LDiR

On a purely physiological note, you can often get rid of the desire for a cigarette by 'shocking the system'. Drink a glass of ice cold water as quickly as you can without inducing a headache, if the urge still exists, repeat. If it's so strong that you cannot get rid of it by shocking the system, I'd recommend meditation with incense. The incense often replicates the feeling of breathing smoke. Once you get past the physical need for an addictive substance the rest is habit, and good habits can replace bad ones. I changed my morning smoke to a morning vitamin-ingesting routine (where I make and eat breakfast then take my vitamins). I changed my car smoking with positive self-affirmations. It also doesn't hurt that the smell of second hand smoke makes me sick to my stomach, makes me not want anything to do with cigarettes anymore. Ultimately it's an individual choice to continue to do something addictive. I got tired of feeling like crap and living my life around when the next cigarette was coming, I felt like a junky. -LDiR

There have been a few studies showing that incense can be harmful to one's health, though I think it largely depends on the additives that are used for the incense as well as how much incense is used. Being an ex-smoker I can tell you first hand that the negatives vastly outweigh the positives, at least with pre-packaged, non-organic cigarettes. What little benefits I had been receiving were suddenly outweighed by the feeling of breathing through a wet dishrag at 5am one morning. It took me another year and a half to successfully quit even after having a few of those experiences, but I finally kicked the habit. Thank goodness, too, because I feel so much better. -LDiR

Any resources for brain wave cd's that can be linked? -LDiR

First, I'll discuss my experiences with firearms. I bought a semi-automatic .40 caliber Beretta a few years back, and though I had bought it outwardly as an adventure in 'fun', I think now that I specifically purchased it as a suicide weapon. I never got close to comfortable handling the thing, and I handled it every weekend for about four months straight. I was never comfortable with it, whether it was firing or just having it around me. After my near-suicide with the handgun I sold it as an act of 'turning myself around'. I still kept a 12 gauge mossberg home defender with shells for home defense. I even had my own plan of attack since I knew the most likely entry point for any home invaders. I was never comfortable with having the shotgun around either, so recently I sold that as well. My current way of looking at it is that owning a gun is not for me. I still own several knives and a retractable baton, but no firearms. Cameron, I guess I'd say that the feeling you get from being around a firearm is something you shouldn't ignore. It may not be 'negative energy' or 'low energy', but it certainly has a negative impact on you. As for the inherent evil of guns, I don't think that it exists. Guns are tools. Yes, they are tools of destruction, but so are cars, medicines, baseball bats, and even belief systems if they are put to the wrong applications. It's all about intent. Gunshots are not always fatal, and if used wisely a firearm can be a very efficient way of putting a stop to an attack without killing the attacker. I finally had attached such a negative feeling to my handgun that I knew I'd never be comfortable using it, and I felt my discomfort my lead to doing more damage than I intended when I shook while I shot and the change in trajectory of the barrell caused me to hit someone else, or hit the right person in the wrong spot. First and foremost it's a personal preference, from there you can decide if you are comfortable owning a gun. I'd recommend going to the gun club and trying it out. You might find that you really enjoy firing guns. I have a friend who says that he goes weekly because it 'centers' him the way church seemed to when he was younger. I found it to be very 'unbalancing' personally. -LDiR

I don't know what effect it has on the flow of qi, but I've found the side project by Jhonn Balance entitled Time Machines to be particularly effective at helping me enter a state of emptiness. I know he was heavily drug-influenced, so again I don't know the effect on qi cultivation, it has seemed to help me with emptying though. You can find just a bit more info on wikipedia (here). I don't know that it's still available anywhere in cd or lp format, I had to get a copy from elsewhere, and if any of you know how to access elsewhere I'm sure you can find it. I've also found some of Sigur Ros's work to be good for flooding the senses, though you have to make sure you pick and choose which tracks from which albums you're going to use in particular because some of the tracks are louder and more abrasive than others. I've found ( ) to be especially good for emptying thought. -LDiR

I've read a few different translations of the Tao Te Ching and have been surprised and delighted at the differences from one translation to the next. My question then is what translations of the Taoist classics (not just the Tao Te Ching) are your favorite translations and why? -LDiR

