Aether

we do know about it in some ways. im not at liberty to give my reasons for saying so - its like the matrix it cant be explained 'you have to see it for yourself'. religion was a communal device and also a control device, like most things it is a source of power and as such has been used for good and bad. fortunately we have evolved again to a point in time when we can challenge, and if we choose to, disregard what people try to tell us to think. i understand where you are coming from in regards to some of your feelings towards religion. i was raised catholic/ christian stopped really caring about it when i was maybe 8? as my grandads had no real interest in Church certainly one of them didnt, however i had to go to a catholic highschool which bred even more contempt for religion, went through a phase in my teens of not giving a F**K if i lived or died and then since i was about 17 ive been pondering all this stuff about exsisitence, the afterlife, the nature of reality from scientific and spiritual angles..and please dont confuse religion with spirituality. now you have denounced your faith are you an aetheist? i said before that i dont believe in a single anthropomorphic god, but i believe there is something divine. thats what i believe and only you can decide what you believe. i didnt just decide this one day i didnt always think like this, its something i have arrived at over time. As Ryuki quite rightly said i dont know Ryukis exact experiences or what path lead him to his beliefs and nor him mine, but through various theories and ideas posts over time i get the sense he and i are on pages that are not light years far away from each other, he got to his beliefs his way and i got to them mine. you have your beliefs now as a result of the things in your life and maybe when you get to being a decade older your thoughts and perception may have changed or they may be the same. its possible in a decade mine may have changed - i could disbelieve what i believe now or my views now could have been more strenghthened. however for me its that much of a culmination of things that i couldnt recall them all, i dont think on these things really anymore because it has become more like a feeling now rather than something i can give you bullet point answers on. i cant give you the definitive answers that you want, its kind of crap to say but the things we believe on this aspect of exsisitence are analogous to quantum phsyics in a way as we are striving for objective truth based on subjective theories that have some basis on objective experiences (as as objective as you can be in this universe) however wether you have experienced or intellectualised certain objective experiences will determine the subjective theories that you have.

im not religious, so my faith doesnt revolve around a deity. But i do have faith that what most of us are experiencing now isnt everything that there is to experience. personally i think physical death is the beginning of another process . i dont fear the experience of death, but i dont want the experience too soon. From that i think you could say that a fear of death in some respect is really relative to how much you value your life now. i dont know if that makes sense so i'll put it like this: yes i dont fear death but if it were to happen tomorrow i would be some what disapointed by the fact that there are still things i would like to do before i ,as i am now, dies. i like my life but im not affraid of the change that death may bring. i think life is a learning process not just an experience, in that way i think there is some point to why we are here and thus some place we will go after.

i suppose its good to excercise the mind and contemplate these things, but you have to understand that no one will ever know. to discuss what came before the big bang is improbable. and even if it wasnt impossible you are still left with more questions than answers. really its like meditation - one ought not to think. Everything we are talking about is to some degree false because we can only experience the universe through a human mind. our brains are wired to percieve the universe as we humans see it, not necessarily how it is. on Durendals theory its a good one, and i think its feasable in some way but even so it still leaves many fundamental questions unanswered, it just creates macrocosmic questions to our microcosmic big bang question. what created the reality that the creators inhabited? who created their big bang ? its just an infinite loop of ???? you have what did the big bang exisit within? what did it expand into? how can it expand into anything if it is all that is contained in one point? its just paradox after paradox . round my way we call this 'headpopping'. it 'pops your head' to think of it. i dont really believe in an Anthropomorphic god (seems a bit anthropocentric to me) or even a non human type 'being' that transcends everything and sat down to create everything, i dont know why it just doesnt sit right with me. even if we were in a scenario like durendal described it, it still leaves the bigger questions. maybe im wrong , maybe im right? i believe everything is everything, we are all part of it and it is all part of us. and maybe its a get out clause or a way to ease my poor fragile human mind but ive said it before and i guess i will say it again - is that all you need to know is that you'll never know it all.

internal vs external methods is such a contrast. i hope you both use some form of dit dar jow ?

actor wise, ive been watching jackie chan since i was about 8, i saw police story and pretty much looked down on hollywood action my entire life because of that,so as much as his more modern films suck his old fims are excellent, and you cant mention jackie without saying Sammo Hung and the underused and underated Yuen Biao. of course Donnie Yen is cool and blowing up now but hes been making films for years aswell. he's probably the last bastion of real kung fu in HK films. Gordon Liu is cool too (pai mei in kill bill) he made a load of films in the 70's and 80's often playing a monk of somekind.

