the1gza

So I have recently taken up the practices outlined in Stephen Chang's Complete System of Self Healing. There's a somewhat long story as to how I wound up choosing them over the myriad of other practices, but overall, they just proved themselves to be more approachable and ready-to-use than what I was doing before. I had been a Yogi fanatic, and yet could never actually get myself practicing because I had no clue of to start. Before I get to my question, I would like to give some slight observations from my 3 months going into it. To start, for most of this time I only ever really did 5 exercises: The Deer, Crane, Turtle, Solar Plexus, and Abdominal exercises. The latter I got into the habit of doing because my digestive system of elimination functions got severely compromised because of the way I was eating. Even after changing my diet, using all sorts of herbs and doing some physical yoga, I had no luck restoring those functions.. until I spent 5 minutes with those two exercises and the Crane. I went and entire week without a voluntary bowel movement (which was a nightmare to someone like me, who never went less than twice a day) no matter what yoga I did or how "clean" my diet was. 5 minutes with those exercises, and it was like I never had a problem to begin with. That moment is when I divorced my obsession with Yoga, and got into these exercises. I kinda lazed into doing these exercises, as up until this time I was the consummate spiritual theorist; always reading, and never practicing. Once I started the Animal exercises, I could feel energetic movements, and I slowly got into the habit of doing the Animal, Directional, Zodiac, and Nerve Exercises. Again, from Day 1 I had a lot of improvements not only physically, but also in my ability to meditate. Recently, I found that the the Zodiac organs are fit together with the organs of the same element. For example, the stomach and spleen-pancreas are both Earth element. As things would have it, both elements are paired together in the same Zodiac timeline; the stomach from 7-9am and the spleen following from 9-11am. This happens through the entire 24-hour day, and as such, I just decided that this must be of some importance. I now find myself focusing on the Crane, Deer, and Turtle, practicing each about 5 times each separately, and combined for another 5 times. However, I have not been able to get to the general maintenance exercises. I alternate the main 3 categories of exercises - The Animal, The Zodiac, and the DIrectional - on a day-by-day basis. In other words, on one day, I do the Zodiac, on another, I do the Animal, on another, I do the DIrectional, and then start the cycle over again. I also found seminal retention to make a big difference in the practice of these exercises. When I upped the Deer- Crane, and Turtle, I retained by semen for 5 days. In that time, I released MASSIVE amounts of mucus in my head... I mean a massive amount. I found that there was so much mucus, that I literally felt pressure being alleviated from my mouth. My teeth were very loose p until that period, and suddenly they are really strong and in place firmly. My ears are clear, and my vision even improved. I could definitely feel the energy that the Deer was cultivating moving into my head, but also in my shoulders, traps, back, gut... it was far different than practicing without semen. Even though my head was releasing a lot of mucoid buildup, it felt like some of that was coming from different places. There was also energy moving in my kidneys... it was all sorts of crazy. However, looking to tempt fate, I spilled my semen, and the awareness of these things seemed to drop pretty heavily. I can't say I'm too mad, because that mucus removal was a trip, but there was definitely something to seminal retention that has inspired me to continue where other experiments have not. The only thing I wondered was whether I might be overdoing it. I saw this quote, and wondered what you guys - anyone who has practiced this system that is - might take from this: The general health maintenance exercises are to be practiced on a daily basis for a minimum of three months.Then one should continue to practice the Deer, Crane, and Turtle daily, and use the other exercises on a schedule of alternate days or weeks so as to build the body to its maximum level of health. I was wondering if he meant that a person was supposed to wait to address the other exercises until I was done with the 3 months of general maintenance? I admit, I haven't found much time to do the general maintenance exercises, and they seem somewhat important. i also have not got around to consistent practice of the Nerve exercises either. I also wondered how one might reconcile the fact that the Lung and Large Intestine blocks are fit to a time frame where people are normally asleep. If anyone has experience with this system, I would appreciate the insight. Thanks a lot.

You know, you're right. My bad

Problem is, this thread is gonna be huge, just like the other number of "Your-God-is-Dumber-Than-My-God" threads going around. I swear, folks got daddy issues.

This is the a terribly lame thread. If you are a cultivator, why are you wasting your energy condemning a man that, truthfully, you don't know a goddamn thing about. "I met his followers, and some article with an author I don't know says he's BAAAADD!!!" So the fuck what? I've met thousands of Christians, Muslims Jews, Buddhists, and Hindus, and many of them were at least morally reprehensible of some level. So, by that logic I should assume that these people are accurate reflections of Siddhartha, Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed, right? Come the fuck on people... this is what happens when people are caught up idolizing people, and idolizing goes both in the positive direction (deification) and the negative direction (demonization). If you got time to waste blabbering about some dude being "evil", then there's a pretty high chance your wasting it.

