swampland

I've been at home on the countryside for about 1 1/2 months now, but now I'm back in the city and the old problem with my neighbour keeps continuing. He's loud at night because of all the people he's inviting. He's doing this often 2-3 times a week. Because I could cope with it once, but not again and again. So I'm lying in my bad and I continuosley hear people laughing and ringing the bell and walking around on the corridor and it starts pissing me of. So I take a hammer and knock on the wall. For about 1 minute. Nothing changes. And I've tried a lot here. Calling the Police used to help. But I only did this once and I somehow don't like it. So yesterday (or today actually), I really went off as I shouted in an immensely loud voice while hammering on the wall and stomping on the floor. It was pretty insane and it was a waste of energy. I felt pretty bad about treating my body in this way later on. But first, one neighbor knocked on his door and inquired, whether someone died. As he started to talk shit about me again, I opened the door and engaged in the conversation. Which ended as always: Like him stating I should live on a cementary and It wasn't all that loud and stuff. When this was done I administered myself two enemas to calm down, which did help, but not sufficiently, so I could not sleep either way. I lay their partly in anger and in shame about what extreme conditions I exposed my body to (when I was shouting like mad). As I couldn't sleep, I realized, that my anger about the noise was in hindsight not the only motivation or the only drive for all this. It is not so easy to explain, because initially it was. But when I started knocking first and nothing happened I got really angry. The noise was not my basic motivation any longer. It was, that I was beeing passed by unnoticed. All the action that followed, was rooted in passion for the fight. And that's basically it. I can't let go of the fight. I even sort of crave the next confrontation with my neighbor. Because if I don't and I don't stay focused, he might catch me cold next time. But that's not the only thing. It is also the feeling that there is a huge thing, that I can win out of this. I just don't know what that would be, so I'm thinking it's merely an illusion. So, does anyone here have similar experiences. How do you cope with these sorts of attachments? I mean, it is sort of a perceived form of danger. But it's just noise. It impairs me, but it won't kill me. I was thinking about this "sealing the senses" stuff and if maybe that could help me. But I haven't looked at that any closer and it's probably too difficult to master, especially in a stressful environment as this.

Well, I'm sure distractions can develop discipline, but only if you don't get overwhelmed by them. But this is my home. It is supposed to be my peaceful place of recovery with nothing to be too diciplined about. They probably wouldn't like me to join them. And they didn't invite me either. But also if they would, there will come a time, when I just want to have my peace and that would be the turning point, when I wouldn't know how to ask for silence, when last week, I was partying with them. So it's difficult, at least for me.

Hi there, I've tried to write in other areas of this forum, but found out that it isn't possible without writing in here first. So that's what I'm doing now. Hey, so about myself. I am in my early twenties and have gotten in contact with taoist practices back in summer 2010 by reading Mantak Chias book on healing love, which I found pretty interesting. I've tried some of the excercises but it never really worked out for me. I've been doing yoga since late 2009 and have gained a general interest and knowledge in taoist practices, as well as tcm and equivalent indian forms such as ayurveda. Also I've read other likewise stuff about shamanism and spiritual stuff in general for some years. However I haven't been able to catch ground in anything I've been doing, since I'm a lot up in my head and find it pretty difficult to do anything physical. So, what I'm looking for here is the bridge that will show me a slow and safe way out of my head. Because I've really been forcing myself to do stuff before and it really hasn't been good for me, like Kundalini-Yoga, which left me feeling deeply depressed for weeks at a point. I've been doing breathing excercises lately as well as experimenting with my diet. I've known this forum since about a year, but again I haven't felt the urge to post something up until now. So, that's about what I have to say. It has got no structure, but sort of neither do I. Greetings

