the1gza

I'm going to use an example posted here as to why I feel that these supposed amalgamations do not give much, if any intelligent respect to the systems they borrow from. At first glance, this makes sense, but if we actually go about knowing where these things relate to each other in their purpose and even in their anatomy, much of these associations make no sense at all. To start, the elemental associations between the chakras and the Kabbalistic centers of the Tree of Life are quite different, especially in regards to the GD practice of the Middle Pillar. The Kabbalistic elements are the same as the Yogic ones, which are earth, water, fire, air, and akasha. However, in regards to the elements, this is where the similarities end. In yoga, the elements start with earth being placed at the perineum with the muladhara, or "base" chakra. The svadisthana, or "sacral" chakra, is the element of water in the gonad region, the manipura, or "solar plexus" chakra is the element of fire being centered in the navel, the anahata, or "heart" chakra is the element of air being centered in the region of the heart, and vishuddhi, or the "throat" chakra is the element of akasha being located in the neck region. This is where the yogic placement of the elements are, and despite certain Western assertions, the muladhara does not drop to the feet upon standing. This is because the Kundalini Shakti force is always seated in the same place, at the perineum. Until Kundalini is aroused through several forms of practice, it is locked in the Muladhara. If the muladhara were constantly moving, then there is no way that the Kundalini could remain static, for that is where the Kundalini is housed and locked until freed through Yogic practice. However, In the GD system of activity, the Earth element resides at the feet, the water element in the area of the svadisthana and manipura, the fire element in the heart, the air element in the neck, and the akasha element in the head. These placements are completely different than the Yogic ones, for Yoga doesn't even have elements rooted in either the Ajna or the Sahasrara chakras. The only way to make these assertions is by having little to no understanding of the elemental sequences that are represented in Yoga whatsoever. Moreover, as stated earlier, due to this lack of knowledge and/or respect for this system, along with perhaps little care for the Western system either, there can be associations placed on these things that don't add up even further. The Dan-Tien, anatomically speaking, is far more related to the manipura than the svadisthana chakra. First, even though manipura has a association to the solar plexus, the seat of that chakra, at least etherically, is placed in the navel. The Lower Dan Tien of the Taoist culture is only 2 inches below manipura, making it far closer to manipura than to the svadisthana. Moreover, the purpose of both the lower Dan-Tien and the manipura are the same: they are primary storage points of energy. The svadisthana is not this for the Yogi at all, in fact you would do well in Yogic culture to transform this energy as soon as possible to avoid imbalancing this chakra and giving way to arousing extreme lust. Lastly, in order to arouse the Lower Dan-Tien, there are practices that mimic Bhastrika and Kapalbhati breathing, which arouse "inner fire" and are techniques that arouse manipura in Yoga. If the Lower Dan-Tien were relevant to any chakric point at all, it would be manipura, not the watery svadisthana. Considering, however, that the elements in Taoism aren't even the same as the Yogic ones (they exclude air and akasha an implement wood and metal as elements), I would again say that trying to draw amalgamations with them is still a stretch. The heart is a fire elemental in Taoism, while the element of air reigns in the Heart area. Now, Stephen Chang says that the element of air is present within fire, so this might no be that far of a stretch. However, in terms of purpose, they might be similar, for (apparently) they are places where "higher" energy mixes with "lower" energy. However, the approaches to how one awakens these systems is quite different between Yoga and Taoism. This is partially why I feel that these loose associations are often based on superficial, often stretched similarities that completely deny the overwhelming differences between these centers. It's not entirely a Western fault, because the East has also presented things this way as a means of making their practices more popular to Westerners. However, the need for cross-validation of systems based on these loose similarities... not only is it unnecessary, it also creates a means of invoking mentally masturbative thinking that does nothing to further the purpose of these systems in the first place: knowledge through practice. I can say that the practices all have some similarities, from my experience, in what they can produce for the practitioner. However, they also produce a wide array of differences, so honestly I feel that if you are going to make shit up, go wild and you might as well throw out the old stuff entirely. But if you are using these systems, I find that those who are accomplished in them stick with these practices with full fervor and zeal, rather than scattering their brains trying to intellectually validate it with similarities in other systems.

