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More Fake Asian Magic
If you fell for the idea that there's mystery and magic in Asia, you were uninformed of the truth about Asian magical systems.
They're all just money making schemes.
There's some tiny "green line effects", meaning that if you alter the internal dialogue in any way, weird stuff can happen.
Especially if your eyes are closed, as in meditation.
But it's nothing to get excited about. Let alone declare yourself a "master", get a throne, and start gathering monks.
Anyone doing that is a total con artist fraud.
The explanation the witches had for why Carlos had failed to teach real sorcery to anyone in private classes, was that the private class people turned him into a "guru".
Which they did!
They should have wanted MAGIC. Before all else.
But none did.
Instead they created a new "river of shit", and put Carlos as the captain of a ship on that new nightmare. Cholita made a picture. If I can find it I'll add it to the comments.
But I can't get the Dali Lama into the ring with someone, to show what a horrible fraud he is. Or any "Rinpoche", Daoist priest, Hindu Guru, or any of those who set up little kingdoms for themselves.
They're protected by delusional followers, the same way the Sunday Classes swarmed around Carlos like groupies, oblivious to what he was trying to do.
Fortunately the kung fu people are delusional enough themselves, to get into the ring with someone who can actually fight.
Inevitably they get knocked down in seconds.
The masters of all of China! Wushu, Tai Chi, mysterious arts using "internal energy".
They all get their butts kicked in seconds, because in fact Asian "magic" is a total fraud.
But so is all other magic on the planet at this time. All destroyed by greed for money.
The only real magic has to come from before money, cities, and even agriculture.
Back when people had no reason to make up stuff.
Like Olmec magic. That's the real thing.
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New Dalai Lama page in the Wiki:
https://www.reddit.com/r/castaneda/wiki/buddhism/dalai_lama/
Linked inside this existing one:
https://www.reddit.com/r/castaneda/wiki/buddhism/
The most salient issue is that much of kung-fu sits in the middle of the fighting-magic axis. Not practical enough to compete against more kill or be killed styles or techniques, and not magical enough (or at all!) to be considered sorcery (or even sorcery-adjacent, in most instances).
In other words, it's mediocre. Pretty. But mediocre, with few exceptions, like chin-na (joint locking) for instance.
Chin Na Tested In Real Sparring
But...the real world applications, even with chin-na, are kinda rare:
3 Best Martial Arts Styles | No It's Not Yours
The best fighters over the last 2 decades were Brazilians who adapted Jiu Jitsu for real competitions.
There's a classic John Wayne film, perhaps about Admiral Perry's reform of Japan. But could be about the aftermath of Hiroshima.
Where an annoying short guy in the Japanese village John Wayne is administrating, keeps kicking his butt with Jiu Jitsu. Like it was a hobby.
John Wayne is like 6'4" tall. In cowboy boots at least.
Wish I had that movie clip.
It's the real thing, by a real tiny Japanese master.
But the Brazilians elevated it to even higher levels through brutal honesty.
Sobriety.
The reason that Asian Martial Arts are what they are today is because of the cultural environment in which they developed. Specifically, closed societies that did not welcome outsiders (people of different races etc.).
The fierce competition for status is, also, what primarily shaped them, rather than extensive empirical feedback from actual fighting situations.
The one Kung Fu group was just going up against another Kung Fu group that was only slightly different than they were. They were, perhaps unknowingly, "compliment' with each other. Locked into a sort of cognitive-feedback loop.
So there were never any seismic shifts in either approach or technique.
Just in appearance. Flourish.
So we must pragmatically concede that the only thing that they're really verifiably any good at is conditioning the body; the muscles and joints.
BUT...
If they could just learn to shrink the tonal, and act in the double, we could bring back the 70s Hong Kong Kung Fu moves.
Leaping across tree tops for example.
I think it would take a witch to "fix" martial arts.
Men don't have the detachment needed to pull that off, without damaging their own progress.
