Awareness

The Spirit Body is our inner most body. It is the body where our Mind resides, which is responsible for our thoughts, and our attitude. All of this has a powerful influence on our health, as suggested by Steiner. Whatever flaw that we have in our thoughts and attitudes, originating in our Spirit, will work its way up the chain, disturbing our emotional disposition and the life-force flow, and will ultimately express in our physiology as some form of disease.

Obviously, it can be that we experience disease due to a physical trauma, poisoning, or being starved of vital resources, like water, air, warmth, and food. This sort of disease does not originate in our inner attitude and our thoughts, although such could have an influence in the expression of, and recovery from, an illness. Rather, it is the deeper chronic issues that are rooted in our Spirit Body.

The notion that thoughts cause chronic disease can be offensive to chronic disease sufferers. For some reason, I have noticed, some people seem to truly want to believe that their body is inherently defective, and that they have zero control over any part of their disease. Even if that were true, why would you want to believe it? That attitude, in and of itself, is going to be destructive to your health. Delusion might even be worse than the poison laced pharmakeia, because the Mind is so powerful. If you think you are ill, then you will become ill. In fact, that's exactly how my grandmother died. Nothing was wrong with her. She just thought she was dying, and so she did. Her famous words near the end of her life were: "I'm not afraid of dying. I'm afraid of living." At the very least, out of precaution, it's best to assume that the Mind, and our thoughts, can be the source of our disease.

It has been my contention throughout this website, that our thoughts are the root cause of Male Pattern Baldness (MPB). If you need a refresher, this is a pictorial summary of my argument.

Prefrontal cortex activity, i.e. thinking, pulls the life-force up, expands the skulls, erodes the sharp skull contours, "confuses" the etheric flow, and kills the hair. Toddlers and babies experience rapid brain growth in the first two years of life, and need a bulging forehead to accommodate that expansion, which happens to result in the exact same skull shape feature and hair growth patterns as adult men with MPB. The only thing that can connect infant to adult male identical skull shape and hair growth patterns is prefrontal cortex activity, and thinking. Thinking causes hair loss via skull growth. That's my whole theory.

I have mostly focused on sheer volume of thoughts, due to a male propensity to think, in combination with iron, natural upward male polar energy direction, schooling, lack of traditional rites of passage, and various other poor physical and psychological conditioning factors, that are contributing to skull growth in adult men. In addition, I have attributed additional upward expansionary energy and the sclerotic component of the disease to an imbalanced male disposition, which is an inclination to express various anger and anxiety related emotions. I have even suggested that this is representative of a systematic imbalance that stems from the Spirit not listening to the heart and the other bodies, and becoming a thinking tyrant. On this page, I want to address this imbalance as an inner attitude issue, though. We need to change how much we think, as well as HOW we think.

The two things that we want to focus on to adjust our inner attitude, are awareness and control. Our Mind is in control, or at least it should be. It's in our inner most body, it has the authority, and it should be our experience that our Minds are in charge and get us around. However, most of us do not have as much control as we think we do, or could have. For example, how many people can't control their food cravings? That's the physical body's urges that are telling the Mind what to do, and not vice versa. There are other physical body urges that can do this too, which I won't get into. How about emotions though? How many people can't control their emotions? How many people are slaves to their anxiety, anger, fear, or infatuation? Or the life-force? How many people even know that their is a life-force in them, let alone can manipulate its flow? The fact of the matter is that our Minds are not doing their job well. They are thinking way too much in isolation, and not governing the other three bodies in a positive way, maybe not even at all. To have a properly functioning Mind and fourfold system, we have to work on our awareness.

As I mentioned on the home page, objective thought is our unique human ability. However, the objectivity is in the awareness, rather than the thought per se. In fact, thinking, or at least the manner in which we are conditioned to think, actually interferes with awareness. Thinking creates noise in our heads, which makes us more prone to react. Awareness, rather, connects us with our bodies in a way that gives us the ability to experience something, and then to deliberate on how to act. For example, we get the urge to eat from our physical body. We can be aware of that urge, but then choose not to indulge in an unhealthy food craving, make a different choice, or just not eat at all. A dog will not do that. Rather, it will rummage through a dumpster for a half eaten taco no matter how low quality that half eaten taco is. Likewise, awareness gives us the objectivity to experience an emotion, but not act on it. If something bothers us, we don't have to react. If something frightens us, we can do it anyway. We have that power of the Mind, through awareness, which no other creature on the Earth has. We were given this ability for a reason. Therefore, it must be important that we use it. In fact, I suspect that full exercise of our awareness, and complete control over the three bodies, is the key to unlock our full potential as human beings, healing or otherwise.

The problem is that we are all taught to think, but we are not taught to be aware. In fact, most of us aren't even aware that we have an Etheric, Soul, and Spirit Body, the latter being the body that actually gives us our awareness. Rather, we are basically taught to THINK that we don't. Likely, if we were left to our own devices, rather than being schooled from a young age, we would have discovered these bodies through our own experiences and have learned to exercise our awareness and control over them, as our ancestors did. However, since we were schooled (or fooled), it's going to take some re-education and work to regain our innate abilities. The interventions that I am going to focus on in this section are meditation, fasting, and various mental practices that challenge our Mind to be more aware.

