Taomeow

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About Taomeow

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  1. Dao Bums (here i am)

    Definitely. But if you're offering them alcohol (for some gods and immortals, it's a must), you discard it afterwards. A bit of a different approach is used with Zhurong, the God of Fire, who is is present in the cooking fire in your kitchen. Since you're into cooking, here's a tip: offer him some hard liquor from time to time, you just need to sprinkle a little on the burning fire, e.g. by dipping your fingers in your drink and shaking the drops off while inviting Zhurong to partake and giving him thanks for cooking your food. This is supposed to improve its taste and bioavailability, and prevent mishaps like under- or overcooking, burning, oversalting, etc..
  2. More Unpopular Opinions

    Thanks for the tip. I'll put that Paris scarf in my pocket, pull it out, see what happens. Please stay tuned.
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    This makes total sense. If you don't hold a live rat in your teeth, the kundalini snake will have no good reason to rush upward. (That's why most practitioners fail to awaken it. Masters who know this secret guard it closely.) And if you don 't sit in lotus, you won't have a legit reason to claim spiritual practice. But in reality, the snake will rush upward to get the rat even if you sit in any other upright position for a while.
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    I own a vintage scarf with the map of Paris printed on it. If there was no difference between the map and the territory, the Eiffel Tower would be poking me in the neck.
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    All the time.
  6. More Unpopular Opinions

    From the taoist perspective, the central channel can be found or placed anywhere where there's yin-yang interplay and transformation. It's the "mysterious border" between yin and yang, and it's not anatomical nor material and not even "spiritual." What it is is in a certain sense virtual -- a virtual field of potential manifestations. If you look at the taijitu, it's that S-shaped demarcation line between yin and yang which both divides and unites them and sort of doesn't exist -- it's the interplay and co-creation of yin and yang that make it appear. No such interplay takes place in wuji where there's no duality. The reason there's no duality is that nothing happens there. Once something happens -- anything at all -- bye wuji, bye nonduality, hello manifestations. So, the central channel can be this division-unification between, e.g., the left side of the body and the right side, the left brain and the right, but also the upper and the lower body, or the back and the front, or the outer and the inner, and so on. Moreover, it can be the border between the body and the mind, between jing and qi, qi and shen, between life and death, between gods and mortals, and so on. If you place your unwavering awareness on any of those division-unification borders, that's where your central channel will be.
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    "Against the flow" examples from nature: Salmons live for 2-3 years and die immediately after spawning. All salmons are powerfully drawn to spawning, but if you put obstacles in the way of it happening, they will live for 14 years. That's going against the flow -- for longevity. Mice like to eat. If food is plentiful, they will always eat their fill. If you restrict their food at an early age, their lifespan increases greatly -- sometimes fivefold, which in human years would correspond to getting to be 160 years old. They grow up smaller than average mice but their health is stellar. That's going against the flow -- for longevity. Neidan practitioners try to go against the flow because they want to be healthy (in body, mind, and spirit) and live longer than what their "natural" lifespan dictates. What is it anyway, this "natural" lifespan? Maybe an individual practitioner won't be able to pull off a dramatic increase -- because of compromised genetics, environmental adversities, stressful events, traumatic experiences -- there's no guarantee that he or she will live a longer and healthier life than some lucky individual who just goes with the flow and still beats them at this game due to stellar genetics, environmental blessings, low stress life, happy avoidance of traumatizing occurrences or routines, and so on. But the idea is to improve one's chances despite adversities. In other words, it's natural to go with the flow, and paradoxically enough (taoism is nothing if not full of paradoxes), it can also be natural to go against the flow. It all depends on what kind of flow and where one is headed going against it and how they go about it.
  8. What made YOU laugh today/tonight ?

