markern

There are a lot of stuff wrong with Chias stuff and he teaches it poorly and unasafely but that it is all "fake" whatever that means is bullshit. Dirk Al got stream entry (veriified by his teachers) doing Budhist meditation in a Thai monastary but lost it again quickly but then regained it again doing mantak chias stuff. My own teacher has also had huge success with Chias system but from what I can see uses it as a more general energetic support meditation because his main practices has been Vipassana , Dzogchen and other budhist practices. I think what has given these two guys their success in the system is partialy their backgraoun in stuff like vipassana which gave them the concentration necesary to do his stuff easily and correctly and allowed them the stilness somponent that is missing in Chias system. Partialy I think they also, or at least my own teacher I don`t know about Dirk, just did things a little bit differently from Chia. He always does things more yin, more moderate and with more wisdom and more psychology integrated into it. Learning inner smile from my teacher was like learning a completly different practice than when I learnt it from Mantak. Same thing with Iron Shirt. He just naturaly did things in a slightly different way whcih makes it perfectly safe and sound. So there is nothing wrong with the basic alchemy. The problem is one of poor or wrong preperation for the practices in terms of physical health and basic stilling of the mind, adjustments of practices especialy making them more yin and adding a stilness component. Michael winn has largely corrected these things so following his system should probably work out well.

Shinzen youngs breakthrough difficult emotions should be sperb for this.

Findley, everyone her understands perfectly well that there is a huge different between a "dualistic" emotion and the nondualistic enlightened state. Having spent time here for a few years I can tell you with absolute certianity that for the regular bums (some newbies and passers by might be something else) that is like 2 pluss 2 and so your weird ranting about this is completly misplaced and just a fantasy in your head. Numerous threads of late that go in depth on enlightenement, budhism vs vedanta and taoism shoudl have made that abundantly clear. On the other hand YOU do not understand non-attatchement att all and you do not understand the relationship between a non-dual unerstanding and a dual self and the cultivation of that self. The way you are talking you should follow up un it and start doing Dzogchen in the traffic. The point as Santiago has said is to live in both mandalas (and do it well) and for that one also works on dualistic emotions and most certainly on dualistic practicalities. This does not at all hinder either mindfulness in daily life nor the possibility or speed with which one reaches enlightenment. A good example of that is Daniel Ingram which has done it realy fast and would find what you are saying completly ridiculous. Read his blook you realy need to learn this: http://web.mac.com/danielmingram/iWeb/Dani...he%20Blook.html You should also read Shinzen Young. He explains a lot of the things you are confused about very, very clearly. The what is equanimity article should be important for you, so should the meditation:escaping into life article be and these also, Purpose and Method of Vipassana Meditation, Meditation and the Self, Meditation and Pleasure, Meditation and Emptying the Mind. His book on the science of enlightenment is probably better but haven`t gotten that far. A wise heart (about budhist pshycology) by jack Kornfield and a path with heart and after the extacy the laundry by hte same author is will also help you sort things out.

After doing yoga for some years and doing a little meditation I have become very, very sensitive to energy, my own and other peoples. I have started to think completly differently about life, my problems and what to do about them and also what other people could do about their lives to improve them. The problem is almost no one I know understands anything of this. And with those who potentialy can understand and are quite interested I can only give them a very basic understanding because this stuff is quite incomprehenisble without experience. Besides after having figured out all the stuff I have in the last few years I realy want to give people a 50 page brief on how to go about energywork, meditation and mysticism in a good way. (I actualy might write such a brief) for those I encounter who want to get into stuff). In total all of this has made me a complete martian. So what I mostly do is shut up and experience my internal world completle differently from those around me and interperate the external world completly diferently and I find that hard. Eventualy the disparity will get even worse. What if I raise my kundalini and aquire strong healing and shaktipat powers. That would kinda put me in the same category as Gandalf in lord of the rings or any other fantazy figure with magical powers which is as weird as it can get. How do you cope with this disparity between your world and other peoples perspective? Any advice?

Thanks! I like those. Can you be more specific about what you want to hear? I guess healing powers wouldn`t be that bad and shkatipat powers are fun and nice and I want them all but still it feels weird. I do meet some people that realy want to hear and the wind is deffinitively blowing in that direction. !0 years from now I think the general poppulation will be more open and interested because of the spread of yoga qigong and research into meditation. Good point. Just like the Roman generals had wispered into their ears by a slave runing along side when they did their triumph march after big wins. Well being omniscient is a step up from Gandalf I think into something even more weird, almost God like. Of course bineg omniscient I would know what to do about that but still. Anyway true Omniscience is one of the siddhis I don`t realy buy into that much. I can see tendencies towards it being true but I doubt the full thing ever being real.

