(Untitled)

[hermeneut]

I've done a lot of research on shamanism and daoism lately, and so I've come across heaps of new-age drivel that I've had to separate from the thoughtful and critical texts that have found their way into publication. It's wonderful that there are so many publications available on issues relating to trance, transcendence, and self-transformation,

Comments

from the outside

[xaufalsia]

i have noticed the same thing, albeit from a different side. i find i cannot determine which is bullshit and which is not. furthermore, i feel like i haven't the time or access to resource necessary in order to figure out the difference.
i was recently ran into the problem of thinking that tai chi would be a great assistance to me for practice, but realizing that i had no real way of knowing wether it would work or not, because the large majority of teachers in the area here seem to be focused on it merely for its aerobic applications.
at any rate, understanding that i myself have the affliction of unecessarily attributing things to my confused view of the universe, i tend to simply continue believing that i have no idea what i'm dealing with. though it seldom results in any sort of anything, for the time being it seems like the best method available.
mostly, i wish i didn't suffer the belief that i suffer limitations. it seems that a vast majority of people are much more content than i, believing at least that they know their

Re: from the outside

[hermeneut]

Although you have trouble determining bullshit from non-bullshit, you don't seem to have any trouble discerning the difference between what can be clearly determined and what cannot. And that's the distinction I'm talking about. In reference again to the mohel's blade and the prophet Jeremiah, it's a matter of having a circumcised heart, which means that one keeps open to undecidability and impossibility. That's why I distinguish this type of approach from a new age approach. When I'm looking at an essay on the ecological implications of Daoism, I separate two types of accounts: the accounts that pretend to have a clear and distinct knowledge of what they're dealing with, and the accounts that admit that the issues are largely impossible to understand and that there is no stable ground upon which to make decisions. New Age books on shamanism pretend that they have a personal hotline to The Secret of shamanism, but good books on shamanism only create more questions, open up more difficulties and problems. Separating the wheat