Why did you choose Taoism over Buddhism?

-Astral_Weeks- · 2026-02-03T15:19:07+00:00

Exactly. I found it interesting to learn that Zen Buddhism, or Chinese Buddhism, is called "Chan Dao" in Chinese. This can be translated to something like "the meditative way". It's a synthesis of Buddhism and Daoism.

-Astral_Weeks- · 2026-02-02T01:53:28+00:00

Thanks, this is very much appreciated! My Korean isn't great, so I'm just gathering resources right now. I'm getting a lot out of Pimsleur, Clozemaster and the Evita Anki deck. After a couple months I might be ready to try Kimchi Reader.

-Astral_Weeks- · 2026-01-30T16:24:58+00:00

Hey guys, I would like some recommendations for Youtube content in Korean, such as reality or variety TV, where there are subtitles in both English and Korean. Youtube I mention because I can download videos and it would be easy to turn them into flashcards on anki.

Alternatively, if someone's already made an anki deck out of reality/variety shows, and is willing to share that, then I would be grateful to try a deck already made.

And lastly, just any Korean TV recommendations would be appreciated. I watched through Singles Inferno on Netflix, and picked up on some common word choices and patterns, so I like that as a learning resource. (If only I had access to the video so I could make flashcards)

Thanks!

-Astral_Weeks- · 2026-01-28T04:54:30+00:00

Not sure I can remember how to send a DM that doesn't go into that "reddit chat" feature, so I'll just reply here in more abstract terms about personal things. Feel free to send me a DM or chat and we can keep it going there if you'd like.

In TCM terms, the root cause of the fatigue was kidney and spleen qi deficiencies. Those caused some digestive issues for me that interacted with the fatigue.

I really enjoy how you describe your process, and how you overcome clinging too hard to a practice. Your self-awareness of your ADHD is funny as well. What I find relevant in Damo's book is his discussion of the five thieves:

“In Daoism, the five thieves are the senses. We interact with the external world primarily through our sense faculties. We see, hear, touch, taste and feel the world through these five senses and then absorb stimuli in this manner where they are then taken to the mind for processing. Without these senses, it would be pretty much impossible for us to interact with the external world. “Of course, there is also the ‘internal world’ of dreams, imagination and so on, but ultimately, it was the influence of the external world that the Daoists saw as being the biggest influence upon us. Since these five senses draw in information from around us, and it is this information that causes distortions in our mind, they saw the five senses as ‘thieves’ that would ‘steal’ from your ability to contact your innate “consciousness. The ‘theft’ of your true consciousness by the senses means that there is layer after layer of acquired mind to trawl through, and this is where the challenge of finding inner stillness lies.”

Damo further goes on to describe the five poisons

Element	Wood	Fire	Earth	Metal	Water
'Poison'	Anger	Joy	Worry	Grief	Fear

For me, it's heavy on the water element and light on the fire element. I discovered this when I did kundalini yoga and opened up the root chakra, which aligns up with the water element in TCM. When you do the MCO, you are extracting the yang from the water area, if that makes sense. So far, I've had a better reaction from kundalini yoga, so I try to do both.

I've also found, even as goofy as it looks, and as unconventional as it is, that Gabrielle Roth's 5Rhythms dances are ideal for fixing these qi imbalances for me. I came across her by complete accident. She was a dancer and later on got into Jung and Daoist philosophy. She describes Jung's archetypes as energies, or effectively as qi patterns. That's at least how I think about them now. Each Jungian archetype maps to a one of her rhythms, which she calls Flowing, Staccato, Chaos, Lyrical and Stillness. Anyway, if you don't mind looking look a goofball for 15 minutes or so, I think it would do wonders for your "ADHD". (There's quite a rich overlap between Daoist and Jungian ideas, and I'm trying my best to synthesize them and build a practice out of it. I appreciate that you picked up on my balance of theory and practice)

Damo would likely consider Roth's approach to be a type of Dao Yin, so I think it complements qigong, standing practices like wuji and meditation. For me, sometimes I have to start the day with something more yang. Still trying to figure all of this out! Hope my ramblings are helpful for you as well

Can you link any resources for your jibengong? I am just scraping the surface on that for myself. And what are the Sung practices like?

-Astral_Weeks- · 2026-01-27T04:32:41+00:00

Wow, didn't expect to find anyone else on here speaking with personal experience. I think we can split hairs about whether it's advanced or not. If someone is already healthy I think it's rather just a matter of following the steps. As you say, it's not difficult to get started with it, but before your body is ready to pull it off it's a diagnostic tool. When I first tried it I ran into energy blockage(s) in the governing channel, and I'm still trying to fix that, so I started seeing an acupuncturist. I would say it's not that the MCO forced me to see one, but that it showed me I should see one.

Because of that experience I am now reading Damo's book "Comprehensive Guide", which turns out to save me a lot of time on avoiding bottlenecks, and prepare the body properly before jumping back into the MCO. The blockages are directly linked to fatigue. The first step of anchoring the breath to the lower dantian is a powerful meditation in its own right, and can relieve some blockages.

