HoldorFold

Yes porn certainly is addictive, especially for young people who's brain's reward circuitry become hardwired based on the vast array of stimulation. I'd be careful on equating porn with sex trafficking and rape though. In the west at least, porn actresses are often paid 10 times more than their disposable male counterparts and many male actors are actually expected to work for free. And overwhelmingly the addicts are men and young boys. But banning porn is not the answer, especially not under leftist rhetoric which pushes the 'predatory-male' narrative. A solution might include better education in schools on the effects of porn. At the moment it's mostly geared around making sure boys understand not to push porn behaviors on girls, but I think they should include more education on its addictive and escalation potential and how it drains the life-force (good luck with that) and how it makes them less effectual in the world. Having kids addicted to something at such an early age is pretty messed up when you actually think about it. If 90% of 13 year old boys were addicted to heroin then we might pay more attention. To deal with something like this we need a societal upgrade, like being able to teach kids mindfulness practices and how to bring consciousness into their behaviors. Not going to happen anytime soon, but one can hope.

There is a 'conspiracy' going on around sex, but it's not really related to the frequency of between couples. That really has just been going on since forever. Think of how much sex Ghenkis Khan had for instance. Some women will want to satisfy their man so he's not going around being a Ghenkis Khan in the world though, for instance i have a friend who's girlfriend is insulted if she cannot give him oral sex first thing every morning. She divulged she does this so he's not looking at other women when he goes off to work. This is not related to government or conspiracy though. What's actually going which is more in line with a conspiracy is in the realm of pornography. The amount of people, especially young boys, addicted to pornography is outrageous. Many have developed warped tastes as a result of escalating their ongoing need for stimulation. They get bored with one thing and then can immediately find something else more 'interesting' around the corner on the internet. I practice retention for months sometimes, so I've also visited non-Taoist places where people practice this, and there seems to be a lot of boys in their teens / early twenties who have grown up with high speed internet who have become addicted to certain bizarre niches of porn, particularly transsexual porn believe it or not, that seemed to be a common one that kept popping up. These poor guys become extremely confused as a result, often suicidal even. There's also other dark things involving the media, fear and shame going on, but it's probably outside the scope of this thread.

You should focus on sinking qi, dissolving and grounding. Sinking qi: - Stand with your spine straight and chin slightly tucked in so your neck is straight - Put your awareness at the top of your head and feel the qi dissolving down inside your head - It often helps to feel the qi like water trickling down inside your body - Go all the way down from your head, through your neck, torso, hips and legs into to your feet and a few inches below your feet - Go slowly, it should take a few minutes to get from the top of your head to the bottom of your feet - Do this several time a day I would stay away from anything which brings energy upwards , including the Microcosmic Orbit. Also check out these threads: - http://www.thedaobums.com/topic/40402-kundalini-help-please/ - http://www.thedaobums.com/topic/40162-kundalini-cannabis-and-cocaine-help/

This is true, although I used to (foolishly) do practices from the age of 18 which involved very forcibly raising energy up the spine, this opened channels which perpetuated burning of lower energies e.g. jing / kidney-essence. The result was early onset of a lot of psychic phenomena but also symptoms of jing depletion even while practicing retention. So while many are concerned with sublimating jing, in my 20's I was mainly concerned with the reverse process. From doing lot of work on my feet and legs over 10 years, I've managed to increase the fuel input into my system where now have the vitality of before I burned myself out and have for the past couple of years been focusing more on Shen type activities. My focus on jing primarily because I tend to do a lot of mundane things like (low-level) bodybuilding, working on my own business, socialising etc. and I find high levels of jing very useful for these activities.

While I was practicing I did some research and came across someone who was a student of Clyman's who claims he was taught that the condensing refines energies in the marrow and so he was told that it doesn't matter what kind of energy you are condensing. That kept me pushing through despite the warning signs, but in the end my experience ran contrary to that idea. When I was practicing before the kundalini experiences, I experienced all the benefits but also in retrospect I believe it was making me more hot-headed/angry in daily life. I think now being much more sensitive to energy, this time around I was perceiving the blockages and issues that were probably being condensed before but were hidden. Just goes to show you can't shortcut your way to these higher level exercises. What's ironic is that it's Clyman's foundational exercise which he teaches first, so I wonder how many of his students are condensing trouble for themselves later down the line. It's a shame because it really was the most powerful technique I've come across to build a lot of jing which is a primary interest of mine.