(squints eyes to look full of wisdom and strokes imaginary beard)ah, the real beauty of tai chi is happening inside the practioner and can not be seen.

well supposedly Yim Wing Chun learnt it from the shaolin nun who i alluded to twice (oh -and if anybody actually reads the post it was to go against the Qings not the Manchus)

well i know it was in the middle of a long post but i did explain what it is and gave you its history!! its nice to quote yourself once in awhile: id try to stay away from envisioning black belts in any paticular style of kung fu or jeet kune do, i think a lot of JKD is philosophy and sparring and it stems from wing chun anyway. in a sense by the time you have absorbed stuff from the different systems you are exposing /planning to expose yourself to you will kind of be creating your own jeet kune do anyway. if that makes sense.

Ok Luna I'll PM you if i remember and im in the right frame of mind. to be honest an 8 year blackbelt sounds short to me ,there arent or at least there shouldnt be any belts in tai chi. that reminds me - i knew someone who started training with a different teacher than me and he said he was doing tai chi, we wernt especially good friends so didnt see him a lot but whenever i saw him i would ask how he was going etc. and he was coming out with these names of stuff i hadnt heard of - and i exstensively reasearch stuff im into - not just my own style of tai chi but i have a little bit of knowldge of the other 5 main styles - but i didnt pay it that much thought and wondered if he was actually doing xing i rather than tai chi. years later after im plodding along with my seemingly slow classes and i heard he was still practicing and now teaching etc. i saw him one time and asked how he was going, so he told me all about how his 2 teachers had just basically made up everything he had been taught in the past 7 years!! - he learnt some self defence and some kind of form i think so it wasnt all a waste, but the teachers made it up! it wasnt authentic stuff, they had grading systems and stuff like that, but it wasnt a legitamate style at all. if he had been sold it under the name of tai chi he had been terribly lied to. the bad thing is they were even teaching in schools for health reasons!! and like i said if you dont know what youre doing you wont get the benefits. anyway that just popped in my head, i know grading systems have become standard in most other martial arts taught in a syllabus style but i think that illustrates the point im making with tai chi. beware of false prophets. its ironic though, people profess to be things that they arent, yet one of the last true grandmasters of my style didnt even like to be called master, he prefered teacher or even just his name, and he was titled with being one of the 100 Best Martial Artists in China. Dude Wing Chun is kung fu id say its what Jeet kune do was birthed by as Wing Chun is the style that Bruce Lee was proficient in and as taught by the legendary (y)ip Man (there are even films of him now starrng Donnie Yen). Legend has it that it was devised at shaolin to teach people fast how to kick ass to use against the invading Manchus i think, it cut out all the superfluous stuff and left you with bare bones defense and attack but shaolin temple got burnt down before it could be taught, and a shaolin nun who had been working on it with other monks escaped and then it was spread from then on. i dont think Bruce used it as such in his movies but i reckon i first saw it in 'the prodigal son' starring Yuen Biao. an awesome kung fu film. they shouldnt, but as youve experienced sometimes they do. i dont know whether power consumes them to make them arrogant or if they are that sort of person and there status then magnifies their ego even more. perhaps a bit of both.