I really liked the excercise. It really helps smoothing and redirecting desire. But what I found in myself first of all, that many very negative feelings towards sexuality were coupled with those soothing "spiritual feelings", that started coming up. That probably came from my rather intensive protestant upbringing, which wasn't overtly against sexuality, but was still deeply reflected by the representatives of this group. To the topic I wanted to say, that I'm sort of practicing solo cultivation, but I would never stop masturbating, because I think I need to learn a lot more about these sensations and gain more control over them. And as far as I know, this can only be fully done by physical stimulation. I think massaging the prostate, as well as the coccyx makes it a lot easier to get yourself back to normal without ejaculation. And I've only tried it for today, but I think thetaoiseays's excercise makes it even simpler. That's maybe not the best you can do to yourself, but I think I've done far worse to myself in the past, like doing mantak chia's excercises excessively and forcefully wtihout even knowing what I'm doing there. And I think, that doing, what I'm doing now get's me further and that's also a good thing. Maybe it's an illusion.

I think it differs from character to character, whether How to make friends and influence people will help you or not. For me, it was a catastrophy, because the I've been doing those techniques for all my life and have become a person, who identifies fully with them. So the reinforcement, that what I've been doing was a good way to do it, was really a catastrophy for me, because I already saw the problems coming up. If you do stuff for people you don't really like to do for them from the heart, then you are acting against yourself and are only doing something because you want to get something out of this. And out of this, I've tried to please everyone the same, because I felt bad about just crawling up the asses about those people who will have the most benefit to me, or who I personally like the most. The techniques in this book work all pretty well, what I can tell, since I've been already doing them before reading this book, but it made me hate people even more and their inability to see through those tricks. And I said to myself, that I will not react to people acting like this on me in any way. So I became (sometimes overtly) angry at people who were nice to me, because I thought they're just using me anyway (which they were probably often times not). I cannot tell about the person opening this thread, but I personally often feel driven to react to people on this Carnegie-Salesman-Level, because there's no real alternative for me, because that is like my mask that's perfectly calibrated and safe. But I have no personal gain in using it. Maybe material one, if I want to use it to do business. But that's kind of why I stay away from people. There is nothing for me to learn in interactions in this mode and I can't switch to another mode safely and I certainly can't be "myself" anywhere. So, wether or not you can relate to anything what I just said, I think the most desirable thing is, to use social calibration as a safe stance to get to know other people more deeply and getting them to open up to you, so that dealing with people might be more interesting. That would require you to open up to yourself in the first place. But I don't know if that is even your problem. I'd vote for Fluttershy

I've been reading a book called Love & Will by Rollo May, which states that many problems of today's society have their base in a wrong understanding of both, love and will. Now there is one thing I came across, that made me think. Namely there is one passage on p. 215 (1969 Fontana Edition), where he talks about the lack of capacity to wish. Also, he differentiates between wishing and willing, which might be necessary for me to describe in short. So willing is basically everything that is done by "willpower", the power to bring things into your life (and I'm going very much off text here, but I hope this stresses the point). While wishing is more like the ability to recognize true desires. So, what came into my mind, that I thought desires are given and my pursuit on the taoist way is to free myself progressively from these desires, to become less attached. But the concept and thought, that I might not be able to identify my true desires in the first place, have never risen in my mind. So, what's the capacity to wish? As I understood it, it is your personal space to imagine and thus setting the basis of the manifestation of the things you deeply want. Thus imagining it beeing the first step of getting it. I find myself thinking and imaginating about lot's of stuff throughout the day, but I have the feeling, that fear often gets in the way of imagining what I really want. Now one could ask, how can I know that I'm not imagining what I really want, if I can't imagine it. But there I just feel it. As a result of not beeing able to imagine what I want (mainly because of fear), I get frustratet. And this frustration, rather than any spiritual wish of gaining freedom and becoming unattached drives me into spiritual practices of letting go. And I somehow think, that this is not a valid motivation, rather than some kind of running away.

No, I didn't say anything about getting rich, It was rather a comparison to statements in "get rich books" or that motivational stuff. I never talked about "my thougts creating reality" anywhere in this thread, it was initially rather about distinguishing the difference of wish and will, as well as the difficulty of staying concious of wishes, instead of becoming compulsive on something unimportant. I was rolling my eyes at the banality of your answer not necessarily the validity of the content itself. It probably works, but not if you keep forgetting what you want and wish for, while loosing yourself in compulsive behaviour. Or even worse, becoming at a point aware that you've lost the feeling of your wishes and are now desperatly trying to generate them, while usually behaving like a dork on the outside. That is basically my problem (well, the one problem that I think might be easiest to solve next) and has little to do with any "the secret" or other new age stuff.