Fasting gives us control over our Physical Body. We have to be able to feel the most primal of urges, hunger, and ignore it. This basic level of objectivity comes from the separation of the Spirit from the physical. All spiritual practices incorporate fasting for this reason. In the Etheric Body, through meditation, or certain forms of meditation, we can learn to cultivate awareness of the life-force, which in itself, i.e. the awareness thereof, governs the flow. It takes as much, if not more, mental effort to focus on awareness as it does to focus on our thoughts. However, simple awareness is all it takes to move the life-force. "Where the mind goes, the qi follows" is a maxim of qigong practice, and a testament to the power of our awareness. Finally, through mental practices, i.e. will and effort of the Mind, along with the help of fasting and dedicated meditation, because these interventions enhance each other, we can begin to exercise control over our Soul Body, i.e. our emotions. The goal is to be able to experience an emotion, i.e. be aware of it, and then to let it go. In the alchemical sequence, this ability is not achieved until the Moon, Silver, the Divine Feminine, the stage before our final transformation. In other words, this is very difficult to do.

The deeper the body, the more mental effort it will take to exercise control. However, the greater the effort, the greater the reward. Having power over our emotions is the ultimate power of the Mind. If we can do that, we can do anything. The reason being is that, when we experience a strong emotion, then we lose our awareness, i.e. our power. Furthermore, we can get so consumed by the emotion that it lingers for long afterwards in our THOUGHTS. We can hold on to that anger by thinking about the person who wronged us, fantasizing about telling them off, or we can hold onto that fear, rationalizing our cowardice or fantasizing about, but not actually doing, what is needed to overcome the fear. Even in love, we can spend our whole day thinking about someone, and being with someone, and can be completely oblivious to their flaws and how they are wrong for us in most ways. We ask ourselves, years later, after regaining our objectivity, "What was I thinking?" because we lost all of our awareness in the emotion.

All of this is to say that we easily lose our awareness with our emotions, our power of objectivity, which gets us thinking, and is expanding our skulls. But, the power of awareness goes beyond skull expansion mitigation. Rather, as suggested in Alchemy, having to control our emotions gives us divine abilities. Those are nice abilities. Therefore, we may want to try to do this. Although it may be more or less difficult to control the expression of an emotion depending on the maturity of our Soul (younger souls will have more difficulty than older souls), since we all have a Spirit, and thus we all have the power of objectivity, then we all have the choice.

Cultivating awareness in the Spirit Body by fasting, meditation, and efforts to change out inner attitude, the way we think and experience life, subjugates the Physical, Etheric, and Soul bodies under our Mind's control in positive way. We can direct and integrate their efforts in ways that have profound healing and transformative effects. This is the essence of the power of the Mind. Right now, we're not using the power of the Mind. Instead, we're thinking constantly, we have little awareness, and the system is in chaos. Our emotions are firing, the life-force is jumping around, our physical body urges are demanding, and no one is in charge. It's an energetic free for all. We have to take back the reigns of our fourfold being. We need to quiet our Mind, turn off the thinking function, and begin to experience life again. The power of the Mind is not in thinking, rather it's in the ability to experience, and to be aware.

Meditation

The word "meditation" comes from a latin word, meditari, which means to think over, reflect, or consider. These are important things to do. We need to reflect on ourselves, our emotions, the events of the day, our purpose, our successes, our failures, etc.. It's our unique ability of the Spirit body to do such. However, meditation can also be an exercise in turning off the Mind for an extended amount of time. I believe that Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) has a word for this sort of mental activity, but it somehow got integrated, perhaps inappropriately, with our word for meditation.

TCM meditations are aimed at cultivating awareness. In TCM philosophy, we were all created from "the void", and, ultimately, we return to "the void". The goal in many TCM meditations is, therefore, to create the experience of returning to "the void," i.e. our home. It involves what they call a "fasting from thoughts". What is achieved by this could range from perfect tranquility to full control over the Etheric Body, or to spiritual enlightenment.

The concept of the void, or returning to the void, is not a unique to TCM. For example, the goal of the movements in the martial art tai-chi, which, admittedly, is a cousin of TCM, is to find the balance between the yin and the yang, where there is complete stillness. In Judeo-Christianity, the Book of Genesis describes the Earth, in the beginning, as being "formless and empty." In other words, it was a void. Furthermore, is it stated or implied in various ways that God comes to us in a stillness, which is a form of the void. The implication is that we can't access the divine wisdom if we are preoccupied with mental business. Stillness, tranquility, the void, the balance in the natural flux of the Earth energies - these are consistent themes across various ancient philosophies. Cultivating this awareness, stillness, or whatever you want to call it, is probably something that we want to do in addition to the self-reflective work of our conscious minds that defines the other type of meditation.

Fasting from our thoughts is not easy. It takes conscious effort and a lot practice. It may be easier, at first, to simply move your awareness elsewhere in your body. Meanwhile, we can still practice "returning to the void" as a complementary exercise. The "meditations", for lack of a better word, that I describe in this section aim at "returning to void" explicitly, as well as simple ways bring our awareness to other parts of our body, in order to fast from our thoughts. Fasting from thoughts, I believe, could be an effective measure to stop skull expansion particularly in the forehead area. In addition, I'm going to describe advanced methods that involve directing the qi with our intent. When we have cultivated enough awareness and control over the life-force, then we can direct it serve our healing needs. Think Star Wars and "the force", in which there are many qigong references.

ENTERING TRANQUILITY

Sit lotus style near a stream of running water. If you don't have a stream nearby, then just go out into nature and focus on nature sounds instead. I don't think it, necessarily, has to be a stream. The goal is to listen to the running water, and that's it. No thoughts.

One qigong master says that you listen not with your ears, nor you mind, but with the qi. That's pretty weird stuff. I think it means somehow connecting with nature on an etheric level. Regardless, the main goal is to fast from thoughts. Try to go as long as you can without producing a thought, and then correct yourself when the Mind starts to wander. This is a simple, but very challenging, exercise.