ive done various meditative things but nothing as exact as being described specifically focused for martial application so they would be interesting to hear. PM me if you like, as like you said its not for everyone and im not sure how responsible it would be putting techniques up for just any one to come across. i am learing the Sabre /broadsword(Dao) at the moment, in the future i will learn spear and maybe the straight sword aswell. i hope you get back to Aikido some time it sounds like it would be worthwhile. i think if i was to learn something with the mind to specifically learn self defense in a shorter span of time it would be Aikido, Wing Chun or Jeet Kune Do. i would also like to learn Bagua, but who knows. the list is endless i suppose ,eagle claw, praying mantis, Hung gar, 5 animals, all weapons!! etc. man- if only i was 1. Rich 2. immortal to have enough time OR 3. in the Matrix film i could just download them!! i do however think arts that can spill into your everyday life to enrich your mind spirit and body (as long as you dont break yourself too much doing it) are better for you. how many times will we actually need to use the martial in your life compared to your normal day to day activities? hopefully never.. if you can build yourself to be a good person at the same time as becoming confident in having a chance of self defense if ever needed that is better than just building up techniques just for the sake of feeling superior, which unfortunately some martial artists do.

That style sounds intersting durendal - the reference to Popeye made me laugh - Popeye Quan or Popeye no Ken!!! Aikido does seem a good parallel to taiji in its approach to incoming force. Im sure you have heard of Tai Chi , although its mainly associated with old people moving slowly its actually a deadly martial art. it was so revered as a martial art that the emperor of china made his imperial bodyguards learn it. as for meditation i am not personally taught it but i do meditate as a supplement to it, in some taiji it is taught, its all on the style the teacher and what level you are at. it also depends on the kind of mediatation you mean and the aim of it.

technically wu shu is more accurate than kung fu right?? wu shu is martial arts, any art that you consistently practice is kung fu - or 'acquired skill' .cooking, drawing, writing etc. if you practice consistently and get good can be termed 'kung fu'. i practice Taiji Quan. i consider this a wu shu art, it is a chinese martial art and if you know what youre doing its brutal and - once again if you know what youre doing - it is also very good for your health. i am working to aquire kung in taiji. it is a multi faceted art - so it may take me another 40 years, but thats my aim , i will get stronger and more skilled as i get older. my main aim is health but if i can learn some techniques to neutralise people along the way, then thats all good by me. im past the age where i want to learn to just FIGHT!!

so i just watched the first 2 eps -and they were actually quite good!! the animation is awesome. it was a little bit slow to begin but any doubts were squashed when things kicked off so it was all good. a few minor points that were annoying apart from point 1 above, i liked where the story is going. to me it seems a little like they are in a situation similar to the Thundercats 'the return' comic books. If these 2 eps are anything to go by, i would say warner brothers did a good job in hiring whoever they did to get this final product. i'll be watching next week anyway! yeah its not the old Thundercats - but its quite cool.

i think Durendal kind of confirmed what i said with regard to Z. As for Buu i prefer it when hes in the version before Kid Buu ( ie not the extra fat or the extra skinny one ) but the medium 'normal' body Buu as the character was more engaging he could fight and was articulate.

dont get me wrong i grew up on Transformers and hate the fact that bays films arent what they should be. in all 3 films there are just things that are wrong, wrong, wrong!! but while i was sat in the cinema for TF 3 at first i was like, oh no, more ruining of the generation 1 cannon and designs etc,. but then i just stopped that and looked at what was actually on the screen, again i'll say -there is some really nice visual work in those films, and thats what helped me enjoy the film more. are there any other films as stunning as this visually CGI /SFX wise?? seriously let me know because either i cant remember or i havent seen them and would like to. and can someone name me an adaptation that fans fully accept and like??