    I can imagine. If I had artistic training, I would probably try to get some well-deserved amusement out of those calls too, but for me, it's a rare occurrence to be inspired like that. Most often I just hang up without saying a word. The reason is twofold. For one thing, those callers are chronofages... though not as ferocious as the inhuman ones that set up time-eating traps when it's me who needs to reach this or that den of officialdom. All those "your call is very important to us," "all our representatives are assisting other customers," "please stay on the line" etc. repeated every minute, tens or hundreds of times while you wait-- with the most horrible, unbearable compulsory music enforcement in between. For another, I pity folks who have to take a telemarketing job, no one chooses it, it's something one would do out of either sheer desperation due to the overall state of the market, or else out of sheer uselessness in any other capacity. If I engage them in a conversation knowing all the while I won't give them a chance in hell of it leading to a sale, I'd sort of turn the tables and eat their time myself. So I do my best not to take those calls personally... most of the time.
  9. What made YOU laugh today/tonight ?

    It's not what happened today, it was a while ago, but I just remembered it by association with something else. Some cold caller managed to get me on the phone (the area code looked like it might be someone I know) and goes, "Is this Miss Me... umm... Mzhe... ahem... Mrzhebr... meebeeee... bebebemeee... (in exasperation) do you speak English a little?!" I hadn't uttered a single word yet, so I figured she projected her own difficulties in pronouncing my name onto me. "I do speak English a little," I responded pleasantly. "Among other things, I've learned how to pronounce names of foreign origin -- I think of it as part of English proficiency. For instance, the caller before you told me his name was Srikarthikeyan. If you can spell this name back to me, I will sign up for whatever you're offering." She hung up.
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    Yes, Elysium (aka Luo Ji?), go for it. Eliminate human tyranny! The world belongs to Trisolaris!
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    Most opinions that are absolutely correct and valid are wildly unpopular. Yours here are a good example. Yet if you wanted people to argue against them, you could choose some more outrageous unpopular opinions. Here's a few examples off the top of my head: Rich and powerful people are edible. The world belongs to Trisolaris. The jing-qi-shen sequence is natural and inevitable, and naturally and inevitably ends up in Void whether you speed it up with this or that ridiculous practice or not. If you alchemically reverse the flow, you can avoid the Void. Taoist alchemy is not about "going with the flow," but about going against the flow.
  12. Stranger things

    One of those many stories most people never heard -- along with the stories of the great female samurai warriors of Japan, or the most powerful and successful pirate of all time who was a Chinese girl, or the three great women who headed the fight for independence from Moscow in the 15th century Novgorod Republic, and so on. This is Henriette D’Angeville, who, in 1838, climbed Mont Blanc with 18 bottles of wine, 26 roast chickens and a carrier pigeon. She was the first woman to complete the ascend unaided. Her outfit was homemade as there were no climbing clothes for women. The pants stirred some controversy...
  13. Spiritual arrogance and it's pitfall

    "My dear Watson," said Sherlock Holmes, "I cannot agree with those who rank modesty among the virtues. To the logician all things should be seen exactly as they are, and to underestimate one's self is as much a departure from truth as to exaggerate one's own powers." -- Arthur Conan Doyle "Don't be so humble, you're not that great." -- Golda Meir
  14. Lower dantian not below the navel?

    Don't put fingers onto your stomach at all if it's confusing. Instead, mark the size of your own personal cun on a piece of paper or on a measuring tape or on a piece of string and use that. Keep in mind that for the location of the lower dantian, it's fine if it's approximate enough, it's not really a point you need to locate as precisely as for sticking a needle therein. Many years ago, someone let me borrow a simple little machine with two electrodes and a graduated scale that measured electrical conductance on the surface of the skin (and doubled up as a treatment device, but I don't remember by now how exactly it was used.) The acupoints have significantly higher conductance -- when you hit the correct point, the measuring needle on the scale would instantly jump. It made it easy to find precise locations. That machine was very simple -- there's modern devices however that are designed for the same purpose, fancier and computerized and costing way more -- but some acupuncturists might have them in their office. You could perhaps try to find one of those and measure the precise location "scientifically."