In some descriptions of the full yogic breath they say start breathing in and expanding the lower belly then the chest and then realy high up in the chest so your shoulders pull back and actualy lift up a bit. Then start breathing out and contracting first the belly, then the chest. However, in other explanations people say to start with the belly then the chest and then start breathing out and contracting first in the bell and then the chest. This confuses me and I realy want to get this down. I am also confused if what is meant by the babys breath/the natural breat and dan tien breathing and belly breathing are also all the same or something different. Sometimes it seems to me what is meant by the later types are just breathing in and out with the belly with virtualy no chest expansion and dan tien breathing sometimes refered to as just belly breathing and sometimes breathing more in and out of the energetic dan tien center rather then just breathing from the general dan tien area without focus on energy. Can anyone clarify for me? And in KAP what version is used there. The description isen`t totaly clear to me there either.

Thanks guys I am going to go with breathing out from the lower belly first.

By you standards any practice that does not itself lead very directly to enlightenemnt is a false practice. Only the practice that itself awakens the kundlini, like Tummo maybe I don`t know, or itself provides the breakthrough to enlightenment like vipassana or dzogchen are worthy pracitces. But in order to make those practices work you need other practices first and simultainiously. Without shamatha (concentration meditation) Vipassana does not work at all. Without the preliminary and surrounding meditations any meditation that is designed particulary to arouse the kundalini is not likely to yield any result because of lack of concentration and no ability to penetrate the energetic kosha and because the chakras and elements are probably completly out of sync with each other. If it actualy did succed in raising the kundalini without the preporatory or surrounding practices one would almost certianly be in for an energetic nightmare known as kundlini syndrome. Further more, enlightenment by itslef does not do everything to balance you out and make you a good and functional person. As far as I know all or almost all traditions have some sort of post enlightenment training to make you a well rounded enlightened being and to work on the personality structure and "ego" which does not disapear but is "seen through" and looses its tight grip on you which is something quite different. This type of work is done prior to enlightenemnt to prepare you for the journey and increase your likelyhood of success and to build something good that is also there once you get enlightened and it is done after enlightenement. Zen does this in numerous ways, Tibetan Budhism does it A LOT, the yogic tradition does it a lot, taoism does it. Thonglen, the Dalai Lamas favorite practice is, as far as I understand not at all anenlightenemnet practice but strictly a compassion practice designed. Loving kindness meditation tought by the buddha is not an enlightenemnt practice, balancing your chakras helps but is not per say an enlightenemnt practice. The secret smile does several things as far as I understand. It prepares very well for kundalini by opening your meridians and making them used to carying large amounts of powerfull emotions and bliss. It makes you happy, balanced and emotionaly healthy which is extreemly important in making kundalini pass through without trouble and in having success in gaining enlightenment because emotional stabilty helps a lot. All traditions stress emotional stability. The first trainings in yoga and budhism are about getting your own basic shit in order and your basic morality in order and this is done almost exclusively because it is consdired necesary in order to have success on the path. If you are an unloving, imoral headcase with manic depressive tendencies getting enlightened is a long shot. The secret smile as I understand it also aproxiamtes the void state which is also helpfull in making you move towards it. Now go read up on wise speach and the Yamas and Niyamas.

Several popes I belive. This has been done in several rounds. In the 30s-40s there was one huge official "pope paper" (don`t know what they call them) written that aproved of quite a large experiementation with stuff from other contemplative traditions. This set off a trend of catholic monks experiementing with Zen etc. The current pope authored the second such "pope paper" but while the previous pope was still in charge so essentially the last pope aproved it but the current one definitively agrees. The did bar some practices but were clear that during something like Vipassana the holy spirit can be active within you and it can be a way to know God. If you google probably words like pope aproves.. vatican paper etc. etc. you should find this.

http://www.aypsite.org/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=6064 http://www.aypsite.org/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=6055 http://www.aypsite.org/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=6063 http://www.aypsite.org/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=6073 http://www.aypsite.org/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=5789 You should realy check out centering prayer and father thomas keathing. The pope has actualy aproved the practice of vipassana and similar practices as a way to know god and you could dig up the arguments given for this online. You might find something good written by Bernard Durell about this as he has not only been the abed of a Franciscan (I think) monastary but also a zen practioner and teacher for decades. Thomas mertons writings has a lot about this stuf. Of course check out St. John of the cross, theresa de avila and the cloud of unknowing. On this forum you will find people who know the budhist AND the christian contemplative tradition well: http://dharmaoverground.wetpaint.com/threa...s+of+Meditation There should be some thorough arguments made online by people who have the same perspective as you for why this is right for a christian. Try googling christianity and meditation ok etc.