STANDING MEDITATION

While starting in the qigong stance, you can alter the position of your hands slightly to achieve different effects. For example, a common adjustment is to take your hands and position them such that you are holding an imaginary energy ball out in front of you. Then, place the hands just in front of one of the qi reservoirs, which are located at the dan tian (3.5 inches below the navel), the solar plexus, or the third eye. Positioning the hands and focusing the awareness in this area stimulates the type of qi in this reservoir, yin qi at the dan tian, workable qi at the solar plexus, and yang qi at the third eye. For our purposes, I like to focus on the dan tian to stimulate the female energy, but it's always best to go off of feel rather than routine or dogma.

Focusing our awareness on the feel of the energy ball in our hands, and the particular qi reservoir, helps to distract us from our thoughts. By maintaining that focus and awareness, it produces an effective fast from thinking. In addition, the imaginary component of the exercise, that being the holding of the energy ball, is a good complement to physical exercise. Children do much imaginary play for a reason. It's nourishing to our bodies in some way. For us, it probably even does more than balance our male energy. Hold this position with focus and awareness for as long as it feels productive.

The other variation of this exercise is to circle the arms forward at the height of the shoulders, palms facing in. It's as if you are giving a big tree a hug. Then, imagine an energy vortex shooting up from the Earth that is going through the arm circle that you created. Focus your awareness on that energy flowing between your arms, while staying grounded with the knees flexed. It's like you are harnessing the power of the Earth. It's a fun imaginary exercise, and also helps fast from thoughts.

BALANCING THE THREE TREASURES

This meditation cultivates the three forms of qi, by using movements that are inspired by the animals that best represent those distinct forms of the life-force energy in nature. This is a good meditation in which to become familiar with "The Three Treasures", where these forms of energy are stored in the body, and to reunite with a few of the densified versions of pieces of our souls in nature, otherwise known as animals.

The crane represents balance and awareness. The foundational movement in this exercise is based on the crane. The crane waits patiently, relaxed, but very aware, and perfectly balanced on one foot, for hours, until a fish swims within it's reach - then it strikes. The Crane movement, in this exercise, cultivates life energy qi, which is the usable form of qi. It is the qi that flows vigorously and abundantly through our energy meridians, but only when we have BALANCED the yin and yang polarities. Life energy qi is stored in, and output from, the middle dan tian, which means "elixir field", behind the solar plexus. It is most strongly associated with the spleen, which extracts the energy from a mix of the food that we eat and the air that we breath. Since we breath in through our nose and input food through our mouth, then the portal for this energy, not surprisingly, is the nose and the mouth.

The crane movement is a simple rocking motion with coordinated breathing. Stand in the basic qigong stance: feet shoulder-width apart, knees bent, a long spine. However, instead of letting the arms hang down, place both thumbs on the sides of the navel, with the fingers pointed down, and the pointer fingers touching below the navel. The hands are placed in this manner to be over the location of the lower dan tian. This is where our jing energy is stored, and will be strongly stimulated in this exercise. The point on the outer body, where the fingers touch, is the guan yuan acupuncture point, which means, "gate of origin", and is also stimulated.

To perform the exercise, slowly rock your weight onto your toes as you sway the torso back, gently, while breathing in. As you breath out, rock your weight onto your heels, sway the torso forward, and gently push the expanded belly in, as if to help the breath escape. The last element, which works on balance, is to keep your eyes closed. Be as the crane, aware, patient, and balanced. The movement is subtle. The slower and more subtle the movement, the better. Rock back and forth for a few minutes until you feel ready to transition to the turtle, keeping the eyes closed.

The turtle movement cultivates shen, which is the yang form of qi. This energy represents the indwelling of the spirit, and the capacity of our Mind to be aware and to think. The dwelling of shen is in our third-eye, the upper dan tian, and the portal is through our eyes. When we are preoccupied with external stuff, when we direct our focus outside of ourselves to the day-to-day worries and obligations, we lose our shen energy. By contrast, when we look inward, and focus our awareness inside of our bodies, then we conserve our shen. Turtles are a symbol of longevity in Chinese culture because they are experts at conserving their shen.

Turtles move slowly. They're not in a hurry. They don't feel rushed. Rather, they move peacefully and assuredly. Furthermore, turtles can pull their heads into their shells, which is almost like physically turning the spirit and awareness directly inwards. That's how we need to approach meditation, in general. Furthermore, this movement stretches the spine in the neck area, which was also believed to be a contributing factor to the turtle's longevity.

The do the turtle variation of the rock, we simply add a neck muscle extension and contraction element to the basic crane rock. When the torso sways backwards, contract the neck muscles as if to pull our head in our shell, like a turtle. When the torso sways forwards, release the neck muscles as if to extend the head out of the shell. Keep rocking until you feel ready to move on.

The deer variation cultivates jing, which is the yin form of qi. Jing is sexual energy, and our foundational energy. Jing flows through our bones. It's in our marrow. It's the base source from which the other two forms of qi are nourished. Weak jing results in a weak life energy qi flow through our meridians, which results in a weak shen flowing through our chakras, ultimately giving off a weak aura.

Most meditations are aimed at cultivating jing, in order to get a strong base energy for all three forms of qi. The reservoir for jing is located at the lower dan tian. This location is nearest to the kidneys, which is the organ associated with this energy. Abdominal breathing both stimulates this "elixir field", which cultivate jing, AND pushes it up, via muscle contraction, to mix with the shen, which balances the polarities and produces usable life energy qi. This pushing up and mixing of yin and yang to make qi is also accomplished by doing headstands, which is what makes that effective skull compression exercise even more important, even if you do not have hair loss at the crown.

Deer movements are especially beneficial for cultivating jing. Deer are a cross-cultural symbol for sexuality. For example, deer musk is a potent aphrodisiac, which is oil that comes from their glands. It is believed that deer are experts at cultivating jing because they sleep with their hoof pressed into their perineum, which stimulates sexual energy.