Oh right i like your theory but im not sure its 100% correct. i think they dropped the Z for kai to identify 1. that it was 'revised' and 2. that it was closer to the manga. i think the references later on in Z are one of the old chicken n egg things. i didn't think there was much in the name of the Z sword, Z fighters or that there was any particular Z power other than it was a play on the name of the show( and if there was i wish Toriyama would have expanded on it). the Z fighters were known as that before the later sagas as i have an old Japanese trading card released before the later sagas that labels them as the 'Z soldiers' even though from as far as i know no one ever mentions the collective as the Z fighters/ soldiers etc. in the anime or manga itself?... Apparently the Z was just to differentiate DB from Z for the animes and as the second part of Dragonball took it to a much higher degree of power (certainly compared to the first part of DB) Toriyama picked the end of the roman alphabet to signify that it took it to the limit (he of course went much further than his fist limit as the series went on and on with regards to power!!!) so equally it could have been called Dragonball Omega or the Omega Sword etc. i think! C'mon man it had to finish with Goku v kid Buu, hes the main character! but most of DBZ was very much focused on the growing up of Son Gohan just as DB was on Son Goku, i think that could be one drawback to the sagas after Cell because Goten's transition to Gotenks just wasnt as good as Goku and Gohans growing up story?? i dont know. As for one piece as i said before i was never really bothered about it as theres just tooooo many eps to catch up on if its not totally mind bendingly awesome, so i was interested in what Ryuki made of it. i tried to get into Bleach again, and it is OK but i dont seem to have been captured by it as im only on about ep 10 but i do intend to keep watching it to see where it goes. im still watching Yu Yu Hakusho which i enjoy.

It sucks in one respect but in another its good. imagine how these would have looked a decade or so ago they would be aweful, simply on a visual level they are great. the story, character designs, elements form the og series etc. are about 80% wrong but these hollywood studios will never learn to listen to the fans or do anything right. i think they do it on purpose just to p us off.

this is what confuses me with kai - why not do the entire series?? although i suppose like i said to me the 'golden age' was covered so thats good but it just seems a bit silly to not complete it. anyway when you say about it being called Z do you mean because there really was nowhere else for it to go after the kid buu saga or some other esoteric thing ive overlooked???? (or maybe forgot knowing me!) Also last i remember i think you were trying to get into One Piece? how did that go??

Maybe its just because i like dragonball so much but im going out on a limb and i'm going to say GT is ok (in lower case). now, if you were to watch DBGT from the beginning you would no doubt hit something in frustration of how cak it is. but it does get better than the first story arc, which is pretty poor. i believe they even negated to air it in the USA at first and thats why they are called 'the lost episodes' on the US dvd release. they did show them in order when it aired in the UK and it had a different dub. however the US version has a lame rap intro that makes me laugh so its all good. however if you just want to have DB and DBZ as a nice contained memory do so, forget GT. Think of it this way -to me Z in the Freeza through the android and upto the end of the cell games saga is the golden age of DB. Past that its cool but just isnt what it was. DBGT takes that to a new level. like Larz said Vegeta has a moustache for F**s sake one thing that annoys me about continuations of a series is that newer villians kind of negate older villains in terms of power and it really just isnt feasible. theres some cool stuff contained in GT but is there enough for Ryuki ?? im not too sure

now a unicron storyline would be EPIC. i see a unicron film as a ranchise finisher though, where can you go from a gigantic planet eating robot??? i still think they need to introduce the arielbots and stunticons and the dinobots,triplechangers etc. before bringing in Unicron and doing all that in one go would probably make the film 4 hrs long!!

that silverbolt guy is funny and way to overexcited!! doesnt this air this Friday (29th)? cant wait to see it i think its gonna be awesome. i wonder how long it will take to be available to us outside the USA? not long i hope