Sure, bear in mind it's just the condensing breathing practice I've done. A few years ago, I used to do condensing breathing regularly, every day. It had very tangible results on my sense of power and vitality. Just practicing for a couple of minutes would make me feel a lot more solid and powerful and give me a lot of energy. I stopped doing it for a couple of years since I was undergoing kundalini symptoms, not related to condensing breathing but related to other practices I was doing and so I stopped almost all energy work bar grounding exercises. Having taken up qigong again, I decided to start back on condensing breathing. Initial results were again instant vitality, power and feeling very solid. The difference is this time I felt a kind of dark energy and while I was feeling more powerful, there was a kind of sinister quality to it. After practicing for a couple of days, one night I had images of a large horned demonic entity in my vision which was very persistent and very hard to dissolve. I can only attribute this to condensing some kind of negativity or blockage that prior to this was more diffuse but I was now given more solidity by condensing it. I figured that this had something to do with condensing qi in the upper-body, since I felt that my heart area was becoming more heavy and dense after condensing which didn't seem right. So I decided to only condense from the waist down after that. The results improved and I didn't have the negative psychological effects as when I was condensing in the upper body, however I still noticed some unusual etheric manifestations as I was condensing, so I decided to not continue with the practice. I'm not sure if the difference between my positive results and negative results is due to changes I've undergone during kundalini episode or if it was always the same but now I am just more sensitive and aware of the effects it produces.

Progressive heavy weight-lifting targeting the largest muscle groups (e.g. squats and benchpress) does the trick for strength. Not just physical strength, but it increases your testosterone hence the internal characteristics associated with strength and vitality. The supplement ZMA also gives me the feeling of more power. Doing Robert Bruce's N.E.W. energy work on my feet, legs and hips has great effects on my vitality. Gary Clyman's condensing breathing was hands down the most powerful technique for me to build internal power, but nowadays I don't do it because I feel it can possibly condense blockages and I had some bad experiences with it after awhile.

I wouldn't recommend visualisation for moving qi since it engages the mind too much so you're basically always activating your third eye no matter what you're doing and is much weaker on the qi than using tactile sensations. Robert Bruce coined the term "tactile-imaging", this is basically putting your awareness in parts of the body without visualising and instead using sensation such as brushing, wrapping, sponging, bouncing, condensing, expanding etc. Using tactile sensations is a lot more powerful though so things get very "real" a lot quicker. It then becomes a lot more important to ensure that the practice you're following is a good one. For instance, you could visualise qi going up the spine for hours and not have anything happen, but do that with tactile sensations only and you might get a full blown kundalini episode in a short amount of time. On emptiness, I think that emptiness should be used in conjunction to working with qi, but it really depends on what your goals are. Emptiness is the more important of the two though imo and qi bloackages can be unblocked spontaneously from it etc.

Absolutely, I believe it's important to have an understanding of various traditions. From my perspective, every tradition has strengths and weaknesses and by studying them you can negate those weaknesses and have a more solid foundation for understanding and practice. I find western/vedic astrology much richer than say Chinese astrology for instance, whereas the Chinese system of mapping of the etheric body and energy practices are much more advanced. I also believe there are strengths and weaknesses in the philosophies themselves. William Mistele, a hermetic magus, made an apt comment regarding how the principle of non-interference contributed to the demise of Tibet. Personally, I follow western and vedic astrology, Hermeticism as put forth by Franz Bardon and William Mistele, Taoism, Qigong, Gnostic Christianity and more. One of the trickier things to integrate is the 5 element system vs the 4 element system since they are so fundamental in these traditions. One view is that the 5 element system works more on the personal level, e.g. in the body, organs and natural processes, whereas the 4 elements work on a more universal level e.g. the division of the 12 signs of the zodiac into 4 elemental triads, the Tetragrammaton and the 4 aspects of God (omnipresence, omniscience, omipotence and omnibenevolence => earth, air, fire, water respectively etc.) This is a pretty good article about the differences between the two elemental systems

From my understanding, the soul can be affected by life experiences while incarnated on earth. So the 'spirits of the body' can effect the re-incarnation process by the effect they had on the soul. I had a disjointed thought that I found confusing and somewhat disturbing awhile ago. I was thinking that since we are all one consciousness, yet we experience our lives as separate from birth until death, that this must therefore mean that at some point you will separately live through the entire lifetime of everyone that has ever and will ever exist from the beginning until the end of time. For example, at the moment, I am the one consciousness having the experience of being locked in the body of HoldOrFold in 2016. Consciousness must do this for everyone that will ever exist, and since I am consciousness I must eventually experience being locked in the body of everyone that will ever exist, separately, one at a time for their entire lifetime. I couldn't quite wrap my head around that one and find it a bit spooky.

