Comments on: Meditation’s Five Percenters http://blog.paradigm-sys.com/archives/304 Sat, 04 Feb 2012 23:15:15 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 By: ThomasB http://blog.paradigm-sys.com/archives/304/comment-page-1#comment-17638 ThomasB Mon, 08 Nov 2010 23:16:56 +0000 http://blog.paradigm-sys.com/?p=304#comment-17638 Firstly I must mention that as a long time fan of your books I am very pleased to come across your blog while searching for something entirely different :-). Secondly As a teacher both within western secondary education as well as a some times tai chi trainer I find your observations regarding drop out rates very interesting and will ponder them. Thirdly It is very interesting, the view especially the more traditionally inclined tai chi teachers take to using learning tools like video. I do understand this point of view to some extent. Amongst other reasons tai chi used to be a secret art, simply not taught, or that is of which one taught different parts to different people, while closely guarding the secret components. Also I frankly believe there IS value in the enormous amount of learning one does WHILE struggling with the mistakes. And finally, this is what amuses me the most, how one is MIRACULOUSLY able to do things in the presence of a living flesh teacher ... and only in his presense. I guess it is called mirror neurons. It is fascinating nevertheless. All the best Thomas B Firstly I must mention that as a long time fan of your books I am very pleased to come across your blog while searching for something entirely different Smile.

Secondly As a teacher both within western secondary education as well as a some times tai chi trainer I find your observations regarding drop out rates very interesting and will ponder them.

Thirdly It is very interesting, the view especially the more traditionally inclined tai chi teachers take to using learning tools like video. I do understand this point of view to some extent. Amongst other reasons tai chi used to be a secret art, simply not taught, or that is of which one taught different parts to different people, while closely guarding the secret components. Also I frankly believe there IS value in the enormous amount of learning one does WHILE struggling with the mistakes. And finally, this is what amuses me the most, how one is MIRACULOUSLY able to do things in the presence of a living flesh teacher … and only in his presense. I guess it is called mirror neurons. It is fascinating nevertheless.

All the best
Thomas B

]]> By: Rocket http://blog.paradigm-sys.com/archives/304/comment-page-1#comment-17575 Rocket Wed, 03 Mar 2010 15:30:31 +0000 http://blog.paradigm-sys.com/?p=304#comment-17575 Tibetan meditative tradition came out of a culture where your average adolescent male sent his sixteenth summer in a high mountain meadow watching Yaks graze. Here in the states the focus is on cars, beer, nooky, computers ... and whatever "values" are conveyed by TV or pop culture. By the time we are adults only a tiny percent are not emotionally out of balance (more or less 5% ? ) even if from one of those "rare as a hens tooth" emotionally healthy families ....we are steeped in a culture that is emotionally out of balance. Dredging up emotional injuries from childhood to neutralize the way we react to life when those issues pull the strings on us from beneath the threshold of consciousness is downright taboo. Only a tiny number of therapist have done it themselves and you sure cannot guide someone else thru it until you have done it your self. The process of patching up emotional injuries is messy and "not to the taste" even of 97% of all psychotherapists I have met and known. Psychiatry? forget it. Those folks are trained to institutionalize mental emotional illness at the behest of the pharmaceutical industry. They are trained to give drugs. Period. ... and other parts of treatment do not address emotions which in almost all cases are the driver of behavioral problems of those confined in hospitals and also the masses of us walking around "normal". I've seen people go off the edge and become crazier by what they were subjected to in a psychiatric hospital while the well meaning staff was way way overwhelmed and not trained to do anything significant except prescribe very expensive drugs and other expensive drugs to combat side effects of of the first drug. ONe of my close friends' father wrote three of the chapters in the standard pharmacology text used in USA medical schools, including the chapter of drugs for psychiatry. He put one of his kids on Haldol starting when the kid was age nine .... at a time the kid was acting out during a divorce that included violent behavior by the father. This guy was one of seven research fellows the federal government called on when they want advice from a psychiatrist about drugs for the mind. The feds thru the VA system published a book he wrote about how psychedelics make you psychotic. Culturally we are cut off from the potentials the Tibetans and other pre industrial cultures have developed to heal the mind of emotional issues by the fact our emotional issues tend to be so "high amplitude" we cannot even relax. stabilize and focus the mind for a few minutes. Tibetan meditative tradition came out of a culture where your average adolescent male sent his sixteenth summer in a high mountain meadow watching Yaks graze. Here in the states the focus is on cars, beer, nooky, computers … and whatever “values” are conveyed by TV or pop culture. By the time we are adults only a tiny percent are not emotionally out of balance (more or less 5% ? ) even if from one of those “rare as a hens tooth” emotionally healthy families ….we are steeped in a culture that is emotionally out of balance. Dredging up emotional injuries from childhood to neutralize the way we react to life when those issues pull the strings on us from beneath the threshold of consciousness is downright taboo. Only a tiny number of therapist have done it themselves and you sure cannot guide someone else thru it until you have done it your self.

The process of patching up emotional injuries is messy and “not to the taste” even of 97% of all psychotherapists I have met and known. Psychiatry? forget it. Those folks are trained to institutionalize mental emotional illness at the behest of the pharmaceutical industry. They are trained to give drugs. Period. … and other parts of treatment do not address emotions which in almost all cases are the driver of behavioral problems of those confined in hospitals and also the masses of us walking around “normal”. I’ve seen people go off the edge and become crazier by what they were subjected to in a psychiatric hospital while the well meaning staff was way way overwhelmed and not trained to do anything significant except prescribe very expensive drugs and other expensive drugs to combat side effects of of the first drug.

ONe of my close friends’ father wrote three of the chapters in the standard pharmacology text used in USA medical schools, including the chapter of drugs for psychiatry. He put one of his kids on Haldol starting when the kid was age nine …. at a time the kid was acting out during a divorce that included violent behavior by the father. This guy was one of seven research fellows the federal government called on when they want advice from a psychiatrist about drugs for the mind. The feds thru the VA system published a book he wrote about how psychedelics make you psychotic.

Culturally we are cut off from the potentials the Tibetans and other pre industrial cultures have developed to heal the mind of emotional issues by the fact our emotional issues tend to be so “high amplitude” we cannot even relax. stabilize and focus the mind for a few minutes.

]]>