Mixing the energy of the second chakra with the heart and heart chakra balances both and makes the often difficult to integrate sexual energy more benign. If you have loving sex then this type of alchemy happens largely by itself which helps a lot in every way and certianly is heplfull and balancing and makes retention a lot more easy. You can find the beldning technique on alchemicaltaoism.com

http://www.thetaobums.com/index.php?showto...=tantra+teacher This thread has several important points about retention especially the karezza stuff

To start with Vipassana or something similar sounds like a very good idea. Check out shinzen young and daniel ingram. Another great practice is the inner smile. For me it is superb and it realy does a lot of basic work for healing the particular parts of the body like organs, genitals, intestines etc, develops happiness, optimism, self worth etc. The brilliant thing is once you have developed some "smiling power" you can generate smiling energy in an instant during the day or while doing qigong or as a 1 minute prep for vipassana etc. Secret smile is also realy great and easily aproachable. Michael winn has a 10 minute qiogng sequence that is meant to open the orbit safely in 10 days. Several people whos opinion I trust on this like Santiago and Trunk recomend opening the front of the orbit first and working from the crown or third eye down the front and back up rather then back up first. The advantage of working the front first is that most peoples back channels open before the front and during that time you can get a shitload of energy stuck in the head without getting it down which is the point of the orbit in the first place. Also if you work from the higher chakras down and then up the lower chakras get blended well with higher energies before the energy of the lower chakras are brought up and that is good for several reasons one of which being that the lower chakras energy can be quite crude and dense. Another good tip I found was that one must not let the power of the back channel alone push the energy down the front but let the more gentle, slow and yin blending that usualy happens in the front happen at its own pace. I think this is because then the energy from the back is not blended well at the front but just moved there and that is not so good. In general I think one should do a lot of sessions with realy slow orbiting and study how it blends to get good "blending habits" in the system for when orbiting at higher speed when correcting bad habits is difficult. Check out alchemicaltaosim.com which is Trunks site. Lot of good info there. By the way I think working on correct, slow and deep belly breathing I think is a very important practice. Much more than is normaly recognised. People often leave that practice when they feel they can master more advanced stuff. However, having this basic breathing pattern absolutely perfected makes everything else work a lot better and makes energy flow correctly in addition to giving continuos abdominal massage during the day etc. Glen Morris argues something like this in path notes and it is strongly emphasized in KAP. Realy mastering this breathing and getting it sloooooow will also make mastering the sexual practices sooo much easier. Trunks advice on the abdomen I think is also very important. And since the sexual practices usualy comes up for everyone after a while I recomend looking in this thread as it sums up a lot of usefull stuff

It is not called kundalini awkening process for nothing. In a year or two or three and possibly just a few months if you are especially ready you can expect a full blown kundalini awakening. That is the mother of all mindblowing energetic experiences. Within KAP this awakening is achieved in a very grounding and balanced way that is way smoother than in a lot of other systems but no matter how smooth it is kundalini still is an almost nuclear energy and once awakened will lead to a huge change of perspective, energy and personality. A very positive and good thing but lightyears away from basic stress reduction. Even before any raising of the kundalini there will be strong experiences of bliss and immense love etc. I think KAP seems like a great system and want to do it myself when I feel ready for it and I recomend it to others but it is important to know what you sign up for. If you are reasonably balanced personally I say go for it.

MOnastaries and seclusion ar like kindergarden and your first years of school. Middle and high school are definitively in society.

Like Glenn Morris recomends in path notes you should start by stilling the mind in a basic way. Do shamatha on the breath or something similar (read up on daniel ingram or shinzen young or bill bodri for instructions). You could also start doing the belly breathing and the secret smile done in kap. Described in path notes and on this forum just search for secret smile in the forum. This way you will have a good preperation for doing the course and will start a little bit a head. You could also do the inner smile. That will develop your "smiling power" which again is integrated in a lot of kap practices but will work so much better for you quickly if you have cultivated smiling power in isolation first for a while. You could also do something to prepare your body. Do some hatha yoga or qigong or pilates. Maybe just a quick simple qi gong set like the eight brocades. Such preperatory practices will probably give you the stress reduction you need but kap will provide you with a whole lot more than stress reduction.