But that's all terribly theoretical, and a part of combat is whether or not a person actually feels their life is threatened. If perps don't honestly feel they are threatened physically in the same or worse effect that they are capable of wielding against the officer, they aren't as likely to even hold back or act with the restraint that they would if they knew that their life was very likely to end. A lot of officers are not getting shot at because they are "packin' heat"... if all they had were tasers and non-lethal weapons, they would not carry the same gravity in the mind of perps. Do you know how many gang members would roll on cops in droves if they thought the cop was carrying something that is very likely to kill them? It's not just about the combat situations, it's also about what leads to combat situations. Lethal weapons are far greater deterrents in the minds of these guys, and things like ambushes on cops are far less likely to happen just because those guys are afraid that, with a lethal gun being a carried by the cop, at least one of them could end up easily dead. With a bean bag or rubber bullet gun, that is not a threat. And like gendao said, if you don't address the root issues, that is an initiative that is destined to fail. It's not just about perp lives, or even just about cop lives, but it's about solving ISSUES. Band-aids will not work one a gaping bullet wound, and right now we are dealing with so many that society might have to break down completely before a society that doesn't have these issues can exist. But non-lethal weapons for cops is DEFINITELY not the even a band-aid in this case.

While criminals do not carry Kevlar one them, in terms of firepower cops are often severely disadvantaged, at least in the case of gang violence. Gang gun seizures are usually overran with high-powered automatic weaponry. I think taking away a police officer's ability to have a readily lethal defense option is a bad move, because they are likely to encounter someone who is hellbent on dealing lethal action. This is why it is not a cop problem, with society the way it is, you can't just try to "fix" one area of it when the entire structure is broken up. The fact that we accept certain issues as being "normal" like mass gang violence, poverty, government corruption, social unrest, and then put these problems squarely on the shoulders of politics and officials to fix... it's not a winning combination. People at the ground level would have to start taking massive action to make these things a reality, and this is something that does not happen. It partially doesn't happen because there are not deep considerations that are focused on really assessing the current frame of human priorities and what honestly needs to change. Hence, even when upheavals or changes are made, they are simply revolutions into a different appearance of the same thing rather than evolutions into a new way of living and doing something. I honestly think that taking away police lethality would just get more cops killed and then serve as an even grater justification for miltarization of law enforcement. Communities themselves have to start becoming active in getting rid of internal violence, and this again is gonna require a human quality that is not commonly expressed or even thought of as being possible. But if we can't eradicate the causes of violence, then we cannot be mad when it gets out of hand. People getting at at cops rather than getting serious about eradicating the issues that are leading us to this just shows how unprepared people are for a change that could actually solve the problems we face in terms of law enforcement.

Thank you. I'm sorry, but this cop stuff is getting out of control, and people are thinking that, for some reason, you can act like a jackass around cops. Now cop or not, the last thing I would do in front of an armed person is even talk shit, let alone run at them, start moving around, or do anything provoking. In response to any of this, there has been 0 perceivable effort on the part of complainers to organize classes where they teach young adults to start being a lot more mindful of how they carry themselves in the streets and especially around the police. There has, however, been a 100% effort to do what people always do: complain. Perhaps people aren't aware, but cops aren't as well-trained as you think. Cops are not armed to deal with a great deal of the confrontation they can expect in some places (not all), especially in cities or areas that are heavy with gang presence. Cops, on some occasions, have shotguns in their vehicles, but most are not trained to deal with a person a group of people who may be carrying automatic rifles, desert eagles, and even explosives. I know I for damn sure couldn't be a cop, because I am not allowed to shoot in enough situations. I know that the rule of not being able to shoot a perp unless they are wielding weaponry in hand is extremely dangerous, especially in a place like Chicago. Kids who are being chased will often lead cops into ambushes where there are crowds of armed people in vacant alley or something of that nature. So shit, folks gotta start taking internal responsibility for this, because this is not just a problem with cops.