In the deer variation of the rocking movement, simply contract the tailbone upwards on the inhale as you sway your torso back, and release it when you exhale and sway the torso forward. As with the other two exercises, continue to rock until you feel ready to move on, and keep the eyes closed. Be sure to do all of the rocks in the same session, and flow directly from one animal variation to the next.

To conclude the exercise, return to the basic crane rock. Rock back and forth as you slowly come to a stop all together. Then, keeping the hands positioned on the abdomen, focus on breathing and the lower dan tian for several breaths. Then, release the hands and let them float down to the sides, still focusing on the lower dan tian. Take a few moments to notice any differences or the feeling in the area of your dan tian. Then, open your eyes.

This meditation has a lot of good reminders in it: (1) to conserve our shen we have to be aware, like the crane, and direct our awareness inwards and move at a slow pace, like the turtle; and (2) focusing on, and stimulating, the lower dan tian, like the deer, cultivates foundational energy, jing, which we can push up through abdominal breathing to mix the yin and yang to create qi, which ultimately broadcasts our shen, or aura, or spirit. All good stuff.

GREAT HEAVENLY CIRCULATION (Da Zhou Tian)

In this meditation, we can start to practice directing the qi with our intent, i.e. our Mind. To do be able to move qi around our body in this way is unlimitedly advantageous, but it requires advanced awareness ability, which we likely do not have yet. Nevertheless, we can start with some basic mental exercises to get a feel for this innate ability. It's also a good way to get familiar with some of the major meridians, at the very least.

This meditation is supposed to be performed sitting in a chair, with the hands on the lap, and breathing in and out through the nose. I don't like sitting down in chairs, and so I usually do it standing. The most important posture is that the tongue has to be touching the upper palate throughout the meditation. The reason being is that it closes the loop between the two major yin and yang meridians. Here's a small lesson on these meridians:

The Governing Channel, du mai, is a meridian that runs from the perineum (between genitals and anus), up the sacrum, along the spine, up to the bai hui at the crown, down the face, and ends at the upper palate. This is the major yang meridian that governs all of the yang channels in the body. It is also referred to as the "sea of yang meridians", and we typically send qi UP this meridian (male).

While the major yang meridians run along the back of the body, the major yin meridians run along the front. The Conception Channel, ren mai, runs from the tip of the tongue, down the front of the body, and to the perineum. This channel regulates our yin energy. Therefore, we typically send qi DOWN this channel (female).

Keeping the tongue pressed against the roof of the mouth is important because qi circulation throughout the entire body depends on a balanced and vigorous flow through the Governing and Conception Channels. It's probably a major reason why not regularly maintaining this posture creates dental arch deformities and cascading health problems, in addition to the simple mechanics of the tongue putting outward growth pressure on the Maxilla.

To start the mediation, focus on the dan tian for a few minutes. The breath does not have to coordinate with any part of the meditation. When you are ready, direct the qi from the dan tian down to the perineum. From there, send it up the Governing Channel, along the spine to the top of the head (bai hui), down the face, and then to the upper palate. Next, send it through the tongue, down the Conception Channel, along the front of the body, and back to the dan tian. This completes one round of the "Small Heavenly Circulation", which is foundational qi circulation through the Governing and Conception channels. Doing rounds of simply this is an effective meditation, which I will describe in more detail at the end of this section.

After completing a round of the "Small Heavenly Circulation", send the qi down the lower abdomen, and continuing down the outside of the legs (no particular channel). When it gets to the feet, send it around them, and then back up the inside of the legs. Let it continue up the spine. When it gets to the upper back, send it inside, over, and down the shoulder blades. Next, send it down along the insides of the arms, around the hands, and then back up the outside of the arms, meeting again at the spine. Then, send it up the up the back, around the head, down the front of the body, and repeating down the legs, around the feet, up the inside... i.e. the same course over and over. Keep moving the qi in this course as long as it feels good.

If you prefer to simplify the movement to just the Governing and Conception Channel, then do this breath coordinated variation: On the breath in, touch the tongue to the palate, and send the qi from the base of the spine, up the spine, around the head, and to the palate. As you breath out, release the tongue from the palate and send the qi down the front of the body to the perineum (or hui yin, "meeting of the yin"). As you inhale, contract the tailbone to push the qi back up to the base of the spine, from the perineum, to start a new round. Keep doing rounds as long as it feels right.

EXTERNAL QI HEALING

Supposedly, our hands are major portals for qi flow. In particular, we can send out, and absorb, qi through the centers of the palms of our hands and the tips of our fingers. For this reason, External Qi Healers will use their bodies as a conduit for the qi and send it out through their palms, or fingers for a more concentrated and localized effect, with their hands held over an area on someone else in need of healing energy. If this sounds like some far out mysticism, consider how Jesus healed others. He laid his hands on them. I'm guessing Jesus was doing the same thing, i.e. sending energy to others through the palms of his hand. Furthermore, the palms are otherwise known as the "heel" of the hand, which happens to be exact same word that we use for "healing" and "health", disguised with a different vowel.

I have taken some liberties with this concept and I am trying to do External Qi Healing on myself. This may not be in any qigong or TCM texts. This is just my own fun experiment with directing qi. My aim is to shoot healing qi, through my palms, at my bald scalp areas, and also shoot forceful qi against the bulging area of my forehead. At worst, this is just a waste of time. And at the very least, I'm getting more familiar with the basics of External Qi Healing.

It is recommended to do some qigong first, before attempting External Qi Healing. This could be simple standing meditation. I think it's probably a good thing to try to cultivate some jing by focusing on the dan tian to avoid exhausting our general supply. Another exercise that I like to do is to make the imaginary energy ball with my palms, and then stretch and compress it with each inhale and exhale. I slowly stretch the energy more and more until it's quite wide, at which time I feel like I have cultivated enough surplus qi to beam through my palms at my head. I also like to do this, or just standing meditation, on or near a tree that exhibits that "die hard" life-force that I want to send to my dormant hair follicles.