Sounds good. You might benefit from some sort of practice that centers you in your belly (dan tien) and or grounds you in your feet and down into the earth. That will be important for keeping everything safe later on and avoid making you spacey and loose contact with life and earth. Especialy when the energy becomes realy powerfull that will be important. Most problems in spiritual practice comes from not being centered and not being rooted. Such practice can be just something physical like pilates for developing your ability to be centered in the abdomen or a simple meditation focused on the dan tien, for example visualising a small quietly burning flame in the dan tien, or a simple standing chi kung posture like embarcing the tree or one of the iron shirt postures (without necesarily adding the rest of the iron shirt practices). It does not have to be much, just 10 minutes 5 times a week or something just to keep you balanced. After energetic meditations it can also be very beneficial to just sit in open awareness or awareness of the breath for a while to let the fruits of the practice digest and integrate by itself for a while. In general I also think it is good for most people in the begining to do a period of bodyscanning (feel the hand, the shoulder, the belly, the leg, the left side of the body, the whole body etc. etc.) in order to properly balance the awareness in the body as a whole and to get realy connected to the body. Once this has been properly done it is usualy not necesary to practice it a lot to maintain the effects because you will do your other practices from that evenly distributed awareness. Such an even awareness also goes a long way in preventing any sort of energetic or personal imbalance. You might also try to find out as much as you can about how the meditation you practice is supposed to lead to enlightenment in the long run. Is it focused on raising kundalini? Is it only one part of a larger alchemical scheme that requires one to progress to different meditations after some time? Is it a form of insight meditation like Vipassana? Is it a practice solely focused on opening the heart and untying the knot in the heart but that does nothing for the other parts of the broad aproach that needs to be taken? Is it just a concentration practice that needs to be coupled with insight practice or alchemy? It is very important to figure out these things so that you know if your practice is the only needed, only temporary, beneficial but ultimately a dead end by itself etc. If you don`t know what insight practice is then google Daniel Ingram and read his free online book and you will be very well informed. Good Luck

Very interesting thread. This thread should be interesting to you: http://www.thetaobums.com/index.php?showto...=tantra+teacher IN general I think most people are better of practicing retention of sperm than strict celibacy although a lot of care needs to be taken to transform the energy well. The advice in the thread I link to should go a long way with that. Practicing a system like KAP will also realy help you a lot, probably much more actualy. My meditation teacher who spent four years as a monk says that he gets more creativity and all of the other typical benefits from practicing retention then celibacy. However, with his training and preperation transforming the aroused sexual energy is quite easy and for beginners it will usualy be a challenge if the periods without emissions are long.

I think you will find this site very interesting: http://www.reuniting.info/ It has a lot of important things to say about sex and realtionships from a "tantric" prespective and how a diffrerent type of sex with a different type of orgasm makes all the difference. When they are talking of not having orgasms they are realy talking about a more quiet streaming type of orgasm though. For transforming sexual energy superbrainyoga is supposedly quite good. You could also do the five rites of tibet and add in the sixth rite which is not often taught because it is a very powerfull transmuter of sexual energy and as such only suitable for ceilbates. It is a realy wonderfull and powerfull sequence that balances all the chakras in a quite unique an qucik way while also opening the central channel which in itself is highly beneficial but furthermore prepares for the rising of the sexual energy up the centers. the first five open the channel and the sixth pushes your sexual energy into it.

These practices got YOU nowhere but has definitively gotten others somewhere. I know a buddhist monk that got stream entry (first enlightenment) but lost it again (not uncommon and his enlightenement was recognized by his teachers) but then got back to exactly the same place through Chias stuff.