Bruh, before you even do this, you gotta prioritize and see what it is that you want. First, it appears you have not established a consistent means of cultivation, be it some sort of moving cultivation or sitting cultivation. Meditation is such a broad term that no one here would honestly know exactly what you did. However, you do mention that you have tried "many" meditation techniques, and that for one can easily caused massive issues. Jumping around from meditation to meditation without allowing it to consistently generate the momentum it needs fro consistent practice... I mean does that sound like it's gonna be helpful to you. More importantly, I find that your reaction to what is going on is only being looked at from one direction. You're not liking your connection with people, when it could be possible that this is happening because you are being alerted to a the quality of the people you are around. I'm not saying that this is definitely what's going on, but have you possibly considered that your connections are dying because they are bogus connections, and you weren't aware of it until you started this? You also seems to be resisting some changes "I'm feeling like my old self"... aren't you doing these practices to transform yourself? The shit can be somewhat uncomfortable at some points. But I would also like to say that, and this is for most people, practices work in certain contexts. I don't find that semen retention works in certain contexts, especially those that are based that are based in highly stressful environments and in frames where you don't have the ability to let's transformations happen. I am not going to say that all cultivation is going to be tumultuous, nor that everyone is gonna go through rough patches. However, a great deal of practitioners are going to go through what you are going through, and the only way they make it through is by allowing the transformation to happen. It's not just with semen retention, they gotta be able to do it with any practice. But if you are becoming overwhelmed by things, or can't allow for certain moments of debilitation or "offness", then that hurdle is never gonna be broken. So you may need to step away from the practice because you need to clean out some surface shit first. Right now, it looks like the problem is in your association to environment and your expectations of what should be happening. I don't think there's any cultivation that's gonna go smoothly if you aren't willing to allow the transformations they bring to work.

Yea infolad this is definitely going nowhere quick. At some point I think we should learn that folks are gonna have different opinions and that, at the end of the day, their knowledge and experience is going to be relative, especially if they are involved in an internet forum. It doesn't matter if you got a ph.D in a field or you're just an internet enthusiast of a subject, no one here can honestly come close to knowing every 1% of what there is to be known and experienced about life on this small planet called Earth, let alone the UNIVERSE or ones beyond this universe. We honestly can't even confirm if physical laws even act the same in all the planets in our own solar system, let alone others So what the hell is the point of us here, who are honestly supposed to be gaining our knowledge from experience far more than from theoretical musings, in wasting energy battling with ideas? Just sayin', there's a whole lot more we could be expressing in learning from each other's experiences rather than being turned off by others thoughts or perhaps being turned off by another's experience because it doesn't fit what you have seen or heard. Not wrackin' on any one person, but seriously theoretical debates are grown folks ways of showing they aren't that "grown" after all. The only thing I would say here is that a lot of initiatory schools rely on language, but that's not necessarily a good thing. The history of most spiritual disciplines are wrought with overwhelming failure and also complacence with failure. And in using language, in an effort to spread teachings rather than letting it spread organically (allowing students to come through genuine vibrational resonance), original simple spiritual teachings were degraded into religious movements that greatly bastardized the original teachings. It wasn't that students needed language to understand these things, it was that followers were trying to use complicated language, fables, and constructs to convince people to practice a way that they honestly should not be in to. All major known traditions are guilty of trying to "sell" their system, with all sorts of noblisms attached to it like being "saviors" of mankind or establishing "Unity" consciousness. But that language was there for the very reason you said, to yank people out of their world view. Problem is, that effort has largely been a humongous failure in terms of people honestly changing their worldview. Meanwhile, people who would get the first time around, for the sake of appeasing everyone, are running through loops that are completely unnecessary. Just look at this conversation here. It has honestly because a heaping mess of over-complication that, at the end of the day, didn't reach any resolution aside from the one you entered in here with: disagreement. Now I'm not saying it's bad, only you guys can say that. However, it doesn't seem like a lot of time and effort to remain at the same conclusion that was reached quite some time earlier in the conversation, know what I mean? Now I've talked to you before infolad, so you know I ain't doggin' you and that if you are doing what you got to do, then it's fine with me (and who cares if it wasn't). But overall, I honestly do feel that this type of shit does get extremely old as a human proclivity overall, na'mean? Let's just cultivate, share what we find, and then live life. It's really not that damn hard hahahaha.