Well I would ask, how much of this is based on your experiential investigation? Do you have personal experience with Western alchemy to a point where the assertions and interpretations you are given are actually based on experiential comparison of these systems? If so, then it's not just simply conjecture. However, if you are making comparisons without experientially experiencing one or even any of these things on your own person work, then I don't know what to call it but conjecture. You even started this thread saying that this was based on opinion, so what else could it be called but theorizing? I'm not saying that what you stated was wrong, but without experience with laboratory alchemy, then how can you draw these conclusions without at least reaching for something that you have not substantially experienced?

This is the thing: we can talk about all these ideas, but in the end, how can we talk about them with any sort of real, scientific knowledge, unless we are personally experiencing the shit ourselves? I don't talk about Western alchemy, simply because I don't know what it is. I can talk about certain forms of Yoga, Kabbalah, and Taoist work, because I have worked with it. And so have many others here. But what this conversation has devolved into, and perhaps was based on, was the alleged experiences of people we did not know or meet, and sometimes not even that. Many of the assertions made here are based on interpretations from people who only studied the shit in an academic manner, never once even working with the stuff in an experiential way. If we are calling ourselves practitioners, how can we even remotely say that this system or that system meet up unless we had extensive experience with both? Hell, for those of us practicing Eastern forms of work, we all know that the stressed tenant of action in those systems was simple: Years worth of intellectual study will not measure to even a day of practice. So how is it that we can make these assertions about Alchemy of the West if none of us are actually doing it? Hell, most of us are still beginners in our mode of Eastern practice, even if we have been practicing for decades. So how is it that we can even remotely consider ourselves, or these assertions, innovative, when the primary engine of this innovation, which is practice, is completely absent from these investigations or assertions? This is what I am getting at, that these ideas of amalgamation have very little to do with innovation. This is what the GD suffered from; they had several very powerful forms of work available to them. However, the GD was so wrapped up in intellectualism, that it's tenants barely ever get the chance to dedicate themselves to the practices at hand. So their assertions are largely based on this intellectualism, and not in experience. I mean, Chris Hyatt was writing books on systems of immortality engineering, and this guy had to have been the most unhealthy hypocrites on Earth, using techniques from Reichian Therapy as a means of picking up females. Not saying his stuff was useless, but that the work presented was based on things that were not extensively explored by these people themselves, outside of academic mentation. This scattered way of association is primarily why some traditionalists argue for keeping to one frame of work: it garners focus. Now I would agree that most fall into a pattern in which these traditions wind up becoming religions, however the thing is that that there is a distinct pattern of action that goes on with folks who are trying to amalgamate everything. They spend so much time thinking and studying this stuff in a theorized way, they can't find a way to even practice what their ideas bring forth. Meanwhile, the traditionalist only has to worry about one thing: the traditional way of practice that they have before them. The traditions have a line of people who have taken the route before, and who can give experiential guidance to the aspirant. With these amalgam systems, however, are solely responsible for finding out a mode of practice that will actually satisfy everything they are trying to amalgamate. I have met some people who have done this, and done it pretty well so I am not of the idea that it is impossible. However, these people also abandoned nearly everything normalized way of interpreting things, and thus their practice is highly unorthodox. As for the majority, however, they are not able to do this, so the amalgamation is stuck in theory-land. This is what I am getting at, and primarily why this type of conversation always leads to debates that, at the end of the day, are meaningless. We have assertions made on things that the have not been experienced by the individual positing the idea. It's not the worst thing, but if we are trying to say what things "are" and "aren't", it's kinda foolish, in my opinion, to do that when you don't have experience with these things. However, most of us have been doing this our whole lives; most of us went to school learning about science. Yet, fairly few of us got to even practice the science we were told was "true"; we accept atomic theory without ever actually conducting experiments at the atomic level. So it's not surprising, but honestly I can't say it's sensical, or that it has a track record of ever producing things of value. The ancient shamanic innovators had nothing to draw from but experiential knowledge, so of course they could innovate. That's entirely different from what is going on now with these amalgam theories, some of which are so young that there can't possibly be an extensive experiential basis for it to begin with.