When sending qi through your hands at someone, or myself in my case, it is recommended that you be well-grounded. This allows your body to be the conduit for the qi. I like to be barefoot on the Earth, but at the very least the fingers of the hand not being used to beam the qi needs to be pointed straight down at the bare Earth to conduct the qi up through the body. Otherwise, theoretically, you will be exhausting purely your own supply of qi to the heal the other individual, which would be counterproductive in the goal of good health for all.

To actually shoot a beam of qi at someone, you just have to kind of put your palm over the area in need of healing and then try to connect with its energy. That, in itself, may be all that is necessary. The qi is emitted from our palms involuntarily. However, adding intent, theoretically, will produce a better result. A few ways to make this a more conscious effort is to circle the palms clockwise to stimulate a particular area of the body, or counter-clockwise to calm it down. In addition, quickly opening and closing the palms, as if to flicker the beam, is a way to increase the potency, supposedly.

Overall, I think that imagination is the key component to include. We're in the realm of the Mind, as it is, and our imagination is an important, powerful, feminine, and neglected tool of ours. I like to imagine the "die hard" energy, from the tree, or the energy from an image of a tree, growing on a rock, and infusing into the miniaturized hairs on my bald scalp. When I switch to forehead flattening, I try to imagine the qi beam flattening the bulge with supernatural force. Like I said, it's worth a try.

GENERAL APPROACH

Awareness is powerful. Thinking is weak. Thinking is noisy. We can't hear God, let alone listen to our hearts or intuitions, when we are thinking. The more we can be aware and be in our own bodies, creating the perfect stillness between the yin and the yang, the more we can separate from our former selves and detach from the fears, worries, resentment, grief, and disappointment that are weighing us down. This will reduce the noise so that we can hear from our inner guides, our hearts and intuitions, which we we need to keep our life choices aligned with our spiritual path.

Fasting

In the next section, I'm going to describe some mental practices that I believe are critical to overcoming disease marked by a male imbalance. Fasting will make those mental practices much much much easier to execute. The catch is that fasting is very difficult.

Fasting is an attitude adjustment exercise. If done properly, it will serve to unburden you from things that have built up your negative emotional constitution. You will become less selfish, you will become more helpful, you will become less resentful, less angry, less controlling, less preoccupied, etc. all by simple self-induced suffering. That's the key factor. We have to suffer, and we have to suffer to the degree that we need an the attitude change.

I have been intermittent fasting for 6 years (~16 hours x day). In addition, I have done countless 24 hour fasts, a 36 hour fast, an 80 hour fast, a 7 day fast, an 8 day fast, and a 10 day fast. In my experience, the long fasts are the ones that we need. You simply do not suffer enough during the first 3 days of fasting. Sure, it's uncomfortable not to eat, but my energy is normal and my cognition is fine. After day 4, though, it gets much more challenging. Fatigue becomes a problem. It's difficult to get out of bed. Furthermore, as I skinny guy already, and being down another 10 lbs in a matter of a few days, I have difficulty keeping my body warm. I can't think clearly because I'm so tired, uncomfortable, and cold. That's when true healing starts. What occurs then is as what the prophet Isaiah, channeling God, describes in chapter 58 of The Book of Isaiah:

Is this not the fast which I choose,

To loosen the bonds of wickedness,

To undo the bonds of the yolk,

And to let the oppressed go free and break every yoke?

Is it not to divide your bread with the hungry

And bring the homeless poor into the house;

When you see the naked, to cover him;

And not to hide yourself from your own flesh?

Then your light will break out like the dawn,

And your recovery will speedily spring forth;

And your righteousness will go before you;

The glory of the Lord will be your rear guard.

Then you will call, and the Lord will answer;

You will cry, and He will say, 'Here I am.'

If you remove the yoke from your midst,

The pointing of the finger and speaking wickedness,

And if you give yourself to the hungry

And satisfy the desire of the afflicted,

Then your light will rise in darkness

And your gloom will become like midday.

And the Lord will continually guide you,

And satisfy your desire in scorched places,

And give strength to your bones;

And you will be like a watered garden,

And like a spring of water whose waters do not fail.

Your light will break forth like the dawn, you will hear God talk to you, and you will be like a watered garden - THAT is the benefit. It's not the autophagy that started at hour 18, or day 3, if that even is a real benefit, or just made up cell biology nonsense. Rather, the healing is in the intensity of the suffering WHILE not complaining, not advertising to everyone that you're on a fast, not looking for sympathy or praise, not being a sorry sack, and all the while making an effort to be helpful to your brothers and sisters on Earth. Because, when you do it that way, and you go back to eating, you will have a much better attitude. And that attitude is a big part of your disease. In fact, it's the origin of your disease, as Rudolf Steiner claimed.

In my experience, having the right attitude during the fast gets better results. I'm sure if you fast long enough, eventually the pain will humble you. But, if you have kids, a job, obligations, then going longer than a week can risk passing out at inopportune times and hurting yourself. It's more effective, and less daunting, to go for a week at a time with the right attitude and humble yourself, than to wait for the fast to humble you. When I did the 7 day fast, I suffered, but I didn't get much out of it. I was crabby and unhelpful the entire time. And when I went back to eating, nothing had changed. The second time, I went for 8 days and made a conscious attempt to not mention it and tried to be more pleasant and helpful than I normally am. That time, when I went back to eating, I felt like an emotional weight was gone. Things no longer seemed to bother me as much. I still feel like I need a few more of these to get some deeper healing, but I am very encouraged to continue doing long fasts, and doing them in this manner, after I gain some weight back first. In addition, I seem to get more inspiring ideas about MPB and the direction of my life from God during them. The direct hair benefit that I have experienced is a decrease in shedding, which has ranged from mild to significant by fast.