...that's kind of what rich people say about getting rich, too...you can make it if you put your mind onto it and never give up, use your failures to learn and whatever...*rolleyes* ...but in fact, I never get to get anything done, so I need to develop the bridge to make me go there, 'cause "just do it" wouldn't do. It's not because I'm scared (well yes, basically so, but in another, more complicated way). I find myself interacting really harsh and defensive as well as overly "offensive" in times, with women that seems to scare them. So there's no smooth game and there's no way to develop any, since I feel like an empty mask playing something that is not me and thus i think I forget to act on my true wishes and rather act on an artificially constructed will, that somehow should serve my wishes, when I get too scared to let them out and even feel them. I think it's because I'm circumcised, but that probably get's too far now. No, you're not derailing "my" thread, since that is kind of the context I should have drawn in the first place, to make it more concrete.

What would be the difference between greedy desires and dreams or wishes? Does it depend on the amount that others are negatively or in any way impacted in order to these "dreams" come true? Or does it count if you do something just for yourself, or to uplift your peers or community? To set those "greedy desires" in a starker contrast, what about Martin Luther King's "dream" against a more selfish desire of a young woman to become a star, or buy an expencive dress. It surely is a different feeling. While the woman's desire sees only herself, somehow beeing trapped in the illusion that things are not alright as they are and she needs more for herself, Martin Luther King saw the afro-american community as not being treated right and the necessity to do something about it. But both are more on a basis that needs to diminish negative effects, or negative effects for the future. An urge to do something in order for things to not happen (again). OK, that in itself is not convincing. The woman could buy the dress, just to make her more attractive, to get more attention, because there's never enough. But that again is based in a feeling of deficit. I think wishing is more about something that you wish for, not out of deficit, but out of pure desire. But is that even possible? What if that desire remains unfullfilled for long? Isn't there a line, where you become greedy about it, when finally the moment comes for this desire to be fulfilled? Won't you start thinking about hoarding this stuff or dwelling on an experience for it to never go away again. I think that is where the difference is in. Wish is the primary impulse for an action and if you make the experience, that your wishes are not fulfilled, and you are starting to become greedy about it, if you are not able to stay cool. Has that still got anything to do with my topic? Ah yes, because in order to find out about the lack of the capacity to wish, the most difficult part is to find out, what a wish is in the first place. The book (love and will) differentiates also between wishes that come out of fantasies, and those out of immagination, while not properly explaining the difference. Found a link now: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/05/19/the_odd_body_imagination_fantasy/ So, as I understand this, fantasies are more compulsive than imagination. Immagination might be something more active. But doesn't that mean, that I'm acting out on a fantasy while imagining. I'm having a really tough time with this stuff. Sorry if what I wrote is unclear or imcomprehensible, because it's written thinking to figure this out.

Wow, thanks a lot. Tips like these really have an impact on me. Because I've been realising, that the only way to learn to steer oneself, is to gain conciousness about these "small" actions, like food I'm taking in or stuff I'm doing throughout the day. So I'm really thankful, that you raised even more conciousness about how everyday-stuff impacts my life. Can you be more specific about what messes energy up concerning touching the face? As I read this, I realised, that I'm touching my nose all the time at the side at the lower end of the alar wing of the nose, so like the 20th point of the LI meridian. I also blow my nose needlessly every quarter hour or so.