Day 16: All of the below exercises are from Stephen Chang's Complete System of Self-Healing: Internal Exercises. General Maintenance Exercises - 30:00 Deer Exercise: 2x/day - (20:00) Turtle Exercises: 2x/day - (20:00) Crane Exercise: 2x/day - (20:00) Deer/Crane/Turtle combined form: 0x/day - (00:00) Solar Plexus Exercise: 2x/day - (10:00) Abdominal Strengthening: 2x/day -(5:00) Semen Retention: 16 days This was a really inactive day for these exercises, primarily because my focus has shifted due to the events of the past week. Because of what I have been experiencing and learning with my current work, I am wondering where these exercises stand in the work I am doing right now. I will refrain from getting too detailed about it, but I will be taking the rest of this week off to see how this works out for me. Dogson, if you would like to message me about what I am doing, feel free to do so . I am also just a bit shocked that this thread only has had about 5 participants in it, and only 2 consistent ones. With all the theory discussions, I would hope that there would be some enthusiasm for a post that advocated practice. This work is about nothing but practice, you could spend years reading an mentalizing this stuff and not gained an iota of the knowledge that practice gives. But hey, I guess that's the way the cookie crumbles.

I'd have to agree with a sentiment that UFA brought up briefly, and that is the idea of trying to fuse systems as a means of perhaps validating their existence. I find that modern spiritualism has had a ridiculous proclivity to try and marry concepts from one system to another in a means of "unifying" spirituality. I feel this is not only foolish, but that such attempts have been completely ignorant. I can't speak for "Western Alchemy" because I simply don't know what it is. However, I do know the other attempts to marry the Kabbalistic tree of life to things like the chakras, and honestly... it's foolish. The TOL is a 10 (sometimes 11) point system, while the chakra system is a 7-point system. While there are general similarities between them, there are even more differences to them, and the connections that people being making are often far-reaching at best. As such, those who attempt to do those things spend all their time theorizing these connections without being able to realize them in practical ways. Even when Franz Bardon talked of the chakras in IIH, he completely ignored and even discouraged addressing the chakras in his work directly, considering that the chakras and energy centers would be built just fine by sticking with a mode of practice. He felt that if you wanted to work in Indian Yogic terms and practices, then one should do so utilizing that train of thought and work entirely. If one was to practice his form, however, then it should be given equal integrity, instead of trying to have your hands in 2 baskets. I can't say that Yoga and Taoist forms are not alchemy, and there are considerable theories as to why they are. However, if they are as such, we should be willing to understand that these were stand alone alchemies my themselves, and not systems that were married to forms from other places on the planet. I can give an explanation as to how Yoga and Taoist practices are indeed "Internal" alchemy, but I can see why trying to compare it to Western alchemy would just be dumb. What I also cannot even attempt to try and talk about is what "illumination" is, simply because I am not on that level. I think attempting to understand illumination from an unilluminated space is perhaps the single greatest form of mental masturbation on Earth. Just think, when you were a child, could you even possibly conceive what "adult" life was like? Yea, you may have had dress-up and played house, but all of us who are adults here know that those games don't even come close to allowing a child to know what that is like. The only way the child learned was to grow into an adult, period. The only way we can know what illumination is like is to grow into it through practice of the craft, no book or idea stream is going to allow us to know about that at all. Only the growing into it does, whether you do it in a lab or you do it through meditation, energy work, or whatever else you are doing. But the theorizing... i just don't see why people feel the need to imbibe on it when they can use that time to practice. To each their own.

I made contact on Sunday, and the form was mostly a tactile interaction. I did not "see" or "hear" it, because it was through a medium of hypnosis, which I had my brother instill for me. With that said, I do feel that the natural progression of things will lead to complete sensory experience, as I have had interaction with the HS that is focused on the head region with attention placed on my ears and third eye areas. But the focus was on healing, so it was not outright necessary for their to be anything other than tactile interaction, which has been ridiculously substantial. Again, I'm not going to brag, but considering how much my body has benefited so far, stuff that I did not expect to happen at all, let alone so soon... I feel that the HS is where it is at. However, I would add that it helps to have far small exposure to normalized views of the HS or Holy Guardian Angel, because if you go by that, half the time you'll think that this being is a straight up dick hahaha. I've had a lot of exposure to those ideas, however I never really could internalize them seriously.

