unmike

Bacteria are interesting critters, as we've learned time and again! What I'm curious about is how this factors into the Taoist equation. What role do they inevitably play in cultivation? Are they connected with the 100 day mark? Do they perhaps feed off micronutrients accumulated after a long time without flushing the pipes, so to speak? What about practices like tummo? Are they the real tiny red spirits behind the ability to generate heat? Do they allow us, in certain situations, to tap into other bands of the energy spectrum than we would normally have access to? Considering 90% of our serotonin resides in our guts in close conjunction with all these tiny thinking cells, suddenly possible correlations and connections are whizzing around my not-quite-conscious at breakthought speed. Intriguing stuff, to be sure. Any bums want to weigh in? Taomeow, I'm angling your direction.

Ack! The only other Angeleno Taobum I know of is jumping ship!

Rosetta Stone is a wonderful program and similarly expensive to a few units at a local community college. If you're more inclined to trust yourself, you may wish to start piecing it together using the internets and a self-composed Swadesh list, then cop a basic understanding of simple sentence structure, followed by vocabulary beefing. Once you learn the katakana alphabet, you can sound it out wherever you find it: fun once you realize all of their more recently borrowed vocabulary is Engrish.

As well, it likely relates to the rise of processed, out of season, non-local foodstuffs. People are no longer getting the cancer preventative nutrition; they simply don't make the correlation very readily, addicted as they are to that which is engineered to be addictive.

In a few other threads lately, people have been espousing the benefits of cool draw and testicular breathing, as opposed to big draw and other techniques. As with all things Tao, subtler is usually the one to aim for. As someone who lucked into proper technique during an unexpected mindblow (this breathing led to MCO led to kan and li led to +4 psychedelia on the Shulgin scale), I've spent the two years since cultivating te and proper intentions because who I was and what I was doing at the time were dangerous to myself and others. As a result of swearing off the physical aspects for so long, I'm a beginner all over again. The rub is, for many without large chi reserves and a dedicated teacher, it's difficult to understand some of the strange sensations associated with the practice via the dense metaphors they're presented in. I recall that so many of the sensations were wildly different than what I'd expected before my sudden success. Something I know a lot of us would benefit from are some clear, simple images delineating various aspects of the technique. Perhaps a diagram elucidating the various times to relax certain parts during the breath cycle. Maybe one explaining where the testicles and abdominal muscles are and what is held in tension and released? Which muscles around the prostate, anus, pelvis, urogenital diaphragm, etc. do we use and when? If anyone is able to share insights, through text, through images, through mindbeams, I would be infinitely grateful. Hopefully this will greatly benefit a bunch of us! Any contributions are extremely welcome. May the Force be with you.

While I did maintain a 13 month period of abstinence, no, I don't believe it's required for everyone. It was right for me in more ways than I know how to explain. It really helped to ground me and establish virtue in my practice. What was so poorly explained in my above post is that I swore off any and all forms of energy practice, including all of the more esoteric aspects which had previously granted me great and terrifying power. Recognizing I was not ready, I decided to take time off in those respects, while nurturing things I knew would be good for myself and others. Thanks for your response. Keep them coming!

If you've played with any MDMA lately, your serotonin is low. Otherwise, I'm not sure how to suss it out without the intense body-awareness granted by satori. Maybe there are some relevant siddhis.

I didn't say you were obsessed or unbalanced. I said to make sure not to obsess, as it's a common pratfall for many in your position. Please do not mistake my words for a criticism; they are intended as heartfelt advice from someone who has had the issues I speak on. Please notice I did provide you advice about building your dantien. Please follow the links to the relevant posts, where you will see a fairly concise explanation of the principles I'm referencing. Basically, because of how the meridians meet in the area of your abdomen in question, and because of how tiny charges are generated by the shearing of collagen fibers during yoga, you can build your dan tien by daily healthy stretching over a long period of time. Accentuating this practice and your already solid diet with meditation and study such as you are pursuing now are the best bets. Slow, steady, progress, effort, consistent. These are the keys. The engine is your practice. Your desire to succeed is the fuel. The way is yours.

You want to stack the deck? Eat so that you are never in danger of being full. Keep your metabolism on a minimal burn by eating tiny amounts more frequently (like you would as a forager). Eat the things with the nutrients you need, and not processed garbage masquerading as sustenance. Adequate nutrient density from varied sources steadily over time will help ensure the body has what it needs to shore up all systems. Consider the amount of protein you ingest, and consider taking some 5-htp in order to maximize your serotonin (an interesting neurotransmitter, considering >90% of it resides in your gut, not your brain. Paramagnetism is a funny thing...

Sounds like you need grounding, a positive intention, to not obsess about sex, and perhaps most importantly, gentle massage and stretching in all the relevant areas. This all works together to help to relax your mind, lower your stress (hormone) levels, balance your (other) hormone levels, and recirculate all of the important chemicals no longer lost thanks to retention (which are a major portion of the goal of your cultivation) currently stagnating in the area . Make sure you have enough of the relevant material components you need for your proposed magicking: namely, enough zinc and other nutrients in your diet, preferably from veggie sources* (which you must salivate and chew properly [twice as slow as longer than you just thought about] for optimum assimilation). Build up your dantian for optimal storage (capacitance). This means DAILY PROPER stretching of everything you possibly can. What do you intend to do with all the energy you'll be storing, I can only wonder... *These plant sources evolved alongside us, symbiotically. They're been genetically engineered over eons to provide a fantastic set of enzymes and bonus goodies specifically designed to help primates out, so we would do their dirty work. Angiosperms have treemendous buddha nature.