Maybe as a "hobby" some day, the community as a whole could try to tinker with existing things.
But it would need to support the tinkerer.
Again, ideal for a woman who doesn't mind having a system to live in, and following the rules for staying in it.
In the process of doing that sort of tinkering with outside systems, it's possible you'd bring back "The Men of Knowledge".
You don't have to become a seer, in order to shapeshift.
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you can tell in the video that the shaolin guy really thinks hes
"flowing with the dao" , especially when he gets back up and pretends to be doing "drunken boxing"
its literally so asinine, especially imaginging that these guys lord their superiority over unsuspecting people who dont know any better
thank you dan for opening my eyes to this lol
A lot of Castaneda fans take to martial arts.
Carlos and the witches liked them too.
But the potential in martial arts hasn't been realized in the last thousand years.
If it ever actually was.
do you practice martial arts?
15 styles over 40 years.
It is very difficult to judge the effectiveness of a martial art from a fight in a controlled environment with rules. Bruce Lee used to say there are not better martial arts, there are better fighters. And those fighters will perform better or worse under a variety of conditions.
If you want to beat your head against a muscled man in a ring, you could perform better after 5 or 6 months of Muay Thai training than Tai Chi training, but if you already have been practicing Muay Thai for years, and then you practice Tai Chi, the Thai Chi practice will make your Muay Thai techniques better. It gives you an extra humpf.
If you are assaulted on the streets and in your self defense you break the assaulter's neck, you go to prison for life and that is not a proper self defense.
Also, when you are 40, 50, 60, 80 years old, it is probable you could not stand Muay Thai training, but you could do Tai Chi training.
My conclusion is that martial arts are tools, and it is better to have tools than not having them. And every tool has a domain in which it performs better than others. A canon can do things a pistol can not, and a pistol can do things a canon can not.
I don't know about all that, but I studied 15 styles. Most very seriously, some for decades.
And I noticed when they do sparing, none of them can actually use the moves they practiced.
It's the elephant in the room everyone notices, but no one is willing to speak up.
Asian martial arts are more like a farce then serious fighting.
Muay Thai being an exception of course, because it's 100% competition.
But they don't do well against brazilian jiu jitsu unless they learn to defend themselves from that specific style of attack so they don't end up on the ground.
Mostly asian martial arts stage situations that would never actually take place in a real fight, and then teach you how to deal with the pretend situation in order to gain rank (endorsement).
They're selling endorsements of your ability to perform their fraud.
That becomes very obvious when you study at multiple schools, black belt in some, and find that when you join a new school they don't even believe you.
You're back to beginner's status no matter how long you've been studying.
BJJ is a great martial art. A must I would say, because no matter what, ground just occur and you better learn to move effectively in that environment.
You're right, there's this historical chauvinism 'my style is better, my school's better, my techniques are better'. They used to kill each others to prove their point!
Bruce Lee used to say you must empty your cup if you want to taste my tea. If you have a kicking technique that is the best in the world, I won't fight you to prove you're wrong. Instead I would ask you to teach me, practice that technique until it's mine, and try to integrate it into my system. Then I would have two kicking techniques and use the one that suits me best in a given occasion. He also used to say belts are to keep trousers in place.
What a interesting fella. I wonder what would have happened if Castañeda and Bruce would have met.
They did!
Made a home movie with Howard Lee.
A bar fight scene.
Carlos was the bartender.
I wish to god we could get that footage!
You have to keep in mind, Carlos was super famous and everyone wanted to meet him back then.
He had access to EVERYONE.
Including famous gurus. He told a story once about going to visit a very famous Yogi, who was standing at the top of the stairs coming down to greet Carlos.
Tripped, tumbled down the stairs, and died at the feet of Carlos.
I might think Carlos was making up a story to teach us, but I've never heard any story from Carlos that didn't ultimately turn out to be true.
And "the spirit" does things like that once in a while, as a teaching lesson.
