Taoist81

It seems we (not speaking for WT necessarily) are using different words to say the same thing. One doesn't have to respect a rotten individual to respect the "event" of having lived through it. Perhaps a better way of saying the above would be to respect the lessons learned from where you came from.

You can reject the tenets of your lineage or tradition without rejecting the benefit that you garnered from it. What benefit you may ask, the benefit of being able to see that side clearly and understanding better than most the damage that it does and the potential for growth from anywhere. Understand there are those here who were raised in racist households, who lived through cults etc.. After coming out of any of that you have two choices, 1.) you feel horrible for it and feel crippled by it for life, or 2.) you look at what you learned from it and how it helped you grow into the person you are today. If you choose to go for the latter you need to get to a point where you like yourself. Once you like yourself you see how you benefited from the bad situation you came from. It is a choice though (albeit a choice which you may be more or less likly to make dependant on your past experiences, but this line of thought will take us into a deeper existential discussion not absolutely necessary for the present topic).

Agreed completely. Where you came from definitely plays into who you have become (even if you have come far). And a well balanced person is not one who hates oneself.

Ah, those three great lies "White lies, damn lies and statistics". : ) half kidding since statistics do have their place. You are right, there is a tendancy to follow ones parents, after all, they raised you. However, think of how many people, say, voted against the desegregation or the like vs. how many people voted for a black president (please note: this is taking a massively complex example and using only part of it to address the point at hand). Change tends to happen slowly overall, but quickly individually. Another example is the fact that "non-religous" and/or agnostic are among the few growing "religious" groups in America. This from a couple of generations of parents who in the 40's had regular clearly Christian prayer with the President broadcast nationally. Saying that one should follow a religion because one was raised in it is overly simplistic and naive.

That is not necessarily true for everyone. Some of us have found that we are completely opposed to the religion we were raised in, either for reasons of education or for having found one that better fit/explained our situations or selves. It may stick with you in memory, but one can completely divest oneself from the religion of one's childhood.

What Kabbalah have you been looking at? In all the old texts the primal Adam is high on the tree than the primal Eve. And to be fair, some women put up with more crap than men, just as some men put up with more crap than women. The crap levels are high on both sides, they just tend to be different flavors of crap. It should be said, though, Darin, if you are getting that impression about how easy it is to find 10 in and out women, you are hanging out in the right places. That is not the case everywhere (GF is one like you describe, so don't take that the wrong way), just like the crap levels, in most places "good" men and "good" women are equally rare.

The parts of the Rites he discusses are the very ones noted above that appear identical to garden variety Yoga asanas. One would expect there to be some flow between the two cultures over time. Either way, most, if not all, traditional Tibetan Yoga schools dispute the claim that the 5 are from their system. The Occam would suggest the initial publisher just put together a few movements from some systems he observed and made a story for it. Because they look, and are practiced so similarly to other practices it is not surprising that there are results, but no one has found any Tibetan monks practicing this supposedly Tibetan set of exercises. Resemblance does not an origin make. We seem to be in agreement though that the "Tibetaness" is irrelevant. They are still good exercises, especially for those who can't or won't take time for other "more full" sets.

Quite the contrary, you should talk about it (to SO's at least). It is quite refreshing for us "blokes" who are not intimidated by it.

Herbs should not be given like Western drugs. You can't just say "oh, you have symptom x so take". They require (in most cases) a full diagnosis with pulse, tongue, ten questions and all.

It wasn't meant as really a disparaging remark, both systems get some results. It is simply that Tibetan Yoga bases itself off of a very different....physiology (chakra numbers etc.). One doesn't have to "know" all of the Tibetan practices to see that there are no tracable connections, none of the movements even resemble each other. Really the 5 Rites resemble Hindu Yoga more than Tibetan, with a bit of backwards Sufi whirling thrown in.

Less than 20 minutes. It is unlikely that anyone could use just the 5 Tibetans in place of a full body workout like Pilates (not an endorsement of Pilates, there are problems with that too). Just a good adjunct to other Qigong and energy work (yoga, meditation ritual) and exercise when it was used. (Not currently with any regularity). Note: the 5 Tibetans have nothing to do with "regular" Tibetan Yoga. It is quite different as anyone who has practiced both can attest.

Before getting him to take any herbs have him seen by a Licensed Acupuncturist (check with the NCCAOM website for local practitioners). Herbal regimens and acupuncture treatments should be tailored to his specific needs. No one can give real good advice from a few short posts on a discussion board.

Perhaps you should visit a "normal" commune first? Someone will have to be working to pay for the place, or manufacture goods to sell (edit: and 4 hours is not a lot of time for that). Time for cleaning, cooking etc. Maybe see about visiting somewhere like: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twin_Oaks_Community before trying to start from scratch. Lots of hippies tried to do the like in the 60's and failed because they had no idea what they were doing.

You forgot 9/11 etc. conspiracies. Unless you include it with ghosts and lizardmen. Other than that, yes, you are dead on. Maybe it's the economy? Or the Swine flu....?

"Spike" was, perhaps, a poor term to use what with the now disproven "hockey stick" being commonly associated with it. Rather, "distinct increase" seems more properly descriptive. The only reason Climate Change was mentioned was in response to the claim that scientists are only working with a couple hundred years worth of information, an all to common misconception. The two are somewhat related, but the intent was not to derail the discussion. Climatology and meteorology are not the same sciences. The are related, but not identical. The "war on CO2" is being blown out of proportion, but it is not "utterly false". The simple fact that our oceans absorb a massive amount of it and the related effects is reason for concern, but the way politics and both sides of the media have mangled the truth, very few people get to any unbiased fact. Spending trillions on a misunderstood idea is certainly not a good thing, but curbing emissions isn't. Just for the more breathable air it would be nice. Still, more regulation is seldom a good answer, more education often is.

