Posts by City Fan

117

Signs of an Awakening Kandalini!!

by frankiespeakin in

paste and clip:.

http://www.kundalini-gateway.org/ksigns.html.

signs and symptoms of awakening.

City Fan

Thanks for those recommendations!

It's not just me who has a pile of books sat in his Amazon shopping basket then!

117

Signs of an Awakening Kandalini!!

by frankiespeakin in

paste and clip:.

http://www.kundalini-gateway.org/ksigns.html.

signs and symptoms of awakening.

City Fan

LT,

Some titles would be great. (How much have I spent on books since joining this forum? !)

And thanks for the link Frankie!

Have any of you guys read any Deepak Chopra? I haven't but his books were recently recommended to me.

CF.

117

Signs of an Awakening Kandalini!!

by frankiespeakin in

paste and clip:.

http://www.kundalini-gateway.org/ksigns.html.

signs and symptoms of awakening.

I have a friend who teaches martial arts and he was the first person who showed me this. He has been a Chi Gung practitioner for over 15 years and teaches classes in London. He has pictures of Buddha type figures and chakra patterns on his walls and in fact he helped me a lot in escaping my JW past.

I'd always presumed he was a Buddhist/Taoist type because of the symbols in his house so when I asked him I was surprised when he said he was a Catholic. He said to me that most of it was rubbish but the Eucharist (I think that's the term he used) was the same as Chi energy circulation. Actually the way you have expressed it is far easier to understand than my friends explanation!

Did your particular 'conversion event' occur after practising Chi Gung for some time or do you think it was unrelated?

117

Signs of an Awakening Kandalini!!

by frankiespeakin in

paste and clip:.

http://www.kundalini-gateway.org/ksigns.html.

signs and symptoms of awakening.

City Fan

Well I hate to read into things what I want to read into them, if you know what I mean.

"Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God"; Nicode'mus said to him, "How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?"

I think any kind of spiritual awakening would be accompanied by what I can only describe as internal changes. The Tao te Ching talks of the Tao or Way as 'hidden and nameless' and 'yet Tao alone supports all things and brings them to fullfillment'. Now if an exercise such as Zhan Zhuang can awaken a previously unused energy in the body in a kind of rebirth then I don't see it as much different from the traditional Christian transformation of being born again.

As I became a complete atheist after leaving the JWs I never thought I'd get a spiritual side again. Let's just say for a moment that my continued Zhan Zhuang practice eventually means I can OBE at will (can this be done?) then hasn't it awakened the ability to separate the physical body from the sprirtual one.

LT, would you say that to you Jesus is a catalyst to awaken these kind of experiences, that is, he's a shortcut really without having to spend 20 years in Buddhist meditation or years and years of Chi awakening exercises? John 3 is very interesting. Would teaching from the Taoists have spread to Palestine by this time?

I don't know about you, but when I try and explain to someone that the most intense exercise I've ever done in my life involves standing perfectly still, I get some very bemused replies!

CF.

117

Signs of an Awakening Kandalini!!

by frankiespeakin in

paste and clip:.

http://www.kundalini-gateway.org/ksigns.html.

signs and symptoms of awakening.

City Fan

Little Toe,

I find this subject fascinating simply because I practise something called Chi Gung or rather a form of it called Zhan Zhuang. I started it as a form of exercise and to help with my martial arts but have really started to feel the benefits after over a year of practise. The breathing techniques have also greatly improved my asthma. The Taoists use Zhan Zhuang to circulate Chi and to help focus the Chi energy in the belly, hence the term 'fire in the belly'. The Bhuddists meditate or chant to accomplish the same thing, although I've only read about this briefly.

I've had some lucid dreams and even a brief OBE recently which was scary. But it is interesting to me that the Taoists use the term 're-birth' once you have mastered Chi circulation from the Tan Tien or the belly, that is you can then circulate your energy in the same was you did before birth in the womb. Is this what being "born-again" means?

Whatever it means, meditation and exercise have given me a spiritual focus that I never had.

CF.

21

How do most of you....

by TallTexan in

handle being called on by jw's in service?

do you try to 'show them the light' or just be polite, or even angry?

also, i heard it rumored once that the local cong's kept a file on all 'apostates' in their territory and wouldn't let the publishers call on them for fear of them being 'turned'.

City Fan

When they offer me literature I say "Oh, I've got one of your books upstairs".

I then walk upstairs and grab my 1920 edition of 'Da Judge' Rutherford's book 'Millions Now Living Will Never Die' and read them a couple of paragraphs from pages 89 and 97 where 'Da Judge' prophecied that 1925 would see the resurrection of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and other OT prophets back to the earth.