I have to read the replies to this thread properly since it seems there's lots of different perspectives, but I've been reading some material about the Tibetan Book of the Dead and there seems to be a belief in the following process. I'm not sure how much I subscribe to it, but this is what I have read (simplified): The soul,at death, ascends various planes until it reaches the "chikhai bardo" where pure spirit itself resides (the realm of "Clear Light" The soul usually will then seek to escape the realisation of divine emptiness and flee this realm and blacks out The soul awakens in the next lower realm, the "chonyid bardo" which is characterised by various Gods/Goddesses/Dakinis etc. and dazzling lights. The soul tends to flee this realm as well since it's so overwhelming and blacks out again. The soul awakens in the "sidpa bardo" where it is shown various images. The souls reaction to these images determines the future karma of it's next incarnation. Eventually has vision of people making love. The soul gets attracted to one of these visions and feels sexual desire for either the mother or father. If it desires the mother then it dislikes the father and becomes a boy. If it desires the father then it dislikes the mother and becomes a girl. In either case, it steps in-between them to intervene and gets sucked into physicality and is incarnated as their offspring.

If everyone's self is an illusion, does that then mean that everyone is already enlightened since they don't exist?

I just made a new discovery for dealing with blocked qi in the head, thought I'd share here in case it may benefit anyone. Its an odd one, but worked for me. A couple of nights ago I had a lot of qi pressure in my head around my brow as I was trying to get to sleep. I remembered a documentary I watched about extreme Yogis where one of them had surgery under his tongue so he could reach his tongue back and up into his sinus.. This was so he could access "the nectar of the Gods" as he put it. So I put my tongue to the roof of my mouth as I often do, but this time I extended the awareness of my tongue as if it were growing longer and felt it energeticaly move to the back of my throat and up past my sinus. There I tried to feel what it would be like if I were able to lick the area at the center of my head above the sinus, actually trying to feel as if my tongue were doing this, feeling the texture of the cranial bone with the awareness of the tip of my tongue...as I did this a huge amount of qi started pulsing down my head through my physical tongue, throat and front of my body, so much so that my throat began to physically pulse and twich ad the qi flowed through it.. One of the biggest and most dramatic releases yet. Will be trying more of this.

The great masters of old pretty much had one thing in common: they gave to the world. When you don't have the desires of the ego, I think that's the one thing that will get you going.

My experience of Kundalini consisted of a few short but intense episodes of heat rising up the spine and on a couple of occasions accompanied by a bright camera like flash in my vision. It wasn't a gradual thing for me, possibly because I (stupidly) did exercises in my 20s to forcibly awaken it. For about 3 years after those experiences, the main issue I had was a constant throbbing in my forehead, sometimes more acute than others. Anything I did would only temporarily alleviate the throbbing sensation, however I've since had breakthroughs with opening up the channels in my face, teeth, jaw, neck and upper chest. I've had a huge amount of qi dumped from my brow down the front of my body a few times after opening these areas. It's still there sometimes, but not as pronounced, especially as I'm doing Energy Gates Qigong and Bruce Frantzis' dissolving technique now so the issue is moving towards a permanent resolution. I found this post awhile back on an advanced Yoga practice forum titled: Kundalini Overload: Grounding/Front Channel Block Quote from posts: There's some good info in there since the OP went had some pretty intense Kundalini w/ front channel blocked, could be worth reading.

I lived through a pretty intense Kundalini episode of a couple of years and had also abused substances prior to that, namely mephedrone (4-methyl methcathinone), cannabis and cocaine. Symptoms for me included but were not limited to: derealization, ungroundedness, "hallucinations" both visual and audio, intense heat shooting up my spine, bright-flashes of light, racing-thoughts and a constant pressure at the front of my head which felt like a heavy appendage protruding from my brow which could be alleviated only for a few seconds by physically rubbing my forehead to disperse it. I also tried grounding my energy through trees which helped only mildly for a few minutes. I attempted rooting myself to the earth using mental grounding techniques, e.g. feeling a cord from my root reach down into the center of the earth. This initially would alleviate symptoms for a few minutes and then would later aggravate them for hours as it caused more heat to rise up my spine after a slight time delay. The microcosmic orbit only intensified my symptoms, as if I were to do anything involving my back or spine it would send hot energy shooting up immediately and the intensified symptoms would last for hours, so I was careful not to practice this even though many had suggested it. In the OP's case it may help as they say it is doing them good, but from my experience it was very clear that it just aggravated my issue. Here's a link to some resources on recovering from Qigong practices which have caused excessive uncontrollable upward qi-flow. The advice about not doing practices which cause energy to rise and how to bring the energy down applies, it certainly did to me. This page in particular is relevant. In general they advise not to circulate but to focus on bringing the energy down. Substance abuse, especially with stimulants, can cause Kidney Yin deficiency which can lead to Heart Fire going out of control, which may explain lots of the symptoms as well. Rebuilding the kidneys can be a long road, but it's worth it. In general what's actually helped me is the following: - Consuming kidney tonics (such as Shaman Shack concentrated He Shou Wu and Goji Berries) - Physical exercise, especially of the lower body - Meditation on emptiness - Breathing qi down into the dantian, feet or testicles - Focusing on my heels (in particular using Robert Bruce's N.E.W. method with focus on my heels) - Gary Clyman's conensing breathing has helped a lot, which may be counterintuitive since it builds a fire-like power. But effectively you're condensing Qi into Jing so this may have also helped my kidneys. All I know is that if I feel ungrounded and spacey, I can do condensing breathing and immediately I feel solid, dense and connected to reality. - Limiting my Qigong practice to water methods (with the exception of condensing breathing)