Well that is definitely in line with it. What I would like to add is that, from what I was taught, what karmic seeds you have are the basis upon which you make judgments. For example, when you touch a burning stove, it will be hot. Now, for many people, the judgment is that heat of that caliber is not good, it burns and hurts. However, before that even is processed, there is a karmic association to heat or even thermal energy that dictates that a greater increase of thermal presence expresses itself as heat. In a naked sense, this is not something that is intrinsic to rising and falling thermal presence, it is only experienced that way through a certain proclivity where rising thermal presence is is expressed at heat. So before a person can even pass judgment, which can plant reinforcement seeds themselves, they have a basic, paradigmatic association towards thermal energy in general. So what causes people to have to walk in order to get from Point A to Point B rather than just showing up there by will, that's karma. Governance to certain laws, both generally accepted laws and "esoteric" laws, that's karma. At the level of Yoga Nidra, none of those matter, they are floating potentials. So in the level of Yoga Nidra, a person could program themselves out of dependence on paradigmatic associations that are not just created in gross thought, but at the level of what makes the paradigm what it is. So hot can be cold, one could eat a pizza and gain the nutritional vibrance they would gain from eating a salad (generic comparison, I know), or any other host of things they could want. But of course, this would sound somewhat blasphemous because most information on Yoga would not suggest using it in that fashion. This is where religious ideals come in, so it would be up to the individual just how they are willing to take what they learn.

I wouldn't know, by my estimation since it is a skill you have, then it is a program for you. How it got there is beyond me, because I wouldn't necessarily rely on most theories of karma that are available. Those ideas are often too religiously based and conformed to an idea of sequential time, which at the level of Yoga Nidra such things have no honest credence. Conformity to a sequential time paradigm is itself a karmic program, so while karma can contain skills and proclivities, it's more about the set of "programs" that a person has in place that shape their reality experience. The way a person prioritizes associate learning, working, sleeping, eating, what is and is not possible... these are all based on karmic programs. This is why a person could do "good" deeds and never improve their personal standing, and why a person who does "evil" deeds can sit around and have many things come to them easily. For one person, certain programs are very tight in them, and for another those programs rather don't matter, or don't exist. So if karma is looked at from a programming perspective rather than a sequential and/or moralistic aspect, then things make more sense.

Yoga Nidra is essentially a way of entering a state of deep delta while still conscious. According to modern standards, delta is the deepest brainwave state there is, and at that state is where the body and mind get the greatest ability to rest and heal. As such, many people who do Yoga Nidra have the opportunity to get a far better rest that those who don't, and also they can heal very rapidly. However, this would take some practice to get done, but if you can get to it, you could get the equivalent of 4 hours of restful sleep in 1 hour of Yoga Nidra. On a deeper level, however, the state that Yoga Nidra puts you in is akin to having access to your "Source Code" if you will. It takes a person to a level before form, the place where the function of form is birthed. As such, this is where people's "karma" originates, which is more about what shapes your experience of reality rather than something that you are "accountable" for and must "pay" for through acts and deeds. If a person can navigate this level, which does take some skill, then they can uproot karma and also implant new karma. Think of it as being a hacker of your own personal being, implanting programs you want in your software program, and deleting ones that don't work for that software. Yoga Nidra was originally a form of nyasa, in which it was used to implant various forms of power into parts of the body. The Yoga Nidra that is modern is the first level of it, and that deep state is needed in order to implant elemental letters and mantra, as well as deities. That's something you probably would not find anywhere in a book, but at the first level, if you really wanted to find that out, I pretty sure you could find access to that info.

Sounds like religion to me.

Hahahaha man took the reaction right out of my brain

If someone is dumb enough to choose me as their Emperor, then I would rule in the way an Emperor rules: to serve myself. Imperialism isn't something that marries well with countries of independent, autonomous thinkers, so even if you wanted that for them, they probably don't honestly want that if they are seeking an emperor. So shit, I'd rule so that I could let everyone else do the regular tasks of work, and work on cultivation matters. If someone wanted to dethrone me, I'd probably be gone before the assassination attempt could happen.

I think it's actually the opposite. The Tree of "Good and Evil" was the first mention of something man had a hold of that was dualistic. It was the Tree of all Knowledge, if it was then Adam and Eve wouldn't even be able to move. But Adam could name things, identify all sorts of food, knew that he had a companion in Eve (and vice versa)... he had plenty of knowledge to begin with. He also didn't need the Knowledge of Good and Evil to be able to experience differentiation, so it's clear that the Tree of Knowledge is a tree of a specific type of knowledge, and that is only of Good & Evil. It does not also mean that Adam had no knowledge of Good, or possibly vice versa. But one of those he did not have, and consiering what he gained from it, which was the knowledge of Lack, Toil, Pain in Birth (Creation), and Suffering, it is implied that Evil was the knowledge he did not have. Now if viewed in a literal, according to us, sense, then everyone thinks it's "God" who punished Adam (which is a very poor way of looking at it considering that God told them what was going to happen to them rather than "doing" it to them). But if we look at it from an "action-consequence standpoint, then the A&E story can serve as an allegory for how man came upon dualistic dependence and how man's current state of living is a consequence of that dependence. Oh man, this is why I don't do cultural comparisons.

