81chapters

https://www.taichitao.tv/

Okay, just to clear things up, Master Liao certainly is still teaching. In addition to a private class for invited senior students and instructors, he is also available for private sessions and can be found at his school in Oak Park on a regular basis almost every evening. You can join or make arrangements to visit the center and most likely meet him. He has been at the same location for 40 years. Stop by sometime, or email them to see if you are able to schedule a private session if you'd like the experience of learning from him directly. The DVDs are expensive because there are so many of them and the market is so small, so to cover the expense of producing them requires a higher price. It's easy to have just ONE DVD and sell it to hundreds of people at $15. It is much harder to produce and maintain a library of over 200 and make a profit of any kind. The books each give slightly different angles and analogies of Chi, because he and his publishers are trying to appeal and get this teaching out to a variety of audiences, not just a handful of discriminating advanced practitioners. So he relates it to "God" a "force" "energy" all sorts of different analogies to convey concepts to people who may be totally unfamiliar with Chi. The DVDs have progressively more advanced info not contained in any of the books, and appeal to advanced practitioners. if you have trouble finding the right one, email them with what you'd like to work on in your practice and they will try to help you. IMHO re: "Temple Style." It is a mistake to classify this as merely just a certain choreography or style of single forms or long form. Dwai is more correct in that it is more a manner of the style of training as a whole, a manner of how to approach the development of energy, as well as the tradition of learning "mouth-to'ear" directly from a master in a temple setting. The long form is rather more of an adjunct to our training, not a definition of the style as a whole. The long form used in his school is reputedly modeled after Cheng Man Ching's long form, as the two masters were friends. I would definitely attend any seminar he holds if you want to meet this master in this lifetime, as his public seminars seem to be less frequent now. There is one in Wisconsin, not far from Chicago/Milwaukee Being at his Center pretty much 7 days a week and being a student there for 16 years, it is always amusing to see lengthy threads comparing rumors and opinions about him from those who barely know or have never met him. No harm done. It is the nature of the Internet. Not here to answer any questions. Really -- the next course of action if you have a question is to come to the seminar or Chicago and ask them yourself. You'll know when you come upon a "real deal" teacher not by their theistic views or worship of the phenomena called energy,...but by their contradiction of everything you believe, including your beliefs about gods and energy. I can assure you Master Liao has smashed to smithereens any belief about gods and energy I have ever had. They are smashed daily without mercy as I continue to form any. He does it at a beginner level for many people in his books too --- maybe not yours, and maybe more gently than you are aware. But if you are going to bring this teaching to a western audience and do not help people redefine their approach to a deity/energy and confront their previous learning in a compassionate, respectful way, how can you succeed?

I have this belief that our President is the mirror of our collective selves as a nation and what we worship. We currently worship smooth words, good looks, and the appearance of tolerance, kindness, compassion, open-mindedness, intelligence, etc. And Obama has this. But when you peel back the veneer on our entire society there is great selfish prosperity built on death, deal-making, profiteering, oppression, and falsehoods. Obama is just a representation of this. Nothing personal against him. Bush, Clinton -- the same. I'm really a believer that we get the leaders we deserve. It's we who have to change before anything in govt. changes.

I'm not partisan at all… certainly this would probably have happened under either major candidate. Just particularly disillusioned by the "hope and change" promised and then this. And remember it's not Obama doing this - -it is our country. All of us. We haven't mustered the guts to stop it, so we acquiesce and pay for it with our taxes and are thereby responsible for it too. God help us. Since what goes around certainly will come around.

I voted for him first round - believed his spin. Didn't vote the second time. Wonder if my first vote makes me a partaker in my share of our nation's karma for this? (see video below - warning graphic) Obama's game of Drone's PT. 1

Had no interest in Taoism nor anything Chinese nor any significant interest in martial arts. I was studying a system of Christian mysticism that focused on the omnipotence and omnipresence of God in meditation for about 10+ years, and the founder of it said in a little sentence buried away in one of his books that you cannot reach the height of oneness with God without a real master. It stuck out to me because it seemed so opposite to what the guy taught. I didn't believe in "masters", but I had had such great awakening from this author that I put out into the universe: "Okay if I need a master, I'm willing to have one." forgot about it..... About a year later got blackmailed by my now ex-boyfriend to go to Taichi classes. Thought it would be a great way to get out of the house and away from the kids, maybe get a little exercise. Besides, this Liao guy seemed nice anyway.... about a year or so in I realized where I was and remembered the "need a master" thing and went "Damn!"

