madMUHHH

Hi there, first of all, please do take everything I write with a grain of salt. I am no master or expert of anything and all I can offer you is my personal experience/opinion. But either way, you can still consider it. It might be of value, or it might not, I dunno. The way it appears to me, yes, you are definitely overthinking this. Because, you know, the thing is, your body is incredibly smart. You can't try to force it to do what you want. It just doesn't work. And actually, you don't want to force your body anyways, because it knows much better what it needs than your mind does. So, I really don't think what you need is another technique or exercise or trick or anything to retain your semen. You seem to have tried a lot of those already anyways, and it didn't really seem to do what you want. And I think this should tell you something. Because you know, semen retention is all well and great and fine and I am not denying that it has a lot of tremendous benefits. But in my personal opinion, if you have to force your body to retain semen, if you have to even try to do that, in other words, if it doesn't come naturally to you, you are doing something wrong. And I think that can do a lot of damage actually. That's at least my very own, personal experience. So just seeing the health benefits of semen retention without realizing that it might actually be hurting you or at the very least not serving you, is a bit one-sided in my opinion. And that's basically the reason why I wanted to join in here. To offer a different position. Make of that what you want.

Hi there fellow Bums! I recently got the confirmation that I will be granted a scholarship for learning Chinese in Taiwan during the next semester (starting in September). So I will go to Taipei for half a year and study at the National Chengchi University. Right now, I'm in my second semester of learning Mandarin, so I do know some Chinese already, even though I only know fairly basic stuff. Since this is the first time I'm visiting Taiwan/Taipei and I want to make the most out of those six months and I assume that at least a few of you people might have been in Taiwan (or mainland China) already, I wanted to ask you people for some help and advice. So anything, that you think that could be helpful from getting by in a foreign country/university, finding a place to live, places I just need to visit, where to find good food, and of course anything that is cultivation/qigong/bagua/tcm related, e.g. good places or people to learn that stuff from would be greatly appreciated. Really anything, even if it's the most trivial seeming bit of advice. I already do have one basic questions. I already know that accommodation is relatively expensive and food and transportation are dirt cheap (judging by middle European/German standards). So what about clothes and electronic devices?

Yeah, I already know about tealit.com. Concerning the other sites. Woah, holy smokes! Soo many Chinese characters! Who the hell is supposed to be able to read that!? Those Chinese people are simply crazy. Haha, just kidding. My Chinese is fairly basic though, so we'll see if I'll be able to make much of those sites. The fact that I only know simplified characters, doesn't help either. 我说一点儿汉语。 But thanks anyways!

Hey there, I am currently looking out for some appartments and I was just wondering, what exactly is the reason for this? The noise level?

That's awesome!

Thanks for the long response, I really appreciate that. That's cool! Might actually even be a bit overwhelming for me, as I'm not really that well versed concerning what kind of martial art styles exist and what specific styles are good for or not. Any suggestions how to best locate a specific school? Are there specific places to go, should I just google it, ask people, or what would be a good strategy? And yeah, six months probably isn't enough time to really get into any of those things deeply. I'm kinda wondering whether I should have applied for a whole year instead. But then again, I'm not sure whether I really could stand just doing language courses for a whole frickin year. ^^ And thanks for pointing me to the forum, I definitely will check that one out. @Dorian Black: Thanks for those links, took a quick look at them and was overwhelmed by the amount of text, so I will check those out later.

That song is so amazing! One of my favourite NIN songs. The Still version of SICNH is great too.

I study Philosophy, so I am not gonna post anything here on the topic of free will. It would just make things so much more confusing and weird.

Any QOTSA fans/friend around here?

Not at all.

Zhuangzi rules!

Edit: Ahh, wait, this is nonsense.

I guess the "just letting thigs happen"-aspect is a big one here. And while it does often lead to some "energetic" phenomena for me, like for example having magnetic-like sensation in the hands/arms/body I think it's really more about expressing/heightening emotions for me.

Not really sure if this counts so much as dancing "differently". I think the basic idea is to try to "feel into" the music while also maintaining great awareness of your body and to just let your body be moved to and by the music. So it's a bit like doing spontaneous qigong movements, just that what you trying to express with your body is not the unfolding of your energy or whatever you might call that, but rather you're trying to express the music and the feeling connected to it.

Dancing is a pretty obvious one for me. I really like to go out and dance, more like dancing at the club though, not the overly formal kind of dancing. For quite some time I was a bit hesitant about going out dancing all that often, because you end up coming home late and the next day might be a bit of a drag then, yadda yadda yadda. However I find the more I do it, the more the lines between dancing and standard "cultivation" start to blur and for me personally, going out for the night to dance can at times be a tremendously valuable experience/way of cultivation, much more valuable than staying at home doing your meditation or whatever. Plus, it's a ton of fun.