To do a long fast, there's not much to it other than not eating. However, I do supplement with extra magnesium salt foot baths to help me sleep. I get severe insomnia, and poor sleep overall, on long fasts. I don't believe that only getting 4 hours of sleep is a necessary part of the suffering. In addition, I did a water enema or a coffee enema every day. Without food matter moving through the digestive tract, toxicity builds up quickly in the body. An enema will help clear out festering waste matter from your last meals that can't otherwise get pushed out, because waste matter keeps getting dumped into the digestive tract even while not eating.

Coffee enemas, in particular, will stimulate the liver to release bile and flush toxins out. It's a good opportunity for the body to clean house anyway, so we might as well enhance its efforts in this way. Here's the affiliate link for the enema kit and the enema coffee that I use, in case I've sold you and putting a tube up your butt, but you still don't have the equipment.

One last note on the power of fasting is that none of the Gospels describe Jesus performing a single miracle until after his 40 day fast in the wilderness. Maybe that 40 day fast was necessary for him to cultivate that degree of healing power. Anyway, it's a good reminder that no matter how much weight and muscle you lose during the fast, you are only getting stronger.

Attitude

As I have mentioned, Nikola Tesla said that if you want to learn the secrets of the universe, then think in terms of energy, frequency, and vibration. I think this applies to health too. My mistake in the recent past is to be obsessed with the food, the exercise, the meditation, the rest, the detox mineral, and all the bio-hacks that supposedly give us health. I still believe these are important. However, these things have to be done with good energy, natural frequencies, and high vibration in our DISPOSITION to have any beneficial effect. For example, we are not going to get the nutrition from a superfood if we are unwilling to share it with a guest or our family, or if we think we deserve the largest portion because we made it or we are trying to solve an important health issue. If that is our attitude, then we might as well not even eat it, because the food has been tainted with bad energy. It's no longer good for us. I have had this attitude for much of my attempt at healing, and I suspect that it has negated much of the benefit, of which I certainly have reaped some.

Jesus said that it is not what goes into a man that defiles him, but rather comes out of him from his heart. I believe that is 100% true. What is in your heart matters much more than what diet you are on. Theoretically, a good diet and being pure of heart is better than a pure heart and a diet of oreo cookies, but the Spirit is the number one priority. If we want to heal ourselves at the deepest level of our disease, then we need to cultivate the correct attitude. We need to be operating on a higher vibration to fully unlock our healing potential. It is theorized that we can't see angels because they are vibrating so strongly. It's like how a fan blade disappears from sight when it's on full force, and all you feel is the energy in the wind that it generates. That's the sort of vibration we want to cultivate. Here are some mental practices that I think will help improve our energy, and get us vibrating on a higher frequency.

GENEROSITY

We can be miserly with more than just our money. I already described how being miserly with our food is a problem. I have the inclination to not put out my best ferments or my choicest meats when guests come over. That's not good. It's bad energy. We have to be willing to part with our superfoods. Rather, superfoods are foods that we share.

In addition to food and money, we need to be willing to give all of ourselves to others, including things like our time, efforts, and emotions. Anytime that we selfishly covet these things, whatever we gain from doing so will have no benefit to us. So, you might as well sacrifice whatever the thing you want to do, like exercise, rest, a meal, leisure time, protecting your feelings from being hurt, time allocated to a personal project, etc., to offer your assistance or companionship to your fellow man. Doing so will nourish the spirit. There's no sense building up the physical body to house a rotten spirit. That rotten spirit will rot the physical body from the inside out.

GRATITUDE

The Bible teaches to "give thanks in all things". That means "no complaining". This is very difficult to do, but essential for cultivating the correct inner attitude. Imagine that you were never able to ever complain about anything, no matter how justified you were, ever again. That's the attitude that we want to strive for.

Having gratitude for our disease is foundational to our recovery. If we do not change our perspective on our ugly hairline from begrudged to thankful for the opportunity to improve ourselves, then we are never going to get the ugliness out of our spirit that is manifesting as ugliness in our hair and head shape. This website is a testament to that change in perspective. Every word that I have written, every health hack that I've tried, and every spiritual path I have explored, I have MPB to thank. All this has come from suffering, and I am so thankful for having the opportunity to create it. That's how it starts. Healing will happen when you are fully committed to giving thanks, even for the worst of what happens to you (which likely will not be MPB).

LOVE YOUR ENEMY

Yet another important lesson from the Bible. Anger is bad for us, whether justified or not. Anger damages the liver, it causes qi to rise, and it is just utterly useless. There is no health benefit to acting on our anger. It's all bad.

The Bible teaches that the wise man holds his anger and that we are to love our enemy. To help with our wisdom, and not act on our anger, it is very helpful to adopt the strategy to "love your enemy" or "serve your enemy." When someone is hostile towards us, annoying, or just full of bad energy, then it is natural to become defensive and aggressive. This will not help make the situation any better. Rather, if we adopt the perspective that this individual is not our enemy and our duty is to help them, then we have a chance at creating a good experience and good spirit nourishing energy from a bad situation. At the very least, we can avoid festering angry emotions. At best, we can elevate ourselves to higher vibrations.

FORGIVE

Forgiveness is a major theme throughout the Bible. Basically, if you can't find it in your heart to forgive others who have wronged you, then God will not forgive you for your sins. In terms of practical application, that means God will not speak to you, and thus cut off your access to the divine wisdom and healing power until you have forgiven EVERYONE who has ever hurt you EVER, no exceptions. Everyone from an ex-wife, to someone who cut you off in traffic, to even murderers. God will deal with them and their sins, not you. You let it go, because harboring all that resentment is extremely unhealthy.