Day 15: All of the below exercises are from Stephen Chang's Complete System of Self-Healing: Internal Exercises. General Maintenance Exercises - 50:00 Deer Exercise: 3x/day - (30:00) Turtle Exercises: 3x/day - (30:00) Crane Exercise: 3x/day - (30:00) Deer/Crane/Turtle combined form: 2x/day - (25:00) Solar Plexus Exercise: 2x/day - (10:00) Abdominal Strengthening: 2x/day -(5:00) Semen Retention: 15 days In having made contact with my HS, I am find that the HS is capable of creating just as much, if not more complete, empowerment and adjustments to my primordial self than the cultivation exercises I am doing. I am not stating that I will stop these exercises, but rather that the HS is capable, depending on the person, of creating empowerment that is superior to any ancient practice that has existed. I hypothesize that the origins of these techniques are, in fact, birthed from the ancients ability to commune with the HS. It's just a thought, but it's a thought that is now experientially-based rather than theoretically-based.

I haven't been taking many herbs consistently aside from triphala and ginger. I do have some shilajit, in it's black tar form but I haven't been utilizing it for whatever reason. However, my food need has been diminished, or should I say my food proclivity has diminished with my food need. I haven't had "need" to eat a lot for some time, but my appetite had remained pretty substantial and therefore a lot of attempted diet changes devolved in see-sawing between "healthy" food and "SAD" food. I found that I first felt that I could eat food that was pretty heavy because my digestion improved, and that actually proved to be true. I rarely found myself with the "pregnant belly" that is associated with eating too much food at one time. However, I found that I just didn't want to anymore, so I been eating oranges and sunflower seeds for the past 3 days. I have been waking up early, but again, the familiarity with the morning is something I gotta get used to. I just go back to sleep outta habit, but today I was waking back up several times, so I woke up about 2 hours earlier than normal. I documented that occurrence about a week ago in this thread, so sleep was probably the first thing i noticed. I am able to sleep even if I am wide awake, so it's easy to extend what was a perfectly content 4-hour sleep (lately it's been 2 hours) into 9 hours. I'm fine with it at the moment, because I am doing some intense healing work right. However, once that's done, I doubt I'll be indulging on sleep again.

Day 14: All of the below exercises are from Stephen Chang's Complete System of Self-Healing: Internal Exercises. General Maintenance Exercises - 50:00 Deer Exercise: 2x/day - (22:00) Turtle Exercises: 2x/day - (20:00) Crane Exercise: 2x/day - (20:00) Deer/Crane/Turtle combined form: 2x/day - (25:00) Solar Plexus Exercise: 2x/day - (10:00) Abdominal Strengthening: 2x/day -(5:00) Semen Retention: 14 days

Day 13: All of the below exercises are from Stephen Chang's Complete System of Self-Healing: Internal Exercises. General Maintenance Exercises - 50:00 Deer Exercise: 2x/day - (22:00) Turtle Exercises: 2x/day - (20:00) Crane Exercise: 2x/day - (20:00) Deer/Crane/Turtle combined form: 2x/day - (25:00) Solar Plexus Exercise: 2x/day - (10:00) Abdominal Strengthening: 2x/day -(5:00) Semen Retention: 13 days I had a healing session with my HS, so I don't know if that counts as cultivation although it was based heavily in energetics. However, what I did find was a definitive increase in my ability to perform these exercises. So even though I only did them twice, I found that each performance of the exercises lasted quite a bit longer, and I had access to my body that I did not have prior to the healing. I also only chose two because the Crane Breathing activated a response from the HS healing that lasted for nearly 2 hours (this is on top of the hour that instigated the healing). Since I do the third performance of these exercises right before bed, and also because the HS healing session involved using sleep as a time to heal, I opted to leave the bedtime performances out, so that I could reserve the healing for sleep, and get to bed earlier.

There is one, or at least some 100-day challenge here: http://thedaobums.com/topic/37806-new-100-day-challenge/

Day 12: All of the below exercises are from Stephen Chang's Complete System of Self-Healing: Internal Exercises. General Maintenance Exercises - 50:00 Deer Exercise: 2x/day - (18:00) Turtle Exercises: 2x/day - (14:00) Crane Exercise: 2x/day - (20:00) Deer/Crane/Turtle combined form: 2x/day - (25:00) Solar Plexus Exercise: 2x/day - (10:00) Abdominal Strengthening: 2x/day -(5:00) Semen Retention: 12 days I felt done for the day, so I did not get a 3rd performance of the exercises that I normally perform 3 times a day.

Criminal? Shiiiiiii, sounds like a hero to me!!!