Oh my God, let's not get to the Bible. Can we please can this discussion now so that folks don't start erroneously speaking for or against it with the same surface-level arguments that are always there?

Well gendao, you should already know that I am not too keen on using cross-cultural parallels, so while there may be similarities between figures, I would consider Ishtar to be Ishtar and Hecate to be Hecate. Ishtar is a goddess that was worship a few thousand years before the Greeks came across Hecate. Also, while certain figures across cultures can have parallel offices, the nature of the entity tends to reflect not just the cultural ideologies of the people, but the nature of individuals themselves. It may be true that the Ishtar goddess archetype was indeed what the Greeks first came across when they were interacting with the Goddess they came to call Hecate. However, as time moved on, their cultural reflections and expectations resulted in a Goddess that was quite different than Ishtar was. Hecate has different sacred animals, different offices of power, and characteristics that are also quite different than what Ishtar is described as by those who know her as Ishtar. So they may be related in some way, but if this is the case then the God Ganesha should also be considered related to Hecate, since they both are gods who are often known for being initiators of paths toward sorcery. That would be a huge stretch for some, and trying to draw parallels would essentially not make working with either any more powerful than addressing them as independent entities. For some people that might work, but cross-cultural paralleling is often a bane of the information age where people put more time into doing that rather than getting to work. When working with Hecate, and I would bet the same could be said for other deities, you won't give too much of a damn about whether or not she is a permutation of some Babylonian goddess. Well, at least I didn't care at all, though the guy I know surely was invested in that type of thing. He also was a bit salty at what I was experiencing with Hecate, and Hecate tried to reinforce simplicity with him that he was not heeding. So I don't know, but I got personal evidence that such things aren't important when it comes down to working. As for working with trees or the moon, I haven't really been interested in working with planetary figures like the moon because the systems surrounding them seemed more like cages rather than liberators. Now, this is not to say that the moon itself is essentially connected to any of those things, and I have met people who interacted with the moon without heeding or needing to worry about waxing or waning influences. So that experience of not working with the moon is based solely on me thinking that those systems meant anything, which was on me. But I haven't been motivated since then to work with the moon because it honestly wasn't a priority. I have been successful, however, in working with other entities as well, and in working with self-realized entities. Where I failed in every one of these was this: I considered that it was "time to get serious" and start picking up practices that I didn't gravitate towards organically. Since the human cultural paradigm tends to favor complexity, I got wrapped up in getting thinking that my was too informal, even with what I experienced. And I was fiercely impatient because, where I was at during all this, I was working from perspectives that were instantaneous-gratifications whores. I'm glad because I got to stand back and reflect on other things like the state of my physical body and health. So I'm not mad at it, but my failure was in honestly not regarding my work to be as powerful as others, even though others thought I was "advanced" or "special" because things were catching on so quick. So that's what happened there.

Methinks you didn't read everything that I wrote on it, specifically the point where I talked about receiving instruction. It's just that attempting to describe it is extremely hard, and since I was answering a question in terms of "miracle" activity, that is not something that made sense to highlight in relativity to gendao's inquiry. Describing a palm print? Pretty easy and simple to do. Describing the essence of downloaded "showing" of data and knowledge? Not so simple (that last sentence doesn't even sound right???) .