On a smaller scale, let annoying things that people do go. Rather than criticizing someone about something petty and point your finger in blame, whether justified or not, simply forgive and move on. Criticism is an imbalanced male trait. Do not criticize, and do not blame, ever. Jesus said that you can't criticize someone for a speck of black in their eye when you have a log in your own. That means that we all have things that we need to work on. Instead of criticizing a friend or family member for whatever annoying thing they did or are doing, think about all the ways that you can improve yourself. It's better for your spirit to bite your tongue, and do exactly that.

TELL THE TRUTH

Telling the truth, always, and in all situations, is not easy. The reason is fear. It's scary to tell the truth sometimes. Look at what happened to Jesus. The guy was the physical embodiment of the truth. He went around everywhere telling the truth, unabashedly, and they crucified him for it! We're probably not going to get crucified these days, but sometimes we act like it when we shy away from telling the truth.

Telling the truth is important because it is step one in overcoming our fear. We will always live in fear, no matter how brave we are otherwise, if we are not willing to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, unashamedly. Our Ares warrior energy needs us to be truth tellers. And if we don't tell the truth, then we will never find the truth when we seek the truth. The Jesus story is all about truth and a testament to how important the truth is. Even if you end up nailed to a cross and bleeding to death, the truth has still set you free. Your body may be beaten and bloodied to death, but your spirit is free from fear. By contrast, when you live in fear, then you are already dead.

Living without fear and being truthful to ourselves, as well as others, is more important than our lives. And the benefit is, as long as we don't get crucified, that the truth will heal us from the inside out. Our physical bodies will change, and the our truth will shine through us like a beacon guiding others to do the same. It's our duty to inspire others with our truth, as others have certainly inspired us.

HAVE FAITH

The most effective way to overcome fear is to have faith. When you believe that we are billions of years worth of random mutations of single-celled organisms that were created from a random lighting strike into a primordial soup water on a sea of minerals that swirled into a dense rock after an explosion in infinite space billions of years before that, then you are going to cling to your life with every bit of grip strength that you have because that is all you have. We live, we die, and we're gone forever. So, just have a good time while you are here. That's what I believed, and I was much more fearful as a result.

Having faith is the wisdom of believing in eternal life. It's the difference between believing in the Creation Story of Atom vs. Adam. When you believe in Atom, you live in fear. When you believe in Adam, you have a purpose. Furthermore, you're probably more accurate in your beliefs. Either way, when you believe in Adam, there's a reason that you were part of the creation, and it is your obligation to pursue that purpose. You focus on the bigger picture and you are more willing to sacrifice yourself and free yourself from the confines of temporary life in order to pursue the truth. Fear makes you a slave. You should ask yourself WHO would want you to believe in Atom, and why?

As a mental practice, have faith that God has a purpose for you. Have faith that your intuition and your heart are guiding you to fulfill that purpose. Ignore all of the natural doubts and fears, along with the ones that have been conditioned into us from learning Atomism, because they are obstacles meant to be overcome for the benefit of our spiritual growth. Really, the antidote to fear breaks down to love. Love God enough to fulfill the purpose that He designed you for, love yourself enough to sacrifice your ego, your security, and your physical body to become your true self, and love others who are hitherto too fearful to pursue their truth, and maybe even scoff and deride you for doing so, to inspire them to do the same. Love and faith are more powerful than fear, and they are the ultimate cure for anxiety.

One last biblical note on faith: throughout the Gospels, before Jesus performed a healing miracle on someone, there was usually an establishment of the faith of that someone who wanted to be healed. Sometimes it seemed like Jesus would ask a question in order to gauge the faith of the individual before the miracle was performed. Once the faith of the individual was verified, then the healing happened. And Jesus would often attribute the cause of their healing to their faith. Jesus says something to the effect of "Your faith has made you well" to several individuals. That means that it wasn't Jesus, or whatever voodoo that He did, that made them well. Rather, it was their belief in God and the healing power of the holy spirit. That's the most powerful ingredient in healing. Not even Jesus, in person, can heal you if you lack faith. If you don't like the Jesus stuff, then ask yourself why is there a placebo effect? It's because beliefs are more powerful than biology.

BE OPEN

Males have a tendency to want to control the situation. This can be very bad for us. We want to be able to let things go and accept what happens, even if it's frustrating, inconvenient, or disappointing. Being able to receive, accept, and not react is a powerful divine feminine quality that we want to cultivate. It helps keep our male energy in balance.

As we get older, we become more set in our ways. Not coincidentally, we get physically stiffer. After we develop routines, egos, and expectations, then we develop sclerosis. We need to try to be more as we were as children, when we were a lot more physically and mentally flexible. Back when we were a kid, and had hair, how much of the stuff that bothers us now would bother us then? For me, I would say about 5%. How stiff was your lower back then compared to now, or your knees, or your neck or whatever? Not at all. There's a connection.

Being mentally flexible helps us stay physically flexible, which is being devoid of sclerosis. So, if you come home late from work and the house is a mess, the dishes aren't put away, and dinner hasn't even been started, then do NOT grumble. Rather, let it go. This can be extremely difficult for jerks like me, but we have to do it. Cheerfully greet your family, and enjoy your time together. If it really bothers you, then don't eat for a week. It will teach you how food is not that important and how to appreciate what you have.

GO TO YOUR FEAR

My college baseball coach had a saying, which I did not appreciate at the time, but never forgot, which was: "wherever your fear is, go there." We have to be willing to face our fears, fail miserably, learn, and move on. We CANNOT evolve spiritually without doing so. There is no way around it.