Realy? Those who themselves have chosen or are drawn to celibacy are fond of claiming it to be the only way. The problem is it is provably wrong that it is the only way because of the large number of practioners, historicly and alive today, that have gone al the way without celibacy. In the Zen tradition it is normal to have a wife and kids among monks. In the indian and tibetan budhist tradition also. My own teacher studied with the two most highly respected tibetan dzogchen masters and at least one of them had a wife and children. You have to look far to find anyone more realized than this guy, although I am sure there are a few, and he is NOT celibate. Jack Konrfiled who himself is not celibate either interviewed around 50 well respected asian and western budhist meditation masters and teachers about sexuality. Only around 10-15 of theese were actualy celibate. From an energetic point of view celibacy is not the most efficient way to go either. The most efficient is without any doubt to have orgasms but practice retention of sperm and and transform the surpluss energy into higher forms of energy. Classical taoist texts claim this. My teacher who has spent 4 years as a celibate budhist monk confirms that for him celibacy is a lot more energicly beneficial than normal sex but multiorgasmic sex with retention is a lot more efficient then celibacy. An experiement done on worms also indicate the same. Some worms were geneticly modified so as to not be able to have ejaculations but still have orgasms. Then the researchers looked at how long the worms lived compared to those who were deprived of sex and those who were alowed to have sex. Those who had normal sex lived the shortest, those who were deprived of sex lived quite a bit longer than those with active sex lives and those who had multiorgasmic but nonejaculatory sex lived a good bit longer than the celibate ones. So if you want to save and build energy for spiritual purposes and transformation you are much better of with retention than celibacy. Being able to handle and transform the extra energy can be tricky for a lot of people especialy in the begining but can to a large extent be done very smoothly by fairly advanced practioners and to a more moderate degree by those with less experience. If you search arround in this forum you will find a lot of good info on how to go about this. Anyway there is not any principle difference between enjoying the beuty of a flower or a nice swim in the ocean and having an orgasm from an attatchement point of view. The question is not if you want or enjoy something or even what you actualy do as long as it does not hurt others or yourself but how attatched you are to your want or desire. The question is not wether you desire but wether you can let your desire flow freely through you. A lot of people confuse non-attatchement with DE-tatchment or indiference which is entirely different. Actualy in budhism indiferrence is considered the near enemy of non-attatchment because it is easy to confuse but completly wrong and unwholesome. It is the same as with the realtionship between pain and suffering. Enlightened people don`t suffer anymore but they do have pain, physicly and emotionaly, just as much as anyone else. Same thing with desire. They have as much desire as the next guy but they are not attatched to it. Shinzen young writes well about this in his articles on equanimity and pain vs suffering: http://shinzen.org/ It seems to me that the majority of western seekers, and a large part of asian teachers, have gotten this absolutely basic thing wrong. That is a tragedy.

I am strongly considering starting with a martial art called Kali Sicaran. It is a mix of filipino martial styles for close combat, wrestling, thai boxing and kali stick fighting. My question is what type of progress can one hope for in a couple of years if one practices only once a week. I practice Iyengar yoga 4-6 times a week so I just do not have time anymore. However that level of practice is giving me very, very good technical abilities and gets me in great shape so learning a martial art will be much easier for me, high kicks and understanding and executing the techniques will be so much easier for me now than a couple of years ago. I am doing this mostly just for fun but if a few years of practice could give me a decent ability to protect myself that would be great.

Thanks for the replies they were realy helpfull. Kali Sikaran is quite simple and straight forward with muy thai, filipino boxing and close combat and grapling as the core elements. So the movements are a lot more instinctual than kung fu etc. and so should get wired in a lot sooner. It also has a fair share of sparing. From people I have talked to that did sparing in muy thai they said that after six months they could easily kick the ass of anyone their own size that was not trained in martial arts just by not doing stupid stuff most people do in fights and that makes sense to me. Also Krav Maga insructors hae told me that they consider Kali Sikaran to be the next best thing for self defense after krav maga and very similar to it. I am also considering doing Krav Maga, muy thai or MMA for a while but thing I want to start with this.

At a later time I want to start some active work on building my dan tien and I am wondering how to go about that. I do a lot of Iyengar yoga and that takes care of the whole body in a very good way except not doing enough for strengthening the muscles in the dan tien and teaching you to move from the dan tien. To compensate I do 15 min of pilates each morning and that seems to fill the physical gap sufficiently. Iyengar also has a lot of restorative poses that are superb for relaxing the whole lower area and removing any constrictions that might be there so what I feel is lacking is something to strengthen the dan tien energeticly.Storing the energy in the dan tien with the secret smile seems to help and 10 minutes of standing like a tree as well but I feel I need more. I learnt some of Mantak Chias Dan Tien Chi kung and how to perform it a lot gentler than he teaches (the packing technique seems like it can create some problems unless done very gently) and that seemed to do a lot energeticaly and physucly but I feel that I need somethigng more gentle in the begining. So can anyone recomend me something that takes not much more than 15 minutes to strengthen the dan tien energetically? It could be qigong or meditation or breathing or whatever. At some point I will probably start doing the male deer excersise but are there other massage techniques I should consider for the dan tien?

I have a huge, huge problem with the fact that there are adverticements for scientology and for hypnotizing people without them being aware of it themselves on the Taobums site. It pops up from time to time. Scientology is a brutal cult that rips people of their money and puts them in debt. Just research a little bit on the net and you will find that out or yourself. I thin thetabums should not such things.