Such as flooding the basement of the apartment Carlos lived in, in Arizona.
Just because don Juan suggested it as a solution to the noisy kid practicing piano down there, disturbing the silence of Carlos all day long.
(magical) Shit happens!
The blue scout story worries me, but once you get out into Silent Knowledge you realize we exist in 2 timeframes. And one isn't as "separate" from the other as you might assume.
Cholita has a hard time believing that, even though she's the one who proves that for me!
I have to be very careful to keep track of which copy of Cholita I'm facing.
Yea, Bruce was cool.
I don't care what anyone says; he had the absolute best spinning back kick. I took private lessons for a few months from the Hwa Rang Do leader, trying to get as good as Bruce for that move.
The Koreans get fancy kick obsessed. Big "show offs" their martial arts are.
Bruce Lee actually won the long beach tournament at the start of his career.
But so did Dan Wagner (under Yamazaki), and without any prep.
I was driving around with him one day with his girlfriend and another classmate, and he suggested we go to that long beach tournament for something to do.
And he won it. But not based on amazing martial arts skills.
His were 2nd degree japanese hard style at best.
He used psychology to defeat people, by learning how to get them to flinch and then attack while their eyes were half closed.
Worked on anyone!
I'm pretty sure he would have beaten Bruce too.
But he got into computers and quit! When computers were all "mainframe".
Made a million.
Which back in the late 70s was a lot of money.
Did they? Woah, awesome. What an amazing sight to see such powerful beings together. I wish that footage could be recovered.
They should have had more time together, maybe Carlos would have helped Bruce to control some addictions that later diminished his health.
Ah, but I guess there's little sense to think about alternative past, now. Thanks for the reply and the information! ☺️
I'm trying to lure you to "fix" martial arts.
But likely as you learn what I explained about muscle memory and shrinking the tonal so you can act in the double, you'll lost interest in martial arts.
It probably has to be "implanted" into the mind of the martial arts community in general, with good cartoons.
So they think it's their idea to adopt sorcery.
That thing you mention, that elephant in the room that paralysis, exist. Idk what it is but I've seen it plenty of times, in apprentices and masters alike. In this video too.
Is it fear? Do I fear to get hurt, or to hurt the other? Is my incapacity to decide and coordinate fast enough what will be my next move? Idk, but it happens and damn you look dumb when it happens.
But sometimes is the other way around; you must react inmediately and your body just clicks and you dont know how but you've done impecably.
Idk how to control it. I think it's the intention.
Abandon and observation.
Silence would do the job. You can't "flinch" even a tiny bit.
Have to have full awareness of what's going on during the fight.
But still your muscle memory has to learn!
We can't react fast enough, so muscle memory has to do the job for us.
Thus all the repetition. To train muscle memory.
Which is perhaps one link to our double.
If you do a lot of sparing, you find that all of a sudden you've got your arm under someone's leg holding it up in an awkward position.
Because they tried to kick you.
But you didn't do that. Your muscle memory recognized the threat, and reacted faster than the conscious mind can.
Unfortunately, martial arts don't understand this well.
That's odd.
They understand that doing a kata 10,000 times produces drastic results.
10,000 is a magic number in asian thinking. So don't take that literally. It's like "thousand year old eggs" in China.
But repeatedly doing katas, does in fact train muscle memory.
Or placing poles in the ground in a 3 x 3 pattern, and then endlessly moving around striking and kicking them. It trains muscle memory from all angles.
And the Zen people have that lame "it shot" archery understanding of muscle memory.
But can't hit a target as well as high school archers. As usual Buddhism is a total fraud, with a tiny bit of meditative effects to beguile people into believing they have something more than just what jogging or shamanic drumming can do.
Unfortunately, asian martial artists simply don't realize they're training muscle memory.
It's the same muscle memory that catches falling glasses before you realize it's slipping off the table.
The same muscle memory that Tensegrity trains.
