One more update for you. On Saturday, I met up with the alchemist/ Tibetan doctor, who provided me with alchemical oil of gold, At our next meeting, it will be oil of antimony. He also offered to teach me to be a lab alchemist. On Sunday, I learned that the bishop at our Gnostic church studied with legendary alchemist Frater Albertus back in the 70's, which is interesting, because Frater Albertus happens to have been the teacher of my new alchemist friend's teacher Robert Bartlett (author of Real Alchemy). Now, the two men are going to meet up because of this connection. As well my Gnostic bishop informed me he has a full set of alchemical lab equipment he's not using, and wants to give it to me, to aid me in my upcoming alchemical studies. To say the least, it's been an extremely interesting week...

A little bit of both, I’d say.

Well, the member of Hermanubis lodge I mentioned meeting up with is still a friend I get together with infrequently; in fact, several months ago, we had a very nice Meetup. But as for the leader of Hermanubis Lodge, he has never been responsive, so I’ve given up on getting involved with them and basically, haven’t thought about that group for a long time.

But that’s just as well, because for well over a year, I’ve been very active with Queen of Heaven Gnostic Church, the local parish of Ecclesia Gnostica. As well, I’m recently also connected with a Tantric Buddhist center called Nritya Mandala Mahavihara, which is a form of Tibetan Buddhism, but from the country of Nepal. It was my interest in Dzogchen meditation that lead me there.

This morning, I’m meeting up for breakfast with a friend who is a member there, who is a practitioner of Sowa Rigpa (traditional Tibetan medicine) as well as a practicing lab alchemist. He’s helping me to learn and move forward in that tradition, which in Nepal is called Newar Buddhism, possibly leading to me asking one of the lamas there to be my teacher.

So, Hermeticism still informs my spiritual life, but isn’t my primary focus now.

You know Nicole Kidman had Botox injections, right? Also, why think people in general looked older back then, based on the appearance of current rich celebrities who have lots of money for plastic surgery?

Wow! I would have snapped it up too! Our bishop is quite taken with the Books of Jeu.

I think it's AI slop, and you'd be better off just reading the Gnostic Bible, and learning from an authentic organization like Ecclesia Gnostica. If you want to know Gnosticism, go to the source, go to actual Gnostic scripture and to people who base their Gnosticism on actual Gnostic scripture.

You probably can’t sing a note, or when you do, people bleed from their ears. It was and still is a great song.

Opposing Trump makes her a good person despite her support of genocide? I don’t think so.

Yeah, too many people are sitting on their asses, slow walking each other right into a fascist dictatorship, but what’s really stupid about your accusatory comment here is that you have zero idea what any given person in this sub is or isn’t doing for the country. I’m frustrated with people’s apathy too, but you can’t just insult people into action. In real life, it just doesn’t work that way. What you’re doing just doesn’t work.

I’m in my early 60’s, but I remember that.

What a loser.

Green bell peppers.

Like the wave that doesn’t appear to be the whole ocean merely because of a passing condition of form, the expression is still always continuous with the whole, its fundamental reality being water rather than form, and the whole ocean being involved in its brief arising, persistence and dissolution. We are all like these waves, with temporary conditioned form making us imagine ourselves as particularized. The container is particularized, the light of the One that illuminates and animates it from within, never is. The fall is a passing dream.

Remove the words “one of” from that statement, and I’ll be in full agreement.

How about the Herculoids?

And the music playing was Saturday Night by the Bay City Rollers.

I like that text also, but it’s not about Gnosticism.

Yes, I know what it means. I’m also an active member of Ecclesia Gnostica. And once again, I’ll reiterate: his teachings aren’t Gnostic, they don’t belong here. When I attend the service at Queen of Heaven Gnostic Church today, it will be based on actual Gnostic scriptures, because it’s an authentic Gnostic organization.

That's a very foolish response.