Your perspective is what matters, no matter what you ponder on. That which is opposed to something helps to delineate precisely what your something is. It can be an object that is not what you're after, a bad habit you'd like to break, or even a person doing things antithetical to your purposes. However, if you can successfully utilize the "bad" to help you find the "good", doesn't that demonstrate that both are really just two ends of the same spectrum, and they're interchangeable depending on the way you view them? Tao...not Tao... All still Tao, in the end.

STAR WARS

I rarely wear long sleeves, but mine is along the inside of my left wrist. I catch sight of it at the funniest and most appropriate of times. The Tao is wondrous and has marvelous timing.

I read the book many years ago, while I was still such a skeptic and hadn't come to grips with much of what the Tao has since shown me. At the time, I hated it and wrote it off as wishy-washy pop-spiritual mumbo jumbo. Since then, I've become vegetarian (without thought to the book), experienced synchronicities so profound that I'm still having trouble believing the universe isn't screwing with me, and met some of the most amazingly spiritual people one could want. I probably owe it a re-read.

Which is why careful forethought is necessary. Get something you know you will be happy with, because it's something that inspires you and represents positive changes. Get something to remind you of/to do good things each time you see it. I have two, at the moment, and more will come later in life, most likely. The first is a Rubik's Cube, symbolizing many things. It's a reminder that life is a puzzle, but may have many solutions. It depends on your goals. It's also a tesselation, rearranging the same shape on each side in order to spell Q.E.D, to signify both my continuing love for linguistics and the quantum nature of reality, but also to unite math as the underlying language of the universe with art, a la Escher. It has a non-standard color scheme to keep me from becoming complacent and following the paths others blaze without question. The second stems from the first, as smaller hexagons falling away from the larger cube. There are 18, for a total of 108 lines: my mala. The pattern is a seemingly random one that came to me while meditating right before. If you place a staff through it, it becomes a melody in six directions, and they all fit together in myriad ways. It also helps me visualize problems in 3 space (little hexagrids are wonderful for that!), and is a handy notepad for things I need to do. Yes, they are commitments. No, they are not to be made lightly or hastily. But good/bad are judgments we place upon them, and decrying them as ego-driven is misleading. Posting on a website is ego-driven. The ego is capable of good acts as well as bad ones. If you want to get inked, get something good.

Holographic theory does state that, but the OP's question can be better explained with connective fascia. The meridians are fascial nets surrounding muscles and giving them their bounds and shape, and permeating the various organs. It's piezo-electric (collagen shears and creates a tiny charge, telling the osteoclasts what not to eat and then the osteoblasts lay down new fibers) so it actually transmits charge and impulses from regions like your feet all the way up to your skull and everywhere in between. Did I mention impulses can travel at six times the speed of nerve? The body also has a network of pathways for light (primarily ultraviolet) reaching from the skin down into your insides. The electrical resistance along these paths and the major places where they intersect (more commonly known as acupuncture points) is much lower than the surrounding skin and tissues. The fascial tissues themselves are basically a giant liquid crystal. =D

Such a wonderful book! Here's looking forward to this thread.

Drawing a distinction between these two and seeing the latter as inferior is just that: drawing the distinction. Life, including the internet, is what you make of it. People can profoundly affect, change, and even help each other with nothing more than the "artificial" presence of words such as these. Without the wise words of a few, I would not be in the position I'm in today, much less the social circle (which actually includes several Taoists), or even the state, much less wonderful west Los Angeles. Please, realize that the words and you are in this synergistically. *edited for word omission*

I had a frighteningly similar experience from the SGI center in Santa Monica. Buddhism for the cost of a prayer handout.

In Beyond the Breath, a text on Vipassana meditation from the tradition of S.N. Goenka, Marshall Glickman makes the case that Gautama started at the top of his head and continued scanning feetward. In my own meandering experience, primarily drawn from Chia system derived tantric experiences, this practice takes on an entirely new dimension once it begins to speed up from the suggested ten minutes of inch by inch examination and feels more like a plane laser is tracking down you...faster and faster until you're feeling it flash by at many hertz, totally clearly

Hahahaha! I'm in that music video. Blue swing bike, big black Jedi robe, 3-d sunglasses... The footage they squandered makes me weep for what could have been epic, instead of the crap they made it.

This link (and my ensuing nerdsplosion and reading spree) was so exciting I had to join this forum so I could tell you. Thank you!

This is a post to introduce myself. This forum happened across my path, so, naturally, I got to reading. I'm to understand full membership requires a post of this bent, so here I am, posting this. I'm a 24 year old male from Iowa currently living in Los Angeles, learning as much about the way and life as I can. Glad I found this place; it's already helped.