Exactly.

While it is true that we "don't know the half of it", climatologists do not just study data "from the past 100 and maybe 200 years". There are records in various forms dating back many millions of years that reflect what temperatures were. Interestingly the data all reflects the cyclic nature that all of the deepest mystic traditions have acknowledged. But the past hundred or so years worth of data shows a spike (only the size of the spike is debatable) when compared with the past. This likewise reflects Lao Tzu's comment "would you conquer the universe and try to improve it. I do not believe it can be done. If you try to improve it you will ruin it." (paraphrased from memory)

PC 9 is at the tip of the middle finger. LU 11 is on the opposite side of the thumb. Though mudras aren't really tit for tat related to acupressure directly. There is some relationship in some of them, but much more distinction.

If that is the "only argument" you've heard it is because you haven't read/listened to the research done on the matter. As mentioned before, most of those who are now so bothered by the 9/11 unTruth movement are that way because when we initially heard the claims made by the movement we were suspicious of the government and decided to look futher. We looked at the claims made by Loose Change and the rest, then looked at the NON-GOVERNMENTAL research by scientists, engineers, and the like, as well as skeptics, and other non-specific researchers. In the end, all that the 9/11 "truthers" do is point at supposedly unexplained phenomena (most if not all of which has been thouroughly explained many times with physics, experiments and outright historical examples) and say "see, the official story is wrong", without doing any research themselves. This is exactly like the Creationists who claim that Evolution is made up because they don't understand how "x" happened, or the way Holocaust and moon-landing deniers claim those to historical facts didn't happen because something about them doesn't make sense to them. The most common thing for 9/11 "truth" promoters to do (and you can look at any site where these claims are being "debated" for the pattern) is to make a claim, then when someone provides evidence that it is false, they simply say "you are just buying the governments false flag lie!" and repeat the same or a similar piece of crap accusation. They then wash, rinse and repeat until the person attempting to use logic and science to prove a point gets tired of trying (because all attempts are ignored) and leaves the discussion. At this point the 9/11 "truth"er claims victory, not because they have proven any point with evidence, but because they have driven away their opponent by shear annoyance. As pointed out here: http://www.debunking911.com/conspiracy.htm the worst crime committed by conspiracy nuts is that it detracts from the real conspiracies in our world and makes it all the more difficult to get anyone to listen when our civil liberties are being stolen, or when torture is being committed by our own country or any of the numerous real threats to our world.

You are absolutely right, that the conspiracy stories are not about truth. Though you are wasting your time and will likely give yourself carpal tunnel before convincing any of our fellow bums who have bought the 9/11 (pseudo)Truth movements crap. They have decided the story they want to believe and are not willing to look at the independant investigations that look at actual evidence (it does make for an interesting study though, the 9/11 "truth" groups use the exact same tactics and evidence ignoring as the "intelligent" design movement and other Creationist groups). They will continue to regurgitate the same discredited claims (like the ones noted in this very thread) and refuse to look at anything that disagrees with them. They will continue to claim that anyone who does take the time to examine all of it without agreeing with them is a "slave to the government" or "brainwashed" despite the fact that those who don't buy in to the nonsense are most often more concerned with the real dangers in todays governmental policies. Anyway, good to hear another voice of reason, but, again, you really shouldn't bother. You will only find yourself frustrated by the delusions that are pushed by the conspiracy nut front.

A few weeks back there was a discussion about this Qing period illustration. Spectrum said he was looking for an academic translation. Ever since, this image has been popping up. In an "embryonic breathing" qigong book I picked up. On a calendar at my school (TCM). All around the same time. So, Spectrum, or anyone else, do you know of an actual translation of the text on the chart? There was a Mantak Chia description, but he stated at the beginning that he was adding HT influences to it, and it wasn't a translation. It the book, which didn't cover much at all, the illustration was only included with a translation of another text. Any help would be great.

http://www.sacred-texts.com/tao/index.htm

Check out www.sacred-texts.com and you will be busy for a looonnng time.

Unfortunately, you are quite right. Those who have decided the 9/11 "truth" groups are right (as opposed to those who open-mindedly evaluated the actual evidence on both sides) simultaneously decided to ignore any and all evidence that contradicts their claims. Any attempts to point out how these tragedies actually happened is met with a covering of their ears while screaming "lalalalalala". All the while the real dangers of the post-9/11 world (namely, those of politicians using real tragedy to forward their own agendas) go for the most part ignored. Instead of watching Loose Change, more people should be checking out The Power of Nightmares.

This is a very good point that seems to miss a major point. The teachers who do teach for free are often teaching things that can be done by the "common man" (i.e. those who do still contribute to society by working etc. rather than leeching off of it by pretending that being a bum makes you more spiritual than those who work their asses off). They are, therefore, teachers who also have their own livelihoods and don't depend on charging for their teaching. The Work itself is work enough to these teachers. For example, in the A.'.A.'., the oath of the Neophyte you state that you will "deny yourself utterly on behalf of" the Probationers put under your charge. You are still bound by the rule that you cannot accept payment for teaching. The catch is simply that if the Probationers don't do the Work they won't succeed. You devote yourself to your student, but only insofar as they will do the work themselves. You advise them, but it is up to them to succeed. And all the while you both keep supporting yourselves. The Work is never "free", but the price is the Work itself, not money paid to a guru. In this way, you avoid people seeking to teach just to make money. Far too many frauds are out there that do exactly that.