.

Eckhart Tolle Laozi Zhuangzi Epicurus Saul Williams Tool Ayahuasca :-O

Thanks for sharing! :-) Overall how much do you think has studying with Shantam Nityama a) had a positive impact on you and b )how accurate do you think his teachings are, judging from your current standpoint. About that: There's a lot in this passage that I like. First of all, I think the whole focus on ejaculation vs. no ejaculation is really not worth tha hassle in many instances and I'm not sure whether it's really worth it bothering about it at all. Also my personal view right now is, that there really is no reason to fear intensity. This is probably pure specualtion on my part, but I think I kinda know what you talk about when talking about experiencing a power that is almost frightening in its intensity and my judgement so far, is that this is a really good, beneficial thing. But I really want to stress here, that this is just my personal opinion. I do not claim any authority on this subject whatsoever and might totally be off track here. And on a last note, I'm really not too fond of Mantak Chia's stuff. I don't think that it's bad per se, but in many instances problematic and unnecessarily complicated and constrained.

Hi there, I'm thinking about getting myself some kind of drums, because, well, I like drums. And I know that there are lot of exotic sounding, super cool drums out there, but unfortunately I really don't that much about those. So, basically I'd really appreciate it if anyone here who knows anything about any kind of drums whatsoever would introduce them here, perhaps with some YouTube videos or whatever. Personally I'm looking for drums which are not overly expensive and which have a decent dynamic range, so that you can create a lot of interesting sounds with it. But this thread doesn't have to be about me exclusively, so just post whatever you think is worth sharing and in some way related to drums. Let's make this the ultimate drum thread! And to start things of, here's some music. This may not be a fitting video for this thread, but the drum parts are awesome enough for me to use that as an excuse to shove some Tool in your face. Edit: What I personally have in mind here are "single drums" if you can call it that. Tablas, bongos, whatever, there's so much stuff out there. Anyways, any posts regarding full conventional drum kits are still welcome.

Seconded! Actually I haven't read the shaking medicine book itself, but I am currently reading this, also by Bradford Keeney: The Bushman Way of Tracking God: The Original Spirituality of the Kalahari People http://www.amazon.com/The-Bushman-Way-Tracking-God/dp/1582702578/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1365956824&sr=8-1&keywords=The+Bushman+Way+of+Tracking+God I've only read like the first 2 and a half chapters, but even reading just that has triggered some powerful experiences for me. It's almost a bit scary actually. Anyways, his or the Bushmen's take on spiritually is highly interesting in my opinion and definitely worth discussing.

Yeah, that definitely seems to go in the direction of what I am looking for. Thanks for that!

Alright, thanks for that! Actually what I had in mind wasn't a whole drumset, but something simpler akin to tablas or more traditional drums. Don't get me wrong, I'd really love to have a whole drumkit and am also playing around with the thought of getting that sometime in the future, but that really isn't practical in my current living conditions. So first of all, sorry if you now feel like your post was in vain. It was not. I still found it to be valuable, because as I said, I certainly would like to own a complete drum set at some point. And besides, if this is supposed to be the ultimate drum thread, then it still fits in quite nicely. But I guess I should have clarified this a bit more. I didn't really think about that, because in German there are two seperate words for that anyways. I guess posting a video of a "rock" song if you want to call it that, didn't help either. ^^ Guess I should update my original post.

This is what Mantak Chia says about the subject (from his book Taoists Secrets of Love: Cultivating Male Sexual Energy). Just popped into my head, so I thought I might as well share it:

I want to second every bit of that. Except for that "John" part. I find that to be kinda questionable. Also, I think "challenge mode" is a very apt expression here. The way I see it, relationships have a tendency to expose you to your own bullshit in a way and intensity you wouldn't get outside a relationship. Which may be hard at times, but at the same time bears a lot of potential for personal growth. I really find it astonishing how women especially seem to possess some kind of hyper sensitive bullshit-detection-system and I think that when you open up to it, a lot of the "odd" behaviour of a partner is just or also a means of confronting you with parts of you, you might not so readily deal with when cultivating alone. This all comes from my admittedly very limited experience with relationships and this is only my opinion, nothing more. But as this thread just so happened to pop up at the exact time, that I feel like I personally resolved some relationship-related issues, I thought I'd add some input here.

So, what would you personally recommend for someone like me, who wants to get into fasting, but hasn't had any real experience with it yet. (Okay, actually I already did fast for 36 hours or so once, and for 21 hours or so a few times, but I dunno how much that counts). Still plunge right into a five-day-fast or start out with less?