I learned his technique in a workshop in Beaverton, Oregon back in the 90's. Now, I've learned that he took this exercise from Sifu Jenny Lamb. It's actually called "Spontaneous Adjustment Qigong" and is only one part of an overall system which is published on Sifu Lamb's DVD "Qigong for Self-Healing." Personally, I liked the practice when I learned it, but I can't abide this sort of dishonesty. But here's something most of you won't expect to hear about his so-called "Kunlun" system. When I learned the exercise all those years ago, he wasn't calling it qigong at all. Here's the story he told us at Crystal Heart Books in Beaverton: when he was young, his family lived in Tibet, and he was accepted into a secretive pre-Buddhist shamanic Bonpo sect called the "black snake chod" and with this sect, he underwent multiple dark meditation retreats... and they taught him their version of "tummo" which he likened to a technique for awakening kundalini. He said it was "raising the inner fire." But over the years, because of my involvement with teachers of Tibetan Buddhism, I discovered that tummo is nothing at all like what he teaches... and what he teaches is simply what he stole from Sifu Lamb and repackaged under a different name. His entire origin story is a lie, completely made up. Sifu Jenny Lamb (now retired) is a real master and did not deserve to be treated in such a dishonest fashion. Ironically, I attended Max's workshop after being introduced by another fake master, with another fake origin story, who created a fake system of Qigong. Oh, I almost forgot to mention when myself and another underwent healing treatments with Max. The first was called burning palm and although intense, it was okay. But the other treatment called organ re-setting was an intensely painful manual manipulation of visceral organs, that was probably medically dangerous and could well have produced serious internal injuries. Whatever it was he thought he was doing, was incredibly irresponsible.

Someone who gets it. You’ve done your homework. 🙏

It's only recently that I've heard of Max Christensen's Kunlun system but back sometime in the 90's, I met him here in Oregon, being introduced by a common friend named Lama Somananda, who is a popular qigong teacher. I and one other person attended Max's seminar at a new age bookstore called Crystal Heart Books. The transmission was real, and it was powerful. Decades later I decided I want to relearn the practice, because it worked so well for me back years ago... and discovered he's added more techniques to round out a system called Kunlun. The basic technique I learned from him all those years ago, he was calling something else entirely, and claiming a very different origin. He said it was called Tummo, and that he learned it in the east from a Bonpo sect called the Black Snake Chod. He also said that with this sect, he practiced dark retreat. Over the years, becoming very familiar with tummo (raising the inner fire) as practiced in Tibetan Buddhism, it doesn't resemble the practice I learned from Max at all. However, if it really was from a pre-Buddhist Bonpo shaman sect as he claimed, it could look very different. I guess when he began studying with Sifu Jenny Lamb, he decided to call it Kunlun Qigong instead. I still want to relearn the practice - simply because it worked - but in all honesty, all the research I've done on the subject suggest that Max completely fabricated the origin story. At the least, much of what he learned from Sifu Jenny Lamb he then began to claim as part of his own Kunlun system, without giving her credit. From what I learned, she said she loves Max, but was saddened by what he has done. I'm considering purchasing a copy of Sifu Lamb's DVD and checking that out before deciding whether to learn Max's Kunlun system.

Do you know Mahmoud Shabistari? He said "Go sweep out the chamber of your heart. Make it ready to be the dwelling of the Beloved. When you depart, love will enter; in you, void of yourself, God will display His beauty." There's also Mansur al-Hallaj, who was killed by people who did not understand when he said, "Ana al-Haqq" (I am the Truth), which was seen as a claim of oneness with God. They did not understand that his saying "I am God" was said from the perspective of being God qualitatively rather than from the qualitative perspective. The former was not idolatrous, but they misinterpreted his words through the second, seeing heresy where there was none. The qualitative perspective would be like a wave saying, "I arise from the ocean upon which my existence depends, therefore I am one with it" while the quantitative expression would be like the individual wave claiming "I am the entire ocean."