I'm sure to keep that in mind... I think the way to solve any problem is to look at it in more detail, kind of what we are doing right now. As for me, I discovered, that when I get angry over other people devalueing my opinion, it is because I feel like they are taking it away from me. Like a forced letting go. They crawl up my ass (first chakra) and rip my opinion out of my intestines and that is something I don't like to happen to me. You can try to let go of your opinions, which will take a lot, because your opinions as a whole and the way you live is a result of millions of years of evolution and thus you will not simply give them up. But you can learn to differnetiate. There are more major, and more minor opinions. For example, i you ask yourself what the color of the shirt you're going to wear today is going to be, that might not make such an important impact on your life and someone telling you, that you should wear something different, and stating urgent reasons may make himself the center of ridicule. However, if your parents are trying to push you into a carreer you don't like, then that will have a major impact on your life and thus getting angry about it, might be justified. What you want to have in mind is a scale of importance of things, so you can always ask yourself "how important to me is that really"...ok, maybe you shouldn't be so techy about it as this system seems to me right now... That's the component directly attached to the opinion. However there is another more socially attached component. Especially when you'e a male, you will have the need to be right in certain situations, because you will (at least felt, at least for me) be inferior to the person who you give your opinion up to. That unconciously binds you to that person as a feeling of he's the boss, he knows what's up. You will automatically value his opinion more in the future and your own less. Thus he will have a higher status than you. Your body feels that coming and wants to protect you by fighting the other. Unfortunately such fights over power will never lead to anything productive. And you don't even need to beat someone up, there are a verbal tactics to shut people up, without ever having a closer look on their point. That's how it's done most anywhere. That's how people protect themselves from inferiority. But truth is never gained out of this. So, practically, again, you need to learn to differentiate and find out how much giving up your opinion costs you socially. That makes it easier to let go.

Ok, this thread is a bit old, I hope it's ok that I post on here. I've been searching for a topic like this on the forum, and I have made some personal experiences only today. Yesterday I said to myself, that from now on I'm not going to eat that much anymore. And after just one day I can say, that one get's a different feeling about food. I had just this one bowl of millet gruel and oatmeal this morning instead of two and I looked at the food and made myself clear, that this is it, This is the only food I will have until noon and I need to get along with it and take as much nutrients as possible out of it. That's a total different attitude of valueing what you have instead of eating yourself full until it annoys you. The point I want to make is, that it's not just about counting calories and discipline, because these factors alone probably won't get you very far. I've done such things before in other areas of my life and after an excessive control phase always follows the release phase, when you need to escape the prison you have built yourself just before. So I think the only way to benefit from this is training your body to get more out of the food and I think the only way, that this is possible is by valueing it and eating it slowly and conciously. That's when one is going to start to do these things naturally. By the way, I felt much lighter and more active today. Maybe that didn't cut the topic so much, but then again, who cares about a six-year-old thread.

Hi Ming, I haven't really been in a situation like you. Since, I've only got "attacked" when I was by myself, but pretty much in the same way, you're describing here. People come near you and do not leave you alone and say provocing things. So, I'm not trying to answer these general questions, but rather I want to think about the very situation you're describing and the feelings you had about it. Feelings and drives like needing to help your friend. In the Situations I've described in the first paragraph, I always ran away without fighting. So a practical solution to that situation would have been saying to your friend that you'd find it a good idea to run now. Now I see the psychological danger in this. Like the loss of territory, that didn't really occur but is deeply felt. In fact I feel it up until now by choosing to run. It leaves you with the feeling of beeing weak. From this point of view, it would surely have been a necessity to defend yourself, but regarding the situation without this component, it wasn't. Until there is nothing that physically keeps you from running, you can run. And you can tell your friend to do so, too. That might seem a bit strange to your opponent and probably to your friend, but it's probably safest. And stuff like the feeling you're a coward that comes afterwards i mainly just a feeling (that's about impossible to get rid off). However, if you know you can never recover from feeling like a coward, I would probably fight anyway, because it's probably much less of a pain to get injured, than having to live with the feeling of beeing a coward in this case. I wouldn't let the practice of "non-violence" be a stiff goal. Because much more important is your personal integrity. You have to face the challenge on one level. And you can decide whether that's going to be the psychological level (risk of feeling like a coward), or the physical level (risk of injury). I hope you can make use of my cumbersome formulation.