Tao of Letting Go - Bruce Frantzis

I've got CK Chu's Neigong book and dvd. The first posture in the set is Embracing the Horse. Every example of this posture I see online has the back straight, like a pole, which CK Chu says is actually incorrect as the lumbar is arched when your back appears straight. So what you're supposed to do is curve the back to achieve to iron out the arch in the lower back. Here's a screenshot from the DVD for a student demonstrating Embracing the Horse as per Chu's Neigong style: I'd be interested to see any other example of this style of this form of the posture elsewhere, so far haven't been able to find any.

Thanks, I'll keep an eye on my back to see if I get any issues with it. The red flag, according to Chu, is the knees, but if you follow his principles you don't strain them. Yeah, there's not much out there about CK Chu and it was hard to find his stuff. I originally got interested in him by a thread TB user Encephalon made about using his methods here: http://thedaobums.com/topic/20035-void/ .... but he's since deleted the original post. It was basically about all the benefits he had from practicing Neigong, of which CK Chu's methods was the primary practice. *By the way, it's your legs that are taking a pounding in this excersise. Your back and stomach are relaxed. Your stomach muscles must be completely relaxed, no tension. After a couple of minutes, your legs are shaking like nothing else but the rest of your body is at ease.

Yeah, you'd think it's a bad posture but practically it really seems to do the trick. It charges me up like nothing else. He really emphasizes not arching the lower back, so rounding the back is really important according to him. The only part which seems a bit dodgy when bent forward is the head position, but he says that you just lean forward like this until your legs get strong enough to round the lower back without having to lean all the way forward. Here's a clip of him talking about this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=488p6689AWg

I feel pretty exhausted this morning (it's 11:50 right now actually - I usually wake up at 9am). I haven't done Reishi in several months, so I decided to make a strong brew last night. I made it quite concentrated, probably 10 grams to 3 mugs of water and simmered for 2 hours. After drinking a cup of the brew I did some stuff then went to bed. It took me probably 3 hours to get to sleep because I was hallucinating pretty hard.... at first I closed my eyes but was wide awake and saw a vision of a blonde woman in a beautiful garden brushing her hair in photo-realistic colour like I was actually there. I opened my eyes, closed them again and then I'd see something else and then my mind started racing a mile a minute with disjointed thoughts and rapid sequences of unrelated visions for about 2.5 hours. At one point I had a clear as day vision of three reptile creatures looking at me, and could make out the minute details of their eyes, skin etc. After about 3 hours of this and tossing and turning I finally get to sleep and then wake up late feeling exhausted with slight brain fog and a very mild headache. Never heard of Reishi doing this to anyone... any idea what could be going on?

Yeah wifi effects me big time. I had to turn it off before I went to sleep, once I forgot and I had a dream my brain was really hot and frying from wifi signals... I wake up and was sure I turned it off but it was the one time I forgot. Another really weird thing I've had for the past few years is when I'm waiting for a lift (aka elevator), I can feel it when it comes up through the ground infront of me... it's like I get slight vertigo and loss of balance when I'm outside the lift without even having stepped inside. I put it down to a big mass of metal coming up through the ground affecting my feet energy centers or something... such a strange feeling.

Yeah, you'd think so lol I tend to be very sensitive to stuff in general... like I can feel wifi signals and things. Never heard of Reishi having effects like this though and I'm wondering if it's a good thing or not.

I feel that I will get a lot more out of meditation at the moment if I can introduce a controlled element of pain somehow which I can work on transcending. I've read about a sect of Monks who for something like 100 days walk up and down a mountain with little food or water as part of their practice. I'm not thinking about anything near as extreme at all, and preferably I would like to be doing a sitting meditation while introducing this pain. I'm thinking holding ice-cubes or something like that, but is there any standard practice at all (that won't damage the body).