It's really a personal thing. I have always been cool with my own thoughts and my own personal being, so when I hear about others with "Dark Nights of the Soul" or alienation, it's not something that really strikes me because I have always been somewhat bizarre to the status quo. I think your last comment hits is; a lot of people are brought up with a dependence on others. Be it the dependence on others to validate our thoughts and ideals, on others for enjoyment, on others for love... I think I would've committed suicide if I had to rely on that to live hahaha. I guess I would have to thank being born into the family I was born into, but even they look at me bizarre when I say things like, "I don't feel like I need to have a wife or a sexual relationship with a woman to enjoy life." Everyone looks at me like I'm sick, but frankly I feel that relationships require a whole lot more maturity than people have when they enter them, and then they invite children into the world without even caring about those ramifications. I've already had my share of impulse decisions, so if I can't find my way into a relationship that I feel is healthy... oh well. I been with enough girls; I can easily be totally fine without that. Then again, if I could, I'd probably live in a cave and just do my thing like butt-naked my name was "Sasquatch: The 2nd Coming"TM. Honestly, that's a bit far from being a reality at the moment but I mean... it's not that big of a deal when stuff comes that way. That feeling usually destroys development, that inability to reconcile that you are, in fact, a new person and that you might just be growing up. You don't feel weird when you outgrow playing with toys, action figures, chillin' at the mall with your pals, and all the other things you outgrow as you grow up. This is just another type of growing; it's just a growing that most people don't decide to embark on.

Day 11: All of the below exercises are from Stephen Chang's Complete System of Self-Healing: Internal Exercises. General Maintenance Exercises - 50:00 Deer Exercise: 3x/day - (25:00) Turtle Exercises: 3x/day - (20:00) Crane Exercise: 3x/day - (30:00) Deer/Crane/Turtle combined form: 2x/day - (25:00) Solar Plexus Exercise: 2x/day - (10:00) Abdominal Strengthening: 2x/day -(5:00) Semen Retention: 11 days I only got 2 combined forms in today, but I added more Turtle to it at the end of the session, due to me experiencing that the Turtle really helps with the distribution of energy. I also only managed 2 of both the Solar Plexus and Abdominal exercises.

And thus more philosophy on, essentially, nothing. Isn't it quite antithetical to even try to conceptualize enlightenment in the first place, or what it "is" or "isn't"? I haven't actually said that it is not what is implied, but rather that this conceptualization is in itself egotistical? Does Brahman or whatever a person may call it confineable to a logic form, which cannot be entirely said to be "logic" itself (logic is simply a means of organizing data, and we use a "duality"-based logic in the normal human world)? This is what I mean by ego, we can talk about a world without ego or looking, and yet we are using modes of thinking that are framed by the ego. I'm not saying that it is wrong or impossible to do so, but can't we see how rather oxymoronic it is to use ego-based language and knowledge forms to address ideals that are supposed to be free of it? Again, I personally have no problem with ego, and I honestly feel that the created ego form that we use here is so tight on people, that they believe they transcended ego once they get to see beyond this tiny bandwidth. Hell, most people don't even think a person like me can exist simply because I am black, "Jewish"-raised from a black, Hebrew family, vegetarian-raised, academically "gifted", and because I never wore "thuggish" clothing. Most ego frames couldn't even accept someone like that existing on Earth, so if a guy like me can rattle an ego, how locked does the average person have to be into this ego-form if they can't even accept something like that? And how would a person react if they truly released the chains on the form? But that's not even the point, it's more so that this entire line of conversation, from the perspectives for ego and for those who favor "transcending" ego... it's all been extremely egotistical. There's honestly nothing wrong with that, but all this stuff is being explained from a base that is centered in thinking that comes from ego. "This is what enlightenment is"... the need to define is an ego-based happening, the need to identify. So that's all I'm saying here; it's just pretty goofy to try and speak about transcending ego using ego-based modes of orienting to reality. Ego is based on identification, and if a person is constantly trying to create a defining identity for something, then they are working from an ego-base. Even if the person is "enlightened" (and I honestly can't say that some ancient scholar was enlightened just because they wrote something on it or claimed enlightenment), if that person is moving to create an identifying mark for something, attempting to explain it, then that person is using ego-based modes of operation to do so. Rather that, or that person is spitting words that have a far different connotation to him than to someone who doesn't have that. Either way, what we are spitting is ego-based.