I can understand this, but in honesty this is an example of how forces are influenced by personal makeup. First off, the issue of karma is very much unlike what most people believe it to be. While morality can play a role, it is not morality itself that houses karma and, in many cases, moral stances can do very little to dissolve "negative" karma. From what I was taught, and it can be found in certain books (although I was taught this directly from a human), the meaning of karma is "seed". The formation of karmic seeds are based on the seeds sown throughout your creation, but also on seeds that are sown in order for people to prioritize the world in the way that they do. These seeds are sown at that underlies creation, before form, thoughts, and every other thing. So morality, and human association towards certain acts, are based on karmic seeds themselves. It is not that one act is inherently "better" than another, it is more so that the karmic seeds that people have toward certain actions denote them as "bad" or "good". This also would do the same in terms of how people learn; most people "need" physical teachers because their associations toward "spiritual" things is based on the idea that those facets of reality are less substantial than what we consider the physical world. It is also the reason why people are so scared of the spiritual; there are seeds planted in people that make it extremely difficult and almost unsavory to explore that which is the true essence of themselves. If it wasn't that way, people could not prioritize many of the frivolous things that they do. This type of reinforcement is sadly displayed in most ancient Eastern systems, and a great deal of known and even unknown systems in general. The current of karmic force that has been reinforced by ideals over thousands of years paves the way for experiences that will continuously reinforce ideals that, while they are real, are not inherent to the nature of the techniques and explorations themselves. However, it's not the same across the board, and like I mentioned earlier, many people who are practice spiritual advancement don't get to explore these more advanced or "liberal" forms of interaction because they are stuck working with karmas that are more limiting than helpful. We gotta remember that in most of the Eastern forms we get ahold of, there are influences from religious ideals that would try to "box" in the nature of infinity. Indian Yoga is primarily influenced by religious Hinduism, and Chinese work can be primarily constructed by religious Buddhism and Taoism. The religions themselves are completely man-made, and were created IN SPITE of the advice of the originators. From what I was taught, karmic roots were meant to be dealt with based on one's ability to enter the world of the formless, or enter a state where one accessed the the formless realm of reality. While most forms of Eastern work have this goal, many of them would have a practitioner believe that this is the "Ultimate" goal, when that realm is actually the platform on getting to work so to speak. From this realm, a person can locate and uproot karmic seeds that are debilitating, while planting new seeds. Again, there are ways that would have people slave at this work for decades, and then there are ways that would have a person get to this level in about 4 months. Whether a person could believe it or not, one could use hypnosis to enter this realm in about 30 days on average, but due to karmic association, many people would outright reject anything that could be considered "that easy". Even though the idea of "hard work" is an oxymoron (would you consider your computer to be "working" if it had a hard time starting up?), it's a heavy karmic association that surrounds the nature of attaining anything beneficial. Every person I have ever seen who was assailed by harmful entities was, by their own make up, destined to have such things happen. They were terribly dissociated from spirituality, bought into horror stories and morose practices with these entities (i.e. blood sacrifice, "pacts"), and most importantly they believed that they needed extreme ordeals just to have slight access to this part of reality. It also helps that they were generally devoid of creativity and trust in what they were doing. Now I'm not judging these people for that, if that's what they had to go through, then that's the path they needed to experience. What I am addressing is the fact that people, when confronted with this, start to relay information about an experience that is entirely their own as a human gospel truth. What I found was that every fear that I had in interacting with otherworldly beings was completely proven wrong. Perhaps I was just imitating the fear, because when I remember it, it feels almost like I was acting. But even when I acted "unworthy" of these beings help, they continuously worked with me without being boorish, forceful, or unpleasant. It was my attempt to try and conform to pre-known ideology that destroyed any helpfulness that they could offer, and even that was often thrown aside. However, one thing I can say is that my experience with pre-known entities is fairly small, and depending on the collective karma sown by practitioners, these entities MIGHT act in a manner that necessitates following the karmic line associated with them. I'm not going to explain exactly how it happened because at a point I feel that talking too much about those things can be detrimental for my progress. But basically the healing, while somewhat spontaneous, was not the only experience like this that I had. Working with the deity Hecate was 100% instigated by my desire, and it was based on rituals that were terribly informal. I got connected with her due to someone on another forum mentioning her a lot, and I decided to ask him about it. His rituals had candles and all sorts of ornaments that I was not going to by nor did I have the space to set up. He also had to agree to "worship" her, which I wasn't about to do without personal experience with her myself. I personally just meditated on a symbol attached to her before sleeping and decided to see what was gonna happen. Despite my rather informal way of doing things, Hecate was very ready to work with me in a very physical way. She was very reliable, and the method of teaching was less about technical instruction and more about "showing". This was something I didn't expect, and quite honestly could not describe... it's like a downloading of sorts. The craziest thing about her was that there were a lot of physical things that I couldn't produce on my own if I tried. For example, palm prints on my sealing that were 3x larger than my head, which stayed there for weeks. There were other things, but I don't want to ramble on too much about it. All that is to say, despite being informal as hell, I was able to connect with something that supposedly warranted far more skill than I had. Perhaps there's something about me that makes it "easy" for me to do this, however I feel it had a lot more to do with the fact that I was presenting myself honestly and without fear that she would rip me to shreds. What's been mentioned here before, the openness, was something that I feel is extremely important, and will take a person a very long way. Personal trust in the fact that you are naturally born with the ability to work with this stuff is also important, as well as knowing when you should stop researching and start practicing. Which brings me to this: What demarks the things you say here are merits of you finding a practice when you were previously very wishy-washy. In the information age, this is extremely easy to do, and something that happened to me as well. However, what is presented here is basing that it was Buddhism that saved you, rather than finding a steady stream of progressive work that led you to something far greater than you could've known being frivolous. It also presupposes that this is something that people cannot do on their own, and the thing is that the quality of entering steady, successful endeavors is key to succeeding in ANY line of work, rather "mundane" or "higher level". Now it seems that in order to clear your mental scattering, you needed Bagua and the works you were working with. That is awesome, and quite important to know that Bagua did that for you and many others. But what you have been presupposing is that Bagua is necessary for others to do in order to get clear-headed, and that Bagua will ensure clear-headedness in everyone who practices it. Just because your teacher told you that what you are doing is "real" does not mean that everything else is lesser or fake. It just means that it is real, a real set of work that can produce real results for someone who chooses to practice it. And he emphasized that you DO NOT clutter your mind with ideologies, but learn directly from the work you had laid out for you. The thing is that this axiom is stated several times in several different forms of work that are not inherently Buddhist. In every book I read from Satyananda, he explicitly told people this very same thing, to get into practice consistently and with determination. Jumping from one thing to the next, no matter how great the practices are, will mean nothing because you knock out the momentum that builds over time. And in the merit of what your teacher said, would his idea not also refer to you? He told you to not mind the babble of forum discussions, and yet you are involved in one. Wouldn't that also mean that the babble that you are also relaying here should be equally disregarded by your own mind?