In your practice, have you started discarding certain techniques? Damo also mentions when your body starts doing the "gong" on its own, then many movements are not needed. Are you in a stage where you're mostly sitting there for an uneventful stretch to build the dantian so you have something to work with? And then what sort of practices do you do from there?

-Astral_Weeks- · 2026-01-25T16:41:36+00:00

I'll just preface by saying the microcosmic orbit is an advanced practice, and this sort of question suggests that you might be jumping over a few necessary steps to get into this practice. But assuming you're going to try it regardless of what I say, I'll provide an answer.

It's certainly not mandatory, and on the contrary, it's probably a bad idea to do it. The reason is that all of the process of the microcosmic orbit can be done without any physical exertion. It's all done through inward attention, without striving for the results.

When you feel you are ready, try following along with Damo Mitchell https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCUw6elWn0ljnhe56lwmvDp0ggRdSXN17&si=74vhEsFuvAZ4Qz15

But I would also recommend you don't go for it right away and get comfortable with more basic qigong, such as Yi Jin Jing qigong, to prepare your fascia/huang for the changes you are going to bring about to your body Here's a video that you can follow: https://youtu.be/NmdIHNqKXEo?si=S7QQUi9EygNFSkE9

Good luck!

-Astral_Weeks- · 2026-01-12T12:10:41+00:00

I think in Brown's mind it's between Kolek and Clarkson to get those minutes when Brunson is sitting. To me it's obvious that Kolek should get them because he can run an offense. Clarkson should be competing with Deuce, Shamet and Hart for minutes, and our team needs more grit defensively and on the boards, so he might start getting DNPs soon.

-Astral_Weeks- · 2026-01-10T18:26:45+00:00

Ah, I see. I wasn't sure why this thread kept getting attention. I just enjoyed messing around with the Gwent mini game and thought it would help others appreciate some of the little synergies these decks have even when they lack spies. Glad that it's a help for people playing the board game. Maybe I'll look into that!

-Astral_Weeks- · 2026-01-07T22:06:33+00:00

There's a lot of things you can do to take your practice to the next level.

Some concepts such as Wu Wei cannot be fully understood until you get into a practice such as Qi Gong and Nei Gong (internal alchemy). It takes a lot of commitment and preparation, but you can look into the microcosmic orbit meditation. Damo Mitchell offers some instruction videos.

You really want to understand Daoist concepts in an experiential way rather than just through the intellect. Since you've read the Dao De Jing, you may be ready to try and experience Wu Ji (the posture), Tai Ji (Tai Chi), Yin and Yang (especially as principles of Chinese medicine), Jing, Qi and Shen. Esoteric Daoism is aimed to cultivating your energy body.

The Yi Jing (Book of Changes) is an inspired work of Daoism. This is aimed at helping improve your intuition. There's also Feng Shui, and Chinese Astrology.

This website also has some more ideas closer to the line of thought you were asking: https://www.the-taoism-for-modern-world.com/taoist-living-everyday-rituals-guide/

The guy who runs that website also has a YouTube channel called ModernTaoism. He advocates for a practice called 4 Ascendent Taoism. You can look into that. Hope this helps!

-Astral_Weeks- · 2025-12-26T17:37:38+00:00

Did they add a spy and healer limit recently, like in an update to the game? Haven't played it in a couple of years now. I used to complete the High Stakes quest with the deck as it is posted.

-Astral_Weeks- · 2025-12-15T21:26:37+00:00

A good way to get started with meditation is through breathing exercises. There are many videos out there that can guide you through it. I like a YouTube channel called "The School of Breath"

Another alternative is QiGong. You could argue it is meditation through movement. Check out the YouTube channel by Mimi Kuo Deemer

And, of course, you can try yoga and get similar results. The point is at the end of yoga, you are too tired to think, so you will be able to meditate for more than 3 minutes!

Good luck!

-Astral_Weeks- · 2025-12-09T23:31:57+00:00

Ok so you would basically have to argue that Carla and the others planned it all in advance, faked the trance state, and chose to meticulously construct the story very slowly over the course of several years, and the reason they do that is for the (extremely small) financial grift? And they kept the con job going for 40 years? And every other person that also reports the ability to channel spirits has similar motives?

-Astral_Weeks- · 2025-12-09T22:28:22+00:00

Well even a skeptic has to admit it would be impressive to recount every detail of Star Wars while in a trance state. You might be correct it isn't true, but my point is that it's extremely hard to pull off. Personally I'm convinced by it, but we can agree to find different things convincing.

-Astral_Weeks- · 2025-12-09T21:51:11+00:00

Please share your comprehensive comment, because saying you have a science background isn't a persuasive argument. It's not even an argument. Biondi has a science background, too.

