbers, no words, just quiet. I sit for as long as my day will allow (never long enough) just simply breathing deep but comfortably. If a thought comes in and it occupies me, when I discover it, I let it go. If I feel that I have quieted my mind significantly, I will begin to move some energy or I may contemplate decisions I have to make or may have to make. You make good decisions when your mind is quiet. Numbers and formulas may work for some and that's great. I like peace and quiet while I sit. It just started raining, I'm heading out to sit in the rain.

I am feeling guilty that I may have insulted Taoist81 and WhiteTiger. So I wanted to sincerely apologize if I offended anyone. Perhaps it is my lack of use of emoticons and my words choice, I meant no disrespect. And thank you, Ultimatefist, for bringing it up that I may have offended someone. This should probably go in another topic altogether, my apologies to the original poster for adding it here. It is still along the lines of rejecting your family and their religion. And before I start, I am not meaning any disrespect toward you, Ultimatefist. The "Come on man, really?" and then the roll eyes kind of gets under my skin though. But I am a little on edge trying to deal with anger and a lot of difficult questions right now, I know normally I would laugh at it. You mentioned in another post how it really sucks to be in the car with a family when they have lost someone dear to them. Six and a half years ago (and it continues to some extent) I had to console my wife after her brother lost a round of Russian roulette ... good times. He had been kicked out of the house at 15, he never got along with his folks, as I never have, his wishes had been to have his ashes scattered in the ocean and absolutely not be buried. I often tell my wife that if I had grown up in her house I would have ended up the same way as her brother. My wife's grandmother died a short time ago and her burial service was one week ago today. Unbeknownst to us the event was to be a double-feature, my wife's mom scheduled a burial service for her brother too ... to be buried instead of scattered in the ocean. She and her interpretation of her religion fucked him over in life and in death. Without going into detail, she has had family members unjustly arrested, owes us thousands of dollars, and is just generally a miserable and difficult person to be around. So, Ultimatefist, tell me, as I try to figure out if I am going to try (with all of my being) and continue respecting her and her bullshit, am I taking things to absolutes? Am I just trying to create an argument? Is it okay for me to dig a little deeper and ask a couple of questions here and there? "I'm not pissed off, I'm a mushroom cloud laying motherfucker, motherfucker" but I am doing a lot of things to help myself and my wife get through this, this event really was just one of hundreds of really bad things she has done. We would prefer to never see her again but that is probably not realistic. How does my wife look back on this and not think ill of, and not disrespect her lineage and her religion? p.s. I assume Santiago will be in the ether tonight at 11. I will be there too, trying to emit a flicker of a flame.

This is fantastic! Thanks!

In an attempt not to sound argumentative, White Tiger made a very absolute statement, and I was merely trying to clarify it for myself. I was using extremes to test the absolute. In the future, to keep you happy, I will try and refrain from asking any below-the-surface questions. I will try and be a good sheep and just follow the herd. Love always, Dave

In a previous post WT said that "you should respect where you come from." I think there is a huge difference between that and picking and choosing the aspects that were worthwhile -- my mom sucked, she abused me and everyone around her and left me with horrible problems (hypothetical again). You are saying that I should respect her because despite how screwed up I would be if this were real, I have gleaned so much from her cruelty, that I should actually respect her for teaching me how not to be. I guess if you can convince yourself into that backward logic, you can convince yourself into thinking anything. Thinking ill of where you came from IS, like WT said and you advocate, probably a mistake because the feelings of anger end up letting your bad past control you ... enslaving you with your own anger. But not thinking ill of and actually respecting your past are two different things entirely -- the past should just exist -- it should just "be" -- rather than being good or bad ... "it is what it is". I don't have a problem liking myself, its probably the opposite if anything, I have a problem looking at horrible things that a family member has done and continues to do and being expected to repect them. Probably a different topic altogether, but it does tie in to choosing the same religion as your folks.

Modern evolutionary theory, and I think Stephen J Gould is responsible for this, (I can't quite remember) says that instead of Darwin's ideas of evolution creating changes over thousands ... hundreds of thousands ... millennia, evolution (in terms of a drastic shift in DNA) occurs in "fits and starts." Could it be that civilization creates itself in a similar manner? Or is it because civilization requires parts x, y, and z and once those components exist within a small society it is firing on all cylinders and ready to explode into an historically-sized population/civilization? Or maybe it requires both, plus a little luck, maybe a little magic, maybe a little star dust. The civilization lives on for a couple of thousand years and then implodes on itself as the results of complacency and immorality take their effect, or just simply lack of carrying capacity. Religion usually demands of a people to continue creating offspring in order to perpetuate the beliefs of said religion (this is also written into surviving genetic codes, that is how the current species of the world still exist) the problem is that civilizations and species overpopulate. I'm going to stop now ... but going back to the original post, in my mind 2012 means absolutely nothing. Our civilization may fail but I don't think anyone knows when or how. But I'm wrong all the time ... all the time.

What if your father was Hitler? Normally I would agree with you, but are there not times when someone should absolutely reject their lineage? Should they not realize heinous crimes against others, think ill of and disrespect those crimes? What if you grew up in a household that preached that you should persecute and kill those that didn't believe the same things that you did? I think that looking to one's lineage and feeling "required" to give respect when their actions have not been admirable creates a lot of inner strife. I know that it has created anger in me that I am trying to deal with in a healthy way. I feel embarrassed that I harbor this anger because I thought that I was passed it, I thought I was better than anger now, but in fact I had just swept it under the carpet. I am interested in your answer because I want to know, while the above is simply hypothetical, how do you respect and not think ill of your lineage when they have conducted themselves in a heinous manner?

That's funny because it never ceases to amaze me how close-minded people can be. The second when someone says, "hey, this might help with this disease or this pain ... or increase someone's spirituality," the close-minded chorus is, "those are drugs, drugs are bad, drugs can't help with anything, its just a bunch of druggies trying to justify their habits." A study about a year ago where people that considered themselves to be "religious" where given psylocibin showed that something like 80% of participants said that was the "most spiritual" event of their life. I don't think that drugs are particularly good for me, but I certainly wouldn't say that anyone that finds remedy through them is justifying a habit. That's nonsense and presumption. Here is another example of "how hallucinogenics are beneficial to someone's health:" Hallucinogenics helped me to realize that I live in a big world that I don't understand. I have to keep an open mind and remember that what is good for me, isn't necessarily good for everyone else, what is bad for me, isn't necessarily bad for everyone else, and to proclaim that my way is the only way, my beliefs are the only right beliefs is flat out fantasy and spiritually blinding.