So basically, martial arts are all screwed up by the egos of their messed up asian leaders.
As Carlos said of Howard Lee, and I can verify from doing business with Asia, "Chinese men are really screwed up".
So martial arts suffer from a lack of analysis and honest understanding.
The leaders of martial arts are all inevitably bad players, just as we see arriving here constantly.
Our own sorcery community is DOMINATED by nothing but fake leaders cheating people
It's just that no one exposes martial arts for the fraud they are. That would take someone in agreed upon "authority", and that will never come into existence.
The major "systems" in the USA, including the one Carlos and the witches studied under, were just some crappy Japanese men who traveled to Los Angeles, after WWII.
And portrayed themselves as "masters".
And back in Japan, their teacher was just some old chi gung style street corner guy.
No real knowledge at all. Just repetitive learning of stylized movements.
Like Kabuki or tea ceremony.
Likewise for Chinese martial arts.
All bad players.
BUT, martial arts could be "fixed".
Emphasize muscle memory above all else, and silence to increase the effectiveness of it.
Then, "shrinking the tonal", so that at some points in the fight, you are actually in your double.
And completely invincible.
I've seen Cholita do that! In public switch to her double, and assault someone annoying her.
She shoved a grocery helper woman at Sprouts who dared to ask if she needed help with the cosmetics display. The woman rose into the air a full foot, from Cholita's shove.
But then she came to me laughing, and clearly not remembering the real event.
All I could do is tell her, "Yea, my wife does that sort of thing. Just say away from her."
Just as happened in Second Ring of Power when the little sisters attacked Carlos and his double defended him.
The victims of that probably can't even remember it clearly.
You could even leap to the roof, and walk on treetops as in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon.
All of that is totally possible.
But will never happen, because the leaders of all martial arts schools are just common bad player types looking for attention and money.
By the way, when you learn to be silent your muscle memory becomes 3 times more active.
And you'll notice it!
For example, you're cooking and something you put on the counter poorly begins to fall off.
Instead of one chance to catch it using muscle memory, you'll now get 3.
Twice with the hand, then once with the foot.
It's remarkable! Even when the first muscle memory attempt fails, it's modified by that very same muscle memory, and you push it back a bit higher, so you can try again.
You begin to "juggle" it using muscle memory.
Completely unconsciously.
Too bad there aren't any actually good martial arts schools!
I tried to get some interested, and got doors slammed on my nose.
It's impossible to influence asian "masters".
It's rude to even suggest there's something they might want to look at.
I'll try to lure them with cartoons.
Cholita and Jadey studied with Howard for years.
Maybe I'll make westerly witch and policewoman give martial arts people a clue what's possible.
Even leaping across the treetops.
I'll try to recreate a scene from crouching tiger!
Maybe a fight breaks out at Tata Pakora's festival, in the park where the Buddhists are gathered?
Amen. A lot of truth you've said here.
Russians aren’t exempt from showy pretending either (parody at the end):
Some Russians do slightly more real fighting than most styles.
So in some cases their stuff isn't total nonsense.
Like Krav Maga.
Based partly on hard style Aikido. Which is used by the Tokyo police.
The kind of aikido from the "ugly" Senpai.
But don't say that to his students.
With Ueshiba, a contemporary of his, being the one under whom Carlos likely had a black belt.
I've often wondered if I didn't take Aikido classes with Carlos himself! It's very possible. Assuming the rumor about him studying Aikido is true.
I definitely attended a couple of Shotokan classes with Taisha in them. Back in the early 70s.
Ueshiba's people infiltrated the UC system along with Nishiyama's Shotokan Karate, which Taisha studied.
But Ueshiba flipped out and become a "woo woo" martial artist. Doing pretend martial arts.
The other main style from the ugly senpai sticking to the original, where all Aikido moves result in the death of the opponent.
Their head gets banged into the pavement.
But still, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu would kick all of their butts.
Because all they do is fight and compete.
No "Air punching".