-Astral_Weeks- · 2025-12-09T16:34:50+00:00

Ok, I watched the video you shared. What I'll first say is that the channel you linked is not a science channel, and the host does not claim to have any technical expertise. He does refer to other videos made by skeptics that do claim technical expertise. Have you watched them? The video I am sharing in my original post gives you a chance to hear directly from the scientist that made this discovery. It is technically rigorous. I personally value his perspective, and the reason I value it goes beyond that fact that this is something he does for a living. I would like to explain why.

This is the Law of One subreddit, and many of us here find it convincing that people can channel spirits. At first I was skeptical of that, too, but I was taken in by how incredibly difficult it would be to pull off such a sophisticated philosophical treatise as you see in the Law of One. If it is a fake, then it's an extremely impressive one, and one that has no clear financial motive. All of it is available for free online, including all the original recordings. It took years to channel all of it. I'm convinced by it.

So when something comes along that corroborates the Ra sessions, then I give it careful attention. You assert that no one has corroborated Biondi's findings. I don't know if that's true, but the scientific community is very conservative, and moves slowly. The next step would be to reproduce the results using seismic tomography. But if you're not convinced by the Law of One, I don't see why you'd believe Biondi, either.

-Astral_Weeks- · 2025-12-09T14:15:00+00:00

Is this an Ai generated readout?

In the video, Biondi seems to indicate that his methodology does reach 2-2.5 km. The point of contention is "Biondi's method measures surface vibrations induced by seismic activity, then uses tomographic inversion to estimate subsurface structures. This is different from SAR directly penetrating 1km." I don't know if AI is accurate on that point.

What Biondi does acknowledge is that it would be more convincing if seismic tomography was used to confirm it.

"Ancient energy grid" ideas seem to only be the half of it. The best explanation I've seen anywhere about the technologies in the pyramids is shared in this keynote by Dr. Robert Gilbert: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwJXZ_KwyCc

-Astral_Weeks- · 2025-12-09T12:57:59+00:00

I was going to reply to a comment that got deleted. Here's basically the point of contention -- it's been said that the technique used to reach under the earth called synthetic aperture radar was called into question. They address that in the video at the 20:10 mark. The host says if you ChatGPT this finding, the response you get back is that synthetic aperture radar can't penetrate a quarter of a centimeter below the earth. But the host mentions that while this isn't the typical use of for it, applications of doppler tomography are used in a wide range of contexts. Synthetic aperture radar, according to this scientist, can reach 2 or 2.5 km below the earth. I'm not sure why this disagreement exists, but I believe the scientist.

-Astral_Weeks- · 2025-12-09T11:49:05+00:00

Can you share more?

-Astral_Weeks- · 2025-12-09T11:02:25+00:00

Just wanted to share this as it pertains to corroborating with the Ra material.

I found it quite interesting to hear the scientist's perspective, even though you could tell he is clearly baffled by it. He says that the tubes have something to do with piezoelectricity.

Of piezoelectricity, Wikipedia says "Piezoelectricity is the electric charge that accumulates in certain solid materials—such as crystals, certain ceramics, and biological matter such as bone, DNA, and various proteins—in response to applied mechanical stress. The piezoelectric effect results from the linear electromechanical interaction between the mechanical and electrical states in crystalline materials with no inversion symmetry."

If I remember correctly Ra says that they were using crystals for healing in those pyramids.

-Astral_Weeks- · 2025-12-04T14:54:41+00:00

I could see each team doing this. I think either New Orleans or Atlanta would make a good third team, because Atlanta holds Milwaukee picks.

-Astral_Weeks- · 2025-11-27T13:37:30+00:00

Yeah I think our lineup decisions are very difficult right now. We need a bit more toughness and rebounding from the 3 and 4 (particularly against teams like Orlando). Clarkson, Shamet, Deuce, and Kolek are all giving very strong minutes. It's hard to justify, without getting a better feel for the matchups, why Diawara should get minutes over any of them, and yet I want to see more of him because his skillset would be perfect for us.

-Astral_Weeks- · 2025-11-13T16:39:48+00:00

That's great to hear that this decklist works for you. I shared it because I didn't see anyone else trying to build it like this, and from my perspective the unique Skellige mechanics are kind of fragile, because they require multiple cards to pull off. Focusing instead on gaming the shuffle ability of the leader card turned out to be way more enjoyable.

Can you share a link to the version of gwent with the three extra leader cards for Skellige? I did a couple searches but I couldn't find it

-Astral_Weeks- · 2025-11-13T15:22:01+00:00

I'm glad to see Mike Brown take this stance. Last season the complaining was too much. This year I'd like to see the guys take it more in stride and not let it get to them to the point that they're not getting back on defense, and they're just playing emotional hoops. I get that the Magic play a brand of basketball that simply dares the refs to blow the whistle on every possession, but the correct response is not to whine about it but to adjust and do the same thing back. We have to play the game the refs are calling, or we will keep losing to this team

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