I'm a student of Master Liao's and just started a blog for people interested in the spiritual aspect of internal alchemy. I just made a post based on an interview with Master Liao where he gives a completely different take on Yin power and how it actually is a foundational force within human nature and even impacts our behavior. http://taojourney.blogspot.com/2014/01/six-burdens-of-human-nature-pt-1.html

Dorian --- whew. So you've dismissed the idea of embracing Te as absurd. But yet you want everyone to simply remember they are God. And you say that our ego and mind are what we are as a self, so our ego and mind are God? And if we don't embrace our ego and our mind, we hate ourselves? I think you've managed to invert centuries of eastern and western religion in upon itself to create a hybrid of Oprah-ism mixed with the snake's promise when offering Eve the apple in the garden. And you assert yourself with such authority about it - no timidity at all. That rumble you hear is most likely Lao Tzu, Buddha, Moses and Jesus all rolling in their graves. Readers beware -- this gentleman's opinion on Taoism and various teachers and books are his own. Please don't allow his air of authority to color your experience. The book we were originally discussing says no such thing in my view and the view of most other people I know who have read it. Sorry for the thread-jack on the embryonic breathing topic. Fine topic and actually related to all of this on some level. Now I really must go. I am already surrounded by folks in my offline life who feel that confident assertion of their beliefs is mastery.

What a sorry state we are in then, just as Liao says, since our mind and personality are indeed fueled by and influenced from damaged signals emanating from old chi. If that is what you want to embrace as "YOU" -- be my guest. I'm working to burn that off or at least transmute it. It seems in your definition we are just a transitory amalgam of suffering karma held together because we like to consider that our "self." Maybe that's why this world is so crazy. Exchanging that for Te sounds better to me. Gotta go guys. I have a day job. I'll keep lurking around like I have for the last 5-6 years and maybe pop in again later. Best wishes to you all!

Just put both my volumes up for sale --- read them years ago and have been collecting dust ever since. So many of the practices by the multiple authors seem to contradict themselves.

"Facts" is one of those slippery words that seems better lumped in with human learning and knowledge, therefore artificial. I certainly don't think MY interpretation or opinion on what Liao teaches are facts -- just opinions. I've learned that what I carry around as a "fact" or "truth," I usually have to exchange at a later date for a better or higher fact or truth. Even what I think are facts that I've gleaned from reading this particular book, I let go of later when they evolve into different facts because my own understanding and spiritual maturity has grown. Unlike this individual's perceived "fact" below... Who is the "YOU" that has the karma if the Chi that makes up "you" is the karma? I haven't been able to fully answer that one yet, but I'll bet you can

That's a good point in questioning what is "you." Our Chi, ego, thoughts, personality are all the things we think of as ourselves, our soul, as 'me.' Liao spends a great deal of time showing how most of these things are artificial and that Te is the "True You." Those other things that break away for recycling were never the true 'you.' His writings and training suggest you can work to shift the center of your being into a connection with the True You while in this lifetime, by taking all of those components, and either purifying them or letting them go before you die (reduction) so that the True You becomes the center and directing force of your being. That's the ultimate goal of practice. It's not just something that happens after your death. It's something achievable in this lifetime. If it isn't, then why is everyone wasting time here on this board year after year? But even when Liao says that the Chi of someone who has not managed to reach the goal of connecting to Te falls away to be recycled at death - even that implies some form of afterlife -- even if it's not a sequential reincarnation as a unified soul. The recycled Chi does not cease to exist. if so he wouldn't have used the word "recycle." In the latest book, Restoring Your Life Energy, he says we've picked up some of these recycled bits of other people's Chi to form who we are today, and their history can impact us. So in a sense those echoes of used Chi inside us are an afterlife of sorts.... not an afterlife any of us might wish to strive for, but even the Chi part of ourselves does go on in some fashion.

I'd respectfully have to disagree with this interpretation of "Tao: The Way of God." The author clearly states, in both this and his other material, that in addition to Chi we also have Te -- a piece of Tao or God inside us. As such it is immortal and indestructible and does indeed survive. That's why his teaching urges students to connect with their Te -- not just Chi. To miss this is to miss the whole point of the book. He does say Chi can fall away to be recycled, but Te continues on it's journey (in one direction or another) on it's return to Tao. It's too wonderful of a book to be misrepresented in such a manner.

I have scanned this forum a couple times per year, and sometimes have been tempted to post, but feel my path is better served by lurking. However I would like to post to one thread, and so here I am.