Yea, I can't believe how some people considered Bardon's work "obscure"... I guess I'll never know why

Well overall, things are a lot different. For one, I am a lot more "lucky"... just today I found $10 lying on my countertop and no one in the house was missing any money. I wasn't either, so this stuff really came "outta nowhere". At any rate, I find that the things I wanted to do are getting done regardless of when or where I have to do them. Even if it is late as hell, I can still get stuff done without feeling really shitty about it. Even though I have been getting to bed REALLY late, I have also found that I have been waking up in the morning pretty refreshed. Mind you, I have only started to capitalize on this today, because even though I could start my day with no problems, me not being used to waking up in the morning just let's me fall back into sleep. Overall, I have had a massive improvement in my digestion. Since I started looking at alternative diets, I have had a battle with my digestion that resulted from trying too many different things without implementing others (i.e no exercise and energy work). I was a raw foodist (raw vegan), mainly trying to see if I could utilize the diet to help me cure diabetes. Overall, I went back to eating cooked food, which wasn't really helpful for my digestion either. However, once I started utilizing this work, my ability to assimilate food got drastically restored. I have been getting slimmer, and yet I still eat a decent amount of food in a day. One thing I have to point out is the semen retention. I don't know why, but for some reason, this experiment into doing it has been REALLY easy. I also can say that I had been doing work from that book for a few months, but when I included semen retention... it's just a whole different ball game. My energetic awareness in my body is going off pretty much 24/7; I can feel things being corrected all the time. There is a LOT of deeply ingrained musculoskeletal and even organ/gland tension that is getting broken down with this stuff, and things I had been trying to work out for years is finally getting dealt with. Finally, my ability to enter deep states of consciousness is steadily increasing without any real strain on my part. I had worked with an entity that was helping me transmute sexual energy, but I did not really have the maturity or personal constitution to work with her in an intelligent manner. Now, I can actually communicate with her, and the anxiety I felt when I was working with her 3 years ago has vanished. Even without her in the picture though, I can enter deeper states that I had been trying to entrain for years, but lacked either the ability to consistently work with it, the patience to see it through, or both (it was actually most certainly both). I don't know where my patience is coming from now, but I am able to let the stuff develop naturally. I guess it helps that the improvements are coming day-after-day. That's it in a nutshell, although it is way more than that. It's just the surface level stuff I can break off the top of my head . It's really hard for me to think that this whole thing started just 10 days ago, but I think it really started in November when I actually started to at least do something from Chang's work consistently. So it did build from there, but still... just 10 days so we'll see how things like just one day at a time, na'mean?

Day 10: All of the below exercises are from Stephen Chang's Complete System of Self-Healing: Internal Exercises. General Maintenance Exercises - 50:00 Deer Exercise: 3x/day - (25:00) Turtle Exercises: 3x/day - (15:00) Crane Exercise: 3x/day - (30:00) Deer/Crane/Turtle combined form: 3x/day - (25:00) Solar Plexus Exercise: 4x/day - (20:00) Abdominal Strengthening: 4x/day -(10:00) Semen Retention: 10 days

This thread might be suffering from being alive for too long?