When we feel fear, doubt, apprehension, unease, or anything of the sort, then that is our Spirit telling us to go there. Every time we face our fears and get humiliated, then it's going to get a little less scary and hurt a little less the next time. That's good. The quicker we get through failure, the quicker we'll get to confidence and proficiency in all of our weak areas. To help us, we have spirit of Ares in our blood to face ourselves in the mirror and grapple with our weaknesses. Furthermore, as long as we're acting righteously, God is right behind us ready to help.

PRAYER

All this God stuff would have made me uncomfortable years ago if I were reading this. I used to believe in atoms, space, and evolution instead. I found it difficult to believe in God while being convinced of the veracity of the so called "science" of who we are and where we are. Now, for reasons I won't get into in this webpage (but maybe on the blog), I don't believe in that anymore. I'm assuming the ancient biblical cosmology is true and going with the God stuff instead. And you know what? It works. Prayer works. Prayer plus fasting REALLY works. But, prayer alone is potent stuff. And we can do it any time, any day.

Prayer is basically tapping into the divine communication channel using your intuition. This allows you to ask God questions, and then get answers from Him. The process is simple, but it takes practice, especially because the voice of doubt and fear has been dominant in us for many years, at least it has been for me. There is a book called Living Fearless (affiliate link), which gives the most practical applications and rationale for prayer. The guy who wrote it, Jamie Winship, was a police officer and muslim country missionary who, like biblical figures, put himself in intense and dangerous situations. By doing so, in combination with prayer, biblical scholarship, and faith that God had his back, he cultivated a fearless disposition. Now he goes around teaching people to do the same in his workshops. Reading this book will help encourage you to face your fear and teach you how let God guide you through doing so.

It is written that God is our Father. As part of his role, he is always willing to give us advice, so long as we are asking from our true selves. Asking God for help gives us access to divine wisdom, which is pretty good stuff, but it also helps with our attitude. It's an act of humility, of openness, of acceptance, of honesty, of gratitude, of letting go, and of faith. The more we can cultivate an inner attitude of these characteristics, and ask of God through prayer with this in our hearts, and stillness through meditation, the louder and more clearly we will be able to hear God's voice.

Jesus said that "With people it is impossible, but not with God; for all things are possible with God." (Mark 10:27). As mere men, we have the ability to accomplish great things. Many men have done so. But, only with God, in our ear and guiding us from the back, can we accomplish the impossible. And growing hair back on slick bald scalp is damn near impossible. But, we must have faith. For Jesus also said: "Truly I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, 'Be taken up and cast into the sea,' and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says is going to happen, it will be granted him. Therefore I say to you, all things which you pray and ask, believe that you have received them, and they will be granted you." We can get a benefit from eating real nutrient dense foods, cultivating and controlling our life-force energy, detoxifying every bit of toxic matter out of our body, reconstituting the gut in the most optimal ancestral way, etc., but collectively it does not compare to the power in faith and prayer. The Spirit is the source of disease, and it is our greatest weapon against it. Keep that in MIND.

Conclusion

I'll end this webpage with where I left off in the Book of Isaiah, chapter 58, because it well summarizes the whole purpose of this website:

Those from among you will rebuild the ancient ruins;

You will raise up the age-old foundations;

And you will be called the repairer of the breach.

The restorer of the streets in which to dwell.

The old ways are better than the new ways. Modern science is a disaster. It's obvious. Look around. Look at how unhealthy and miserable people are. Look at our cities. They're hideous. Compare old buildings to new buildings. Old buildings are magnificent. They make you stop whatever you're thinking about and stare in awe. New buildings are depressing. Furthermore, when you snap back into reality, then you start to wonder how the old beautiful buildings were even built without cranes, motors, trucks, etc.. And you start to realize that we are not living in a renaissance of human technology and accomplishment. Rather, we are living in a combination of the Dark Ages and 1984.

My purpose in this life, as far as I can communicate with God and get clear answers through fasting and prayer, is to raise up the "age-old foundations" of ACTUAL medicine, and to help people break out of the spell cast on them by modern medicine. Our blindness to the obvious connection between head shape and hair growth patterns, all the while chasing phantom menaces like DHT and genetics, is representative of the entire modern approach to health and healing. It's oblivious, disconnected, ineffective, bizarre, and downright harmful to our physical health and spiritual wellness.

The TCM, Ayurvedic, Biblical, and Alchemical ways of approaching disease are the "ancient ruins" that need to be rebuilt. Our inspiration needs to come from observation and divine wisdom. Focusing on hormones, genetics, cells, vitamins, calories, metabolic pathways, plant compounds, autophagy, and all these creatures of science that we hear and talk about, but cannot see, touch, smell, feel, or have any practical way to determine if they actually exist, is a WASTE of time. Rather, we need to focus on unlocking the full potential of our innate healing abilities. That, like the qi, has no substance, it has no chemical formula. Don't bother looking for it with your radio-spectrometry device, because you won't find it. Nevertheless, if you fast for long enough, if you suffer hard enough, and if you pray faithfully and humbly enough, then you'll feel it. Because it's there, in our Spirit. And it's waiting for us to rediscover it.

I'll post updates on anything that I have found to be particularly effective, even the bio-hacky stuff, in the blog or my YouTube Channel. On YouTube, I have a lot of "break the illusion" kind of videos, but also I want to put videos on skull flattening and qigong exercises there, because they are not so easy to describe in writing. On the blog, I just have the perfect pickle recipe, and I'll probably fill it with more recipes too. I've become quite adept at recreating my favorite foods using just salt, fermentation, and high quality simple ingredients, since I've been doing Paleo and then the GAPS diet for a combined 7 years now. I don't ever miss eating the poison, though. And restaurant food is overrated. Nothing tastes as good as the food that you cook yourself, because there are no nutrients in food; rather, it's all (non-caloric) energy.