Aeran

I found this video really enlightening on the subject of Jing, might be worth a watch:

That's really cool stuff, thanks for sharing your experiences with the system You mention blockages - if you don't mind me asking, what was it like working through those?

I'd be really interested in hearing more about what you experienced using the techiques in Heavenly Streams. I thought the book was amazing and by far the most coherent introduction to the meridian system I've come across, but I never tried the practical training.

http://www.martinfaulks.com/ is another good resource for Bardon, he also has a youtube channel where he discusses the system, and I believe recently started running online meditation courses. I haven't looked into Runyon, but regarding Newcomb, I read his book a few years back but honestly wasn't impressed. He seemed somewhat confused, vacillating between the psychological theory of magic and more spiritual theories. I think you'd probably get more out of Kraig's Modern Magick or Regardie's One Year Manual in combination with Bardon's IIH.

You should be able to get a pair of rubber earplugs from the supermarket or chemist for $5 or so, that might be worth a shot. Or you could try a pair of earphones designed to block noise, which should be no more than $20 (although I'm not sure for iphones specifically). Alternatively, are there any parks within a short walking distance but away from the tracks/roadworks?

If I had to pick a single one it would probably be Monk Holding Pearl - I liked the comfortable posture and the simplicity of it when I first started practicing FPCK, very easy to relax into the stance, perform the breath sequence then just let the mind go quiet, and I loved the warm bubbling sensation it would bring on in the lower Dantien.

Yeah, that's not what I meant, no need to be so defensive. I'm personally not a huge fan of weed, but I have no problem with it's use. I was pointing out that, in my experience, distortion of your bodily sensations is a pretty common effect of weed.

Very interesting piece, thank you. I'm curious about a few things though: Why is this "clear"? I'm not trying to be sarcastic or facetious, just curious about what's behind this particular interpretation of the dragon ouroboros, as it isn't one I've heard before, and you assign different properties to the dragon symbolism later in the writing. Would you say it's only guarded against him approaching it by chance (that is, stumbling across it while still blindfolded), or would you interpret the angel as also standing guard against a seeker who approached with his eyes clear and open? The same group referred to in more recent times as the Great White Brotherhood?

I'll bring it up, but right now I'm focused on just dealing with the side effects as I establish a daily practice (on the theory that the side effects will balance out and slowly fade through proper practice on top of the lifestyle changes I've made and the herbal treatments).

Ok but putting aside the question of what makes a master a master, I've never seen a comment on the subject from anyone to whom the title has ever been applied, or who could potentially qualify. Not one. That makes me raise an eyebrow. As for the IQ thing, I'll check out your links after I go grab a meal, but I did some research on the subject and iirc the only study I found which showed a link between fluoride consumption and IQ demonstrated a 1 - 2 point deficit in areas of rural Asia where the natural drinking water contained 5 - 10x the fluoride levels put into our drinking water. And I really did try - I spoke to all sorts of anti-fluoride types and told them to give me their best stuff. Generally speaking, I agree that there's a lot of nasty contaminants that gets into our body as a result of industrialization and our modern lifestyle that cause problems, but I just don't see the evidence that fluoride is one of the greater threats. But I will read those articles and follow up. If it's such a subtle, tiny thing that even great yogic masters, people who've dedicated their lives to spiritual/energetic cultivation, aren't noticing it, then isn't it maybe being blown out of proportion?

I would still want to know why, if fluoride is such a big deal, has there never (to my knowledge) been a single comment on it from any of the great yogic/qigong/meditation/etc. masters? They talk at length at more or less all other aspects of people's lifestyle, but they never touch on the fluoride thing, and those teachers I've asked have all said it's not a big deal.

I suspect this might be a factor.

I reduced my fluoride intake significantly for about a year as something of an experiment (swapped tap water for spring water and used non-fluoridated toothpaste) and honestly the only difference I noticed was the hit to my bank account when I I got a few cavities and had to go to the dentist :/ I've also never heard a comment on the fluoride thing from any actual authority on meditation/metaphysics, it's all dodgy new age/conspiracy websites, so for now I'll stick with protecting my teeth

Interesting, I'll try to remember to raise the subject in my followup appointment, I'm nearly done with the first 3 month herbal regime he recommended. Thanks!

Might make for an interesting watch if you want an alternative perspective on the ability to "train" for siddhis It's a speech by a physicist who was involved in the US military/intelligence services' remote viewing programs for 25 years, and he concludes that at least some abilities (in his particular case, remote viewing, including precognition I suppose, as he claims they would frequently see into the future) can be trained reliably in almost anyone without a huge amount of effort. I only came across it a few days ago so I can't exactly vouch for everything he says, but it lines up with what I've heard from other people involved in such programs (The Monroe Institute, Institute of Noetic Sciences, etc). As for telepathy, I've never experienced it, but given what I have experienced, it seems quite likely.

Did Eric Isen comment on how much of the FP Chi they induce, compared to the longer regular meditations in DVD's 1 & 2? I ask because I've managed to resume a rudimentary daily qigong & meditation practice with the help of the herbal regime Eric recommended (thanks again for putting me in touch with him, by the way), but I think any of the longer meditations might be too intensive at this stage, so I'm looking for a way to integrate some of the FP practice into my daily routine without causing a recurrence of the side effects I was getting.

Not to divert the discussion but Tao Stillness, If I remember correctly it was you who, a few months back, discussed experimenting with the 90 second meditations on the 5th DVD, I was wondering if you ever got around to trying them and what kind of results they yielded?

I stopped at the monologue on the beach 5 minutes in - does it actually have anything unique to say, or is it just 40 minutes of pointing out the obvious faults in the wider "alternative medicine" industry?