Personally, I see the Industrial Revolution as a very large culprit in the moving away from the natural. Take the advent of jobs and so-called careers. Nobody before the IR was taught to go out, get some good education, and then get a job. How many individuals prior to the IR worked for an hourly wage? Most people were taught a ways and means to either go into business for themselves via a trade of some sort (smithing for example) or were taught how to be self-sustaining through a barter system, hunting/gathering, or agriculture. I guarantee that the pilgrims and Columbus didn't get in their boats, brave the fierce Atlantic ocean, to go to school and get a job. Combine that with the modern trend of rising inflation and stagnating pay (my cost of living increases for the last four years combined doesn't equal the inflation for even one of those years). The system that is in place retards personal autonomy because that's how big business works. Big business needs employees to work menial jobs, without them big business fails, but how do you keep an economy based on big business from collapsing? Educate the public that the only way to succeed in life is to get a job and attempt to climb a corporate ladder. Every corporate ladder has a top rung for every individual where the only way to advance is by the retirement or death of the person above you. How this all fits in is that it is advantageous for an economy based on big business to keep people at the employee level, and it works much better if the employees delay pregnancy to use their youthful years for the advancement of the big businesses we are talking about. I find it ironic and sad that if you go to school for business ownership in college you get taught by people who are government (or private, depending on the campus) employees. How are they going to teach you to own a business successfully if they've never done it? Those that you find who have done it are likely to have failed at it, how can you trust your attainment of knowledge in their hands. Theory only goes so far without the experience of practice. I'm done for now, perhaps I'll come in and ruminate more later. As a final, tangential note, I've always found it astounding in a very negative way that at the age of 18 a person can go out and make a pornographic video, but that you cannot buy one in most states in the US until you are 21 years of age. There's something wrong there. -LDiR

My goodness! I thought being centered was all about being on an even-keel and enjoying life, what's all this cynicism about humanity and the ability to commit to another human being? Her and I feel the same way about marriage, it's not a commitment to stay together even when you no longer love one-another, it's a commitment to love one-another until you both die. We've had the discussion that unless abuse or adultery comes into play there will be no divorce, just widowing. It's the difference between wishing and making a decision with your heart, and wishing with your heart, but making the decision with your head. My heart says I love her, her heart says she loves me, and both of our heads say that we can put our backs to one-another in this fight and be assured that our backs are protected from harm. If others don't feel that the ceremony is important, hey, do whatever you like, but I enjoy the fact that I'll have someone so close to me in the law's eyes that they will abide by my wishes in any situation that may come up (death bed stuff, etc.). You can quote instances where the spouse didn't abide by the injured person's wishes all you want, I know for a fact that those instances are a lot more rare than the media would like us to believe (and usually stem from the fact that the two never shared their desires with one-another). This was all over the place, but I went where my path was taking me, just as I am with the act of marriage. -LDiR

Thank you all for the information. mYTHmAKER I hadn't looked for anything locally in a few years, so didn't think there was anything until I searched on the web and found the Dhanwantari Center, which just opened this year in June. Pretty exciting, I've emailed about availability of classes after the ones going on now have finished out. In the meantime I'll check out some of the great books that have been mentioned here. Thanks again! -LDiR

Thanks all for the contributions. We're not doing anything traditional. The ceremony is going to have less than 10 people total as guests, few of whom will be family. There will be a reception, but that's going to be a very informal affair. The ceremony is important to both her and I as a symbol of the crossing of our lives into one-another. At first I was in the seat of asking myself how necessary it truly was to have a wedding/marriage, but once she said that it would not be in a church and could be put together any way we wanted to put it together I got excited by the idea of having our own ceremony to mark the merging of our paths. -LDiR

"The size of the man can best be determined by the size of what makes him angry." and "Pigs don't know pigs stink." Attribution won't be necessary here as both of them are fairly frequently spoken in my household, I've always found their plain, but deep meanings to be particularly wonderful. -LDiR

In response to vortex: While those statistics are incorrect, your tone suggests that you think instances of abuse/rape are extremely low in the population. Hopefully I'm misinterpreting, because even at 10% of women, taking a 250 million population, dividing it in half to 125 million, and taking 10%, that's still 12.5 million women, 12.5 million individuals who, and this I think is the key for me, FEEL abused, feel victimized, feel like they've been treated like an object. Now my understanding of Taoism has always been that it's 'individual focused' meaning every individual is important. If this is so then I think vortex is forgetting about 12.5 million individuals (low-ball numbers too) who are being made to feel as if they are the least important people on the planet. If it wasn't your intent to come across that way, then I advise you try to work on warmth next time and focus less on something that makes you angry. The biggest lesson I've learned in the last three years is to focus on the individuals rather than the politics of a given situation. -LDiR

After having read the texts traditionally associated with Taoism I find myself desiring guidance on how to go about cultivating Tao. I have a few homebrewed techniques for meditation, but none of them truly bring about energy changes. They help to relieve negative emotions and they relieve stress, but nothing profound. I went through the list of books, articles, etc. that are pinned on this page, but that's overwhelming for someone who wants a starting point. My question is what books (because I can't afford trips to seminars at the moment) could people here recommend as starting points for meditation techniques, Chi Kung exercises, and Tai Chi. Also, I'm trying to adopt the most preferred spelling methods for this forum, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong with any of my adoptions. Thanks in advance.

My girlfriend and I are planning on getting married sometime next year. She is what is typically termed a Pagan and I consider myself a fledgling Taoist, and one of the first things she said attracted her to me (besides my winning personality and good looks) was my acceptance of her religious beliefs. Since we both accept the others' religions openly we wanted to have a wedding that incorporated elements of both religions. Everything I've seen and read so far has said that there are no standard marriage ceremonies for Taoism, but I thought perhaps some of you might have experiences that can be posted so that I would be able to get an idea of what sort of ceremonies people tend to have. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Hello Tao Bums! I came upon this site while perusing the results to a search for Taoist wedding and thought that the topics were pretty good, so I decided to join up and join in. First, I'd like to say that it's nice to find a place where eastern thought is freely discussed among such knowledgeable individuals. Now that the accolades are out of the way, my experience with Taoism started when I was actively searching for a religion that made sense to me. I spent a lot of time in middle school (grades 6-8) reading the Christian Bible, both a study version and the King James version, but found it unsatisfying by the time I got into high school. I spent a lot of time combing through information on western religions, only looking at the eastern religions in my junior year of high school. I'd read the Tao Te Ching, but didn't spend very much time digesting it because I had been introduced to a few western philosophers shortly thereafter. After reading such philosophers as Kierkegaard, Sartre, Nietzsche, and Camus I adopted a very existentialist, atheist, nihilism that kept me comfortably miserable for years. Though I'd frequently be confronted with desires to read the Tao Te Ching, and would consistently on a nearly annual basis run into either a discussion or book that mentioned Taoism in a loose way, I stuck to my miserable nihilism for years. For the last three years I've been on a journey of self-exploration prompted by a near-suicide, naturally there are a whole lot more things involved in what happened than what I'm putting in here, but this is neither the time nor place to give the whole story. I found myself without a solid foundation for recovery from a series of life-altering events. After my near-suicide I began my journey of self-exploration and went about trying to rebuild myself. I quit drinking and smoking, I stopped having sex outside of relationships, and I started to work hard on finding ways to be happy. Naturally, all of this didn't get corrected overnight, but I'm fast-forwarding to the point at which the Tao Te Ching re-entered my life on a more permanent basis. I'd gotten to the point where my body and mind were doing well, but I wasn't doing well spiritually. I started reading more books on Taoism just over a year ago. My favorite aspect of Taoism is the reliance on individual interpretation. While there are many broad beliefs that are very common among all schools of thought with regards to Taoism, the specifics are largely up to the individual. I look forward to broadening my horizons here and hopefully finding a few ideas that I can appropriate. I own four different translations of the Tao Te Ching, the Library of Chinese Classics version of the Zhuangzi, and the Alfred Huang translation of the I Ching. By no means an expert on any of these books or on Taoism itself, I'm hoping to learn as much as I can here and anywhere else I can find information. EDIT: My handle is an abbreviation of Long Day in Rehab, which has been my internet handle since I first started my journey of 'rehabilitating myself'.