I finally saw this last week and i was highly impressed. i left any hope of getting an actual full on transformers experience at the cinema after i saw the first one, so i have left behind any expectations of a full robotic experience or seeing soundwave as an actual tape player etc or Megatron actually looking like anything other than a walking scrap heap (most decepticon designs are way over done in my opinion why dont they just look like planes etc.?????? ). as a film loosley based on my favourite 80's robot themed cartoon it was enjoyable. regardless of anyones opinion on how it should/could be some of the scenes in it are just incredible visually. the opening cybertron war scene - nice. and many others throughout the film were very visually impressive. i also liked the fighting scenes bumblee bees a badass. im certainly glad i splashed out the cash to see it at the cinema. i refuse to watch stuff like this aqquired on the net as if its a TS the quality is crap. with films like this that are CGI heavy you need clarity to appreciate it and 30 ft screens help aswell. anyway as for too much human drama being involved - what do you excpect? if they hadnt even included sam in the first one we probably wouldnt have the other 2 . which some people may say is a good thing but i think they are OK. not what they could/ should be, but they are OK. all the human stuff thrown in is probably what makes the damn things so long!! youve got to remember the studios arent just trying to cater to transformers fans but joe idiot public. after the film i heard some person saying: ' oh it was ok, didnt really like it though, it was a bit too alieny for me' ??? WTF you came to see a film about transforming alien robots and it was too alieny??? 1. they are alien beings anyway 2. i dont even get what he was on about?- did the fact that the moon was involved and some shots of cyberton were included make it more 'alieny'??? these are the people who make up the numbers for studios to line pockets and give us more films. anyway i thought it was good and enjoyed it so there.

Awesome. Thanks BB dude. is this your own original art??

dont feel bad for going off topic. i m probably more responsible for that than yourself ha ha... you never know -you might end up back like me again. i never just accepted things though, i was very inquisitive, always wanted to know why and researched a lot of historical and metaphysical stuff over the years. any small amount of ''knowledge'' i spew in the theories and ideas thread is mostly from stuff i read over at least 5 years ago as thats when i stopped my active search, i often have trouble recalling exact pieces but the general stuff is there. i know i dont have all the answers as a cohesive whole but i have a few of the pieces. enough for me anyway. eventually i came to the understanding that all you need to know is that you'll never know it all. instead of chasing massive questions i try to find the answers in front of me. this might be cryptic, but then its useless giving someone else advice who hasnt had their paticular thirst quenched. of course i still have an interest but i used to be obsessive. im no longer like that. i agree that the subconscious is locked, but its able to be opened. i dont think you can talk of it happening as a species,except over a vast period of time where it may catch up to everyone. we may be all human but as much as we are the same physically there are a lot of different types of people where the conscious is concerned. of course there needs to be security , for the individual and those around them. there are people who would not be fit to wield such power and even if a person is ready to experience it they may not like it. i think to begin with you have to have to be a certain type of person and think in acertain way to entertain this stuff seriously...only a certain amount of people seriously think of the stuff we are on about here. and then out of those people only a portion of them will pursue it. out of those only a few will find the means to pursue it and out of those only a few will attain it. i'd say your theory on atoms is correct . and that this isnt really sci- fi its sci- fact. its just to what degree. yes we might not be talking yoda n his prime powers, but some of this stuff is real. ill leave this now to get the topic back on track

hope im not coming accross as attacking your thoughts because thats not what im trying to do thats fair enough but dont be afraid..then thats half the battle won. i might be scared of sharks but its very unlikely i'll ever have to confront one! life the universe and everything ive already explained my thoughts on energy. I agree, this statement is good, but it's natural argument is to turn it against itself. If a person is born deaf, thus never being able to experience sound, does that mean that they can never understand how sound works? i get your point but, no. a deaf person can experience sound - as vibration - they just cant hear it. that wasnt the point anyway. the point was that theres no need to understand something for it to work or for it to exsist. therefore people who say that the soul doesnt exisit because theres no offical explanation of it are kind of denying that they are even alive. its hard to put myself in the position of such people. they just dont think or see the world in the same way. some say our spirit leaves us everynight. that would be the same as the deaf person scenario. as the deaf person can experience sound waves but not hear them, we can astrally travel but we dont readily experience it, apart from in a skewed way through parts of dreams. nevertheless it could still be happening. do i need to understand how it works for it to work, or for it to happen??? no. you dont neeed a spiritually based theory to prove any of those things apart from astral travel . and really its the other way round, we do have the ability to unlock the hidden secrets, we always have from a certain part in time. its just that its not so easy. especially with the way modern civilization lives.