The look on their faces is priceless. Actually I've only done this once and they've not been back since.

7

Q for Brits...Britpop New Labour

by Huxley in

jw
friends

i just finished watching a documentary entitled, "live forever".

(no intentional jw reference there..) it was about the time period in the early 90's to about 97 when britpop was huge.. i've been listening to a lot of music from that period lately.

early stone roses, pulp, etc...the whole britpop thing went pretty much unnoticed here, actually a fellow bethelite introduced me to a lot of it..he snuck out to see echobelly when they played in nyc!.

City Fan

Every time I hear Gordon Brown say 'Boom and Bust Economy' I cringe. What an arsehole. If Mr Brown ever becomes Prime Minister I'm off. I'm having a house built abroad just in case, no joke. Bring back Ken Clarke.

Anyway, as for the music. Early nineties music was fantastic. The US had Nirvana, Chillie Peppers, Faith no More, Metallica. The UK had the Stone Roses, Oasis, Blur, The Charletans, The Happy Mondays. Dance music and the rave scene was at its peak long before big business made dance music into the boring pap it is today. I'd just left the JWs when Oasis released 'What's the Story' and I used to go into the local pub The Tavern which had about 400 people in on a Sunday night and the last song they played was always Champagne Supernova off that Oasis album. Fantastic.

A lot of JWs still went into the Tavern pub then (and I mean at least 40 - 50 of them) and I started to get really annoyed with their double lives. Most of them still talked to me even though I'd stopped going to meetings and was smoking at the time. I even went out with a couple of JW girls who I met in the pub after I'd stopped going to meetings. They knew I'd been a JW but it didn't seem to matter too much to them. But eventually I got more friends who were normal people than JWs and knew then that I'd never go back.

They were happy days though, before a mortgage, bills and boy-bands spoiled it all.

CF.

Edited to say - get the DVD '24 hour party people' which is a good film about the record label run by Antony H. Wilson and the Hacienda night club around this time.

15

hya ,ex jw from oldham uk

by dezza in

jw
friends

hya all,new here,mabe not the right place to put this but i gotta get it of my chest,i am male born 1961 and entered jw at about 4 to 5 yrs age,and from thereon my life took a step backward,everything from schoolwork to home studies was all related to jw,i have recently gone through a major breakdown(brothers included) and i think jw is the cause of this,i have got homaphobia,insomnia and a host of other mind deseases,little does one know when entering this torturous religion you will end up a freek,no r.i in schools well that was a big bummer right away,blood transfusions another one,my first play with a lovely girl had me in tears,i had to sit before the elders and explane what i did (did you touch her there,ect,ect,anyway ya get the picture).my mother is still a witness at the grand old age of 70,and i havent the heart to tell her that its a piece o s*** she livin with,and i done london bethal,so you all tell me this is a true religion or just something else that confuse and disorientate there customers.

City Fan

Hi Dezza,

I knew Oldham cong quite well. Glad you've seen the Watchtower for what it is and hope you're on the road to recovery.

CF.

14

Excellent Chronology website

by City Fan in

for anyone who's interested, i just wanted to post a link to a great chronology website i've found.

you can find it at: http://www.caeno.org/.

basically it deals with babylonian astronomy, king lists, chronicles, synchronisms etc.

City Fan

JC,

This site DOES NOT do any calculations. All they do (which is good) is posts the Sachs/Hunger outdated reference. A scan of the actual text.

What you're looking for is the Adobe pdf document titled "Diary No. -567 an analysis of all intelligible observations (31 pages)".

It's 31 pages of star charts and discussions of every observation in VAT 4956. There are also some good Adobe pdf files on astronomy basics, which show why your calculation for line 8 is wrong. You need to use an ecliptic grid or RA/declination grid for the terms 'Above', 'Below', 'In front of' and 'behind' to remain consistent.

14

Excellent Chronology website

by City Fan in

for anyone who's interested, i just wanted to post a link to a great chronology website i've found.

you can find it at: http://www.caeno.org/.

basically it deals with babylonian astronomy, king lists, chronicles, synchronisms etc.

City Fan

It should also be interesting what they do about Line 3 where the moon at sunset is supposed to be 4 cubits below beta-Geminorum.

Actually, it's line 8. They have a star chart showing the Moon was 4 cubits below beta-Geminorum on 22 May 568 BC. I have different software that shows the same thing. Try using declination or better still an ecliptic grid for your results. It definitely isn't an altitude measurement. Below, above, in front of, and behind all refer to normal stars on the ecliptic. If you don't have an ecliptic grid then right/ascension-declination values will be close.