If you honestly were to eradicate ego, your whole existence would be annihilated. People talk of the eradication of ego as some bliss event... if you have no "Self", how are "you" experiencing anything? There's no bliss, because bliss is a "thing". To eradicate ego is to exist beyond all things all the time, so the idea of "feeling" bliss goes out the window unless you have an anchoring existence to experience from. I feel that what folks are talking about with ego eradication is in fact an expansion of ego. Problem is that folks are so married to their particular conscious experience of this reality, that they point to this experience as being "The" self. When a person finally breaks those barriers, all of the sudden they feel like they transcended the "Self". However, what's been transcended is a dependence on this paradigmatic experience as the sole experience of the Self, and a person enters a field where they recognize just how expansive they are. But if a person truthfully eradicated their ego, they would be writing about it, because they wouldn't be. We talk so much about eradicating this and that, nondualism, and yet we can't escape placing these ideas in dualistic means. Ego vs no ego, light vs dark, Unity vs separation... we can't talk about infinity using limited means of expression. This includes what I am saying here, no matter how sensical this might or might not sound, it's no closer or farther away from "explaining" things than anything else. This is why, as great as some philosophies might sound, they are ultimately inconsequential to anyone other than those people who can use it to help them gain experience of their potential. However, beyond that... it's just hard for humans to accept the idea of being unified while experiencing a completely sovereign, independent experience. If you are to be unified with "the One" in the dualistic mind, then you have to eradicate ego and be "non-separate". The opposite view is held by so-called "left-hand path" idealists; in order to be your own sovereign, unlimited being, you gotta separate from everything else. Both come from dualism, and I feel both ideas can get you to that unlimited state. However, neither can be said to be true for all humans... there is an idea that "universality", "unity" and "equality" mean "sameness". Yet, everything we look and see around us tells us otherwise... hell, our own bodies tell us otherwise. Our bodily cells all have extremely unique qualities; it's not just "body" cells. You got brain cells, blood cells, muscle, bone, skin, organ and various other cells. Even cells in the same category can be broken down into even more differentiated categories, but they are unified. And hell, if you cells tried acting like other cells, if a blood cell tried being a skin cell, that thing would be expelled from the body or cause serious dysfunction in the body. So these ideas... we have a desire to keep expressing them, but I feel that expression is better placed in practice rather than in facilitating theory. People often say, "spread knowledge", but I'm not sure that the ways we know how to spread them are useful. There's a very egotistical reason for teaching that many people don't like admitting, spreading "love" and being "One" with "everything. But even more so, this love of ego-annihilation is probably the most egotistical thing I have ever seen. I cannot think of a more egotistical ideal than eradicating your own identity. How big-balled do you gotta be thinking that you can garner so much will that you can erase your own identity? And I can say, in practicality, these ideals of ego-death do NOT play out in the world the way people picture them to be. Most "true gurus" are very far from looking like what we picture them to be, but they also aren't spending their time debating any of this with people, let alone on a internet forum. If we spent half as much time practicing as we did "searching" for other's answers and imbibing on that... well this forum might not exist hahaha.

Day 9: All of the below exercises are from Stephen Chang's Complete System of Self-Healing: Internal Exercises. General Maintenance Exercises - 45:00 Deer Exercise: 2x/day - (10:00) Turtle Exercises: 2x/day - (10:00) Crane Exercise: 2x/day - (10:00) Deer/Crane/Turtle combined form: 2x/day - (10:00) Solar Plexus Exercise: 2x/day - (10:00) Abdominal Strengthening: 2x/day -(5:00) Semen Retention: 9 days This was a "light" day, as the energy was pretty intense that I was cultivating, and I wanted to give it a chance to even out. I might do things like this tomorrow, and then go back to having things the way I had it on days 6 and 7. I'm gonna be back to my original routine tomorrow, but this was definitely a good rest. I can't wait to see how it translates into the upped practice tomorrow!

The processes and exercises are supposed to move that fluid away from the prostate. Now I wouldn't claim to say it does 100%, although in talking about these activities, we have to realize that we honestly can't rely 100% on modern anatomical understanding to explain something that isn't solely based on "physical" anatomy. However, the prostate is supposed to be emptied, it just is supposed to go into other parts of the body. The anal an perineum locks are supposed to empty the prostate inward and recycle the fluids into the spine and bloodstream. Again, not going to claim that makes anatomical sense, and since I am not arguing that it does, please do not post a counterclaim that is going to point whatever those possible flaws might be; that would be a waste of time. However, what can be said is there are enough people who practice in this fashion who do NOT get prostatitis, and likewise there are a considerable amount of people practicing who DO get prostatitis. So I would have to say that it's not the method, it's the practitioner.

Initiation Into Hermetics

Day 8: All of the below exercises are from Stephen Chang's Complete System of Self-Healing: Internal Exercises. General Maintenance Exercises - 45:00 Deer Exercise: 2x/day - (10:00) Turtle Exercises: 2x/day - (10:00) Crane Exercise: 2x/day - (10:00) Deer/Crane/Turtle combined form: 2x/day - (10:00) Solar Plexus Exercise: 2x/day - (10:00) Abdominal Strengthening: 2x/day -(5:00) Semen Retention: 8 days This was a "light" day, as the energy was pretty intense that I was cultivating, and I wanted to give it a chance to even out. I might do things like this tomorrow, and then go back to having things the way I had it on days 5 and 6.