The thing is that every claim you have made here has been and will continue to be made about other systems. Now I am not saying that any of these forms of work are ineffective, in fact I know that they all possess a great deal of merit. But the problem is stating superlatives about things in the world with very little exposure to things outside of it. Who here is devoutly studying African shamanism, Native American shamanism (both North and South), intense Runic work, or truly knowledgeable Kabbalah?? The claim that something is "the best" period is ridiculous because the people making these claims rarely ever work with anything but what they "know" to be the best. It's like claiming that Corn Flakes is the best cereal in the world when you haven't eaten anything else but Wheaties and Shredded Wheat, if you're lucky. Just because the teaching is "spiritual" doesn't mean it is free of bias. If you need that bias to actually work with it, go ahead, I can't honestly knock it if it works for you. I don't know shit about Bagua, Taiji, or Zingyi. I also did not claim that all the merits of Chinese people about these arts was wrong, far from it. But the superlative statements about it being the best thing for any human period... that's not only arrogant but just completely detached from any notion or knowledge of other systems. Hell, I know people who practiced Tai Chi for years who were completely unprepared for how powerful Reichian therapy was. Does that mean Reichian therapy is, without a doubt, more powerful than Tai Chi? No, it just shows that it was more powerful for those people. I personally have only practiced a particular form of Qigong outside of certain things in dreams. To this day, I don't know of any Buddhist or Taoist technique that would heal years-old surgery scars in 1 night of sleep, to a point where they just simply don't exist. I don't know any Buddhist or Taoist technique that would reform 8 cavities and a 70% broken and rotting tooth to completion in that same night, and I certainly don't know of any such thing in those systems that would be available to a novice. But would I say the dream work is, without question, more powerful than Buddhist spirituality? No, that would just be a completely ignorant statement based on nothing but experiences I and others around me have had. And the superlative statements I'm talking about are exactly based on that type of ignorance. I mean I looked over the Vipassana, and if that is considered a "high-level" practice, then I would have to wonder where that idea comes from. I'm not saying it's weak, but its mastery is easily something that is a preliminary to advancement rather a hallmark of high-advancement. The Tantra sadhana I was given would have the practitioner master this process so thoroughly that you entered a state beyond thoughts and were at the level of where thoughts were first given birth. Again, this was something that was to be mastered in about a year, but even Franz Bardon's Initiation Into Hermetics addressed this at the very first level of his training. Contemplation meditation is not unique to Buddhism, and I doubt it's even "advanced" according "high-level" practitioners. So yea, you're free to believe what you want, and I hope it does you well. However, saying that one can't learn the best on their own because they can't, according to you, learn the system you like on their own... sounds like statement made by 1st graders on a playground. It happens all the time, but that doesn't mean that it's intelligent or even worthwhile to do.

Well this is why I have stressed that the difference between "teacher" in a traditional sense and teacher in a holistic sense. I think it's only common sense that you use a teacher from another plane if you can, so I'm not knocking that at all. It's what I would prefer to do, but if you can get to a point where you have consistent ability to access "otherworldly" teachers, you're basically teaching yourself because what you are learning and who you are learning from is pretty much dictated by you. This is one of the reasons why I would stress that a "Seeker" who doesn't know much go about learning lucid dreaming. But lucid dreaming can be terribly ineffective to people who rely too much on a single-focus idea of reality. The problem here Gerard is that there are so many "legit" systems in the world that, based on modern knowledge, it's completely asinine to talk about which systems are "legit" or not. Moreover, for the modern practitioner, most of what that individual will get taught, at least with Eastern systems, is gonna be so small in comparison to what's actually there, that if they do manage some sort of "advanced" development, it's simply because of the quality of the practitioner rather than the practice itself. That's probably something that most people will not accept or do not want to accept, but considering that only what, 5% of the Tantra manuals in India have ever been translated or even located by modern people, let alone Westerners, and given the highly secretive nature of the East in general... just because something looks "legit" to us doesn't mean it's any more advanced than preschool. I've met a lot of people who work with dreaming, so I might be partial to DIY learning (which includes coming in contact with non-corporeal teachers), and considering what I have experienced from them and with myself, I can say that the need for corporeal teaching is extremely relative. Again, that's a debatable statement that some folks will never agree on, but what can be said is that despite however spiritual a person might be, they can still be narrow-minded zealots who will prioritize their experience as being "truth" over other possibilities. Some Chinese people will claim that all math, martial arts, and spiritual systems came from China, which is a ridiculous claim. Doesn't mean that their system is flawed because practitioners believe it, it just means they make wild and ridiculous claims based on their experience and/or what they been told. And some systems may been way better to approach with a corporeal teacher, I know Yoga certainly is. But the question is what one can do without one, not according to Taoist art systems, Yogic arts, or other known paths, but overall.

This discussion really wasn't profound at all. I think the OP was trying to find something very specific with this question, despite the fact that the question is somewhat vague. However, this is a question that is impossible for us to answer for them unless we knew them very well, knew their goals, and were potentially their teacher. So when that type of questioned is ask to people who are not in that position, they get answers that really didn't tell them anything. Being a person who has asked questions like this myself, I can say that a at least some people ask this question looking for an exact list of what is in column A and what is in column B. Now, in my opinion, it's ridiculous to expect that such an answer can be given to us without having someone who has the above knowledge about you. Nevertheless, when the questions don't come with that specific type of answer, then it's easy to leave the topic.

Well you'll really never know now until you actually set out on the path. There was a time, when this stuff was first contrived, where people had no choice but to learn on their own. There had to be an "originator" of these systems, but the way they learned these things is often way too hard for people to accept as possible. Due to the fact that people are terribly inept at creativity, and are also nestled into a framework of toiling for even small gains, it is nigh impossible for MOST people to learn on their own. However, this is not something that is innate, but rather a learned and inherited way of interaction that folks just accept. If you want to learn on your own, or learn independent of the need for "physical" teachers, you are gonna have to take a chance and go about trying something out that you may not understand fully. Moreover, you might have to start pushing the boundaries on what you think you need so that you can attain what you actually need. You can lucid dream and gain a teacher for everything, but will you accept that you have gotten a teacher who is as "useful" as one in this reality experience? That's up to you to decide, and if you chose to act the same way with physical teacher, your results would be the same. So you can learn anything independent a physical teacher, but if you are going that route, you gotta be willing to use methods that are not generally accepted as "legit" by others.

Lucid Dreaming is probably the easiest way to get into consistent and effective magick, along with many other things. Honestly, I have a hard time trying to delineate based on semantics, but dreaming can effectively be used to explore anything in the "spiritual" or "physical" world. The problem is that folks tend to view dreaming as being insubstantial, primarily because it can be a lot easier than trying to meditate or "astral project" from a starting waking state. But I would suggest that you look into things like brainwave states to get an understanding of dreaming on a shamanic level. The state people are in with lucid dreams is the prime state that people want to be in when they conduct magick, at least until they have done it enough that the magick they produce feels natural. But I would contend that unless you are using lucid dreaming for magickal exploration, it is completely useless. I find that the main issue is that it is so much easier to work with things in dreams that folks just can't accept it as having effect on the "real" world. So that's why it's not considered much in most magic literature, or explored very much beyond Castaneda's work.