Does anyone have recommendations? I'm after anything related to Daoism specifically or Eastern/Esoteric spirituality in general, metaphysics/parapsychology, meditation, energetic & yogic practices (qi gong etc), internal martial arts and related topics. It doesn't have to fit the podcast format specifically - recorded lectures, interviews, etc would also be great. To start the thread out, I've just been listening to and thoroughly enjoying the following discussion between Sam Harris and Joseph Goldstein on meditation - specifically Vipassana/Dzogchen. https://soundcloud.com/samharrisorg/joseph-goldstein Any links or suggestions would be awesome

I've just started reading "Thoughts Without a Thinker: Psychotherapy from a Buddist Perspective," and it gave this quote from Freud: "As Freud put it, the patient 'must find the courage to direct his attention to the phenomena of his illness. His itself itself must no longer seem contemptible, but must become an enemy worthy of his mettle, a piece of his personality, which has solid ground for it's existence and out of which things of value for his future life have to be derived. The way is thus paved for the reconciliation with the repressed material which is coming to expression in his symptoms, while at the same time place is found for a certain tolerance for the state of being ill.'" I think the bold part is essential because I don't feel that the attitude of accepting an illness is necessarily "in direct opposition" to choosing to fight the illness. It can be the exact opposite - the equivalent to turning around with your head held high, acknowledging an opponent who has been chasing you and taking them head on.

I remember reading a bit about it in a brochure from Clyman's system, as I recall it was pretty much just pore breathing into the bones, but it's been a while since I saw it.

I shouldn't be shocked by this, but somehow I am...

It's really good to hear that the Aboriginal people are hanging onto and reclaiming their spiritual traditions and connection to the land. It would be nice if one day these aspects of their culture could bleed into more mainstream Australian culture, since I feel that it's something that we're really missing as a society, even moreso than most of the Western world, but sadly the Aboriginal community has much larger issues to deal with themselves :/ All the same, I would love to check it out sometime - there's so much beautiful scenery like this in NSW once you get outside Sydney, I can't speak for further inland but Northern NSW, especially up about Byron Bay, has an amazing energy to it. Maybe it's because you've got the Pacific Ocean brushing right up against the mountain chains, all covered in vibrant rainforest, but there's a reason all the hippies moved up there back in the 60's and 70's I've never found anywhere where I've felt more relaxed and in touch with the natural world.

Which models are you referring to?

I think there are two factors here - the first is simple attention grabbing. As has been mentioned, calm, rational, measured statements don't make for headlines, and no headlines means no social profile and no name recognition and no book sales and no extra professional opportunities and so forth. As a result, academics and scientists (especially those in the softer sciences) tend to exaggerate their findings when it comes to pushing some new (or at least, new within the context of their culture and understanding) concept or theory. This happens when something new emerges which yields positive results, and then again when that thing, over time, is found to not be as effective as it was initially hailed as, or is found to have side effects which weren't initially given enough attention. This leads to a bit of a pendulum effect, where mainstream scientific opinion can swing from one exaggerated view, then straight past a balanced viewpoint to another exaggerated view, over the course of a few decades. Which is why all sorts of medications, but especially psychiatric ones, tend to go from being hailed as a miracle breakthrough when they emerge to being derided as fraudulent/useless/dangerous a decade or two later - you'll notice this effect with basically every form of antidepressant, anti-psychotic and tranquilizer which has emerged on the market, if you look into their history. The second problem is just that - that this concept, that meditation can worsen problems in certain situations if not performed properly, is a bit of a new one in the Western mainstream. In the last few decades meditation (especially in various watered down forms) has been increasingly pushed as a therapeutic modality in psychology and related fields until it reached the point of almost panacea status. It was also thrown around rather haphazardly in watered down form, treated as just another therapeutic modality in the "take 50mg of prozac and perform 15 minutes of mindfulness daily then come back and see me in a month" sense. This attitude also seems to have slipped out of the psychological community and the meditation community and into the mainstream - a perfect example are those 10 day vipassana retreats, I've lost track of the number of people I've known with little or no meditation experience who've decided or been convinced that going on one of those retreats would somehow be a good idea, only to have a miserable experience and drop out (or, in one case, a friend of a friend, with bipolar disorder, went to one of these retreats, stopped taking his medication while there, and fell into an extreme manic state). And so deprived of the structural teaching, lifestyle changes and philosophical education which tended to accompany traditional meditation training (having been developed over thousands of years to maximize the outcome), of course there's going to be a somewhat higher chance of meditation triggering underlying issues, and having watered down the practice and stripped it of it's traditional context, of course psychologists are going to be at first disbelieving, and then shocked and outraged, when they find out that meditation (or for that matter, any given psychiatric medication) isn't necessarily the panacea they were pushing it as. And of course, because people are people, some of them are going to exaggerate this "discovery" to increase their career profile. As for the side effects themselves - well absolutely certain meditation practices can certainly trigger (although I'm not comfortable using the word "cause") certain health problems, I can attest to this myself (nothing so severe as psychosis, thank God, but two years on and I'm still working to figure out exactly what happened and how to work through it - partly because in the West, even in many meditation schools, we simply don't have the structure and teachings to help people with these issues when they occur). But I don't think the problem is meditation itself (although nothing worth doing is perfectly comfortable and perfectly safe) so much as the way Western culture has taken a buffet attitude towards meditation, picking those parts which are convenient and which fit with our worldviews and lifestyles, and throwing away the rest. Unfortunately the parts we threw away were essential components of the metaphorical meal, and discarding them is coming back to bite us. In short, I think this article and those like it (there have been a fair few popping up lately) say less about meditation than they do about Western psychology as a field and Western culture in general. I think the title of his book is also very telling: